The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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How to Survive Hopelessness
How to Survive Hopelessness

“You can expect good and bad luck, but good or bad judgment is your prerogative.”

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The Remarkable Story of the Dawn Redwood: How a Living Fossil Brought Humanity Together in the Middle of a World War
The Remarkable Story of the Dawn Redwood: How a Living Fossil Brought Humanity Together in the Middle of a World War

How an ancient survivor of the unsurvivable became a triumph of the human spirit in a divided world.

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Turning Loss and Loneliness into Wonder: How the Victorian Visionary Marianne North Revolutionized Art and Science with Her Botanical Paintings
Turning Loss and Loneliness into Wonder: How the Victorian Visionary Marianne North Revolutionized Art and Science with Her Botanical Paintings

A vibrant foray into “a perfect world of wonders” fueled by the bittersweet dimension of life.

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Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times

“What is it like, such intensity of pain?”

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Love, Music, Solitude, and How to Be More Alive: The Best of The Marginalian 2022
Love, Music, Solitude, and How to Be More Alive: The Best of The Marginalian 2022

From Emily Dickinson to Bruce Springsteen, by way of galaxies and gardening.

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The Creative Accident: Visionary Ceramicist Edith Heath on Serendipity, the Antidote to Obsolescence, and the Five Pillars of Timelessness
The Creative Accident: Visionary Ceramicist Edith Heath on Serendipity, the Antidote to Obsolescence, and the Five Pillars of Timelessness

On aligning the things we make with basic human values for an enduring world.

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The Two Objects of the Good Life: Mary Shelley’s Father on the Relationship Between Personal Happiness, Imagination, and Social Harmony
The Two Objects of the Good Life: Mary Shelley’s Father on the Relationship Between Personal Happiness, Imagination, and Social Harmony

“The true object of education, like that of every other moral process, is the generation of happiness. Happiness to the individual in the first place. If individuals were universally happy, the species would be happy.”

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The Unphotographable: The Moon, the Tide, and the Living Shore
The Unphotographable: The Moon, the Tide, and the Living Shore

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How Our Story Ends: Richard Powers on Rewriting Earth’s Future History
How Our Story Ends: Richard Powers on Rewriting Earth’s Future History

Reawakening to the rapture and responsibility of “a changing world that by every calculation ought never to have been.”

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The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence
The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence

“I armed myself with patience and courage, and only after several months managed to dissolve my doubts and see my research crowned with happy confirmation.”

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