The Marginalian

The Marginalian

Maria Popova

Culture

Hello. My name is Maria Popova and The Marginalian is a record of my reading and reckoning with our search for meaning: sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children’s books, always through the lens of wonder. Founded in 2006 as an email to seven friends under the outgrown name Brain Pickings and since included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials, it remains a one-woman labor of love animated by the ultimate question that binds us all: What is all this?

https://www.themarginalian.org/

Latest posts

Love, Lichen, and the Art of Trusting Time: The Best of The Marginalian 2025 2025-12-30 02:31am
The Continuous Creative Act of Holding on While Letting Go: 10 Cultural Icons on the Art of Growing Older 2025-12-29 09:50am
How to Bioluminesce: Artist Ash Eliza Williams’s Reveries of Wonder 2025-12-26 05:26pm
When Friends Become Lovers: H.G. Wells on Navigating Blurring Boundaries 2025-12-25 04:11pm
How to Live Fully: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Remedy for Our Resistance to Change 2025-12-23 08:47am
If Birds Ran the World 2025-12-20 11:02am
The Leaf that Wouldn’t Fall: A Tender Illustrated Parable about the Measure and Meaning of Love 2025-12-19 07:58am
The Woman Who Mapped Labrador and Revolutionized the Literature of Exploration 2025-12-18 03:27am
A Decalogue for the Dignity of Growing Old: Eva Perón’s Revolutionary Rights of the Elderly 2025-12-14 08:44am
Favorite Books of 2025 2025-12-13 07:20am
Beatitude: Poet John Keene’s Spell Against Despair 2025-12-10 02:24pm
The Lighthouse Keeper: A Tender Illustrated Meditation on What Saves Us 2025-12-09 02:43pm
Little Free Library Divinations: Searching for the Meaning of Life in Discarded Books and Found Objects 2025-12-07 03:28pm
The Indissoluble Filament Connecting Us All: Patti Smith on What It Means to Be an Artist 2025-12-05 03:22pm
Aldo Leopold on How to Hear the Song of Life 2025-12-03 06:35pm
Alphabet in Motion: Artist Kelli Anderson’s Wondrous Pop-up Biography of the Letters 2025-12-02 12:23pm
How to Be Human: Kahlil Gibran’s Recipe for Our Spiritual Perfection as a Species 2025-11-29 10:10am
Thanks: W.S. Merwin’s Ode to the Defiant Courage of Gratitude in a Broken World 2025-11-26 08:00am
Love Against Probability 2025-11-24 09:58am
A Lamentation for Linnaeus: In Praise of Confusion and Rewilding Wonder 2025-11-21 02:18pm
If You Forget Me: Pablo Neruda’s Staggering (Un)breakup Poem 2025-11-19 10:33am
Chasing Fog: The Science and Spirituality of Nature’s Grounded Cloud 2025-11-18 10:44am
How to Love the World More: Artist and Poet Rachel Hébert’s Breathtaking Catalogue of Gratitudes 2025-11-16 07:59am
Midnight Motorbike: A Lullaby of Wonder for the Sleepless, Inspired by the Whimsy of South India 2025-11-13 10:07am
How to Fix Breakdowns in Communication 2025-11-11 02:31pm
Against the Cartesian Myth of Work/Life Balance: André Gregory’s Extraordinary Letter to Richard Avedon about the Nature of Creativity 2025-11-10 11:50am
Words: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language 2025-11-05 12:02pm
How to Be a Lichen: Adaptive Strategies for the Vulnerabilities of Being Human from Nature’s Tiny Titans of Tenacity 2025-11-02 03:14pm
How Not to Waste Your Life 2025-10-31 01:01pm
The Beginning and the End of War, in a Stunning Watercolor Reckoning with Humanity 2025-10-29 01:20pm
What It’s Like to Meet an Orca 2025-10-27 08:42pm
Endless forms of Wonder: The Nautilus, the Leopard, and the Spirituality of Wildness 2025-10-25 04:55pm
The Search for Meaning Cast in Clay: 19 Years of The Marginalian in 19 Ceramic Sentences 2025-10-23 08:45am
A Chosen Path of Light: Alain de Botton on Successful Friendships 2025-10-21 12:09pm
Perfect Mind: The Gnostic Field Guide to Wholeness and Hearing the Voice of Truth 2025-10-19 11:04am
The Engine of Our Redemption: Nick Cave on How to Use Your Suffering 2025-10-17 01:13pm
I Feel, Therefore I Understand: Humboldt on the Essence of Science and How to Read the Poetry of Nature 2025-10-16 09:59am
Annie Dillard on How to Live 2025-10-14 04:42pm
How to Be a Good Explorer in the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself 2025-10-13 11:55am
How to See the Milky Way: Instructions for Being More Alive 2025-10-10 02:48pm
How Not to Be a Victim of Success 2025-10-09 04:57pm
The Three Elements of the Good Life 2025-10-05 10:33am
Heed Your Daemon: Rudyard Kipling on Writing 2025-10-05 06:18am
Eight Takes: How to Tell a Truer Love Story 2025-10-03 07:39am
The Measure of a True Visionary: Jane Goodall on the Indivisibility of Art and Science 2025-10-01 05:34pm
The Feather Detective: How Roxie Laybourne Pioneered Forensic Ornithology 2025-09-30 07:16pm
The Cell vs. the Crystal: The Philosopher-Naturalist John Burroughs on What Makes a Great Poem and a Great Person 2025-09-28 09:06am
Fernando Pessoa on Unselfing into Who You Really Are 2025-09-25 06:23pm
How Humanity Saved the Ginkgo 2025-09-23 06:48am
Ode to a Good Pen: Or, How to Write the Book of Love 2025-09-20 04:11am
The Heart of the Andes and the Invention of Virtual Reality: Frederic Edwin Church’s Immersive 19th-century Paintings of Natural Wonders 2025-09-16 11:08am
The Coziest Place on the Moon: An Illustrated Fable about How to Live with Loneliness and What It Means to Love, Inspired by a Real NASA Discovery 2025-09-12 05:45pm
Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success 2025-09-11 10:55am
Virginia Woolf on Love 2025-09-09 06:23pm
By Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of Faith, and the Courage of Heresy 2025-09-05 07:55pm
On Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing 2025-09-04 12:39pm
Embodiment and the (Re)invention of Emoji, from the Aztecs to Humboldt and Darwin to AI 2025-08-31 08:38am
A Heron, a Red Leaf, and a Hole in a Blue Star: Poet Jane Kenyon on the Art of Letting Go 2025-08-29 10:38am
Undersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World 2025-08-26 09:09am
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements of Creativity 2025-08-22 06:31pm