https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZV5I8YRYvI

Podcast audio:

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Ben Bayer interviews Elan Journo about the American and Israeli attack on Iran.  

Topics include:

The Institute’s Position on Iran;

Answering critics;

Congressional approval;

Evaluating Trump;

Prospects for Success or Failure.

Resources: 

ARI Resources on the American Conflict with Iran

This episode was recorded on March 3, 2026.  

Image credit:  U.S. Navy / Handout / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mzUUDz14Ac

Podcast audio:

In this special podcast episode, Yaron Brook and Elan Journo interview Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas founding leader who became one of Israel’s most valuable intelligence assets. Raised within the movement, Yousef recounts how his experiences led him to break decisively with Hamas and oppose it at great personal risk.

The conversation centers on the ideological nature of Hamas, an aspect often evaded by its apologists. Drawing on firsthand experience, Yousef describes a movement rooted in a culture of sexual repression and the subordination of women. He argues that these are foundational aspects of the religious Islamic ideology that suppresses dissent, encourages mass murder, and brutalizes its own people.

One of the most striking aspects of the interview is Yousef’s account of the conscious moral choice that guided his transformation: the choice to protect human life. In contrasting Hamas with Israel, he identifies a fundamental difference in values between a movement that glorifies death and a society that values human life.

Topics include:

Yousef’s defection from Hamas;

The ideology of Palestinian brutality;

Indoctrination in Palestinian society;

Palestinians’ repeated rejections of peace;

Risks of working with Israeli intelligence;

October 7;

Q&A.

This podcast was recorded live on February 18, 2025, and is available on The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

Image credit: Noam Galai / via Getty Images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmnux6MriXE

Podcast audio:

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer discuss the recent decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump, striking down the President’s expansive “Liberation Day” tariffs.  

The majority’s reasoning

The major questions doctrine

Statutory interpretation and legislative intent

The dissent’s plausibility

The separation of powers

A stopgap against eroding separation of powers

Scrutinizing deprivation of economic liberty, property

Emergency powers

Resources: 

Ben Bayer, “Ayn Rand on Free Trade, the 'Essence of Capitalism’s Foreign Policy'”

Ben Bayer, “The Constitutionally Dubious Law Empowering Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Tariff Authority”

Ben Bayer, “The Lawyers Defending Trump’s Tariffs Know They’re Un-American. Here’s How We Can Tell”

This episode was recorded on February 25, 2026.

Image credit: Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDKszEjACFA

Podcast audio:

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Ben Bayer interviews Agustina Vergara Cid and Brandon Lisi about their new article: “’I Chose to Be an American:’ Ayn Rand’s Immigration Story.”

Topics include:

Motivation for the article;

Why Rand chose America;

Obstacles Rand faced;

How Rand pushed America to live up to its values;

Archival resources consulted;

Most surprising facts about Rand’s story;

Impact of the article.

Read the article here: “’I Chose to be an American:’ Ayn Rand’s Immigration Story.”

This episode was recorded on February 23, 2026, and posted on February 24, 2026. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89gUQLWQGG0

Podcast audio:

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss the role of Trump in today’s rise in political violence.

Topics include:

How Trump’s campaign demonized fellow Americans

Connection between tribalism and violence

Trump’s whitewashing of violence

Trump’s targeted political attacks

Trump’s comfort with political force and strongmen

How “crisis narratives” legitimize the use of force

This episode was recorded on February 13, 2026. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

Image credits: Zach D Roberts / NurPhoto via Getty Images; Brent Stirton / News / via Getty Images; Kevin Dietsch / Staff / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49b6O7nOtZI

Podcast Audio:

In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Robertas Bakula and Mike Mazza discuss the opposition to autonomous vehicles.

Topics include:

Why some people oppose autonomous vehicles;

The safety of autonomous vehicles;

Economic costs of automobile Accidents;

Fear of displacing jobs;

The “common man” argument;

Divine right of stagnation.

Resources:

Nathaniel Branden’s essay “Divine Right of Stagnation” in The Virtue of Selfishness

This episode was recorded on January 12, 2026, and posted on February 12, 2026. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

Image credits: Waymo: Mario Tama / Staff / via Getty Images; Hawley: Chip Somodevilla / Staff / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtmQv3O7T8

Podcast audio:

It is common to think of values as things we “discover” about ourselves — pre-packaged preferences waiting somewhere deep inside. We speak, for example, of “discovering our passion” or of finally realizing “what we were meant to do,” as if these priorities had been there all along. On this view, valuing is automatic: we simply respond to our needs, desires, or emotions.

In his 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference talk, titled “Conceiving Values,” Gregory Salmieri offers a different account. Drawing on Ayn Rand’s distinctive view, he argues that valuing is not passive or instinctive. It is an active, cognitive achievement — something we must choose, learn, and practice.

Values, Salmieri explains, are goals within an ongoing process of self-sustaining action. Other organisms act to preserve themselves, but only human beings can conceptually identify and plan out their values.

To concretize this process, Salmieri turns to the work of creators.  An architect does not discover their buildings ready-made in the world; a novelist does not stumble upon finished stories; each must actively conceive a guiding idea and gradually give it concrete form. Likewise, valuing involves choosing long-range commitments that give direction to one’s actions and define the course of one’s life.

Topics covered in Salmieri’s talk include:

Conventional view of values vs. Objectivism’s;

Values and life;

Conceptual values in human beings;

Knowledge and goals in valuing;

Q&A.

This talk was recorded live on July 5th in Boston, MA, as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference, and is available on The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream.  Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g8n9_LOSwc

Podcast audio:

In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Sam Weaver and Ben Bayer discuss a new policy in Texas A&M University that restricts professors’ ability to teach topics related to gender and sexual orientation, which resulted in one professor being prevented from teaching Plato’s Symposium.

Topics include:

Texas A&M’s policy;

The case of Plato’s Symposium;

Relation to intellectual freedom;

Who should decide in public universities;

Motives behind the policy.

Resources:

Ayn Rand’s essay “Fairness Doctrine for Education” in Philosophy: Who Needs It

Onkar Ghate and Sam Weaver’s article “Trump vs. Harvard: Intellectual Freedom in the Crosshairs”

This episode was recorded on January 27, 2026, and posted on February 5, 2026. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

Image credit: Jon Hicks / Stone / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twCDUSXZMWw

Podcast audio:

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Ben Bayer and Tristan de Liège discuss the confusions involved in the conventional conception of sacrifice.

Topics include:

Examples of Sacrifice;

Investment vs. Sacrifice;

Value Hierarchy;

How to Rank Values Objectively;

‘Sacrifice’ as a package deal;

The false appeal of sacrifice.

Resources: 

Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand’s essay, “The Ethics of Emergencies”

The Ayn Rand Lexicon entry on sacrifice

This episode was recorded on December 30, 2025, and posted on January 29, 2026. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbyYlYiLE7Y

Podcast audio:

In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Onkar Ghate and Agustina Vergara Cid discuss the implications of the killing of Renee Good for the rule of law. Among the topics covered:

Topics include:

ICE operations resembling military operations;

The immediate aftermath of the shooting;

The administration’s contempt for the rule of law;

ICE is not real police;

They way ICE conducts arrests;

The argument that the Constitution doesn’t apply to immigrants;

The administration playing to its base’s tribalism;

The administration’s loyalty tests;

The shooting of Ashli Babbitt;

The future of America.

Resources:

Synchronized videos of Renee Good’s shooting

The White House’s January 6 timeline  

The shooting of Ashli Babbitt  

Harry Binswanger’s essay “ICE vs. the rule of law, not of men”  

Podcast episode: ICE Raids vs. Rule of Law: Interviewing Institute for Justice’s Josh Windham  

This episode was recorded on January 21, 2026, and posted on January 22, 2026. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.