Good afternoon and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Today on the secular foxhole podcast, we have two guests, Michael Berliner and Anu Sepala. I hope I pronounced that correct. They are the authors of a compelling book called Russia to America, a guide to Ayn Rand homes and sites. Mike, Anu, how are you doing? Well, great, great. How were. How were the photos obtained? Did miss Rand have many of them herself, or did you. Did you and Anna Anu scour the archives, so to speak?
Anna, you want to start with that? Hoping you could hear me? I guess we've lost her.
Yeah, probably.
She's online, but I don't see any wavelength, so we.
I'll go ahead and answer that yes to everything we had. We did scour the archives, but there are about 150 images in the book, and just 30 of them are from her own collection of photos that she either brought with her from Russia or were sent to her by her family. So 20% of the. Of the total. And the rest are. Are either images that we took of archives, items, took people in LA or in Russia or New York, of the buildings, the houses that she lived in. So there's a big variety.
I can't tell you how distinct from the archives, but probably well over half. But the vintage photos are ones that of her family, particularly once that she brought with her from Russia when she got out in 1926.
Yes. Okay. Okay. Now, who are or what was the Kerensky revolution in 1917? How old was she then? I think she was, what, twelve, maybe?
She was. Well, yeah. And at that time, Kerensky was Alexander Kerensky, and he was the head of a provisional government that lasted a few months before the Bolshevik October Revolution took over and chased him out of the country. He was the last hope for any sort of sanity in Russia. It was the revolution that she watched, the fighting that she watched in 1926, in February, that was the. Known as the February Revolution or the Kerensky Revolution. And it was anti czarist.
There was a combination of different groups for different places on this political spectrum fighting against the tsar, and it took place only in St. Petersburg. It was not a nationwide revolution that far. And the tsar abdicated. And Kerensky. Korensky was her big hero, but she was that age. He thought, you know, he was the. He was the hope for Russia, and he was a dashing figure, and he turned out to be a real loser, which she recognized pretty early on, maybe not at age twelve, but later.
That compromiser didn't really have any solid ideas. He loved mother Russia, and she met him actually, in the 1940s at a party when she was in New York. And I think he turned out to be even worse than she thought he was. So she blames him. This is in her biographical interviews. She blames him for not being what he could have been. And he actually thinks that he could have prevented the Soviets from, I mean, the Bolsheviks from thinking over, because he was so beloved that Russia had to fight.
And they do this often. So I see, I see.
Now, what's, one of the things that I was really surprised at in your book, Washington, when her family vacationed in France in 1914. Of course, World War one was underway, I guess, and apparently, the way you have it in the book, the ocean liner before hers and the one after hers were sunk, but she was apparently, obviously lucky to be alive after the bombing of the shipping lanes.
So that's. Yeah. You know, when you put that into perspective, think of all the things that could have happened. Yes. Not just the bombings, but they were attacked by bandits in the Crimea, all sorts of things that could have ended her life in a second. And I think, God, where would I be? That didn't happen. There would have been no objectivism, though. You know, it's. But that's. I think you named that, that's the scariest thing that, going through, I guess, that the North Sea and the U boats.
So what does that mean? Fortunate. Fortunate.
Fortunate, yeah.
For the world. Yes. Now, another thing that I didn't know is I knew her father was a pharmacist and that he had bought an apartment building in 1916, apparently where they came back from. The Karami, I believe.
Right.
And then that's where she finally gets to America, from that apartment building. But can you. Before we get to that, can you. Her school years, can you describe her school years for me?
Well, uh, we know something. She talks about that in her, in biographical interviews, the classes that she liked that she didn't do well in. She said she was particularly bad at anything that, that was more physical. Like there was an art class that she didn't like, sewing she was totally inept at, but in the more academic subjects, she did really well and way beyond her peers. And her favorite subject was math. Mathematics.
I don't know what they called it over there at the time, to the extent which her, and was so good at it that her, her math teacher told her that if she didn't make a career of math, that would be a prime. But I wonder if you can guess why she didn't go into math. I won't put you on the spot. So I'll tell you, not connected enough to the real world. Oh, my. Theoretical math.
It was because she was always on the premise of living on earth, and she thought that theoretical math was just too abstract. And as much as she loved just. She loved the psycho epistemology of it, or the epistemology of it, and. But as far as doing anything with it, it was amazing. My own words, more of it, almost an in itself, so. And then later she. Under the Soviets, when she went to college, she had to keep quiet about the important things, except for Aristotle.
She was very outspoken, but anything that bordered on political, as she said, if she'd spoken out, she would have been dead within a year.
Yeah, I was just about to come to that quote in the book, too.
Yeah, I knew you liked school. Basically, she liked learning, but she found most of it boring and I guess too rationalistic in our terms, as lecturing. Lecturing to little kids. So she didn't like that aspect of it. But she. The subjects that she liked, philosophy and math earlier, math she loved. And Washington was a standout student, but.
I don't think it was nice not to interrupt you, Mike, but I thought her. Well, I don't know if it was her favorite, but she majored in history, correct? Or.
Yeah, she did. In college.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah. So the math was really high school, which is particularly. I don't know if she took that. And we do have her, you know, we have her transcripts and records, grade reports, all kinds of. Much of which was found for us by objectivists or objectivist sympathizers in Russia. They got into the official papers, I guess the Freedom of Information Act. I don't know, after the Soviets fell.
Right. Okay.
Obviously. And so we have a lot of that information. I just can't remember if she took any higher math. I don't know. She was studying later. She was taking private math tutorial much later in her life. So she obviously, she kept up her love of it and what it indicated epistemologically and what you could do with it, but. Yeah, you know, she was an industry.
Major, and I wonder if those math notes will ever be released someday.
Never seen it. Oh, I don't think. Yeah, I think if they existed, we would have seen them by now. Yeah. Don't get me off onto the things that we don't have. I don't mind her early scenarios, which I don't know where they are that she brought with it from Russia.
I remember Doctor Peacock saying that there's a box or two missing of her, all of her possessions. So I wonder what happened to that. But that's for another story. I know that obviously, we, the living. She must have used a lot of those locations and statues and things. And Anu, do you have any idea about those or.
No, not really. I mean, she did. She used those. She used the people, too. There's a. I think in the Robert Mayhew anthology, there is a chapter. I think it's Scott McConnell who did the hundred voices, oral history, did a chapter on the connection of people she knew in Russia, family members, like, connection of them to characters in we the living, which is a fascinating chapter, if you get a chance to look at that. As she said, it's the closest she ever came or would come to an autobiography.
That it was Kira was not the specifics, but Kira's sense of life approached the world.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I want to read a quote. You sort of touched on it earlier, but I'd like to read it from your book. This is on page 27, en route to America. Let's see here. Where do I want to start? Ayn Rand was finally leaving the country that even as a youngster, she considered, quote, just an accidental sort of cesspool of civilization.
I had a feeling because of being in Russia, that I am simply among the wrong people and in the wrong environment, and that whichever I see here is not representative of mankind, end quote. And then she goes on to say, people told her at her going away party, when you get out, tell the rest of the world that we are dying here, unquote. Had she remained in Russia and written as an individualist, she recalled, she herself, quote, would have been dead within a year, unquote.
But in America, she would tell the world. Yeah, that's, uh.
That's.
That's profound in my mind.
So, yeah. That I love. That's one of my all time favorite quotes. And although it wasn't by her, tell the world we were dying here.
Right, right. Yeah.
And if. I don't know if you caught when that going away party was January 6.
Well, 17th, says here.
Yeah. The party was the night of January 16.
Yes. Okay.
Right.
Thank you. Yes.
And I don't know whether that's it. Obviously, it's the sports of that, the use of that in the play, but I noticed that a few years ago. It seems rather coincidental, but, yeah, I mean, that's.
Well, you know, that's. I mean, she does that because she started writing at Le Shrug on September 2. And that, of course, is prominent through the novel.
Right. But, uh. Well, it could have been, but, yeah. That. That quote, uh, from the guest party is really. Oh. Because it was not metaphorical. It was actually. We are all dying here.
Yes, true.
And they did. So, um. But, uh, that she got out and all that. I don't know if you've. I don't know if that story has been in print, that she was in Riga, Latvia, I think, and had been denied a visa to get out. And she noticed on the desk of the. Of the official that she was talking to, she read it upside down and. And I think, recognized that there was some mistake, that he was. I wish I could remember the detail. Talking to the wrong person or something.
And she corrected it and then got her visa and that. Another chance encounter.
Yes, exactly.
Yes.
I wanted. Is Anu still with us, Orlando?
I am, but you apparently can't hear me.
Yes, we do. We're just. I did try to reach out to you a moment ago. Do you. In the book, she has a specific emotion upon arriving in America. Can you describe that or.
I think so. I know that she didn't put in these words, but she must have been somewhat emotional for having reached the goal of her. Her travel to America. When seeing the skyline of New York, which, since you read the book, you know how important the New York skyline was for her. And that was the first time she saw it in person after having seen it in many movies and books. So I think there was a kind of crystallized vision of what her future will be where she is now in America.
So that's my interpretation of it, yes.
Yeah.
She does comment, I think, in the biographical interviews about missing seeing the Statue of Liberty as the boat came in. The ship came in, and that was really crushing to her because that was so much in her mind as the coming to America that she's gotten here. And I can't remember why. Was it in the dark or is raining or something? And she was the downer of getting to America, but.
Okay, well, she stayed in New York for a while, then she went to Chicago to stay with relatives, if I'm not mistaken. And there's another quote I want to read from some of her family members. It's quote, we had two little cots in the dining room, and we had to move out because Ayn Rand had her typewriter in the dining room where we slept. She was just a cousin who came to America and could hardly speak English. We didn't know she was going to be a great writer with great ideas.
She was just another one of the, quote, greenhorns that grandpa and the uncles and aunts brought in. But we wanted everyone to live in the land of milk and honey, unquote. There's some nice, nice relatives anyhow. But again, these photos are phenomenal. Fantastic. Now, going to Los Angeles, the Richard Nutra house.
Nitra.
Yeah, nitra or nutra.
Blair, I was not getting audio for a while. I don't know if you were on it, but I. But I might have missed.
Oh, I pulled back from the mic. Maybe that's my fault there then.
Yeah, I've been getting everything, I think.
All right, I can read that quote again, Martin, if you want me to.
Yes, please.
All right. From one of her cousins in Chicago.
Yeah, I heard that.
Okay.
Yeah.
She was just a cousin who came to America and could hardly speak English. We didn't know she was going to be a great writer with great ideas. She was just another one of the greenhorns that grandpa and the uncles and aunts brought in. We wanted everyone to live in the land of milk and honey, unquote. That was her cousin.
Right.
Now, sadly, this neutra nitra house was torn down.
Oh, yeah. I'd actually, Harry Binswater and I went to that house. We didn't get in, but it was just a few blocks away from where I was teaching. It moved to LA in 1970, and I was teaching at what's now California State University in Northridge. And that, that house, the neutra house, was an iconic house. And the official neutra volume and books has that as the COVID photo. And it got, you know, and we, Harry and I went there and got chased off the property by whoever was running it at the time.
We didn't. And that was before he'd gotten to know her. So he couldn't say, I'm a friend of mine, ransom. So we meekly left it and within a few months, it was gone. And I met and talked to Richard Nitra's son, Dione, a couple years later. He told me that the money to save it had actually been raised. And the people that were having it torn down didn't know that. And destruction went on. And he was more awfully. There's a video online showing the destruction of the house.
It was an architectural crime. No, not a real crime.
Yeah. Mike, you have a note in end of the book, of course, that you should respect the property rights. And because your book that you have worked here, Mike, in honor and with all the helps with photos and how many of these locations, sites and homes and places could you visit today? Of course, respecting property rights if it's a private home or whatnot. But you said in the green room that you and Anna have been having, like, tour guide guiding.
Yeah, I think the number of places you can get into now is probably zero.
Okay.
I don't know what you've been in on it. Did you take the tour where we went into the Hollywood studio club?
I did. Oh, that was the Ari staff tour that you.
All right, right.
You and Jeff. Did I? Yeah. So I've been there. But, you know, for instance, a lot of the photos are from the facades, from the outsides of the houses, so those you can still see almost all the buildings in New York. I've actually taken the photos, and they are still there, and I never went inside. I don't think in most cases we even knew which apartment it would have been okay.
But. But continuing with that, we are fortunate. All this started back, I think, in the 1990s for me, long before we had the idea for a book. But for some reason, we had all of the russian letters, all the 900 letters from our family in Russian. We had them at our house. I can't remember why it. And I shudder to think on something that valuable. And sitting around the house when we had it. And my play wife Judy, who was a big champion of the russian lawyers, I think it might have some.
She paid that and translated. So we were very interested in that. And part of it, we realized that we could find out where she lived by looking at the forwarding addresses on the envelopes. They were basically sent from her family to the relatives in Chicago and forwarded to Ayn Rand, wherever she was living then. So we put together a chronology, and we started driving around LA to see where she lived at that point, nobody knew basically where she lived in LA. And very fortunate.
We actually got into a couple of the apartments by chance. Somebody was moving, and they said, we said, can we come in? Sure, come on in. It wasn't very exciting, but just the idea that we'd gotten into the exact apartments that she'd lived in. But now I don't even know what's going on at the studio club, which is a historical site, so you could probably get into the lobby.
And the last time I was there, they no longer had the display case where they feature her letter to the studio club, lauding it for what it did for the young women who come the Hollywood. So that's about as far as you could get anywhere. The rest of them were just boons are locked up tight because these days, with the increased crime, you can't get into the front door of these buildings at all.
Again, I think the studio club itself, was that privately funded back then, I mean.
Yes. YMCA.
Okay, that. Yeah, there you go. Okay.
Yeah. Or maybe it was a YWC w. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And DeMille's wife, I think. Wasn't she the, uh. Uh, the. The. I mean, the finance, uh, behind it, on it? You remember what the.
I don't remember that. Um.
Mill's wife. I don't remember what it was, but.
That'S not in the book anyway.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
I can mention about one place where if it went in St. Petersburg, Russia, you could probably get into. It's the 120 Nevsky prospect address where Ayn Rand lived as a young girl with her family. Several years before Russia attacked Ukraine. It was converted to a private boutique hotel. And there's a guy who was helping us obtain many photos and who went to the national archives in St. Petersburg when they became open after Covid, he went there and he sent us pictures.
But sadly, it's out of pounds for anyone with any kind of a conscience nowadays. But it did look really nice, and it used a lot of the space. Apparently that had been Irene's fathers mother's apartment.
Is that the one under. They for a while had a plaque on outside?
Yeah, that's the one. And then they apparently had to take it off because there wasn't a permit for it or something like that. Typical.
Yes. Typical bureaucracy. I'm actually surprised some of these buildings in Russia are still standing, but I don't think Russia has ever really been invaded, so to speak.
No. And St. Petersburg is a beautiful city. I took a lot of those pictures in 2004 and five when I did a couple of trips there.
You can see the modern cars in front of these buildings.
But if it's really modern cars, then it's Mikhail Kratzov, our friend in St. Petersburg, who's taken that. But if they look like they're 20 year old cars, then that's mine.
It wasn't. It was under siege in, what, 3940.
Oh, I see.
Yeah. For a long time, around 1000 days.
And her sister got killed. Right.
Gosh.
Yeah. In a bombing.
Bombing rate, yeah. But. Right.
Yeah.
Otherwise, I don't know. Did you guess you didn't see any ruins in St. Petersburg?
No, I didn't see any ruins. I don't remember it really being damaged, that it would have been. A lot of these buildings are much older than second world war, so at least I didn't see any in the nineties or early two thousands.
Okay, okay. What about now? A lot of, almost everyone knows about her meeting with Cecil B. DeMille and running into him, so to speak. What about. Is it your Ray? Colorado?
Your ray who?
Anno, did you take that photo or. No?
No, I didn't. We found the photo in a collection in the Eindran archives, Mike. Do I remember that correctly? And then we did quite a bit of detective work to find out who owns the photo and who took it. And then we wrote to him and he was delighted to give us the right to use it in the book. And we sent him a copy of the book. So hopefully he's enjoying it.
I have a funny story how I came across that when I was teaching, as customary, when faculty members go on vacation, they'll send a postcard back to the department or department secretary and we'll put it up on the bulletin board. And I was in the department office one day and this must have been, I don't know, 19 71, 72, something like that. And I see this exact postcard, I think, right? And I know where it was. Never heard of you. Right. But Jesus, all that needs is a rate screen.
That could be golf skulks. And I mentioned that to a friend of mine, Alan Gottvel, who knew I ran and he said, guess what it was. I had no idea. And then after we got the archive material, 20 years later, I found the maps and everything related to Yuretzenhe. So it was. Now I have to say that when you're. We went to vacations. You're right. You don't experience what you see in that picture, which is obviously from the air. Yes. So it's.
You don't get, when you're in the town, you don't get the feeling that you're surrounded by these huge mountains. But that photo is so adult skull.
Yes, I agree. I agree. I'm looking at it right now. It's. That's certainly a valley, you know, and you can, you can picture the, you know, the homes of the, the heroes and protagonists.
And they certainly love. She and Frank certainly love that place there. Twice.
I have, I have a note there talking about podcasting and podcasting 2.0. If the listeners, and if we have permission with that photo, as you got permission, it had been possible to then show it as a chapter that the listener could say, okay, we are talking about this. And then they could see it on their phone or on the web.
And then you could give credits to the person who took the photo and if they would be like, adding to what you have done, Arno registered on true fans, then the person could get something for that, like a donation. So this is amazing how we're talking on audio, but then your imagination. And also, if you looked at the book and have been at Colorado, you get the picture. And if you listen to, and you could add that into the audio, like on a new modern podcast app, you could really see it.
So this is fascinating, and thanks again to, you know, the market and developers and inventors and applications. That was something that struck my mind. Now, when we're talking about this nice feature. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. What was, quote, the residence that never was, unquote.
I knew. I take that one.
Yeah, sure. Ayn Rand loved Frank Lloyd Wright's work, even though not the character of the person itself. And you may be familiar with the story of how she had written to Frank Lloyd Wright a couple of times when she was writing the fountainhead asking for a meeting and never heard back. And then when the book came out, Frank Lloyd Wright did acknowledge that and thought it was about him and all kinds of funny incidents, but they ended up meeting.
And apparently Frank Lloyd Wright was so impressed by Ayndrand that he agreed to do a drawing, a design for a house for her without knowing what would be the house's location, which apparently was typically a no no for him. And he did that. But unfortunately, that was the time when Ayn Rand decided that she would rather live in the city. And this house was designed to be built somewhere, I think, you know, maybe close by where one of you lives, you know, in Connecticut, close by the ocean.
But she went back to New York City, and the house was never built. There is a beautiful design in the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation archives, and unfortunately, they didn't allow us to reprint it in the book, but anyone who wants to find it can fairly easily find it on the Internet or in the archives. It's a beautiful building, somewhat reminiscent of falling water.
Yes, it's striking. It's very striking. Yes, very striking. Now, one of the things I was kind of fascinated by, in a way, she, apparently they moved around quite a bit in New York City itself. I mean, they had, what, six or eight residences, and then obviously the building or the rooms for the objectivist and the Ayn Rand letter and so on. But she had a lot. They moved around quite a bit. Was there a reason for that?
Or if you look at the times when they moved around a lot, that was earlier, they were still fairly young, and it seems to be that they were moving every year, every 11th month. So I suppose that they made a year's lease and then got a better price or a better place somewhere else. But if you look at the two last places where they lived until Eindran's death, they are pretty long term.
That's true.
That's true.
Yeah. Places in 31 years. 32 years. Yeah.
The. So what was. What was meant by the perfect 36 in one of her residences?
That was an old phrase for a woman with a perfect figure.
Her man.
Okay. I have to tell you that when I got this question yesterday from you, a blair, I started looking at it and Google wouldn't even tell this meaning anymore. And I thought that was pretty sure. Yeah, I think so. It's apparently a perfect score on SAt. It's this and that, but nothing about the woman's measurements. I thought that was quite funny.
It is, but we are for the freedom of expression, and this is not explicit, so to speak. But the lead to this is like, it's in the address. Right. It's the street number and 36 east.
And the apartment. Yes, yes.
I don't know what the waste. They should be.
24.
24. Is that 36? 24 36.
That is it. Yes.
Yes. That was a.
So that's. That's. That's funny. And cute.
And funny.
Yeah. Now, obviously, there's the famous photo of them on top of the Empire State Building. That's one of their trips back to New York from Los Angeles.
That was the. Not the Empire State. That was Rockefeller center.
Sorry. Yes, Rockefeller center.
Oh, yeah. Great picture.
Yes.
Yeah.
They look very happy, and they look into the camera and hold on to their hats. Yeah.
But again, so this must have been a real labor of love to put this book together.
It was. We had a lot of fun. I have to say that Mike is the best person ever to work with. He's prompt and he's capable, he writes well, he's funny.
If this sort of video, my face would be red.
But it has to be because you are great to work with.
And I know that. I have to say that. And we will get you on video, both of you, and do something, because, of course, this is a show and tell. People have to use the immunization and get the book. Also, I read it in Kindle and Blair in the paperback, but I could see opportunities in different media with this. It's like, as I said, a photo album. It's a gallery, it's a tour guide. It's so neat and nice in every way. So great work in doing this, Mike.
Yeah. We're really lucky that, that Ayn Rand was a saver. And Blair asked earlier about how many photos were from her collection. Only 30. But a lot of the other photos were things that she kept and we would know nothing about if she hadn't kept them. And it makes her journey so much more alive to have her and the luggage receipt from her trip to America on the de Grasse. She kept that.
Could that be something? Now, maybe it's far fetched, but, you know, one of my favorite essays is on the value of having stamp collecting as a hobby. And she written about stamps, how to collect stamps. And also you learn things and you get inspired. So it was fascinating when it was this stamp of rand. And also the first letter, you know how to say in Swedish, you call it first day letter, but you get it like this date on it.
And I could see that in the, in the book, it's, it's lots of that nostalgic thing.
So, yeah, you know, I have to say this. Nothing, not this book in particular, but what, what it's full of and what it led to had a big effect on me personally. I've always, being in academia, had a more academic approach to things, and I was interested in her ideas. Lastly, I'm interested would be an understatement, but nothing, not particularly in her as a person. And it was just, you know, I'm caught up in the world of ideas at the university and all that.
And then in the mid nineties, I had to do a little research of the cartons of her material that Doctor Beacov had down in Orange county. And in the course of which I, I saw some things I'd never seen before. And I thought, you know, people are going to start using this stuff. We ought to know what's in there. So I volunteered. He actually paid me a dollar, the inventory, all that material, this should be pretty interesting.
And so I started bringing three, four, five cartons up from Orange county to where I live. And it's about an hour away where I lived, north of where all this material was in a warehouse. And I put it out on the floor of the living room. And I would reach my hand into a box and just grab hold of something and pull it out. And one of the first things I pulled out was her passport. God, this Iran's passport. If it hadn't been for this, there would have been no objectivism.
And that concretized what she had gone through and accomplished. And it was just increased, increased with all the other materials I saw. And that was when I got interested in her life. And that's, I think I mentioned in the intro to this book, the tagline from Ayn Ray said, to life, more compelling than fiction. And that had, you know, this is a compromisation of that whole thing.
And then I got super interested in the archives and finding out more and connecting this piece of material to something else. That whole process was not just enjoyable, but gave me a whole different outlook on Ayn Rand as a person. I met her a number of times, but I can't say I knew her. We weren't, not enough to be friends, but that it was a real eye opener and a mind opener. When I saw her, like, concretized and all these things, I reminded of it before.
And we were talking about that photo from the Rockefeller center, and she kept the receipt from that photo, and she didn't keep things just to keep them. She wasn't a hoarder in that sense, but she kept tons of stuff that were meaningful to her, like hundreds of notes between her and Frank. They would leave in the morning to call, order the groceries, and I don't remember many the details, but it's a life, and it's concretized that way. I'm really grateful that she kept so.
Many things and like the quote that Blair was saying about the importance of a typewriter and did the work. And I like the photo when, as a cat person, when she is Frisco in action, where on the photo, you could sense how it was in my apartment and so on. So I have. If. I don't know if you don't have any other things, like regarding the book, I want to segue a little bit before we wrap up.
I do have one more question, Martin, if I may. I just want to ask Anu, why did she love New York City so much?
Yeah, that's a good one.
I would venture to guess that it's a maybe the best form that human, productive endeavor has taken on a landscape and, you know, given a very enjoyable place to live and thrive for anyone who wants to be there. And I know skyscrapers held a special meaning to her.
That's true.
There, not having been any in the. In Russia or Soviet Union, I don't know, you know, having lived in New York City myself, there is some energy in that city that is very rare, if not even non existent, anywhere else. So I. That would be a part of it.
It really meant America to her. That was. They were synonymous almost. And I. For people living in Russia at that time, America was like Mars. And it was manifested in New York City. What could be more better example of american freedom and productivity than New York? I mean, she said at one point, I think it was in the interviews for biographical, that she was in this slightly a paraphrase. I don't remember it exactly. She was talking to Frank, said, I was in love with New York.
Not just I loved it, but I was in love with it. And Frank said to me, it's the New York that you made up in your own mind. And she said, that's true.
I think we have that in the book, Mike.
Do we?
I think it is.
Yes, I read it. And, and that's quoting from.
You're quoting almost yourself. Yeah.
Is that in the skyscraper?
Yeah.
Yes, I think that's what I'm just looking.
I can't see it right there. But I.
Hold on.
Let's see if I can.
But I read it in.
Oh, maybe it's in. We have a couple of skyline.
So America became the world for Mars. Yeah, that's there.
And this, I must say on a personal, this will give me strength and fuel and support to visit New York City again because I haven't been there since the tragic and the terror attack and so on. So I was.
Yeah, yeah, do go. It lives on.
Yeah. Good. Good to hear. So. So, Mike, I was, and that could be for another episode. You wrote an article, a piece on we were living and music. Do you want to, could you connect that somehow with this book? And also, Rance had future plans of music and tiddlywing music and some work of art.
No connection pops into my mind, though. I think she pretty much will. Stylish. I think she lived in New York at the same time as her then favorite composer, Emmerich Kalman, and didn't know it. And I, of course, never got to meet him. But, no, I mean, maybe there is, but I'm not seeing it, Martin. Sorry.
No, that's okay. But I thought it was very interesting piece about the music and we were living, and also, as we talked about all the statues and landmarks and it's fascinating to learn more about her life and her career and everything. So. And thanks again for your hard work. And do you have any things going on or something that you want to mention or something? Again, you have to plug the book, of course, and where the listener could get it and. Yeah. Reach out to you and so on.
Yeah, the book is available on Amazon, both on Kindle evision and a print edition. But like Martin mentioned earlier, it is not easy to read it on Kindle. It's hard to make the font any bigger. And I bet the photos are blurry. So do get it in print. And it's pretty inexpensive and comes to you quickly, at least if you're in the US. Which reminds me, Martin, if you need any help getting it to Sweden, let me know.
Yeah, I will talk to you. You know how it is in Scandinavia.
I do know that.
Nordic countries.
Anu, are you over in Europe or where are you, if I may?
No, I'm in. I'm in southern California, too. I'm in Orange county, just about an hour south from Mike.
Yeah, I know you worked at the Institute for many years, and I did see a blurb some time ago where you had retired.
Right? Yes. I've been enjoying only life for about two years now. It has been quite, quite nice.
I'm glad. Michael, let me. On the back cover, you mentioned you there. It mentions that you wrote recent biographies of Emerick Kalman and Jacques Offenbach.
Edited, not wrote.
Okay. I haven't been able to find those. Are they available there?
Yes, they are. They're on. They're on Amazon. Uh, the biography of Emerick almond is called laughter under tears.
Ah, okay.
And the author is. Last name is Fry Frey. And the other, more recent is a memoir that Kalman himself wrote in 1940 and telling stories about his growing up and becoming an imposer and the like. And that's that title. That is the unadulterated truth. I'm not sure that's an accurate title, but you call it the unadulterated truth. And he's the named author of that. But they're on kind. I don't know if they're on Kindle, actually, but they're certainly on Amazon.
But I don't want to leave without saying not only was this book probably the most enjoyable book that I ever worked on at Ari, but working with Anu, I don't think we had any disagreements. To me, Anu, which is pretty surprising. It was pure joy to do this.
Yeah, I don't think we had. And you, given that we really put down. Put ourselves down to work shortly after Covid began and we were stranded at our homes. It was really a glimpse of another life and something positive coming on that was quite wonderful.
Of course, it took about 1517 years to get it done.
That's right. But maybe without Covid, we couldn't have done it.
It's possible.
Yeah. No, thank you guys, for wanting to interview us. That was wonderful.
Oh, it's our pleasure. Our pleasure. I want to. Martin, did you want to finish up? And I'll do that.
I think it's all good. Of course, if you value this, as listeners, you are welcome to support us and support our guests, and we'll talk more about that in the future, how we could spread the good word and keep this going. So please wrap it up, blaire.
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, today we've been talking to Michael Berliner and Anu Sepala, authors of Russia to America, a guide to Ayn Rand, homes and scents. Mike, Anu, thanks for manning the foxhole with us.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you very much.