Reads by Maria Popova
The Building Blocks of Peace: Pioneering X-Ray Crystallographer and Activist Kathleen Lonsdale’s Quiet Masterpiece on Moral Courage and Our Personal Power
“Those people who see clearly the necessity of changed thinking must themselves undertake the discipline of thinking in new ways and must persuade others to do so.”
The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death
“Immortality is not a matter of more or less time.”
Nina Simone’s Gum and the Shimmering Strangeness of How Art Casts Its Transcendent Spell on Us
The metaphysical made physical in a symphonic celebration of imagination, collaboration, and the human heart.
The Atom and the Doctrine of Identity: Quantum Pioneer Erwin Schrödinger on Bridging Eastern Philosophy and Western Science to Illuminate Consciousness
“The over-all number of minds is just one.”
The Flower and the Meaning of Life: Emily Dickinson, Michael Pollan, and The Little Prince
A look into “the very heart of nature’s double nature.”
Singularity: An Animated Ode to Our Primeval Bond with Nature and Each Other (Toshi Reagon Sings Marissa Davis)
A song of praise for life and “the smallest possible once before once.”
The Fragile Species: A Forgotten Masterpiece of Perspective on How to Live with Ourselves and Each Other
“We need a better word than chance… To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness.”
Let There Always Be Light: Dark Matter and the Mystery of Our Mortal Stardust (Patti Smith Reads Rebecca Elson)
“For this we go out dark nights, searching… for signs of unseen things… Let there be swarms of them, enough for immortality, always a star where we can warm ourselves.”
Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work
Wisdom on the elementary particles of our shared humanity from Alain de Botton, Brené Brown, Elizabeth Alexander, and other visionaries across the spectrum of the creative life.
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