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/

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Latest posts

• Undoing as Remaking: How Abraham Lincoln Drew Poetry and Power from His Suicidal Depression 2026-02-14 11:09am
• Albert Camus on the Will to Live and the Most Important Question of Existence 2026-02-14 03:55am
• The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written 2026-02-13 02:30pm
• How to Keep Life from Becoming a Parody of Itself: Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing Older 2026-02-13 07:38am
• How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old 2026-02-13 07:37am
• The Art of Choosing Love Over Not-Love: Rumi’s Antidote to Our Human Tragedy 2026-02-12 09:58am
• Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness 2026-02-12 09:50am
• Why You 2026-02-11 03:08pm
• Darwin’s Greatest Regret and His Deathbed Reflection on What Makes Life Worth Living 2026-02-11 03:07pm
• The Art of Solitude: Buddhist Scholar and Teacher Stephen Batchelor on Contemplative Practice and Creativity 2026-02-11 03:07pm
• Edward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die 2026-02-11 09:01am
• Dostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life 2026-02-11 07:19am
• Blaise Pascal on the Intuitive vs. the Logical Mind and How We Come to Know Truth 2026-02-11 07:00am
• Virginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Limits of Empathy 2026-02-10 03:31pm
• The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning 2026-02-10 01:25pm
• How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss 2026-02-10 09:41am
• Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life 2026-02-09 03:40pm
• The Blessing of Burnout: Samin Nosrat on the Faustian Bargain of Achievement and the Simple Substance of the Good Life 2026-02-08 08:40am
• Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity 2026-02-08 08:30am
• Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance 2026-02-07 09:44am
• Relationship Rupture and the Limbic System: The Physiology of Abandonment and Separation 2026-02-07 07:25am
• A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating Century-Old Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want 2026-02-07 01:47am
• Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life 2026-02-06 11:01am
• The Story Behind Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and the Poet’s Own Stirring Reading of His Masterpiece 2026-02-06 11:00am
• Dying Mothers, the Birth of Handwashing, and the Bittersweet True Love Story Behind ‘Frankenstein’ 2026-02-06 10:22am
• Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning 2026-02-06 10:06am
• The Reason of Emotion: Bruce Lee’s Unpublished Writings on Willpower, Imagination, and Confidence 2026-02-06 01:00am
• Kandinsky on the Spiritual Element in Art and the Three Responsibilities of Artists 2026-02-05 02:00am
• How Pioneering Physicist Lise Meitner Discovered Nuclear Fission, Paved the Way for Women in Science, and Was Denied the Nobel Prize 2026-02-05 12:00am
• Sleep and the Meaning of Life: Fernando Pessoa on the Existential Dimension of the Horizontal Hours 2026-02-04 02:51pm
• Carl Jung on Creativity 2026-02-04 09:03am
• What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep 2026-02-04 07:22am
• Forgiveness 2026-02-03 05:52am
• On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran 2026-02-03 02:56am
• Rilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity 2026-02-02 02:42pm
• When Your Parents Are Dying: Some of the Simplest, Most Difficult and Redemptive Life-Advice You’ll Ever Receive 2026-02-02 10:31am
• Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge 2026-02-02 10:18am
• The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife 2026-02-02 05:27am
• Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird 2026-02-01 04:18pm
• Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being 2026-02-01 10:52am
• How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life 2026-01-31 11:01pm
• Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living 2026-01-31 11:00pm
• Georgia O’Keeffe on the Art of Seeing 2026-01-31 11:00pm
• How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Choosing Presence Over Productivity 2026-01-31 10:00pm
• Telling Is Listening: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Magic of Real Human Conversation 2026-01-31 06:06pm
• Kurt Vonnegut on the Simplest, Hardest Secret of Happiness 2026-01-31 07:47am
• Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go 2026-01-31 07:35am
• The Neurophysiology of Enchantment: How Music Casts Its Spell on Us 2026-01-31 04:34am
• The Four Buddhist Mantras for Turning Fear into Love 2026-01-31 04:33am
• Don’t Waste Your Wildness 2026-01-30 03:49pm
• Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself 2026-01-30 03:46pm
• What Happens When We Die 2026-01-30 12:56pm
• The Majesty and Mystery of Ice: 200 Years of Artists Reverencing the Wonder of Water’s Wintry Face 2026-01-30 06:46am
• The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior: Bertrand Russell’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 2026-01-30 06:31am
• How Emotions Are Made 2026-01-30 06:30am
• The Single Best Piece of Advice on the Creative Life 2026-01-30 06:12am
• But We Had Music 2026-01-30 04:01am
• The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life 2026-01-29 04:38pm
• The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking 2026-01-29 04:30pm
• A Winter Walk with Thoreau: The Transcendentalist Way of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold Season 2026-01-29 10:23am
• How to Be More Alive: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Breaking the Trance of Near-living 2026-01-29 09:01am
• Michael Faraday on Mental Discipline and How to Cure Our Propensity for Self-Deception 2026-01-29 09:00am
• Love Anyway 2026-01-29 02:32am
• The Mystery of Personal Identity: What Makes You and Your Childhood Self the Same Person Despite a Lifetime of Change 2026-01-29 02:00am
• A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety 2026-01-28 12:51pm
• How Kepler Invented Science Fiction and Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial While Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Universe 2026-01-28 08:09am
• The Most Valiant Way to Complain Is to Create: William Blake and the Stubborn Courage of the Unexampled 2026-01-28 03:49am
• James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe 2026-01-28 03:45am
• The Light Between Us 2026-01-27 04:47pm
• Love After Love: Derek Walcott’s Poetic Ode to Relearning to Be at Home in Ourselves After Heartbreak 2026-01-27 04:44pm
• The Importance of Being Scared: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on Fairy Tales and the Necessity of Fear 2026-01-27 04:30pm
• Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death 2026-01-27 07:19am
• When Einstein Met Tagore: A Remarkable Meeting of Minds on the Edge of Science and Spirituality 2026-01-27 07:14am
• Immortality in Passing: Poet Lisel Mueller, Who Lived to 96, on What Gives Meaning to Our Ephemeral Lives 2026-01-27 07:11am
• What It’s Like to Touch the Bottom of the World 2026-01-27 07:05am
• Do Not Spare Yourself 2026-01-27 03:52am
• Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World 2026-01-26 05:05pm
• Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” 2026-01-26 05:03pm
• Is There a God? Stephen Hawking Gives the Definitive Answer to the Eternal Question 2026-01-26 05:00pm
• Cephalopod Atlas: Stunning, Sensual Illustrations from the World’s First Encyclopedia of Octopus and Squid Wonders from the Ocean Depths 2026-01-26 01:32pm
• The Pleasure of Being Left Alone 2026-01-26 10:12am
• The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name 2026-01-26 02:38am
• How to Bear Your Fear and What It Means to Love: A Tender Meditation in Ink, Watercolor, and Wonder 2026-01-25 07:48am
• Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful and Creative Predator 2026-01-24 10:52pm
• How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty 2026-01-24 10:07pm
• Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss 2026-01-24 07:26am
• The Purest Definition of Love, the Qualities of a Lasting Relationship, and the Salve for the Betrayals of Time 2026-01-24 07:12am
• Diseases of the Will: Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ramón y Cajal on the Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gift 2026-01-23 11:30pm
• The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel 2026-01-23 09:55am
• Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss 2026-01-23 08:33am
• Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert 2026-01-22 11:00pm
• A Spell Against Fear: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry and The Art of Productive Impatience 2026-01-22 02:19pm
• The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother 2026-01-22 08:34am
• The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother 2026-01-21 04:34pm
• How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James 2026-01-21 06:46am
• Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace 2026-01-21 06:00am
• Let the Last Thing Be Song 2026-01-21 02:54am
• How to Be an Instrument of Kindness in a Harsh World: George Saunders on Unthinking the Mind, Unstorying the Self, and the 3 Antidotes to Your Suffering 2026-01-20 03:16pm
• Elif Shafak on the Three Roots of Hate and How to Be a Star Student of Life 2026-01-18 07:56am
• Emerson on How to Touch the Universe 2026-01-16 08:31am
• How Not to Be a Victim of Time: Rebecca West on Music and Life 2026-01-14 12:39pm
• How to Be Immense: Trauma Therapist Frances Weller on the Relationship Between Uncertainty and Renewal 2026-01-13 02:47pm
• Strata: The Consolations and Invitations of Deep Time 2026-01-11 09:48am
• How to Hold on to the Light of the World 2026-01-09 10:46am
• The Trouble with Romantic Love 2026-01-07 07:25am
• Saved by Wonder: The Ziegler Polar Expedition and the Aurora Borealis 2026-01-05 11:25am
• Traversal: New Year, New Book (Seven Years in the Making) 2026-01-02 03:02pm
• Cover Song for the Second Law: A Poem for Beginnings 2026-01-02 06:11am
• The Body as Revolution: Che Guevara on Social Medicine and Personal Health as a Political Act 2026-01-01 12:41pm
• 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