https://youtu.be/MLF5deQWbrc
Podcast audio:
In this episode of New Ideal, Aaron Smith interviews Elan Journo to discuss his critical evaluation of two popular but deeply flawed biographies of Ayn Rand: Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market and Anne C. Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Among the topics covered:
The standards of objectivity that the biographies fail to meet;
The authors’ disregard for how Rand thought of herself and her work;
Examples of the books’ lack of objectivity;
How the authors mishandled the biographies' sources;
Why ignoring Rand’s philosophy makes the books less interesting and intelligible.
Recommended in this podcast are Journo’s articles “‘Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right’ Is Worse than Incompetent” and “Postscript: ‘Ayn Rand and the World She Made’ Is an Exploitative, Tabloid Biography,” and Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri’s book A Companion to Ayn Rand.
The podcast was posted on October 23, 2024. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.
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