It's a surprise to some people to realize that Ultimate Frisbee is one of the great modern sports.

It combines the athleticism of soccer with the elegance of the best moments of basketball,

the play-calling of the most complicated moments in football, all in one modern sport.

But the best thing about Ultimate Frisbee is surprising thing,

is the concept built into the rules called the spirit of the game.

Hey, it's Kevin Beach and this is a special archived episode of Akembo.

What sets Ultimate Frisbee apart, what will make it the only sport of its kind

if it ends up in the Olympics, is that there are no referees.

Built deep into the structure of Ultimate Frisbee is the idea that every player calls her own fouls.

That every player is responsible for calling themselves out if they're harassing somebody,

touching them when they're not supposed to interfere with the Frisbee, breaking any of the rules.

This idea that you play in the spirit of the game,

that you're taking a longer-term view for what it means to engage in a sport or a game,

happens to be revolutionary in our modern world.

The idea of our modern world is that you're supposed to win right now,

that selfish behavior is the best behavior, that the short term is the best term.

And Ultimate Frisbee flies in the face of that thinking.

Ayn Rand was a much more successful novelist than philosopher.

She published several books about philosophy, talking about epistemology,

challenging Descartes and Yume, and the other greats of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

And professional philosophers don't really pay a lot of attention to the details of her amateur philosophy.

But there are plenty of people who have read Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead,

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