Maria Popova on Muck Rack

Maria Popova

Verified
New York
As seen in: The Marginalian, Apple Podcasts, The New York Times, The New York Times en Español, The Washington Post, TED, The Atlantic, MDPI, Scoop.it, Flipboard, Pocket and
Reader. Writer. Creator of The Marginalian (long ago named Brain Pickings). Author of #Figuring. Lover of trees. Petter of moss. Rider of a cobalt blue bicycle.
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Articles

The Violinist Who Solved the Ancient Riddle of How the World Holds Together

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By Maria Popova Verified
| The Marginalian
This essay is adapted from Traversal. She is looking at the staff lines of a strange symphony in blue, her cautious disbelief punctured by a burst of delirious wonderment. Brushes and tubes of paint are scattered about her — paint she has spent years mixing into the perfect shades of blue to color a world’s worth of oceanic depths inside the contours of her enormous maps in the making. But now she is not looking at the blues. She is not looking at the maps. She is looking at the staff lines.
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Tolkien Reads from “The Hobbit” in Rare Archival Audio from His First Encounter with a Tape Recorder

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By Maria Popova Verified
| The Marginalian
J.R.R. Tolkien (January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973) firmly believed that there is no such thing as writing “for children” and that creative fantasy serves to set the ageless human imagination free. Nowhere was Tolkien’s ethos more perfectly enacted than in his 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit (public library), a book so beloved that Tolkien’s own little-known illustrations for the original edition have been reimagined by great artists around the world in the decades since its publication.
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Now Yourself: The Elusive Science of What the Present Moment Is Made of and How It Makes You Who You Are

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By Maria Popova Verified
| The Marginalian
“Whatever has happened, whatever is going to happen in the world, it is the living moment that contains the sum of the excitement, this moment in which we touch life and all the energy of the past and future,” Muriel Rukeyser wrote in one of the greatest books of all time.
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