The Marginalian
The Marginalian
Maria Popova
Books
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?
March 2026
Stats
252 posts published
Average 36.0 posts/month
Favorite day to publish: Friday
Top words
- love
- life
- meaning
- self
- live
- living
- world
- courage
- wonder
- being
Latest posts
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Roots and the Meaning of Life 2026-03-15 05:44pm
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Pi and the Seductions of Infinity 2026-03-14 08:30am
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Einstein on Free Will and the Power of the Imagination 2026-03-13 05:19pm
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May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone 2026-03-13 10:36am
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How to Feel Whole in a Broken World: An Astronaut’s Antidote to Despair 2026-03-12 05:45pm
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The Day Dostoyevsky Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Dream 2026-03-09 05:37am
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How to Be a Stone: Three Poems for Trusting Time 2026-03-08 10:23am
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What Makes a Soul Mate: Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love 2026-03-08 05:56am
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Annie Dillard on Unselfconsciousness 2026-03-07 08:16am
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Letting in the Golden Light: Oliver Sacks on How Love Changes What We See 2026-03-07 05:47am
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Doris Lessing on How to Read a Book and How to Read the World 2026-03-06 09:52am
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Octavia Butler on Change and the Meaning of God 2026-03-06 09:23am
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How to Be a Tree: Notes on the Resilience of Letting Go 2026-03-05 03:08pm
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Oliver Sacks on the Three Essential Elements of Creativity 2026-03-05 04:02am
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Pablo Neruda on How to Hold Time 2026-03-03 09:40am
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Borges on How to Conquer Time 2026-03-02 02:55pm
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An Love, Reason, and the Antidote to the Melancholy of the Chance Not Taken 2026-03-02 10:41am
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The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind 2026-03-02 08:06am
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Grace Paley on the Art of Growing Older 2026-03-01 06:30pm
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A Lighthouse for Dark Times 2026-03-01 09:13am
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Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song 2026-02-24 02:59pm
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The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison 2026-02-24 07:02am
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Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary 2026-02-24 05:05am
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Dostoyevsky on Why There Are No Bad People 2026-02-22 04:21pm
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The Mattering Instinct 2026-02-22 08:56am
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From the Labor Camp to the Literary Canon: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer 2026-02-20 10:00am
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Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life 2026-02-20 07:02am
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The Color of Wonder and the Chemical Code of Creation 2026-02-19 03:43pm
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The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul 2026-02-19 06:46am
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The Importance of Breakdowns: Crisis as a Clarifying Force for Authenticity 2026-02-18 04:10pm
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For Warmth: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Poetic Antidote to Anger 2026-02-16 07:09pm
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How to Live and How to Die 2026-02-15 04:38pm
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How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love 2026-02-15 10:38am
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How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old 2026-02-13 07:37am
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The Art of Choosing Love Over Not-Love: Rumi’s Antidote to Our Human Tragedy 2026-02-12 09:58am
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Why You 2026-02-11 03:08pm
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Edward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die 2026-02-11 09:01am
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Virginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Limits of Empathy 2026-02-10 03:31pm
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The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning 2026-02-10 01:25pm
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Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life 2026-02-09 03:40pm
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Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance 2026-02-07 09:44am
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Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life 2026-02-06 11:01am
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Carl Jung on Creativity 2026-02-04 09:03am
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Forgiveness 2026-02-03 05:52am
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On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran 2026-02-03 02:56am
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Rilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity 2026-02-02 02:42pm
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Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge 2026-02-02 10:18am
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Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being 2026-02-01 10:52am
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How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life 2026-01-31 11:01pm
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Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living 2026-01-31 11:00pm
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Georgia O’Keeffe on the Art of Seeing 2026-01-31 11:00pm
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Kurt Vonnegut on the Simplest, Hardest Secret of Happiness 2026-01-31 07:47am
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Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go 2026-01-31 07:35am
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The Neurophysiology of Enchantment: How Music Casts Its Spell on Us 2026-01-31 04:34am
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The Four Buddhist Mantras for Turning Fear into Love 2026-01-31 04:33am
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Don’t Waste Your Wildness 2026-01-30 03:49pm
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Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself 2026-01-30 03:46pm
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What Happens When We Die 2026-01-30 12:56pm
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How Emotions Are Made 2026-01-30 06:30am
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The Single Best Piece of Advice on the Creative Life 2026-01-30 06:12am
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But We Had Music 2026-01-30 04:01am
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Love Anyway 2026-01-29 02:32am
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A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety 2026-01-28 12:51pm
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The Light Between Us 2026-01-27 04:47pm
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Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death 2026-01-27 07:19am
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What It’s Like to Touch the Bottom of the World 2026-01-27 07:05am
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Do Not Spare Yourself 2026-01-27 03:52am
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Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World 2026-01-26 05:05pm
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The Pleasure of Being Left Alone 2026-01-26 10:12am
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How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty 2026-01-24 10:07pm
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Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss 2026-01-24 07:26am
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Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss 2026-01-23 08:33am
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Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert 2026-01-22 11:00pm
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The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother 2026-01-22 08:34am
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The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother 2026-01-21 04:34pm
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How to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James 2026-01-21 06:46am
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Let the Last Thing Be Song 2026-01-21 02:54am
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Elif Shafak on the Three Roots of Hate and How to Be a Star Student of Life 2026-01-18 07:56am
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Emerson on How to Touch the Universe 2026-01-16 08:31am
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How Not to Be a Victim of Time: Rebecca West on Music and Life 2026-01-14 12:39pm
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Strata: The Consolations and Invitations of Deep Time 2026-01-11 09:48am
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How to Hold on to the Light of the World 2026-01-09 10:46am
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The Trouble with Romantic Love 2026-01-07 07:25am
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Saved by Wonder: The Ziegler Polar Expedition and the Aurora Borealis 2026-01-05 11:25am
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Traversal: New Year, New Book (Seven Years in the Making) 2026-01-02 03:02pm
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Cover Song for the Second Law: A Poem for Beginnings 2026-01-02 06:11am
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Love, Lichen, and the Art of Trusting Time: The Best of The Marginalian 2025 2025-12-30 02:31am
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How to Bioluminesce: Artist Ash Eliza Williams’s Reveries of Wonder 2025-12-26 05:26pm
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When Friends Become Lovers: H.G. Wells on Navigating Blurring Boundaries 2025-12-25 04:11pm
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How to Live Fully: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Remedy for Our Resistance to Change 2025-12-23 08:47am
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If Birds Ran the World 2025-12-20 11:02am
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Favorite Books of 2025 2025-12-13 07:20am
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Beatitude: Poet John Keene’s Spell Against Despair 2025-12-10 02:24pm
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The Lighthouse Keeper: A Tender Illustrated Meditation on What Saves Us 2025-12-09 02:43pm
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Aldo Leopold on How to Hear the Song of Life 2025-12-03 06:35pm
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Love Against Probability 2025-11-24 09:58am
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A Lamentation for Linnaeus: In Praise of Confusion and Rewilding Wonder 2025-11-21 02:18pm
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If You Forget Me: Pablo Neruda’s Staggering (Un)breakup Poem 2025-11-19 10:33am
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Chasing Fog: The Science and Spirituality of Nature’s Grounded Cloud 2025-11-18 10:44am
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How to Fix Breakdowns in Communication 2025-11-11 02:31pm
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Words: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language 2025-11-05 12:02pm
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How Not to Waste Your Life 2025-10-31 01:01pm
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What It’s Like to Meet an Orca 2025-10-27 08:42pm
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A Chosen Path of Light: Alain de Botton on Successful Friendships 2025-10-21 12:09pm
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The Engine of Our Redemption: Nick Cave on How to Use Your Suffering 2025-10-17 01:13pm
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Annie Dillard on How to Live 2025-10-14 04:42pm
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How to Be a Good Explorer in the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself 2025-10-13 11:55am
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How to See the Milky Way: Instructions for Being More Alive 2025-10-10 02:48pm
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How Not to Be a Victim of Success 2025-10-09 04:57pm
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The Three Elements of the Good Life 2025-10-05 10:33am
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Heed Your Daemon: Rudyard Kipling on Writing 2025-10-05 06:18am
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Eight Takes: How to Tell a Truer Love Story 2025-10-03 07:39am
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The Feather Detective: How Roxie Laybourne Pioneered Forensic Ornithology 2025-09-30 07:16pm
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Fernando Pessoa on Unselfing into Who You Really Are 2025-09-25 06:23pm
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How Humanity Saved the Ginkgo 2025-09-23 06:48am
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Ode to a Good Pen: Or, How to Write the Book of Love 2025-09-20 04:11am
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Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success 2025-09-11 10:55am
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Virginia Woolf on Love 2025-09-09 06:23pm
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On Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing 2025-09-04 12:39pm