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It’s late August, so it’s more pop culture than politics on the podcast this week as we tackle Mad Men, vampires, South Pacific, the Drambuie mistake, and the definition of a bunco party. Then, columnist Virginia Postrel joins us for an boots-on-the-ground report of the LA Obama-Jam, why Michelle isn’t Jackie, the allegedly non-functioning U.S. Senate, and the Target controversy. So sit back and grab a martini: it’s a podcast best enjoyed shaken, not stirred.

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With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1958, Rand became a full-blown cultural phenomenon, selling millions of books and inspiring countless readers-ranging from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to actress Angelina Jolie-with her moral defense of capitalism.

A refugee from Soviet Russia, Rand argued that capitalism was the best way of organizing society not simply because it was more efficient than communism but because it allowed the individual to fill his or her potential. A self-declared “radical for capitalism,” Rand emphatically rejected collectivism of all stripes and embraced “man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Decades after her death, Rand’s work is hotter than ever.

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