The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited

A largehearted invitation to “stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in.”

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The Ants, the Bees, and the Blind Spots of the Human Mind: How Entomologist Charles Henry Turner Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Evolution of Intelligence and Emotion
The Ants, the Bees, and the Blind Spots of the Human Mind: How Entomologist Charles Henry Turner Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Evolution of Intelligence and Emotion

“The handicaps under which Dr. Turner’s work was accomplished were many, and were modestly and bravely met.”

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The Tragic Miracle of Consciousness: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning and Purpose of Hope
The Tragic Miracle of Consciousness: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning and Purpose of Hope

“Hope is a diagnostic human trait, and this simple cortex symptom seems to be a prime factor in our inspection of our universe.”

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Favorite Books of 2022
Favorite Books of 2022

From Rumi to Blake to Nick Cave, by way of trees, hummingbirds, grief, and music.

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How to Be a Swimmer in the Stream of Time: Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on the Antidote to Disorientation and Isolation
How to Be a Swimmer in the Stream of Time: Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on the Antidote to Disorientation and Isolation

“The definition of the soul is made of these places where you feel that the world came into being so that they could exist.”

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Bertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness
Bertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness

“Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.”

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The Symphony of Belonging: Alfred Kazin on Music as Spiritual Homecoming
The Symphony of Belonging: Alfred Kazin on Music as Spiritual Homecoming

On the emotional machinery that suspends us between rapture and tears.

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What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone
What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone

“The moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity.”

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The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature
The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature

“Mind is invisible nature, while nature is visible mind.”

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The Unphotographable #7: Richard Powers on the Majestic Mass Migration of Sandhill Cranes
The Unphotographable #7: Richard Powers on the Majestic Mass Migration of Sandhill Cranes

Sometimes, a painting in words is worth a thousand pictures. I think about this more and more, in our compulsively visual culture, which increasingly reduces what we think and feel and see — who and what we are — to what can be photographed. I think of Susan Sontag, who called it “aesthetic consumerism” half a century before Instagram. In a small act of resistance, I offer The Unphotographable — Saturdays, a lovely image in words drawn from centuries of literature: passages transcendent and transportive, depicting landscapes and experiences radiant with beauty and feeling beyond what a visual image could convey.

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