Ayn Rand on The Meaning of Life and Moral Judgment — Now on YouTube

On February 2, 2025, in celebration of Ayn Rand’s 120th birthday, the Ayn Rand Institute released a pair of thirty-minute interviews between Ayn Rand and radio show host Raymond Newman.

Originally broadcast in October 1980 on The Raymond Newman Journal, this hour-long conversation was one of Rand’s final interviews before her death on March 6, 1982. Until now, the audio had only been available through limited CD releases or through unauthorized versions circulating online. Thanks to preservation efforts of the original audio at the Ayn Rand Archives, and a licensing agreement with the copyright holder, both interviews are now available on the Ayn Rand Institute’s YouTube channel.

Newman’s discussion with Rand, titled “Objectivism in Brief,” provides an essentialized account of Rand’s unique philosophy, covering morality, politics, and art. At the start of their second interview together, Newman asked Rand a common question in philosophy: “What is the meaning of life?” Exhibiting her characteristic philosophic acumen, Rand challenged the very premise of the question:

Asked that way, it seems to imply that somebody outside of us, naturally, some supernatural being, is the one who has to prescribe that purpose, and we should spend our lives trying to find it out and then live up to it. There is no such thing as the purpose of life, because life is an end in itself. Life is the purpose of life.

A major focus of both interviews was Rand’s view of how to form moral judgements of people. Rand explained that most people are of mixed premises, and that in dealing with them, “you have to balance, in effect hierarchically, the seriousness of their virtues, and of their vices, and see what you get in the net result.”

Rand was the first guest on the Raymond Newman Journal, a weekly cable television and radio show that would later feature Governor Richard Thornburgh of Pennsylvania, jazz legend Benny Goodman, Soviet defector Simas Kudirka, and many others. Newman was also a Korean war veteran, attorney, accountant, and a dedicated teacher, known for his work in SAT tutoring and test preparation. Throughout their hour together, Newman expressed his admiration for Rand’s philosophy, and according to his obituary, he was “a lifetime student of Ayn Rand and Objectivism.” According to Newman’s family, he even adopted one of Ayn Rand’s cats, who was named “Professor of Epistemology.”

This fascinating hour between Ayn Rand and Raymond Newman can be heard in its entirety on YouTube, as part of the Institute’s effort to bring more of Rand’s words and ideas to the world.