Seventy-five years after its initial publication, Ayn Rand’s "The Fountainhead" remains a cultural touchstone. The book has been translated into 29 languages, and it remains an enduring lightning rod for controversy, amassing rabid fans and critics alike. A saga of sex, ambition, and architecture, "The Fountainhead" endures not just as the story of Howard Roark, but as a powerful tribute to individualism “not in politics but within a man’s soul.”
Ayn Rand’s ideas are part of the cultural mainstream in a way they weren’t even ten years ago, let alone seventy-five. Rand has become the regular punching bag of everyone from economist Paul Krugman to comedian John Oliver. Even President Obama was compelled to weigh in on Rand in his 2012 interview with Rolling Stone.
Yaron Brook is chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute and joins us to discuss the book’s profound cultural relevance today.
