Articles by Maria Popova
We found 349 results.
A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ in 1942. “Everything else … is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest.
→ read full articleHaunting Illustrations for Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Introduced by the Courageous Journalist Who Broke the Edward Snowden Story
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
As the full impact of the Snowden revelations sank in, many people made the connection, and Amazon announced a dramatic rise in sales of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ To some, the young NSA analyst had revealed a world which was near-Orwellian; others thought that he had described a state of affairs that Orwell could barely have imagined.
→ read full articleMargaret Mead on Myth vs. Deception and What to Tell Kids about Santa Claus
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
How to instill an appreciation of the difference between “fact” and “poetic truth,” in kids and grownups alike. Belief in Santa Claus becomes a problem when parents simultaneously are telling their children a lie and insist on the literal belief in a man in a red suit. Children who have been told the truth about birth and death will know when they hear about Santa Claus that this is a truth of a different kind.
→ read full articleWilliam James on Choosing Purpose Over Profit and the Life-Changing Power of a Great Mentor
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Nov 2014
“After all, the great problem of life seems to be how to keep body and soul together.” Life spoke to him in even more ways than to most men, and he responded to its superabundant confusion with passion and insatiable curiosity. His spiritual development was a matter of intense personal experience.
→ read full articleKahlil Gibran on the Absurdity of Self-Righteousness
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
A short poem that speaks with great subtlety and great insight to our illusion of separateness and the self-righteousness it produces, our lamentable tendency to mistake others for interruptions and nuisances, to forget that everybody is simply doing their best in this shared experience called life.
→ read full articleAt Home with Themselves: Sage Sohier’s Moving Portraits of Same-Sex Couples in the 1980s
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
A Tender, Thoughtful Lens on Life and Love in the Margins
→ read full articleOctober 22, 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre Becomes the First Person to Decline the Nobel Prize
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
My reasons for refusing the prize concern neither the Swedish Academy nor the Nobel Prize in itself, as I explained in my letter to the Academy. In it, I alluded to two kinds of reasons: personal and objective.
→ read full articleFriedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running from Difficulty
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Oct 2014
A century and a half before our modern fetishism of failure, a seminal philosophical case for its value. “The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains…”
→ read full articleThe Life of the Mind: Hannah Arendt on Thinking vs. Knowing and the Crucial Difference Between Truth and Meaning
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Oct 2014
The questions raised by our thirst for knowledge arise from our curiosity about the world, whatever is given to our sensory apparatus, in principle all answerable by common-sense. But the questions raised by thinking and which it is in reason’s very nature to raise — questions of meaning — are all unanswerable by common sense and the refinement of it we call science.
→ read full articleHow to Be Alone: An Antidote to One of the Central Anxieties and Greatest Paradoxes of Our Time
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Sep 2014
“We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person.”
→ read full articleWhy We Hurt Each Other: Tolstoy’s Letters to Gandhi on Love, Violence, and the Truth of the Human Spirit
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Aug 2014
The exchange sparked an ongoing correspondence between the two that lasted until Tolstoy’s death — a meeting of two great minds and spirits, eventually collected in Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi and rivaled only by Einstein’s correspondence with Freud on violence and human nature.
→ read full articleFascinating: The Universe, “Branes,” and the Science of Multiple Dimensions
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Aug 2014
How a needle, a shower curtain, and a New England clam explain the possibility of parallel universes. Gradually physicists and cosmologists are coming to see our ten billion light years as an infinitesimal pocket of a stupendous megaverse.
→ read full articleEdna St. Vincent Millay on the Death Penalty and What It Really Means to Be an Anarchist
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Aug 2014
An Anarchist is a person who believes that human beings are naturally good, and that if left to themselves they would, by mutual agreement, govern themselves much better and much more peaceably than they are being governed now by a government based on violence. [TMS editor: The 12-Step self-help Anonymous groups as examples]
→ read full articleC.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
If the universe operates by fixed physical laws, what does it mean for us to have free will? That’s what C.S. Lewis considers with an elegant sidewise gleam in an essay titled “Divine Omnipotence” from his altogether fascinating 1940 book The Problem of Pain.
→ read full articleA Brief History of How Bees Sexed Up Earth and Gave Flowers Their Colors
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jul 2014
How a striped, winged, six-legged love machine sparked “the longest marketing campaign in history.”
→ read full articleBuddhist Economics: How to Stop Prioritizing Goods Over People and Consumption Over Creative Activity
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jul 2014
What does it really mean to create wealth for people — for humanity — as opposed to money for governments and corporations? That’s precisely what the influential German-born British economist, statistician, Rhodes Scholar, and economic theorist E. F. Schumacher explores in his seminal 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
→ read full articleAlan Watts on the Difference between Belief and Faith
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jul 2014
Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.
→ read full articleIsaac Asimov on Optimism vs. Cynicism about the Human Spirit
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jul 2014
It’s insulting to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being. Isn’t it conceivable a person wants to be a decent human being because that way he feels better?
→ read full articleLeo Tolstoy on Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jun 2014
“For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite… In complete contrast to my ignorance, [they] knew the meaning of life and death, labored quietly, endured deprivations and sufferings, and lived and died seeing therein not vanity but good…”
→ read full articleThe Greatest Commencement Addresses of All Time
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jun 2014
The commencement address is the secular sermon of our time — a packet of timeless advice on life, dispensed by a podium-perched patronly or matronly shaman of wisdom to a congregation of eager young minds about to enter the so-called “real world.” But the genre’s finest specimens speak to all of us looking for some guidance on the path to the Good Life, transcending boundaries of age or occupation or life-stage.
→ read full articleAlan Lightman on Our Yearning for Immortality and Why We Long for Permanence in a Universe of Constant Change
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 May 2014
A heartening perspective on mortality by way of the physics of the cosmos and the poetics of the night-blooming cereus cactus.
→ read full articleLove Undetectable: Andrew Sullivan on Why Friendship Is a Greater Gift Than Romantic Love
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 May 2014
“A principal fruit of friendship,” Francis Bacon observed, “is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.” Thoreau would “sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities.” St. Augustine described friendship as “sweet beyond the sweetness of life.”
→ read full articleHow a Smile Saved Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Life: A Soul-Lifting Meditation on Our Shared Humanity
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Apr 2014
Care granted to the sick, welcome offered to the banished, forgiveness itself are worth nothing without a smile enlightening the deed. We communicate in a smile beyond languages, classes, and parties.
→ read full articleHappy 80th Birthday, Jane Goodall: The Beloved Primatologist on Science, Religion, and Our Human Responsibilities
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Apr 2014
Legendary British primatologist Jane Goodall (b. April 3, 1934) is celebrated not only as humanity’s greatest expert on chimpanzees but also as a remarkable mind that bridges the rigor of science with the sensitivity of spirituality.
→ read full articleCreativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Crucial Difference Between Success and Mastery
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Mar 2014
Mastery requires endurance. Mastery, a word we don’t use often, is not the equivalent of what we might consider its cognate — perfectionism — an inhuman aim motivated by a concern with how others view us. Mastery is also not the same as success — an event-based victory based on a peak point, a punctuated moment in time. Mastery is not merely a commitment to a goal, but to a curved-line, constant pursuit.
→ read full articleThe Most Beautiful and Timelessly Bewitching LGBTQ Love Letters in History
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Mar 2014
Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West,
Margaret Mead & Ruth Benedict,
Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky,
Edna St. Vincent Millay & Edith Wynn Matthison,
Eleanor Roosevelt & Lorena Hickok,
Oscar Wilde & Sir Alfred “Bosie” Taylor.
We Are a Cosmic Accident: Alan Lightman on Dark Energy, the Multiverse, and Why We Exist
Maria Popova, BrainPickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2014
Questions like ‘why our world exists’ and ‘what nothing is’ have occupied minds great and ordinary since the dawn of humanity, and yet for all our scientific progress, they continue to do so, yielding only hypotheses rather than concrete answers.
→ read full articleDebunking the Myth of the 10,000-Hour Rule: What It Actually Takes to Reach Genius-Level Excellence
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2014
The main predictor of success is deliberate practice — persistent training to which you give your full concentration rather than just your time, often guided by a skilled expert, coach, or mentor. It’s a qualitative difference in how you pay attention, not a quantitative measure of clocking in the hours.
→ read full articleFrom Galileo to Sagan, Famous Scientists on the Art of Wonder, the Mystery of the Universe, and the Heart of Science
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2014
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. . . . To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. –- Einstein conversing with Tagore.
→ read full articleVarieties of Scientific Experience: Carl Sagan on Science and God
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2014
“If we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.”
→ read full articleThe Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2014
Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
→ read full articleStay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2013
“In my experience, outside the idea that God forbids it, our society today has no coherent argument against suicide. Instead, many self-described open-minded, rationalist, sophisticated thinkers emphatically defend people’s right to do it. How did those in the modern world – who fight death so fiercely elsewhere – come to accept or at least leave unchallenged an ideology that kills”?
→ read full articleLove and Math: Equations as an Equalizer for Humanity
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2013
“Mathematics is the source of timeless profound knowledge, which goes to the heart of all matter and unites us across cultures, continents, and centuries.” Georg Cantor, creator of the theory of infinity, wrote: “The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.” Mathematics teaches us to rigorously analyze reality, study the facts, follow them wherever they lead. It liberates us from dogmas and prejudice, nurtures the capacity for innovation.
→ read full articleThe Science of Dreams and Why We Have Nightmares
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2013
The Psychology of Our Built-In Nocturnal Therapy
→ read full articleHow Mind-Wandering and “Positive Constructive Daydreaming” Enhance Creativity and Improve Our Social Skills
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2013
The science of why fantasy and imaginative escapism are essential elements of a satisfying mental life.
→ read full articleWisdom from a MacArthur Genius: Psychologist Angela Duckworth on Why Grit, Not IQ, Predicts Success
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2013
“Character is at least as important as intellect.” Creative history brims with embodied examples of why the secret of genius is doggedness rather than “god”-given talent, from the case of young Mozart’s upbringing to E. B. White’s wisdom on writing to Chuck Close’s assertion about art to Tchaikovsky’s conviction about composition to Neil Gaiman’s advice to aspiring writers.
→ read full articleHenry Hikes to Fitchburg: Lovely Illustrated Children’s Adaptation of Thoreau’s Philosophy, Full of Universal Wisdom for All
Maria Popova, BrainPickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2013
An existential walk into what money can and can’t buy. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard wrote in her sublime meditation on presence vs. productivity.
→ read full articleHow the Nobel Prize Was Born: A Surprising Story of Bad Journalism, Existential Guilt, and Dynamite
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2013
How a deplored “tradesman of death” brought to life the highest accolade of human achievement.
→ read full articleReligion vs. Humanism: Isaac Asimov on Science and Spirituality
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2013
“The soft bonds of love are indifferent to life and death.”
→ read full articleRIP, Elmore Leonard: The Beloved Author’s 10 Rules of Writing
Maria Popova – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
“If it sounds like writing … rewrite it.” – How heartbreaking to learn that the wonderful Elmore Leonard (October 11, 1925–August 20, 2013) has died, and what a bittersweet invitation to revisit his timeless contribution.
→ read full articleSynesthesia and the Poetry of Numbers: Autistic Savant Daniel Tammet on Literature, Math, and Empathy, by Way of Borges
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2013
Daniel Tammet was born with an unusual mind — he was diagnosed with autistic savant syndrome; his brain’s circuits made possible learning Icelandic in a single week and reciting the number pi to the 22,514th digit. He is also diagnosed with synesthesia — that curious crossing of the senses that causes one to “hear” colors, “smell” sounds, or perceive words and numbers in different hues, shapes, and textures.
→ read full articleCharles Bukowski’s “Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men,”
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2013
“The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.”
→ read full articleWhat the Psychology of Suicide Prevention Teaches Us about Controlling Our Everyday Worries
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
Two surprisingly simple yet effective techniques for ameliorating anxiety.
→ read full articleHappy Birthday, Thoreau: The Beloved Transcendentalist on Friendship, Sympathy, and Animal Consciousness
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2013
The beloved transcendentalist, born on July 12, 1817, considers the essence of friendship, what it means to be human, and how inextricably connected we are to our fellow non-human beings, who are just as worthy of our sympathy and respect as our human friends.
→ read full articleOscar Wilde’s Stirring Love Letters to Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2013
“It is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.”
→ read full articleDo Scientists Pray? Einstein Answers a Little Girl’s Question about Science vs. Religion
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.”
— Albert Einstein
Carl Sagan on Science and Spirituality
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2013
“The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
→ read full articleHelen Keller on Optimism
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2013
“Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.”
→ read full articleScience vs. Scripture and the Difference between Curiosity and Wonder
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2013
From Aristotle to St. Paul, or how rational thought and religion battled over knowledge.
→ read full article