On Yearning with Maria Popova

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Our guest today is Maria Popova, who thinks and writes about our search for meaning — sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian (born in 2006 under the name Brain Pickings), an online publication, which she has fought to keep free and advertisement free. It features her writing on books, art, science, philosophy and poetry. It is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She’s also the author of Figuring, and maker of the live show “The Universe in Verse” — a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry, which is now also a book.

In addition to her writing and related speaking engagements, she has served as an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, as the editorial director at the higher education social network Lore, and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired UK, and other publications.

We will talk about:

• Dissatisfaction as propulsive force
• Productivity as a band aid
• Performative Identity versus Soul
• Instagram Wisdom
• Everyone is a living question - the question is what is the question
• Poetry as a side door to consciousness
• Writing as a clarifying force
• Resisting Dinner Parties
• The Price of consciousness is awareness of mortality
• ”The Republic of Letters”

Now let’s search for meaning.

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