One of the most important intellectual relationships in the life of Alan Greenspan, the prominent former central banker who died Monday, was with author Ayn Rand, whose 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged has become a perennial favorite among conservatives and which the Library of Congress named as one of the books that has shaped America.

The two first met when he was in his mid-twenties and she was in her forties, and already well-established via her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, which had been a best-seller. They were introduced through Greenspan’s then-wife, the Canadian art historian Joan Mitchell. Mitchell was a close friend of the wife of Nathaniel Branden. Branden was Rand’s protege and longtime lover.

Greenspan and Mitchell wed in 1952, but divorced within a year. By contrast, Greenspan’s relationship with Rand was far more lasting: they remained friends until her death in 1982.

Through the Branden connection, Greenspan joined Rand’s “Collective,” a small group of friends and thinkers who would gather regularly at Rand’s midtown Manhattan apartment to discuss politics, world events and ideas. He became a Collective regular.

According to Greenspan’s 2007 memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, Rand nicknamed Greenspan “the undertaker” early on in their friendship, thanks to his penchant for dark suits and his sober demeanor.

His dour reputation was at odds with his early artistic pursuits. He was a talented musician. Before pursuing an economics degree at New York University, he enrolled at Juilliard to study clarinet, and as a teenager played in a swing band alongside jazz legend-to-be Stan Getz. His musical tastes were just as conservative as his politics, however: in his memoir, he dismissed almost every form of post-big band popular music as “on the edge of noise.”

Greenspan wrote for Rand’s magazine, The Objectivist, including contributing an influential essay on the gold standard in 1966 that was later reprinted in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. When he was sworn in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Ford administration, it was Rand who stood with him, along with Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor, and Greenspan’s mother Rose Goldsmith.

“Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life,” he wrote in his memoir. “She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent – we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.”

For more than a decade, Laverne Cox has been one of the most visible trans women in America. But the Orange Is the New Black star says she spent most of her childhood in Mobile, Ala., keeping herself hidden.

A turning point came when she was in third grade, on a church field trip to Six Flags. She bought a paper fan to cool herself, and caught the attention of her teacher.

“I was having a Scarlett O’Hara moment, fanning myself,” Cox says. “And then later that day, my mother comes in and tells me she had gotten a call from the school … and [my teacher] said that I would end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if we didn’t get me into therapy right away.”

When she was 8 or 9, Cox was sent to conversion therapy, where, she says, a therapist suggested injecting her with testosterone. “The idea was that that was supposed to make me more masculine,” she says. “My mother, thank God, said no to that.” But Cox knew she needed to leave Mobile.

In her new memoir, Transcendent, Cox writes about her journey from Mobile to show business. She remembers being bullied mercilessly by other children at school — a situation made worse by her mother’s reaction: “My mother … instead of having an impulse to protect me or care for me or ask if I was OK, she made it my fault,” she says.

In the 1990s, she moved to New York City and began auditioning for roles, first as a dancer and then as an actor. She also started experimenting with gender norms; she began her medical transition in 1998, at the age of 26.

For Cox, writing her memoir is an act of resistance and healing: “After 2023, it became very clear to me that we, that trans people had lost the culture,” she says. “I knew this was the beginning of a disaster in terms of policy. … The dehumanization was so clear to me, and so I think I also thought maybe one more human story out there can help.”

Interview highlights

On the anger she still feels about being bullied as a child

As an adult, I’m angry at the boys. I am angry at my mother. I want to protect that little child. I’m just so angry. I’m so hurt. … There’s also like the anger [about] all the kids that I’ve met who are trans or queer who are still experiencing this, and the anger of knowing that in states that have passed anti-trans laws that the percentage of bullying has skyrocketed in those states. … There’s the rhetorical piece that happens in the media that is dehumanizing and stigmatizing trans people. And it creates a permission structure. If, like your governor and your state legislators are doing [it], if your teachers and pundits on TV are doing it, then of course kids are emboldened to do it. And that makes me so angry.