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
Pinned
Maria Popova
@mariapopova.bsky.social
· Apr 19
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I ori…
www.themarginalian.org
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I shared the morning of my fortieth birthday. They are now a book of cards:
Artist and philosopher Rockwell Kent on our existential wanderlust www.themarginalian.org/2022/06/21/r...
Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Our Existential Wanderlust
“Wander where you will over all the world, from every valley seeing forever new hills calling you to climb them, from every mountain top farther peaks enticing you… until you stand one …
www.themarginalian.org
November 23, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Artist and philosopher Rockwell Kent on our existential wanderlust www.themarginalian.org/2022/06/21/r...
If you've ever been discomposed by an abandonment or a separation, this is for you: www.themarginalian.org/2022/09/06/g...
Relationship Rupture and the Limbic System: The Physiology of Abandonment and Separation
“A relationship is a physiologic process, as real and as potent as any pill or surgical procedure.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 11:55 PM
If you've ever been discomposed by an abandonment or a separation, this is for you: www.themarginalian.org/2022/09/06/g...
How to be a good explorer in the lifelong expedition to yourself www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/13/p...
November 22, 2025 at 10:16 PM
How to be a good explorer in the lifelong expedition to yourself www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/13/p...
How to stop waiting and start living – a jolt from Henry James www.themarginalian.org/2022/10/17/h...
How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James
“It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM
How to stop waiting and start living – a jolt from Henry James www.themarginalian.org/2022/10/17/h...
“The people we love are built into us.”
May Sarton on the art of living alone www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/17/m...
May Sarton on the art of living alone www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/17/m...
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
“The people we love are built into us.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 4:28 PM
“The people we love are built into us.”
May Sarton on the art of living alone www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/17/m...
May Sarton on the art of living alone www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/17/m...
"When power corrupts, poetry cleanses... We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."
Remember JFK, who was killed on this day in 1963, with his magnificent speech on the political power of art: www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/01/j...
Remember JFK, who was killed on this day in 1963, with his magnificent speech on the political power of art: www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/01/j...
JFK on Poetry, Power, and the Artist’s Role in Society: His Eulogy for Robert Frost, One of the Greatest Speeches of All Time
“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 3:04 PM
"When power corrupts, poetry cleanses... We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."
Remember JFK, who was killed on this day in 1963, with his magnificent speech on the political power of art: www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/01/j...
Remember JFK, who was killed on this day in 1963, with his magnificent speech on the political power of art: www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/01/j...
Fuel for your weekend: How to be more alive – artist and philosopher Rockwell Kent on breaking the trance of near-living www.themarginalian.org/2025/04/06/r...
How to Be More Alive: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Breaking the Trance of Near-living
The point, of course, is to make yourself alive — to feel the force of being in your sinew and your spirit, to tremble with the beauty and the terror of it all, to breathe lungfuls of life th…
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Fuel for your weekend: How to be more alive – artist and philosopher Rockwell Kent on breaking the trance of near-living www.themarginalian.org/2025/04/06/r...
How not to be a victim of success www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/09/r...
How Not to Be a Victim of Success
A self is a personal mythos — a story through which we sieve the complexity and condradictions of lived experience for coherence. The cruelest price of success — that affirmation of the…
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 1:01 PM
How not to be a victim of success www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/09/r...
A lamentation for Linnaeus – in praise of confusion and the rewilding of wonder www.themarginalian.org/2025/11/21/j...
A Lamentation for Linnaeus: In Praise of Confusion and Rewilding Wonder
Long ago, we traded the trees for tools, trying to bend the world to our will. We rose to our feet, ambling under the weight of an oversized brain that grew the opposable thumb we call thinking and…
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 5:47 AM
A lamentation for Linnaeus – in praise of confusion and the rewilding of wonder www.themarginalian.org/2025/11/21/j...
“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place.”
On this day in 1973, Maya Angelou's superb conversation with Bill Moyers www.themarginalian.org/2013/06/14/m...
On this day in 1973, Maya Angelou's superb conversation with Bill Moyers www.themarginalian.org/2013/06/14/m...
Maya Angelou on Freedom: A 1973 Conversation with Bill Moyers
“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 22, 2025 at 3:24 AM
“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place.”
On this day in 1973, Maya Angelou's superb conversation with Bill Moyers www.themarginalian.org/2013/06/14/m...
On this day in 1973, Maya Angelou's superb conversation with Bill Moyers www.themarginalian.org/2013/06/14/m...
How to grow reenchanted with the world – a salve for the sense of existential meaninglessness and burnout www.themarginalian.org/2023/03/04/k...
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and Burnout
A shimmering reminder that “the magic is of our own conjuring.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 10:16 PM
How to grow reenchanted with the world – a salve for the sense of existential meaninglessness and burnout www.themarginalian.org/2023/03/04/k...
"The choice we make of how we dispose our consciousness is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a moral act: it has consequences."
Fascinating read on the power of attention in shaping reality www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/10/i...
Fascinating read on the power of attention in shaping reality www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/10/i...
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
“Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 8:03 PM
"The choice we make of how we dispose our consciousness is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a moral act: it has consequences."
Fascinating read on the power of attention in shaping reality www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/10/i...
Fascinating read on the power of attention in shaping reality www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/10/i...
"A forest is an actuating algorithm that we are catching at a moment. But the beauty, to me, one of the principal beauties is to try to imagine the stream of matter and energy through this moment from where it’s coming from to where it’s going."
Gorgeous read:
Gorgeous read:
In Search of the Canary Tree: What a Disappearing Ancient Forest Can Teach Us About Resilience and Grace in a Changing World
“There’s simply no imaginable tomorrow — no modeled future scenario, no amount or shade of red — that could ever possibly nullify the need for unwavering care and thoughtful action today.R…
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 6:03 PM
"A forest is an actuating algorithm that we are catching at a moment. But the beauty, to me, one of the principal beauties is to try to imagine the stream of matter and energy through this moment from where it’s coming from to where it’s going."
Gorgeous read:
Gorgeous read:
Last 48 hours to enter the ceramics raffle! (Celebrating 19 years of The Marginalian.) www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/23/c...
The Search for Meaning Cast in Clay: 19 Years of The Marginalian in 19 Ceramic Sentences
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006 as a kind of field notebook on my expedition through the wilderness of life, searching for signposts. We live in a decimal world that loves the round an…
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Last 48 hours to enter the ceramics raffle! (Celebrating 19 years of The Marginalian.) www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/23/c...
Vaclav Havel, writing from prison, on how to live with your greatest failure — one of the most extraordinary letters I have ever read www.themarginalian.org/2025/05/11/h...
Václav Havel on How to Hold Your Failure
Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the “fail better” of startup culture, not the “fail forward” of self-help, not th…
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Vaclav Havel, writing from prison, on how to live with your greatest failure — one of the most extraordinary letters I have ever read www.themarginalian.org/2025/05/11/h...
The pain and the god within you – Carl Jung on the relationship between suffering and creativity
November 21, 2025 at 1:02 PM
The pain and the god within you – Carl Jung on the relationship between suffering and creativity
Owl Lake – a vintage treasure from Japanese artist Tejima www.themarginalian.org/2025/05/23/t...
Owl Lake: A Vintage Treasure from Japanese Artist Keizaburo Tejima
That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of the most exasperating things in life, but also one of the most humbling, the most ca…
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 5:47 AM
Owl Lake – a vintage treasure from Japanese artist Tejima www.themarginalian.org/2025/05/23/t...
Walt Whitman, shortly after his paralytic stroke, on what makes life worth living www.themarginalian.org/2017/12/20/w...
Walt Whitman, Shortly After His Paralytic Stroke, on What Makes Life Worth Living
“Tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Walt Whitman, shortly after his paralytic stroke, on what makes life worth living www.themarginalian.org/2017/12/20/w...
"Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others."
An Alan Watts classic on becoming who you really are: www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/06/a...
An Alan Watts classic on becoming who you really are: www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/06/a...
Alan Watts on What Reality Is and How to Become What You Are
“Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 3:24 AM
"Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others."
An Alan Watts classic on becoming who you really are: www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/06/a...
An Alan Watts classic on becoming who you really are: www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/06/a...
Mushrooms and our search for meaning, or the rhizomatic link between Lewis Carroll, Sylvia Plath, and AI www.themarginalian.org/2025/06/03/f...
Mushrooms and Our Search for Meaning
This essay was originally published as the cover story in the Summer 2025 issue of Orion Magazine. “Who are you?” the caterpillar barks at Alice from atop the giant mushroom, and Alice, never quite…
www.themarginalian.org
November 21, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Mushrooms and our search for meaning, or the rhizomatic link between Lewis Carroll, Sylvia Plath, and AI www.themarginalian.org/2025/06/03/f...
“We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay.”
I needed this today, perhaps you do too: www.themarginalian.org/2024/01/26/w...
I needed this today, perhaps you do too: www.themarginalian.org/2024/01/26/w...
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with Uncertainty
“We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 20, 2025 at 10:16 PM
“We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay.”
I needed this today, perhaps you do too: www.themarginalian.org/2024/01/26/w...
I needed this today, perhaps you do too: www.themarginalian.org/2024/01/26/w...
This remains the most wonderful, unexpected thing I've ever read about the mystery of the self www.themarginalian.org/2018/10/25/l...
How a Jellyfish and a Sea Slug Illuminate the Mystery of the Self
A humbling evolutionary antidote to the hubris of exceptionalism, with a side of etymology.
www.themarginalian.org
November 20, 2025 at 8:03 PM
This remains the most wonderful, unexpected thing I've ever read about the mystery of the self www.themarginalian.org/2018/10/25/l...
This is so moving: Artist Maira Kalman on how to live with remorse and wrest from it defiant joy in living, with a nod to Tolstoy, who returned his borrowed stardust on this day in 1910 www.themarginalian.org/2024/02/13/m...
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Wrest from It Defiant Joy in Living
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor …
www.themarginalian.org
November 20, 2025 at 6:04 PM
This is so moving: Artist Maira Kalman on how to live with remorse and wrest from it defiant joy in living, with a nod to Tolstoy, who returned his borrowed stardust on this day in 1910 www.themarginalian.org/2024/02/13/m...
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
Tolstoy, looking back on his long and imperfect life (which ended on this day in 1910), on kindness and the measure of love www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/21/l...
Tolstoy, looking back on his long and imperfect life (which ended on this day in 1910), on kindness and the measure of love www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/21/l...
Leo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 20, 2025 at 4:28 PM
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
Tolstoy, looking back on his long and imperfect life (which ended on this day in 1910), on kindness and the measure of love www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/21/l...
Tolstoy, looking back on his long and imperfect life (which ended on this day in 1910), on kindness and the measure of love www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/21/l...
“In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.”
The pattern inside the pattern – fractals, the hidden order beneath chaos, and the story of the refugee Benoit Mandelbrot, born 101 years ago today, who revolutionized the mathematics of reality www.themarginalian.org/2021/02/22/m...
The pattern inside the pattern – fractals, the hidden order beneath chaos, and the story of the refugee Benoit Mandelbrot, born 101 years ago today, who revolutionized the mathematics of reality www.themarginalian.org/2021/02/22/m...
The Pattern Inside the Pattern: Fractals, the Hidden Order Beneath Chaos, and the Story of the Refugee Who Revolutionized the Mathematics of Reality
“In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.”
www.themarginalian.org
November 20, 2025 at 3:04 PM
“In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.”
The pattern inside the pattern – fractals, the hidden order beneath chaos, and the story of the refugee Benoit Mandelbrot, born 101 years ago today, who revolutionized the mathematics of reality www.themarginalian.org/2021/02/22/m...
The pattern inside the pattern – fractals, the hidden order beneath chaos, and the story of the refugee Benoit Mandelbrot, born 101 years ago today, who revolutionized the mathematics of reality www.themarginalian.org/2021/02/22/m...