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Interview with Marsha Enright
Episode 83 • 1st May 2024 • The Secular Foxhole • Blair Schofield and Martin Lindeskog
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Today we chat with Marsha Enright, President and Program Director of Reliance College. Of the many topics we cover:

  • The significance of the name Reliance.
  • What is their core program of subjects.
  • The Unknown beauty of the city of Chicago.
  • Her essay on What Vision Do Young People Need.
  • Her time spent with Ayn Rand.

Check out this delightful episode!

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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

Episode 83 (36 minutes) was recorded at 2230 Central European Time, on April 26, 2024, with Ringr app. Martin did the editing and post-production with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Alitu.

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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Transcripts

Blair:

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Blair:

Welcome to the secular Foxhole podcast.

Blair:

Today, Martin and I have a great guest with us, Marcia Enright, who is president and

Blair:

program director at Reliance College, which is in the planning stage, I understand.

Blair:

Is that correct, Marcia?

Marsha:

Yes, we're hoping to open in 2025.

Blair:

All right.

Blair:

Well, that's not too far off, I guess,

Blair:

obviously, with the recent publicity that many universities, certainly in America and maybe

Blair:

around the world, are the negative publicity.

Blair:

That is, at least in my mind.

Blair:

Do you think Reliance College will hopefully be an antidote to some of that?

Marsha:

Well, I'm sure that the program would be a great antidote to it.

Marsha:

And we actually ran a. What's called a concept test on our program, which is a classic

Marsha:

marketing test.

Marsha:

One of our trustees is a former senior

Marsha:

executive from J. Walter Thompson, which was a huge advertising agency.

Marsha:

And we ran a classic concept test where you ask, you find your demographic, you ask your

Marsha:

market, here's what the concept is of the product, and here's some questions about it.

Marsha:

And what do they think about it? Are they interested?

Marsha:

That's good.

Marsha:

Yeah.

Marsha:

And we got.

Marsha:

I thought maybe we'd have 10% interest.

Marsha:

And the experts said, well, if you got a 40% interest in a product, then you would go to

Marsha:

market with it.

Marsha:

Well, we got an 82% interest.

Blair:

Wow.

Marsha:

I think there's a lot of.

Marsha:

A lot of people out there, parents and

Marsha:

students, looking for an alternative.

Blair:

Yes. Yes. I understand many of the western universities have abandoned the great

Blair:

books, and there's so many, the dead white author kind of thing.

Blair:

What do you propose will be part of your curriculum?

Marsha:

Oh, it's a core part of our curriculum, because the writers of the great

Marsha:

books are the people who shape the modern world.

Marsha:

They're the thinkers whose ideas are still influencing us till today.

Marsha:

And not only that, they really help you learn how to think well and how to reason well.

Marsha:

So it's very important for people to know about that, to know about the full range of

Marsha:

ideas, you know, not just one ideological side or another.

Marsha:

But if you want to be very well educated, you want to know the full range, and you want to

Marsha:

have thought about it carefully so you can make up your own mind about who you agree

Marsha:

with.

Marsha:

The core part of our curriculum, and we're

Marsha:

going to include important modern works, including those of free society writers of Ayn

Marsha:

Rand, people who aren't normally included, but they should be included as equal to the great

Marsha:

books.

Blair:

Thank you.

Blair:

I agree.

Blair:

I agree.

Blair:

In conjunction with that, you wrote an essay

Blair:

called what vision young people need.

Blair:

Can you expand on that a little.

Marsha:

Well, young people are looking for inspiration.

Marsha:

They're looking for what shape do they want to see their life?

Marsha:

They want to know what's possible in the future.

Marsha:

And today, with all the postmodernist and nihilist influences, they see so much negative

Marsha:

ideas about the future.

Marsha:

You know, I know young people who don't want

Marsha:

to have children because they're afraid that humans are ruining the planet, as if the

Marsha:

planet was a living thing, that they were somehow killing.

Marsha:

And they see so many movies, plays, artistic portrayals, reports in the news about how

Marsha:

terrible human beings are, that it's a very demoralizing vision out there.

Marsha:

But what they need is a positive vision.

Marsha:

So that's why I think that they need works

Marsha:

that show heroic action, show people pursuing important goals, acting with honor and with

Marsha:

integrity.

Marsha:

And that's very important for young people,

Marsha:

because otherwise, I don't know if you realize, but there's been a huge increase in

Marsha:

suicides of young people in the last 1520 years.

Marsha:

Oh, it's alarming.

Marsha:

And Jonathan Haidt, the sociologist who wrote

Marsha:

the calling of the american mind, he's now come out with a book where he places a lot of

Marsha:

the blame for that on the rise in the use of cell phones and the influences that, the

Marsha:

intense influence, social influence that students are, that young people are having

Marsha:

from other people.

Marsha:

And I'm sure he's right that it's contributing

Marsha:

to it.

Marsha:

But I think that what's missing in the

Marsha:

analysis is all of the negative ideas that are out there that are affecting the young people

Marsha:

who are getting them on their phones and videos and from other young people.

Blair:

I have to agree, Marcia.

Blair:

I mean, philosophy, the science of philosophy

Blair:

is basically what moves the world, and for good or ill.

Marsha:

Yes.

Blair:

And I know, unfortunately, I have experienced some of my family members, my

Blair:

brother in laws, children rave about how much better Europe is than America.

Blair:

And one of my nieces will not have children because of the very many things you mentioned.

Marsha:

Really?

Blair:

Yeah. Me, too.

Blair:

Me, too.

Blair:

And, you know, we can't reach her.

Blair:

Kids can't reach them there because they're

Blair:

convinced that, you know, anybody over a certain age does, you know, you don't know

Blair:

what you're talking about, so on and so forth.

Marsha:

The usual.

Blair:

Yes, the usual.

Marsha:

You know, these kids, they've been exposed to these ideas since they were in

Marsha:

first grade.

Blair:

That's right.

Blair:

Yes.

Marsha:

When I founded a Montessori elementary school in 1990, and I ran it for many years,

Marsha:

and at one point, I decided that we could not.

Marsha:

There's a weekly newspaper for children called

Marsha:

Weekly Reader that.

Marsha:

And I said, we can't have this anymore,

Marsha:

because every week it had some disaster story about the environment in it.

Marsha:

Relentless.

Marsha:

And this is a newspaper that first graders are

Marsha:

reading.

Marsha:

So, you know, and they're getting this in

Marsha:

school, in the books that are written.

Marsha:

So many of the young adult novels which are

Marsha:

for, you know, middle school children are about children that come from families that

Marsha:

are drunks or they're drug addicts or the child is cutting themselves.

Marsha:

And it's just such a. Such a horrifying view of the world.

Marsha:

I understand that the reason why they do those, or they say that their motive to write

Marsha:

these is so that children who are going through that problem feel understood.

Blair:

Oh, dear.

Marsha:

But, you know, it's not an inspiring point of view.

Blair:

No, no. I think one of the few positive things that have come out of the COVID

Blair:

disaster, if you will, was that I think a lot of people, certainly a lot of Americans, woke

Blair:

up about the horrors of public education.

Blair:

And I think homeschooling increased like 20 or

Blair:

30% here in these, here in the states, which I think is a very positive sign.

Marsha:

Oh, I agree with you.

Marsha:

I think it's probably the best thing that came

Marsha:

out of that disaster.

Marsha:

That disasters.

Marsha:

They got to see what was actually going on in school, and the parents were horrified.

Blair:

I think, of course, the battle is still far from over.

Blair:

I mean, homeschooling has a long way to go, but I've been a homeschool advocate for since

Blair:

the 1980s, especially ending the public government and education.

Blair:

What's the word I want?

Marsha:

Hegemony.

Blair:

Yes. Yeah, that's a good word.

Blair:

Yeah.

Blair:

Yeah.

Blair:

Now, as far as Reliance college, I know that

Blair:

you have hosting a fundraiser for it next month.

Blair:

Can you delve into that?

Marsha:

We are.

Marsha:

I was wondering if you wanted me to describe

Marsha:

the program a little more.

Blair:

Well, yes, please do.

Martin:

Please do.

Marsha:

Okay, so we have a uniquely designed, very rigorous enlightenment liberal arts

Marsha:

program.

Blair:

Nice.

Marsha:

That all the students would take.

Marsha:

And this is so this kind of education, what

Marsha:

people don't understand is that the term liberal arts comes from the idea that what

Marsha:

kind of education do you need to be a free person?

Marsha:

That's why liberal is in there, because it's the same route as liberty.

Blair:

Right.

Marsha:

When you think of the founding fathers, they were very powerful thinkers,

Marsha:

partly because they had gotten this enlightenment education of all the best

Marsha:

thinking beforehand and very strong reasoning skills.

Marsha:

They were explicitly schooled and strong reasoning skills.

Marsha:

And this is going to be a great part of what we're doing.

Marsha:

And not only is it the content of what we're studying, but the way that we're going to have

Marsha:

the students work, because you can't learn how to be a free and autonomous person if you

Marsha:

don't experience it.

Marsha:

And if you're in a classroom where somebody's

Marsha:

sitting there and they're just lecturing to you and you are supposed to take the

Marsha:

information in as if they're an expert and then spit it back to them to get your credit,

Marsha:

are you really examining that information? Are you really incorporating it into your

Marsha:

thinking? So what I find is if we use this very special

Marsha:

form of collaborative seminar in which the students, the teacher is basically the text

Marsha:

that we use, and the living teacher is a guide to the discussion, and then we use principles

Marsha:

where if you are going to make a comment about the text, you have to use reason and evidence.

Marsha:

So the discussion is driven by the questions of the student about what does this text mean

Marsha:

and what are its implications and what are its relationship to other things that they've read

Marsha:

and to what's going on in the world.

Marsha:

And what happens is that the students end up

Marsha:

being the directors of their own learning in the classroom, but the teacher keeps them on

Marsha:

track by always focusing on, well, what are we learning from this text and how is it related

Marsha:

to other things that we've learned and to the world and to your life?

Blair:

That's wonderful.

Marsha:

We've used this and thank you.

Marsha:

We've used this in our summer program.

Marsha:

We've been running a summer program since 2009, a week long summer program called the

Marsha:

great connection Summer seminar.

Marsha:

It's July 20 to the 27th this year in Chicago,

Marsha:

and I put everything I knew about optimal education into it.

Marsha:

But I have been amazed at the results.

Marsha:

The results have been far greater than I

Marsha:

thought.

Marsha:

The end of one week, I get about 75% of the

Marsha:

students telling me my life has been transformed.

Marsha:

That's wonderful.

Marsha:

I can judge anything for myself, and they keep

Marsha:

in touch with me and some of them have worked for me and they keep in touch with each other.

Marsha:

It's really interesting what's happened.

Martin:

Yeah. Marcia Martin, is that why you have picked or choose the word for the school,

Martin:

reliance?

Marsha:

Because. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Marsha:

Yes, because our aim is to help young people

Marsha:

become self reliant, to become the entrepreneurs of their own lives.

Marsha:

And I forgot to tell you that.

Marsha:

So in addition to this very rigorous liberal

Marsha:

arts program, every student every year will do some real world will find a problem in an area

Marsha:

of their professional interest and do a research project on that, trying to find a

Marsha:

solution to that problem and trying to implement it.

Marsha:

We are going to connect them up with accomplished mentors.

Marsha:

So if they want to go into an art, we'll find somebody to help them with that.

Marsha:

If they want to go into finance, we'll set them up with somebody in finance, in physics,

Marsha:

you know, whatever they're interested in.

Marsha:

And they'll also be getting a lot of work in

Marsha:

economics, personal finance, the arts, and in self awareness, self understanding.

Marsha:

So in this way, we have an all required liberal arts program, but then the student

Marsha:

picks certain things that they want to study on their own, and we can individualize what

Marsha:

we're doing that way.

Marsha:

So I don't know if this makes sense, but this

Marsha:

is the things we put all together, and it's, the summer program is kind of a compressed

Marsha:

version of what we're going to do in the college, so I know it works well.

Blair:

Now, do you have many, your summer program, do you have repeat students or are

Blair:

they all new every year?

Marsha:

Oh, no, I've had some that have come four times.

Marsha:

Four or five times.

Blair:

Let's see.

Blair:

Okay. Yeah, let's do.

Blair:

That's great, though.

Blair:

Is there, what is the cost for that, by the

Blair:

way?

Marsha:

Well, the list cost is $2,500, but right now we have a special discount.

Marsha:

I think it would be 800 if you sign up now.

Marsha:

And we also offer scholarships for people that

Marsha:

can't afford that.

Blair:

I see.

Blair:

Martin, we have to remember to put that, their

Blair:

link in the notes for that.

Blair:

Yeah.

Blair:

Now, again, this is really fascinating.

Blair:

I'm very happy to hear this, Marsha.

Blair:

I appreciate the work you're doing.

Blair:

I know some of that is there has to be

Blair:

extension from Montessori as well, I would imagine.

Marsha:

Yes. Yeah. I'm very well learned in the Montessori philosophy, which is, of

Marsha:

course, developmentally oriented.

Marsha:

In other words, what kinds of learning, what

Marsha:

format of learning works best for each level of development?

Marsha:

And so I'm very focused right now on what do young people need?

Marsha:

So your question about the vision, that's one part of it.

Marsha:

The other part is they're looking for their place in the world, and they're looking for,

Marsha:

well, you brought up philosophy.

Marsha:

They're looking for answers to the question of

Marsha:

how should I live my life? You know, how should I live with other people?

Marsha:

Those are all philosophical questions, and those things are well incorporated in what

Marsha:

we're going to have them study.

Blair:

That's great.

Blair:

Wow. That's great.

Blair:

Oh, to be young again, anyway.

Blair:

Well, let's see again.

Blair:

So you said in our green room that next year this green lights college will be underway.

Blair:

So when exactly?

Marsha:

Well, we're hoping to open in September of 2025.

Blair:

Okay. Okay.

Marsha:

And right now we're, what we're doing is we're raising the money to make that

Marsha:

possible.

Marsha:

And that's one of the reasons why we're having

Marsha:

the dinner in New York in May 16.

Marsha:

Thursday, May 16.

Marsha:

It's to inform people about what our program is like and then also to hopefully get more

Marsha:

supporters for it.

Martin:

And that will be like physical campus in Chicago.

Martin:

How big will it be? How many students and teachers and faculty?

Martin:

Could you talk about your plans there?

Marsha:

Sure. Sure. So it definitely is going to be in person because young people need

Marsha:

that.

Marsha:

They need that desperately.

Marsha:

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago about these young employees who

Marsha:

had, you know, gone to college during COVID and they were used to all this remote work.

Marsha:

And now they were back in the office and they were having anxiety attacks about going to

Marsha:

lunch with each other.

Marsha:

But, you know, you, you really need to learn

Marsha:

how to interact with other people and knowing what they're like in person.

Marsha:

And you can't have that kind of very detailed discussion about things with person when

Marsha:

people, when you only do it remotely.

Marsha:

It's just very difficult to have those after.

Marsha:

You know, you could have students who are in the same class together, but then how do they.

Marsha:

They don't have that when you went to college.

Marsha:

They don't have those incidental conversations

Marsha:

where you pick up on something.

Marsha:

Yeah.

Marsha:

And you get to know each other really well and you do things together.

Marsha:

It's just a whole different experience.

Marsha:

So it's going to be in person.

Marsha:

We're looking to start with 50 students and they will be in discussion classes of, at

Marsha:

maximum, 17 each.

Marsha:

And we've got some tutors.

Marsha:

We call them tutors, the teachers.

Blair:

Okay.

Marsha:

Lined up already.

Marsha:

Every class would have one or two tutors in it

Marsha:

to help guide the discussion.

Marsha:

And then they'll also be working very closely

Marsha:

with each individual student on that students goals.

Marsha:

And what did you ask me? What else did you want to know?

Marsha:

I forgot.

Martin:

Yeah. How many students and if about the faculty and also about the campus and so

Martin:

on.

Martin:

And.

Martin:

Yeah.

Martin:

The plan, what you have?

Marsha:

Well, right now there's, we're planning to rent space in downtown Chicago.

Marsha:

Downtown Chicago has about 60,000 college students there in different, in different

Marsha:

schools down in the downtown area.

Marsha:

So it's a good place for young people to be.

Marsha:

There's, of course, lots of things to do.

Marsha:

There's great transportation.

Marsha:

And so if you were starting a small school this way, the students would have a larger,

Marsha:

you know, excuse me, social environment in that way.

Marsha:

And we want to expand to, at most 1000 for any, for one particular college because that's

Marsha:

the best social environment for learning.

Marsha:

But what we envision in the long run is to

Marsha:

have multiple colleges with slightly different flavors on the same campus, kind of like

Marsha:

Oxford and Cambridge.

Marsha:

Okay, you get the advantage of the small, the

Marsha:

small school experience, but you have a larger environment if you want to go do other things,

Marsha:

you know, if you want to learn other things.

Marsha:

So that's the vision.

Marsha:

And we plan to start a continuing education program fairly soon after we start the college

Marsha:

because we know that there are a lot of retired people who are, in some respects

Marsha:

asking the same questions of themselves as young people and who are looking to discover

Marsha:

what's their next career.

Marsha:

And we want to create a nice, we want to

Marsha:

create a cultural mecca for people who are looking for inspiration.

Marsha:

Great, wonderful art, good learning, great other great people to interact with.

Blair:

Well, here's a question out of left field, so to speak.

Blair:

Do you have any germ of an idea for an athletic program like volleyball or track and

Blair:

field or anything like that? And down the road?

Marsha:

Well, yeah, sure.

Marsha:

I'm sure we'll want to expand, right?

Marsha:

I mean, if we start in the rented quarters, we'd probably use Chicago park district.

Marsha:

And because they're quite extensive, Chicago has an amazing park district itself.

Marsha:

So with volleyball, tennis, pickleball is very big these days.

Marsha:

Track, you know, all those things.

Marsha:

And I think, you know, part of it will be to

Marsha:

try to see, well, what are students most interested in doing kind of sports, especially

Marsha:

if you're starting small, you want to find sports that that's good for a small cohort of

Marsha:

people.

Marsha:

So.

Blair:

True, true, true.

Blair:

Now, are you a native Chicagoan by any chance?

Marsha:

I am.

Blair:

Yes, I am.

Blair:

Obviously, the only news we see out of Chicago

Blair:

is negative.

Blair:

And I know that there's some beautiful museums

Blair:

there.

Blair:

What else can you.

Blair:

What other positive aspects of Chicago can you enlighten our audience with, if you would?

Marsha:

Sure. Just to put this out there.

Marsha:

So there's a famous italian jewelry company

Marsha:

named Buselatti.

Marsha:

I don't know if you've ever heard of it, very,

Marsha:

very high end jewelry.

Marsha:

And the head of that company said that Chicago

Marsha:

is the most beautiful city in North America.

Marsha:

And interestingly, it's one of the most man

Marsha:

made because it was originally, the reason it was founded was because the Chicago river goes

Marsha:

into the Lake Michigan, and Lake Michigan is connected to all the other lakes and then to

Marsha:

the St. Lawrence Seaway and to Europe, basically on the west.

Marsha:

It was connected.

Marsha:

You could portage from the Chicago river to

Marsha:

the Illinois river very easily and then go to the Mississippi and down to New Orleans.

Marsha:

So it was really always been a great transportation area, but it was a scrubby,

Marsha:

kind of a scrubby beach with a flat plain.

Marsha:

That's all it was.

Marsha:

Right.

Marsha:

And over the years, the city, different groups

Marsha:

in the city have just done an amazing job on building it so that now we have 29 miles of

Marsha:

beaches, mostly from sand.

Marsha:

That was from the sand dunes that they took

Marsha:

down to build the Gary steelworks.

Marsha:

We have a gorgeous layout of the city that was

Marsha:

designed by Daniel Burnham, who was the architect of the world's fair in 1893.

Blair:

Wow.

Marsha:

And they did things like raise the reverse, the flow of the river so that sewage

Marsha:

would not go out into the.

Marsha:

Into the lake, raise this downtown area by

Marsha:

20ft so that it would be away from any problems with the river.

Marsha:

It's just an amazing city.

Marsha:

And it has some of the most beautiful

Marsha:

architecture in the world because we had a fire here in 1871 and the people here were

Marsha:

very.

Marsha:

A lot of go getters and they sent word out to

Marsha:

the east that there was a lot of work to be done.

Marsha:

And this is one of the reasons why people like Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel Burnham and

Marsha:

Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor, Louis Cameron, not Louis.

Marsha:

Louis Sullivan.

Blair:

Yeah.

Marsha:

So we have some of the most interesting architecture here.

Marsha:

And the city's really, really beautiful because of the Burnham plan.

Blair:

Well, good.

Blair:

That's great to know.

Marsha:

I just want to mention one other thing.

Marsha:

And unlike some of the more sprawling, more modern cities, it's got a kind of concentrated

Marsha:

area downtown.

Marsha:

So you have a lot of museums and parks and

Marsha:

music and restaurants and all kinds of things to do.

Marsha:

Very easy to go their way.

Marsha:

The great transportation system, the loop.

Marsha:

Yes, exactly.

Blair:

Okay. Well, that's cool.

Blair:

I see.

Blair:

I didn't know about some of those things.

Blair:

That's great to know.

Blair:

My wife briefly worked there in Chicago for a long back in the day, so to speak.

Blair:

Let's, if we can do a little more personal exploration with you, Marcia, you were

Blair:

involved in the early days of objectivism, perhaps with NBI and so on.

Blair:

Could you relate some of that to us?

Marsha:

Sure. Actually, not NBI.

Marsha:

I got interested.

Marsha:

I had a high school teacher who had the Nolan chart.

Marsha:

Do you know what that is? That's that graph that shows personal freedom

Marsha:

on one side and economic freedom on the other side.

Blair:

I do know that, yeah.

Marsha:

Then you plot, you know, authoritarians are at the zero zero line, and

Marsha:

the old style democrats were high on personal freedom and lower on economic freedom, and the

Marsha:

old style conservatives were high on economic freedom and low on personal freedom.

Marsha:

And at that time, the only person in the total Freedom quadrant was Ayn Rand.

Marsha:

And he wanted us to read a novel from two of the quadrants.

Marsha:

So I read the fountainhead, and I said, wow, this is what I've always thought, but

Marsha:

explained a lot better than I could.

Blair:

Well, yeah, I know what you mean.

Blair:

I know what you mean.

Marsha:

So then I got.

Marsha:

So that was 1969, and I got very interested in

Marsha:

her ideas, and then ended up reading everything that she wrote.

Marsha:

And in the seventies, I moved to with my husband.

Marsha:

Well, he wasn't my husband at the time.

Marsha:

With my partner, too, New York City to go to

Marsha:

graduate school.

Marsha:

And at that point, Peekoff and Blumenthal were

Marsha:

giving lectures at the Stantler Hilton, where NBI had been.

Marsha:

I see town, New York.

Marsha:

Ok. We attended those, and Ayn Rand was always

Marsha:

there.

Marsha:

She was in the audience.

Blair:

Nice.

Marsha:

Yeah, it was fairly easy to go up to her.

Marsha:

Like, a lot of people were not going up to her to talk to her, you know, so.

Marsha:

So I just went up and was asking her questions all the time.

Marsha:

And I had a wonderful experience with her because she would listen very carefully to my

Marsha:

questions, and then she would try to answer them.

Marsha:

I asked her questions about everything from do the higher animals have a kind of free will?

Marsha:

Because it seemed like she was implying that in one of her essays, or how should we cast

Marsha:

Atlas Shrugged? And when that up, she.

Marsha:

She said, now, this is the kind of conversation I like.

Marsha:

Yeah.

Marsha:

And I talked to her about my cats.

Marsha:

She looked pictures of my cats.

Marsha:

We talked about jewelry.

Marsha:

We talked about, oh, I had discovered that the first novel written by Victor Hugo when he was

Marsha:

19, is called Hans of Iceland.

Marsha:

The hero of the book becomes the first of the

Marsha:

counts of Danischld.

Blair:

Okay.

Marsha:

So I said to her, oh, I saw that you named Ragnar after this character in the book.

Marsha:

And do you know what she said to me? Well, there really were counts of danish gold.

Blair:

Okay.

Marsha:

Know how I took this? I took it as she didn't want to.

Marsha:

Looked like she was riding on Victor Hugo's coattails.

Marsha:

I took it as she was giving a tribute to him.

Marsha:

Right.

Marsha:

But she was very concerned about whether she did the right thing.

Marsha:

And she was like that.

Marsha:

That was my experience of her.

Marsha:

You know, I never felt like she was talking to me as if she was the great thinker, and I was,

Marsha:

you know, just a nobody.

Marsha:

It was always mind to mind.

Marsha:

She was very serious and very.

Marsha:

But fun, too, to talk to.

Blair:

Yeah.

Marsha:

And so I had a great experience with her.

Marsha:

Oh, and there was one time when I was waiting to talk to her, and she was sitting in a row

Marsha:

with her husband.

Marsha:

Frank was on the outside.

Marsha:

I was in the aisle.

Marsha:

She was next to Frank.

Marsha:

And then she was talking to somebody on the right side of her.

Marsha:

Now, Frank had obviously something.

Marsha:

She had had a stroke or something because he

Marsha:

was aphasic at this point, which means that he could understand what you were saying, but he

Marsha:

had a hard time talking.

Marsha:

That's typical.

Marsha:

Is a very common stroke that men can get.

Marsha:

Especially.

Marsha:

That leaves you like that.

Marsha:

And so I was making conversation with him, and

Marsha:

I was asking him about his paintings and things like that, and she was very protective

Marsha:

of him.

Marsha:

I wanted to bring this up because I could tell

Marsha:

every time I saw her with him, she was very protective of him because of his condition.

Blair:

Okay.

Marsha:

I assumed it was because of his condition.

Marsha:

So I was talking to him, and I was making conversation about asking him about his

Marsha:

painting and that kind of thing.

Marsha:

And she kept looking over at me and getting

Marsha:

madder and madder.

Marsha:

And then all of a sudden she says to me, don't

Marsha:

bother him.

Marsha:

He's not an objectivist.

Marsha:

He's my husband.

Marsha:

And I thought, oh, well, she didn't know what

Marsha:

we were talking about.

Marsha:

And she knew that I was somebody to always be

Marsha:

asking her questions about philosophy.

Marsha:

So she thought.

Marsha:

Probably thought I was pestering him about that, you know?

Marsha:

So I walked away.

Marsha:

And during the next break in the lecture, she

Marsha:

came over and found me.

Marsha:

And she said, please, darling, forgive me.

Marsha:

I didn't know what you were talking about.

Blair:

Okay. That's nice to know.

Marsha:

She wasn't acting like I'm the great person that, you know, she wanted to make sure

Marsha:

that she did the right thing.

Blair:

Well, I never.

Blair:

I've never considered her a, you know, an

Blair:

ogre, if you will, or a, you know, like, I wish.

Blair:

She struts around thinking how superior she is to everyone.

Blair:

I've never.

Blair:

I've never thought of that.

Blair:

Of her.

Marsha:

She doesn't come across like that in any of the interviews.

Marsha:

I don't?

Blair:

No, of course not.

Marsha:

No, I just wanted to confirm my experience with her.

Blair:

Well, I appreciate that very much.

Martin:

So, yes, thanks for sharing.

Martin:

It's.

Martin:

It's adding value, and it's like taking stories from a facets of rand.

Martin:

So.

Marsha:

Yeah. Oh, and, you know.

Marsha:

Oh, that reminds me of something.

Marsha:

So I have three other stories, if you don't mind, please?

Martin:

Yeah, please.

Marsha:

One is that she had some plastic jewelry on and I was admiring it.

Marsha:

We talked about jewelry, and she said, oh, that was, that was designed by Joan

Marsha:

Blumenthal.

Marsha:

And another time I brought a copy of the

Marsha:

fountainhead to have her autograph it.

Marsha:

And she said, to whom should I autograph it?

Marsha:

And I said, John Enright.

Marsha:

And she says, that's a nice name.

Marsha:

And I thought that was funny because of Roger Enright.

Marsha:

Of course, you know that she liked that name.

Marsha:

Gosh, what was the last one?

Marsha:

Oh, oh, yes.

Marsha:

So she and I had had these various

Marsha:

conversations about cats, and I brought her these pictures of my cats and things like

Marsha:

that.

Marsha:

And it was funny because at one point I teased

Marsha:

her and I said, oh, I'm going to bring my cats to the next lecture.

Marsha:

She says, oh, no, darling, you can't do that.

Marsha:

And one day this was in between periods.

Marsha:

The lectures were in the fall and maybe this was in the winter when no lectures were going

Marsha:

on.

Marsha:

So I saw this pin of a cat that was arching

Marsha:

his back, hissing and kind of, and it was all jeweled and everything.

Marsha:

So I bought it.

Marsha:

It was $3, and I wrapped it up.

Marsha:

And for her birthday, which is in February, went to her office and I went to drop it off.

Marsha:

And her secretary, I think it was Elaine Kalberman, said, oh, no, she doesn't accept

Marsha:

any gifts.

Marsha:

And I said, it only costs dollar three.

Marsha:

So the secretary took it.

Marsha:

Well, the next fall, when there were some more

Marsha:

lectures, I saw she was wearing the pin.

Marsha:

So I said, oh, I gave that to you.

Marsha:

And she says, oh, it is the essence of cat.

Martin:

Thanks for sharing that, Marsha.

Martin:

We have here a support, how you could support

Martin:

our show.

Martin:

And in a way I created, you could call it like

Martin:

boostogram, like a number.

Martin:

And that's 221905.

Martin:

So that rand's birthday in status.

Martin:

So then, now we could make a clip of this and

Martin:

share it and see if listeners value that and they want to donate and support.

Martin:

And then we could make a split of that.

Martin:

So that's great with sharing with sunlight

Martin:

universe.

Martin:

So could you go back a little bit with your

Martin:

bio and your, you have done lots of writing and papers and so on.

Martin:

Could you tell us a bit more? You talked about one about, you said about

Martin:

animals, higher animals, and you have done a recent study there in a paper.

Martin:

Could you tell a little bit about that?

Marsha:

Yes. Well, after many years of reading and thinking about it, I wrote a paper, a

Marsha:

philosophy of biology paper.

Marsha:

Recently it was published in the Journal of

Marsha:

Ayn Rand Studies.

Marsha:

And it's called life is not a machine or a

Marsha:

ghost.

Marsha:

And it's about the naturalistic basis of

Marsha:

life's ability to pursue goals, to have consciousness, to have free will, and to have

Marsha:

meaning.

Marsha:

And what I do is talk about the fact that the

Marsha:

way that biologists and philosophy of biology people have approached life has been through

Marsha:

the lens of mechanoreductionism, which is the idea that we can reduce everything to physics

Marsha:

and chemistry.

Marsha:

And consequently, they've had a hard time

Marsha:

explaining many of the unique characteristics about living things.

Marsha:

So what's happened is then you get, if you can't explain it that way, people just kind of

Marsha:

throw up their hands scientifically, then you have other people saying, well, it must be

Marsha:

that there's a life force or there's a mystical force that's enabling life to follow

Marsha:

goal, to have goals and to have consciousness.

Marsha:

So what I do in the paper is discuss these

Marsha:

issues and then show a way to understand how life can have in itself the ability to pursue

Marsha:

goals and how consciousness is related to that ability, how it arose, what it is in the body,

Marsha:

and how free will arises out of the same ability.

Marsha:

So that's, that's what I'm trying to answer in this paper.

Blair:

I see.

Blair:

Well, that's something, though, obviously,

Blair:

we'll link to, and I'll have to read myself.

Marsha:

Okay. Well, it's, you know, it's basically what I'm trying to do is give a

Marsha:

naturalistic account for where these powers of human life, of not human life, of life itself

Marsha:

come from.

Blair:

Okay, great.

Blair:

All right.

Blair:

Well, Marcia, we've enjoyed having you on the show, and we wish you well with your endeavor

Blair:

with, as program director and president of Reliance College.

Blair:

And ladies and gentlemen, Marcia enright.

Marsha:

Thank you so much for having me.

Marsha:

I really appreciate it.

Martin:

Yeah. And Blair, I want to add a little bit at Andy here.

Martin:

You had in the show notes about your future plans and also where the listeners could find

Martin:

your writings and also things about college.

Martin:

And, yeah, if you want to apply for something,

Martin:

for example, the dinner, the details there and so on, you can.

Marsha:

Find information about the college at Reliance, reliancecollege.org, comma reliance,

Marsha:

like self reliance.

Blair:

Okay.

Marsha:

And also there is where you can find out about the Jefferson dinner, which is going

Marsha:

to be in New York.

Marsha:

We're also going to hold one in California in

Marsha:

September.

Marsha:

And the summer seminar.

Marsha:

If anybody is a young person who'd be interested in coming, please look up our

Marsha:

summer seminar on the same website.

Marsha:

It's under participate now.

Marsha:

And all the links to all these things are there.

Marsha:

And my writing website is Marsha, M A r S H A.

Marsha:

Famolaro, f a M I l a r o dash enright.

Marsha:

Enright.com.

Blair:

All right.

Blair:

I think very good.

Blair:

Very good.

Blair:

Well, Marcia, thanks for manning the foxhole

Blair:

with us.

Marsha:

Thanks for having, thank you very much.

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