Maria Popova
@mariapopova.bsky.social
Creator of The Marginalian (once upon a time called Brain Pickings). Lover of books and tress. Petter of moss. Wonderer. Also: almanacofbirds.org
Helen Keller’s moving account of “hearing” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” with her hands and suddenly understanding the meaning of music www.themarginalian.org/2016/10/11/h...
The Trans-Sensory Transcendence of Music: Helen Keller’s Electrifying Letter About “Hearing” Beethoven’s Ode to Joy
“I felt the chorus grow more exultant, more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still.”
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How to love the world more – peek inside one of my all-time favorite books www.themarginalian.org/2025/11/16/r...
How to Love the World More: Artist and Poet Rachel Hébert’s Breathtaking Catalogue of Gratitudes
Here we are, living these lives bright and perishable as a poppy, hard and shimmering as obsidian. We know that they are entirely improbable, that we bless that bright improbability with each flash…
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What makes a good life – revelatory learnings from Harvard's 75-year study of human flourishing www.themarginalian.org/2016/08/23/h...
What Makes a Good Life: Revelatory Learnings from Harvard’s 75-Year Study of Human Happiness
“The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.”
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Spell against indifference www.themarginalian.org/2023/08/20/s...
Spell Against Indifference: A Poem
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a si…
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"As you swim, you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances."
Roots and the meaning of life www.themarginalian.org/2026/03/15/r...
Roots and the Meaning of Life
They are so far out of sight for us, creatures of the upper world, that we don’t readily think of them. But as soon as we do, as soon as we plunge the mind into the cold dark humus to which t…
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Born on this day in 1841, the naturalist William Henry Hudson wrote beautifully about the spirituality of wonder: www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/25/w...
Endless Forms of Wonder: The Nautilus, the Leopard, and the Spirituality of Wildness
We are the only animal captive in a cage of its own making. Its bars can look like many things — the screen, the self, the scintillation of being right — but it is from within it that w…
themarginalian.org
Roots and the meaning of life www.themarginalian.org/2026/03/15/r...
Roots and the Meaning of Life
They are so far out of sight for us, creatures of the upper world, that we don’t readily think of them. But as soon as we do, as soon as we plunge the mind into the cold dark humus to which t…
themarginalian.org
Trial, triumph, and the art of the possible – the remarkable story behind Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" www.themarginalian.org/2022/05/17/b...
Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
A hymn of rage, a hymn of redemption, and a timeless love letter to the possible.
themarginalian.org
You can't have it all ...but you can have August, and abundantly so A tonic of a poem: www.themarginalian.org/2019/02/07/y...
You Can’t Have It All
“…but there is this.”
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Kahlil Gibran on silence, solitude, and the courage to know yourself: www.themarginalian.org/2026/07/29/k...
Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself
“In much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”
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Pulitzer-winning poet Marie Howe's ode to the best in us, animated: www.themarginalian.org/2024/04/04/m...
Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated
“It began as an almost inaudible hum…”
themarginalian.org
What makes you makes the universe – Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger on quantum physics, Vedanta, and the ongoing mystery of what makes us who we are www.themarginalian.org/2026/08/03/e...
What Makes You You Makes the Universe: Nobel Laureate Erwin Schrödinger on Quantum Physics, Vedanta, and the Ongoing Mystery of What We Are
“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole.”
themarginalian.org
The Experience Machine – fascinating read on the power of expectation and how the mind renders reality www.themarginalian.org/2023/06/20/t...
The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the Mind Renders Reality
“We are never simply seeing what’s ‘really there,’ stripped bare of our own anticipations or insulated from our own past experiences. Instead, all human experience is part phantom…
themarginalian.org
How to hold the darkness – notes on living with uncertainty www.themarginalian.org/2026/08/02/f...
How to Hold the Darkness: Notes on Living Through Uncertainty
There are times in life when the continent of certainty parts underfoot and, as the ash cloud of the old world rains darkness upon us, we are asked to swim in the rivers of lava that will make the …
themarginalian.org
"There is no quieter place on earth than the third hour of a good long day of walking. It’s alone in this space, this walk-induced hypnosis, that the mind is finally able to receive the strange gifts and charities of the world." Gorgeous read: www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/09/t...
Things Become Other Things: Walking, Forgiveness, and Belonging in the Mountains of Japan
Steps are events, experiments, miniature rebellions against gravity and chance. With each step, we fall and then we catch ourselves, we choose to go one way and not another. The foot falls and worl…
themarginalian.org
"True teachers are called into being by the contradictions generated by civilization… We need them." Gary Snyder (a true teacher himself) on how to unbreak the world: www.themarginalian.org/2025/01/31/g...
Gary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World
“What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands and minds.”
themarginalian.org
The grasshopper, the game of life, and the "lusory attitude" essential for playing www.themarginalian.org/2026/08/02/s...
The Grasshopper, the Game of Life, and the “Lusory Attitude” Essential for Playing
On a recent flight, I watched a mother across the aisle play peek-a-boo with her small son while next to me a grown man in a VR headset spent six hours ascending the levels of a video game. It occu…
themarginalian.org
Annie Dillard on how to bear your mortality – superb read www.themarginalian.org/2023/04/30/a...
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality
“We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water.”
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Baldwin, born 102 years ago today, on how to live through your darkest hour and happiness as a moral obligation to the universe – some of his least known, most wonderful writing:
James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe
“I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of th…
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"Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance." On Baldwin's birthday, his eternal advice on writing (which applies to all creative work): www.themarginalian.org/2016/02/08/j...
James Baldwin’s Advice on Writing
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”
themarginalian.org
"There is only one solitude... large and not easy to bear... People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy. But it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the difficult." Rilke on the relationship between love, sex, solitude, and creativity: www.themarginalian.org/2026/08/02/r...
Rilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity
“There is only one solitude, and it is large and not easy to bear… People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy. But it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the d…
themarginalian.org
The best of The Marginalian this week, in one place – Carl Jung on death and how to be more alive; a blackbird's lesson in friendship; and a serpentine/ceramics raffle: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so." René Magritte on enchantment, the courage of joy, and the antidote to the banality of pessimism: www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/31/r...
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
“Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so.”
themarginalian.org
New #birddivination to remind us that the obstacle is the way. Find the original deck of 100, along with the story and process behind them, at almanacofbirds.org
The best of The Marginalian this week, in one place – Carl Jung on death, how to be more alive, and the rebirth of middle age; a blackbird's lesson in friendship; and a ceramics raffle: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
For an act of resistance to the tyranny and vanity of algorithms, try the Marginalian newsletter — undistracted notes on the search for meaning, free, ad-free, AI-free, fully human for 20 years this year: themarginalian.org/newsletter
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If you yearn for depth and delight without the distraction of a social media feed, if you are weary of algorithms deciding what you see and read and constellate into reality, try the Marginalian Su…
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