We promote open Objectivism: the philosophy of reason, achievement, individualism, and freedom. Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism was set forth in such works as her epic novel Atlas Shrugged, and in her brilliant non-fiction essays. Objectivism is designed as a guide to life, and celebrates the remarkable potential and power of the individual. Objectivism also challenges the doctrines of irrationalism, self-sacrifice, brute force, and collectivism that have brought centuries of chaos and misery into the lives of millions of individuals. It provides fascinating insights into the world of politics, art, education, foreign policy, science, and more, rewarding you with a rich understanding of how ideas shape your world. Those who discover Objectivism often describe the experience as life-changing and liberating. Ayn Rand's philosophical works have been praised as presenting historic breakthroughs in thinking. At the Atlas Society, our scholars work to further develop this philosophy born in the mid-twentieth century. We present the empowering principles of Objectivism to a global audience, and offer those principles as a rational and moral alternative in the marketplace of philosophical ideas.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 313th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with returning guest Geoffrey Cain to talk about his new book “Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary,” which draws on previously unpublished materials and new interviews to reveal the untold story of Steve Jobs's “lost decade”—the twelve years of failure, near-bankruptcy, and humiliation at NeXT that forged the discipline and vision behind his legendary return to Apple. An award-winning investigative journalist, Cain is a returning guest to Objectively Speaking, having previously joined us to discuss “The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.” A former correspondent at The Economist and regular commentator in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Foreign Policy, and a frequent guest on CNN, NPR, Fox News, and Bloomberg, Cain sits down with world leaders, tech founders, and dissidents at pivotal moments in history. His previous books also include “Samsung Rising,” longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year.
Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph.D., for the 312th episode of Objectively Speaking as he unpacks the paradox at the heart of Greenspan's career: how a man shaped by Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and free markets came to spend two decades running the very institution designed to plan them.
What makes a true founder, and why does America keep needing them to break the cycle of stagnation? Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 306th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with returning guest Arther Herman to talk about his latest book, "Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump." In "Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump," Arthur Herman argues that America has always been driven forward by a distinctive type of leader—the founder—who, through visionary risk-taking and a willingness to build from first principles, has repeatedly rescued the nation from stagnation. Returning for a second time on Objectively Speaking, Herman previously joined to discuss his book "The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization." A senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute, Herman is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist historian and biographer, authoring nine books, including the New York Times bestseller "How the Scots Invented the Modern World," "Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II," and "1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder."
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 310th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with returning guest Doug Casey to talk about his latest co-authored book, "The Preparation: How To Become Competent, Confident, and Dangerous," which lays out a four-year, sixteen-cycle alternative to a college path that now averages $140,000 and too often delivers ideology, debt, and obsolete credentials. What if you could trade four stagnant years in lecture halls for four years of adventure, emerging as a debt-free EMT, pilot, welder, web/app builder, rancher, and entrepreneur all in one? A previous guest on Objectively Speaking, Doug Casey returns to discuss The Preparation: How To Become Competent, Confident, and Dangerous, his new book co-authored with entrepreneur Matt Smith and Matt's twenty-year-old son Maxim, the program's "beta tester." Written across three generations, it lays out a four-year, sixteen-cycle alternative to a college path that now averages $140,000 and too often delivers ideology, debt, and obsolete credentials. Built on a foundation of Stoic and Renaissance thinking, The Preparation is a roadmap for forging the kind of person who can protect, build, heal, sell, and lead—a modern-day Renaissance Man ready for a world being upended by AI and economic turmoil.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 309th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with returning guest Gad Saad to discuss his book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, and its blistering critique of maladaptively irrational altruism that has gripped our culture. Building on themes from his earlier work on the spread of destructive ideas, Saad argues that a miscalibrated sense of empathy is driving many of today’s most dangerous cultural and policy failures. A Lebanese-Canadian Professor of Marketing, Saad is a scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. Gad Saad previously joined The Atlas Society to discuss his book, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, which examines how certain destructive ideas have managed to take hold in places like academia and popular culture.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 308th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she is joined by returning guest Batya Ungar-Sargon for a conversation about her latest book, "The Jews and the Left," which examines how one of the most consequential alliances in American political life—between Jews and the progressive movement—has come undone, and what its unraveling reveals about antisemitism on the left. Returning for a second time on Objectively Speaking, Batya previously joined to discuss her books, "Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women" and "Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy." Host of "Batya!" on NewsNation, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has written for outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and the New York Review of Books Daily.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 307th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with the Chairman of the Liberty Justice Center, Sara Albrecht, to talk about the organization's recent legal victory over the Trump Administration’s tariffs before the U.S. Supreme Court. Can the President unilaterally impose sweeping taxes on Americans without Congress's approval—and what does it take to stop him when he tries? In February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court answered with a resounding "no," issuing a landmark 6-3 ruling in Trump v. V.O.S. Selections that struck down the Trump Administration's "Liberation Day" tariffs and reaffirmed that the power to tax belongs to Congress, not the executive. Sara Albrecht is Chairman of the Liberty Justice Center, the nonprofit, public-interest law firm that brought V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump and prevailed at every level of the federal judiciary, from the U.S. Court of International Trade to the Supreme Court. Beyond her work at Liberty Justice Center, Sara serves on the boards of the Illinois Policy Institute, Empower Illinois, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Unify America, and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 306th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with by New York Times #1 bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz to discuss the real-world rise of political violence, radicalization, and what he calls the "horseshoe of nihilism": the point where the far left and far right bend toward each other and meet in a shared rejection of meaning, a "No Lives Matter" zone. What's driving the "horseshoe of nihilism," and why are so many people being pulled toward it? Fresh off his standout appearance at The Atlas Society's Galt's Gulch 2026 student conference, Hurwitz unpacks how monetized algorithms select for users most vulnerable to radicalization, why so many people, especially young men, feel unmoored from reality, and how much responsibility each of us bears for where our attention goes. The author of 27 thrillers, including the bestselling “Orphan X” series and upcoming novella “The Delivery”, Hurwitz has been published in 33 languages and currently serves as Co-President of International Thriller Writers. Beyond fiction, he's written screenplays and television scripts for many of the major studios and networks, published poetry, and is an award-winning documentary producer.
What is tort law actually for and when does it stop protecting individual rights and start undermining them? Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 305th episode of Objectively Speaking as she sits down with the lead author of the American Tort Reform Foundation's annual Judicial Hellholes report, Lauren Sheets Jarrell, as part of our mini-series on tort reform to discuss the relationship between civil litigation, accountability, and the proper role of law in a free society. In addition to authoring the flagship report that identifies the jurisdictions where civil courts most fail to deliver balanced justice, Jarrell directs ATRA's amicus program, advancing sound legal principles in state and federal courts across the country. Her work focuses on lawsuit abuse, no-injury class actions, and the structural reforms needed to restore the courtroom to its proper purpose: protecting individual rights and holding genuine wrongdoers to account.
Who are “We the People”? Are we a collective body whose majority will is sovereign, or are we individuals whose inalienable rights government exists to secure? In Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People , Randy Barnett argues that America’s founding charter was designed not as a license for democratic majorities, but as a bulwark protecting the rights of each individual against the encroachments of government—and that the long drift toward a “Democratic Constitution” has eroded the very liberties the Founders enshrined. Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center and Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution; he argued Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court and was a lead architect of the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius. As part of this episode, Barnett will also draw on his new true-crime memoir, Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago , recounting the murder cases and moral dilemmas he confronted as a young prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, as well as his biography A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist , which traces his decades-long fight to restore the Constitution’s original meaning.
Join Atlas Society Senior Scholars Stephen Hicks and Richard Salsman for the 303rd episode of Objectively Speaking, where the duo discuss whether today's "post-liberal" New Right is genuinely charting new philosophical territory, or simply repackaging the same critiques of reason, individualism, and capitalism that have long animated the postmodern left. Drawing on recent work by figures like James Orr and Roger Scruton, Hicks and Salsman examine what the New Right actually believes, where it converges with the postmodernism it claims to oppose, and whether both movements ultimately share a pre-modern rejection of Enlightenment values.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 302nd episode of Objectively Speaking, where she is joined by James (Jim) R. Copland to discuss his book "The Unelected: How an Unaccountable Elite is Governing America," which explains how unaccountable agents have taken over much of the U.S. government apparatus. This episode is part of our mini-series on tort reform to discuss why a combination of historical accident, decisions by judges and law professors, and self-interested advocacy by litigators has built an onerous and expensive legal regime. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of Legal Policy, Copland works to develop and communicate novel, sound ideas on how to improve America’s civil and criminal justice systems. He has authored many policy briefs, book chapters, articles, and opinion pieces in publications including the Harvard Business Law Review, the Wall Street Journal, and The Federalist Society.
What if the latest science forced us to rethink human nature from the ground up? Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 301st episode of Objectively Speaking as she is joined by author Jonathan Leaf to discuss his book, "The Primate Myth: Why the Latest Science Leads Us to a New Theory of Human Nature," which examines groundbreaking research in neuroscience and genetics to propose a bold new framework for understanding who we are and why we do what we do. A playwright, journalist, and cultural critic, Leaf has the rare gift for making big ideas accessible. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review, among many other publications, and he has been nominated for Best Play of the Year at the Innovative Theater Awards. His unique background across the arts and journalism brings a fresh perspective to some of science's most provocative questions.
What are the most powerful arguments against free speech, and why do they all fall short? For our 300th episode, The Atlas Society is excited to welcome back one of America’s foremost civil liberties advocates, Nadine Strossen. Co-author of War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail, Strossen examines the flaws in pro-censorship arguments and offers a compelling defense of the right that is central to both individual liberty and our democratic self-government. A constitutional law professor and the ACLU’s first female president from 1991 to 2008, Strossen has been named one of America’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers" by the National Law Journal. Her return to Objectively Speaking deepens a conversation she began with us around her earlier book, HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship—and her argument is more timely than ever: the cure for harmful speech is more speech, not silence.
What is irrational self-interest? What is enlightened self-interest, and why do so many people get it wrong? Using a jaw-dropping real-world story of pardons and political operatives, join Atlas Society Senior Fellow Robert Tracinski for the 299th episode of Objectively Speaking, where he explains why rational, long-term thinking is the true foundation of a free and civilized society and how irrational self-interest doesn’t just fail morally, but practically as well.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 298th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she is joined by Ted Frank to discuss how an unchecked plaintiffs' bar uses litigation as a weapon—driving up costs, chilling research and development, and punishing the risk-taking that fuels progress in medicine, technology, and beyond. This episode is part of our mini-series on tort reform to discuss why a combination of historical accident, decisions by judges and law professors, and self-interested advocacy by litigators has built an onerous and expensive legal regime. Ted Frank is the Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, where he has spearheaded landmark legal challenges to abusive class action settlements and championed reform in the name of individual rights and rational jurisprudence. He has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements,” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 297th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she is joined by author Priscilla West to talk about her book, "The New Face of Woke Education," which exposes Social Emotional Learning (SEL) as a toxic brew of psychology and sustainability aimed to promote collectivist propaganda in modern classrooms. Priscilla West worked as a refinery engineer, traded jet fuel in the Atlantic basin, and brokered Caribbean oil supply cargoes before shifting gears to full-time motherhood — where the stakes remain high and negotiations far less predictable. With experience that spans boardrooms and bedtime routines, she now dedicates herself to education advocacy, championing a return to the classical pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. As a researcher for Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute and a chapter chair of Moms for Liberty, her writing reflects a life lived at the intersection of global affairs, community leadership, and endless chauffeuring of teenagers with her sense of humor intact.
Join Atlas Society CEO Jennifer Grossman for the 296th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she meets with acclaimed ghostwriter and author Joshua Lisec to talk about his book, "Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them)," which argues that communism, socialism, Marxism, and similar radical ideologies are not philosophies but recurring tactics of terror that strip people of life, liberty, and property—and then exposes their playbook to show how those tactics can be confronted and defeated. Lisec is a New York Times, USA, and #1 Publishers Weekly bestselling author, a New York Times bestselling co-author, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling ghostwriter. As of September 2025, Lisec has ghostwritten more than 100 nonfiction books, collectively translated into more than a dozen languages.
Join Atlas Society CEO for the 295th episode of Objectively Speaking, where she sits down with returning guest Michael Shermer to talk about his 2024 book "Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational," which presents an overarching review of conspiracy theories―who believes them and why, which ones are real, and what we should do about them. Returning to Objectively Speaking, Shermer is no stranger to The Atlas Society, having joined us previously to discuss his book "Giving the Devil His Due," a tour de force in defense of free speech from a scientific humanist perspective. Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and the author of New York Times bestsellers "Why People Believe Weird Things," "The Believing Brain," and "The Science of Good and Evil," among many others.
What does it truly mean for a nation to act in its rational self-interest on the world stage? Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph.D., for a discussion on why America is right to adopt self-interested foreign-military policies, as captured in the phrase “America First.” The U.S. national interest entails preserving liberty and capitalism. Salsman explains how this egoistic principle fueled the launch of the U.S. war with Iran and so far has guided its conduct. But U.S. victory must be swift, definitive, and devoid of the “nation building” which violates the America First principle. Salsman argues that a future Middle East without dominance by theocratic Islamism could prove as beneficial to U.S. interests as did the end of the U.S.S.R. and the Cold War in the 1990s.
Ranking source
Apple Podcasts rankings supplied by Mato Topic Intelligence Platform.
Observed July 31, 2026.
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