[ { "i": 0, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Maria Popova writes one of the internet's best personal blogs. It was originally called Brainpickings, now it's called The Marginalian, and it's there that she's published more than 6" }, { "i": 1, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "million pages worth of writing. >> [music] >> And it's become such a treasure that the Library of Congress said, \"Hey, we want to make this part of our permanent archive.\" But this conversation is about so much more than that. It's about how" }, { "i": 2, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "to live and how to see, and how to turn to books for wisdom when you're confused, and comfort when you're suffering. But how is it that we can read and learn in order to improve our lives? Well, that's the driving question behind this conversation." }, { "i": 3, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Uh before we got started, you kind of tapped me on the knee and you said, \"Hey, uh less time on LinkedIn, more time in archives.\" So, I want to hear about what it is you love about archives." }, { "i": 4, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Oh god, well, there's so many kinds of archives. Uh first of all, I love the the radical reminder that the internet is not all there is. I mean, the internet is this kind of surface level of the ocean of the common record of human thought and wisdom and knowledge." }, { "i": 5, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And we think if you can't find it on the internet, it doesn't exist. And it it it it it's like insane to me, because there's so much that has been thought, felt, written, created, drawn" }, { "i": 6, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "that that dwells in university basements and libraries and it has shaped the present we live in more profoundly than you know, what the 40-year depths that's the internet. I mean, with some exceptions of public" }, { "i": 7, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "domain things and this and that, but still, still much I mean, tiny example, and you can multiply that by several million because how many such institutions there in the world, the 92nd Street Y here in New York, one of the most revered literary institutions." }, { "i": 8, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "They were the first to host many, like Pablo Neruda's first uh US appearance they hosted. Uh Susan Sontag's first big lecture they hosted. Where is that stuff? It is on reels in their basement." }, { "i": 9, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Not digitized, nobody knows it's there unless you go and, you know, spend time with it. These are real events in the history of the world, the history of the creative universe that are erased from the simulacrum of memory that is the internet." }, { "i": 10, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "How do you I've spent zero time in archives. So, I'm curious. Like, what do I do if I want to spend more time in archives? Do I call Jane at the 92nd Street Y? Do I look up best archives in New York City? Do I go" }, { "i": 11, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "to the New York Public Library? What do I do? >> I mean, to put I I don't do it for just sort of like, \"Ooh, I'm going to go explore.\" I usually do it for research." }, { "i": 12, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, a lot of the things I write are extremely research-heavy. Like, I don't do just the kind of surface Wikipedia page. I I want the primary source materials. I I want I, you know, I" }, { "i": 13, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I have a book that came out recently that was 7 years because for each of the people in it, I devoured all of their existing writings, public and private, you know, going to the Library of Congress for all of Walt" }, { "i": 14, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Whitman's notebooks, going to the Bodleian Library at Oxford for all of Mary Shelley's journals because you It is, first of all, extremely hard to render the reality of a person across time and across" }, { "i": 15, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "consciousnesses, you know, it's very hard to speak for someone else. But it's a 200-year gap." }, { "i": 16, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "It's a real responsibility to do it honorably, to do it as accurately as you can, you know? And if you only go to what's preserved digitally, you're going to really misrepresent a life. I mean," }, { "i": 17, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "it's not a small thing. So, a lot of my time in archives is just to better understand the people I'm trying to understand." }, { "i": 18, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> But for your practical question about how to approach institutions, so there's a huge range in how institutions handle their archives. Some of them really want them explored. So, the New" }, { "i": 19, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "York Public Library actually has an amazing thing. I don't know if they still do, but they until a few years ago they had a thing called after hours and it's about once a month where they would" }, { "i": 20, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "different archivists would bring out in a little gallery um things in the archive that are not in public view usually and then you can talk like the Copernicus's book, you know, they have one of the four existing" }, { "i": 21, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Copernican uh you know, the heliocentric universe uh and and they would be in the room, the archivists, and they would tell you about it, you know, Lewis Carroll's diaries and I think more institutions can do that." }, { "i": 22, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Diaries. >> What has made you love reading diaries and writing one every single day?" }, { "i": 23, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I used to write uh a nightly journal uh until several years ago. Uh you know, it's interesting um I was recently I spent time in very remote nature uh several months and I got there thinking, \"Okay, I need a" }, { "i": 24, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "daily thing.\" I I I'm very regulated by having a daily practice. So, besides writing I do many other things like I do ceramics, I work with wood and I always have like a daily thing." }, { "i": 25, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And I got there and I had this strange thought, \"Oh, the literary form I've always most enjoyed is diaries.\" Uh in the kind of diary that is that starts with observation and ends with contemplation. So, more like Thoreau than Anaïs Nin, you know." }, { "i": 26, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh and it's the one form I've never written. I've written introspective personal journals but not starting with observation of the external world. So, as a practice I ended up doing a daily such a thing in my four months in Patagonia." }, { "i": 27, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And it was incredibly rewarding because it is this conversation between the mind and the world that that there's no more direct way to do it where you're literally taking something in that is" }, { "i": 28, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "outside of the self and then giving it meaning and interpretation, taking a an unit of truth of objective reality and turning it into a unit of meaning. And to me that's the beautiful thing." }, { "i": 29, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Mhm. And I mean, you're also writing it just for you which strangely is what I love about reading other people's diaries so much. Is they're so sincere, they're so authentic because almost by definition the performative mask comes off. It's the one place where it doesn't exist." }, { "i": 30, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Well, I there's so much to say about that. Uh >> [laughter] >> a lot of people wrote knowing they were going to publish. >> Their diaries. >> Their diaries. So Anaïs Nin, probably the most professionalized diarist in the history of literature, how many? 14 volumes of her diaries?" }, { "i": 31, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "She knew. And and then on top of that, the diaries that come to see light of day have been edited sometimes by the person if they're living, very rarely, usually by their heirs or by the estate. So we do get many layers of filtering of the actual lived experience." }, { "i": 32, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh with historical diaries that are more than 200 years old, it they're a little more reliable um just because they come from the actual notebooks and people were not really doing publication in this" }, { "i": 33, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "exhibitionist way that the 20th and 21st century, you know, the age of memoir uh there was no such thing really at the time." }, { "i": 34, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Hm, how would you distinguish between diaries and memoir?" }, { "i": 35, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I mean, memoir is just the Instagram version of the diary. >> [laughter] >> But you know what's interesting that in the past up until the end of the 19th century, memoir was used uh as the term meant somebody else writing to commemorate somebody who died." }, { "i": 36, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, for example, when Margaret Fuller died, Emerson wrote Memoirs of Margaret Fuller that other people contributed to. So, it was kind of other people remembering the person as opposed to the person self-reporting their life." }, { "i": 37, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And then it it changed." }, { "i": 38, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> And that's different from biography how? >> Diff- Well, because it's not a birth to death. They're impressions." }, { "i": 39, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Impressions of someone in recounts meeting them at a dinner party. Somebody recounts what it was like to go to school with them. Some You know, it's a I guess it's a composite biography, but but it's not a kind of linear and complete telling of a life history." }, { "i": 40, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> What diaries have really touched your heart?" }, { "i": 41, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Well, I mean, I love Walden. And people say whatever they say, but but I just I love Thoreau and um more of his notebooks than not just Walden." }, { "i": 42, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Um I spent about 7 years immersed in Mary Shelley's world. Her Her journals and diaries, they're extraordinary. Extraordinary. Uh the person I've encountered in my 20 years of reading who's endured the most loss. >> Uh Mary Shelley?" }, { "i": 43, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Mary Shelley. By the end of her 20s, she had lost her mother at birth." }, { "i": 44, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Her mother died complications giving birth to her. Her only sibling, the love of her life, and three of her own children. I mean, imagine being in your 20s and having lived with that" }, { "i": 45, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "through that. And her diaries it to me what what makes a diary so wonderful that it it's a record of how someone pays attention. And it her extraordinary discipline of paying attention to beauty and wonder that so clearly saved her from all that grief, from all that loss. It's a beautiful thing to witness." }, { "i": 46, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Diaries versus letters. >> Oh, well, in some ways exactly the same, in some ways completely different. >> Huh. >> I mean, a conversation with me versus a conversation with yourself in the shower, what's the difference?" }, { "i": 47, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> A lot. >> Well, there you go. But but some there will be some recursive parts that are just part of who you are that come out in both places, right? You can't not be yourself." }, { "i": 48, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And it comes out in both the diaries and the letters, and depending on the person, some of the letters uh can be very performative, meaning a persona speaks, not the person speaks, and some of the letters can be very open-hearted, that is the same person who's on the pages of that person's journal." }, { "i": 49, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "What strikes me about both diaries and letters is just that they're less polished and refined than other forms of writing, and often there's a kind of honesty that emerges that's really nice to read, which is ironic" }, { "i": 50, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "because a lot of times when I'm doing writing, when I'm trying to publish something, I really focus on the polish and refinement cuz I'm like, I feel like that's what the world needs. And yet, as a consumer, I often crave exactly the opposite." }, { "i": 51, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Hm. I'm drawn to the letters that are more consistent with the person's formal writing. So, for example, Virginia Woolf's letters are not unpolished. I mean, she thought so deeply about every phrase and every" }, { "i": 52, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "comma, and it it it it it it it it it it feels very her, and I think maybe that's just how her mind worked. Maybe it's not that it's polished, maybe it's she just thought in complete extraordinary" }, { "i": 53, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "sentences in her inner monologue in the shower, you know? [laughter] I don't know. Uh but but I love letters that are both intimate, cuz it is a conversation with another human being, and kind of beautiful, beautifully crafted." }, { "i": 54, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> In all the reading that you've done, are there certain writers whose practices and their approach to the craft, are there certain writers who you've said, \"Wow, I really like the way that they" }, { "i": 55, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "approach this?\" >> You know, it's so interesting. I have been asked many times about routines and all that. I'm I'm not terribly interested in that." }, { "i": 56, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Um I can't think of anyone that I thought, \"Oh, isn't that a cool, you know, there's the anecdotal stuff people enjoy. Oh, Edith Sitwell wrote in a coffin, that kind of thing. But I I don't" }, { "i": 57, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I don't necessarily think there's a great correlation between uh how you do it and what it is you do. I think everyone needs to just find how their mind works best and give it the space and time and shape and form and practice to do its work." }, { "i": 58, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Uh so the mechanics is not that interesting to me. >> I like in your year-end review, one of the bullets is presence over routine. And more of presence. And you know what it wasn't that >> Over productivity." }, { "i": 59, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> It was presence over productivity. That's exactly what it was. And I thought that was a really beautiful way to frame it." }, { "i": 60, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Because I do have many routines in my life that are routines of presence. >> I mean, I spend a lot of time in nature. I walk for hours a day. I, you know, there I I like rhythm. I like regularity. It regulates me." }, { "i": 61, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "But it's not in the service of producing stuff. Um of course, a lot comes out of it. I always say I've written almost everything on foot. And then what I do at the keyboard is transcription. >> What do you do on your walks?" }, { "i": 62, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I I think I sometimes try not to think so things can kind of flow in and do the silent work that is incubation and the kind of combinatorial play that the mind does without our participation. Einstein's term." }, { "i": 63, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I mean, I started writing in order to figure out how to live, and I still do it for the same reason, 20 years later." }, { "i": 64, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Your writing for me was like this place Your writing to me embodies kind of what we've lost about the internet, actually." }, { "i": 65, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Because I remember when I would go on Brain Pickings, when you called it that, I would go on and I would just follow the hyperlinks, and it was like a world of wonder that I could like slip and" }, { "i": 66, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "slide and kind of slap dash between. And it was I feel like you introduced me to all these new worlds." }, { "i": 67, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Mhm. I think it's just how the mind works, you know? Don't you think it's an association machine, and these hyperlinks are how we think." }, { "i": 68, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "We're having this conversation, we're jumping from one thing to another. It's essentially a hyperlink to another field of ideas, another notion, another concept. Uh and it's it's very, you" }, { "i": 69, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "know, it's interesting the internet has kind of failed where encyclopedias have succeeded, which is discovery." }, { "i": 70, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Not search, because you can only search for what you know you're looking for, but discovery, which is that place of self surprise, where you find your own blind spots and delight in them. You" }, { "i": 71, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "know, I I grew up with my grandmother's library of very many encyclopedias. I would pull one out because I wanted to learn about Burundi. And I would open it, and then next to it would be some sort of beetle" }, { "i": 72, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "that I'd never heard of, and wouldn't have known to search for because I didn't know it existed. But it would be right there." }, { "i": 73, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Um and I think the internet I mean, it's interesting AI is trying to compensate for that, but in actually still in a predictive way, because algorithms can only ever be predictive. And the most" }, { "i": 74, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "exciting things about life, about growth, about intellectual discovery are the unpredictable parts of us." }, { "i": 75, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> How much in your work you feel like you you to insert yourself in your work versus kind of offer an objective view of >> There is no objective view of anything." }, { "i": 76, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "It does not exist. No, I I write to understand my own life." }, { "i": 77, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, in a way, even if it reads impersonal, yeah, I am still in it. I am the lens and it it's very moving to me that other people read it, but that's not why it's written, you know? It's because" }, { "i": 78, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I'm grappling with something in my life that I don't have a better way of metabolizing or comprehending." }, { "i": 79, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> My sense of your writing is that there was in your process, at least in writing the Marginalia and building it up over many years, there was a sense of planning for the editorial calendar, for what you were going to read. >> Zero. Zero. Exactly zero." }, { "i": 80, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Back then, there was >> I've never planned a thing. So, I have a huge backlog, meaning things that I've wanted to write about that are maybe more research-intensive or need more time and thought, and I don't manage." }, { "i": 81, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, I keep a log of what I mean to write about, but it's not like editorial or calendar. And I would depend whenever I have more time or feel like revisiting something. And it's been interesting," }, { "i": 82, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "too, because now that uh file is 20 years old, and I can scroll down and be like, \"Oh, in 2016, I wanted to write about Susan Sontag's list of likes and dislikes.\" Or, you [laughter] know, just such an" }, { "i": 83, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "interesting thing of uh things fading in salience and in interest or sometimes resurfacing as even more interesting." }, { "i": 84, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Hmm." }, { "i": 85, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Like resurfacing your own work? >> Resurfacing things that I had abandoned un- un- unexplored, just ideas that I wanted to explore and never got to." }, { "i": 86, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh and then coming back to them 10 years later, and of course, then having 10 years more of contextual, uh you know, hyperlinks of the mind to bring to them, uh and then revisiting them in a totally" }, { "i": 87, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "different way. >> You know, you keep mentioning the hyperlink because I do think it is, as I was prepping for this, it is like the fundamental unit that I think makes the world that you've created a world." }, { "i": 88, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "That it is surfing between these different ideas and allowing us to basically play. Like I always thought about Brain Pickings as a sense of play. I was like Brain Pickings and Wikipedia. I was like the place that" }, { "i": 89, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I would go, places I'd go to kind >> that name." }, { "i": 90, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> What? >> The whole name. >> Brain Pickings? Why? >> Oh, I was 21." }, { "i": 91, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "You know, we don't really have puns in Bulgaria. We don't have kind of word play in that way. So, I was very excited about uh, word play in America and named it the silly, just it's so silly." }, { "i": 92, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh, and also, you know, at the time I was studying, one of the things I was studying was cognitive psychology. It's very much about the mind and uh, the more I've lived, the more anti-Cartesian I've become. I don't" }, { "i": 93, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "think our experience is entirely mental or cognitive and I I don't think it's what we pick for the brain that defines what we become. There's so much more experience that is embodied and emotional and just integrated." }, { "i": 94, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Do you feel like words then aren't able to capture that? Or do you feel like you do capture it, but through metaphor and not as direct?" }, { "i": 95, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> The latter. Yeah. Latter. Let you know, language, I mean, it's so interesting, the limits of words. I think about them a lot. Language is a vessel for thoughts that shapes the contents. And so, you know, the great revelation of" }, { "i": 96, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Einstein was that space-time is the fabric of the universe. And in it, space-time, the bend of space-time tells matter how to move. And matter tells space-time how to bend. And language is the fabric of the mind, the fabric of culture. Uh language tells thought how to move, and thought tells language how to bend." }, { "i": 97, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, it's a kind of circular process uh that is self-limiting." }, { "i": 98, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Do you buy the Wittgenstein line that the limits of our language is the limits of our world?" }, { "i": 99, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I think the limits of our language are the limits of our description of the world. And the great danger is mistaking the description for the reality it describes." }, { "i": 100, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> The map is not the territory." }, { "i": 101, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Exactly." }, { "i": 102, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Poetry. What was the line that you had? Turlan, let me get this up. Let me read this to you. Unlike the prose of letters pinned to the physical and emotional reality of the present, in poetry the imagination is allowed to travel between fact and fantasy, to traverse present, past, and" }, { "i": 103, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "future, so that the reader, and perhaps even the writer, is never quite sure, nor need ever ask, to what extent the images evoked correspond to the intersection of matter and moment we" }, { "i": 104, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "call reality. >> Wow, I don't remember writing this, but it's very much what I believe. That I mean, this is back to our conversation about language, right? That clearly these are things I feel inside, and I at" }, { "i": 105, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "some point in my life I've given it that particular form that now I cannot even recall." }, { "i": 106, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, what was it that I chose those particular words? And if I had to express that feeling or thought or concept today, I would frame it in a different way. But it would be the same substance. I'm fascinated by that. Uh yes, poetry." }, { "i": 107, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I am uh a latecomer to poetry. Uh I for many years I dismissed it the way we dismiss things in which we're not literate. I have no education in poetry." }, { "i": 108, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And then uh I met this wonderful person, uh Emily Levine. She was a uh comedian, philosopher of science, great lover of poetry. We met across the aisle on a transatlantic flight coming back" }, { "i": 109, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "from Europe and much to the discontentment of the whole cabin, we talked the entire way. >> [laughter] >> And she was in her 70s, I was in my 20s." }, { "i": 110, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And she uh, it kind of became apparent that I kind of don't much care for poetry and she loved it. It shaped the way she thought, it shaped I mean, she had the most associative mind where she would leap from Hannah Arendt to, you know, stoicism to, I mean, just you know." }, { "i": 111, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, one day, she lived in California and I was here. She visited and we went to a cafe in Chelsea, like one of those packed Sunday afternoon cafes and we somehow got a table." }, { "i": 112, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And she said something rather and I rolled my eyes once again about poetry. At which point Emily gripped the edge of the table, rose to her full height of 4.4 and began reciting The Love Song of J." }, { "i": 113, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Alfred Prufrock with that line, \"Do I dare to disturb the universe?\" And she just sat down. She went to the Harvard Theater School, so she was like a real performer. >> It was like a full-on soliloquy." }, { "i": 114, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> sat down and I looked around, people put down their drinks, they were like applauding in this packed, you know, this never happens in New York. And of course, my universe was disturbed. I said, \"Okay, there's something here.\"" }, { "i": 115, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, she decided she was going to educate me and she started sending me a poem a day. A poem that she loved. It would just like a few lines about why she loved it." }, { "i": 116, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And yeah, I mean, and then she got very ill very suddenly and I started taking her in her final months to we called them poetry retreats. So, we would rent a cabin in Northern California near where she lived and we" }, { "i": 117, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "would go with one or two other friends for a weekend and just read poetry and talk about the universe and uh and as a consequence of my relationship with her, I started um I because talk about integrating new" }, { "i": 118, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "experiences into our existing framework, I started seeing the parallels between poetry and science and also the complementarity in how we understand reality and how we bridge truth and" }, { "i": 119, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "meaning. So, it is because of her that I ended up doing for 7 years a show called the Universe in Verse where I would bring poetry and science together and, you know, thousands of people would come and" }, { "i": 120, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "listen about the discovery of dark matter as Patti Smith is reading a poem about dark matter, you know, that kind of thing." }, { "i": 121, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Tell me more about how you saw the connection between the two." }, { "i": 122, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Well, science expands or enables us to meet reality on its own terms. The discipline of science is about meeting reality on its own terms and poetry helps us broaden and deepen the terms on" }, { "i": 123, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "which we meet ourselves and each other and between the two, between truth and meaning, is really the sum of human experience." }, { "i": 124, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Yeah, as you were saying that I was thinking about light and that the concept of light in terms of light waves and whatever is going on there is so different from how I see the spiritual concept of light, which is" }, { "i": 125, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "goodness and beauty and righteousness, whatever you want to call it. And I've been thinking a lot about this, about how in the modern world, we have gained an understanding of the scientific ways that things work, but often lost our understanding of the meaning of those very things and the wonder inside of it." }, { "i": 126, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Mhm. I don't think the wonder is an antipode to the scientific understanding. I think having a greater understanding of uh how starlight travels in the electromagnetic spectrum and optics makes the rainbow all that more wondrous." }, { "i": 127, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I do not stand with Keats who, you know, accused Newton of unweaving the rainbow with his science. Uh I think it deepened and brightened and magnified our appreciation of the phenomena around us" }, { "i": 128, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "to have this other layer of understanding. >> So, like with a bird, understanding the aerodynamics of flight or whatnot, you see no like a pure existence >> for me. It makes it all the more astonishing that uh uh an anatomical" }, { "i": 129, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "design can prevail over gravity in such a magical way. But, I will say uh science will never tell you the meaning of a bird." }, { "i": 130, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And, I also think it's dangerous to search for the meaning of a bird. There is no meaning of a bird. There's only an encounter between us and what is not ourselves, right? This practice of unselfing. And, the moment you try to find meaning in something that is not ourselves, that's also a danger." }, { "i": 131, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Unselfing?" }, { "i": 132, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Unselfing. This is actually I love that notion. I Iris Murdoch to talk about extraordinary novelists who are also, you know, other minds. Uh she's probably my one of my three favorite philosophers, but also" }, { "i": 133, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "beautiful novelist. She used the word unselfing in a kind of almost as an aside in she has a book called Existentialists and Mystics that you would, I think, appreciate given what you just said about the the light. Uh" }, { "i": 134, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "and she talks about how art and nature, our encounters with art and with the natural world, are occasions for unselfing." }, { "i": 135, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And, I read this maybe 10, 15 years ago and I it it it has never let me go because it it immediately landed so true. When I spend time in Patagonia or in the woods where I live, it is absolutely the work of unselfing" }, { "i": 136, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "and then kind of absorbing external reality in a way that changes my internal reality so that I can then give it shape in the writing as something that is not just me, you know?" }, { "i": 137, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I don't know if this is what you meant by unselfing, but as you were using that word, I was thinking about how when you're in a state of just full awe and wonder, there's a sense of clarity that you have." }, { "i": 138, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And I think that what happens with awe is the self is so reduced, so minimized, is basically evaporated if only for a snap of finger, that for once you can see that thing clearly." }, { "i": 139, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And that's a lot of what awe is, is it's like the purity of perception because the self isn't in the way." }, { "i": 140, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> It it it perception, but also connection. This this belonging to something other than larger than yourself, that it's all one thing and you're suddenly transported to this oneness. >> Do you feel that a lot when you read? >> When I read? Um No, I feel that a lot in the natural world." }, { "i": 141, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I feel very much like I'm just a creature among creatures and I become so much less interested in the stories that we call self. I mean, a self is a story." }, { "i": 142, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Um and also most of our suffering as human beings is a problem of selfing, this spiral that burrows inward and inward and inward to the exclusion of the outside world." }, { "i": 143, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Do you feel that in writing? Do you feel I mean, people talk about flow, but there might be another word that you feel." }, { "i": 144, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Sometimes, yes, when I disappeared into into these enormous rabbit holes, you know, spending 5 days learning about the eye of the scallop, which is amazing, by the way. >> The eye of a scallop? >> Well, it's not one eye, it's many eyes that the scallop has, and they're extraordinary." }, { "i": 145, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Like the scallop that we eat? >> Unfortunately, yes. Good luck eating them again when knowing about the eye, which has these extraordinary hexagonal crystals that are not known anywhere else in nature, but they do look like" }, { "i": 146, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "the mirrors in the James Webb Space Telescope. And also, they're so beautiful. They look like tiny, bright, cobalt blue blueberries along the rim of the the mantle of the scallop. >> I know. I do eat them. I mean, now I I now I can't, you know." }, { "i": 147, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh >> In my past life." }, { "i": 148, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> I have eaten >> Can you >> the James Webb Space Telescope. >> Can you take me back to What was the woman's name who you met on the airplane? >> Emily Levine." }, { "i": 149, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Emily. So, Emily. So, can you take me back to what she showed you about poetry that you hadn't seen before? Like in what way did she open your eyes?" }, { "i": 150, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> That's a beautiful question. Um I guess she showed me that poetry opens these back doors of consciousness where we uh get access to our own experience in ways particularly to the regions of" }, { "i": 151, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "experience we can't quite name or comprehend with the analytical mind, but it opens this back door where we can then be in them, be present in them. And as you say, metabolize them even in a different way that's not analytical." }, { "i": 152, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "It gives shape, it gives voice, it gives mm a foothold on our own experience." }, { "i": 153, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Mhm. Do you see a lot of the difference between looking and seeing? >> Mm. >> And I think a lot of what poetry is doing is taking us from a place of looking to a place of seeing. >> Oh, that's yes, absolutely. Absolutely." }, { "i": 154, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> And in doing that sometimes it'll actually open up portals of sight that we didn't know we had. So, let me that's a big statement. So, let me just be super concrete. William Blake has that line to" }, { "i": 155, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "see the world in a grain of sand to hold infinity in the palm of your hand." }, { "i": 156, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Right? >> I mean, he was a complete he was such a shepherd of attention. My favorite line of his comes from a letter to one of his patrons and he says a tree that moves some to tears is to" }, { "i": 157, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "others a green thing that stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees." }, { "i": 158, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Exactly. Yeah, you talk a lot about William Blake. What is it that you love about him?" }, { "i": 159, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> He was Well, he was a radical. He was an absolute radical. He was an entrepreneur." }, { "i": 160, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And he was a person who really didn't care about expectation or convention. He cared about truth as he felt it, as he saw And giving shape and voice to that and it didn't matter to him that people" }, { "i": 161, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "thought he was a lunatic. It didn't matter because he had he lived in truth. >> He could paint, too. >> Yeah, wasn't bad." }, { "i": 162, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> [laughter] >> I had this experience at the Brooklyn Museum a few months ago. It was a Monet in Venice exhibit. And I've always liked Ruskin's writing. It was always it's wonderfully visual and vivid. But, I didn't know how detailed his sketches were." }, { "i": 163, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And that kind of the bilingual writer painter >> Mhm. >> is something I see a lot in like 17th, 18th, 19th century writer." }, { "i": 164, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> But, it wasn't just writer or So, Ruskin wrote beautifully about drawing as a way of seeing. And a lot of the scientists, I mean, so Galileo dismantled our present conception of the or our past conception of the universe because he had been trained in perspective, drawing in So, when the" }, { "i": 165, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "first telescopes came out, this is the 1610s, give or take, um there was an Englishman whose name was Thomas I forget his name his last name who also drew the moon. He looked through a telescope and drew a map of" }, { "i": 166, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "the moon, but he had not been trained in perspective, which originated in the Arab world and had moved to Italy, but had not yet gone to England. So, he drew this like two-dimensional black-and-white sketch that looked like Swiss cheese. That was his moon." }, { "i": 167, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> [laughter] >> But Galileo drew the very that famous image of the five the phases of the moon, you know, that is perspective and shaded. And that was actually profound because all of a sudden the moon became" }, { "i": 168, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "not this ethereal body of you know, immaterial magic out there by the gods, but rugged and material as the Earth." }, { "i": 169, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And this was a, you know, anti-dogma in every way that the it was not in the heavens. It was made of the same matter as the ground we walk on, and you could only see it because you could see the" }, { "i": 170, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "craters, you could see the dimension, you could see the ruggedness, the materiality of the world that the the the celestial body because Galileo was trained in this particular style of art. And many, many" }, { "i": 171, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "scientists, I mean, this is an extreme example, obviously, that caused cultural change, but even on a day-to-day basis, you know, a lot of the um botanists, naturalists, ornithologists, astronomers" }, { "i": 172, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "up to the end of the 19th century, they illustrated their own work. There wasn't this um specialization and fragmentation of our way of seeing, right? Our way Our way of looking and our way of seeing" }, { "i": 173, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "have become completely specialized, so that we no longer see the full picture in that way because we've been trained to, you know, see the optics, see the mechanics, see the aesthetics, see the, you know, whatever specialty you are, that's what you see. But also the language of science used to be the same as the language of poetry." }, { "i": 174, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "So, I don't know why, but a few months before my 40th birthday, I decided, I mean, per my need of daily, a daily practice, I decided to start taking 19th century ornithological my favorite 19th century ornithological" }, { "i": 175, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "books. And every day I would take an every night I would look at an image, pick a drawing of a bird from from those books, which I have digitized, and read the ornithological description" }, { "i": 176, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "of the bird, and I would sleep, and then in the morning >> [laughter] >> in the morning I would take certain words would kind of bubble up, and I would make these little poems and collages over the artwork." }, { "i": 177, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And first of all, the delight of I mean, Audubon and the Goulds, these great ornithologists of 19th century, the language they used was just so touching." }, { "i": 178, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "They would use words like bewildering >> [laughter] >> You know, and I I I made a hundred of these, and they became this deck of cards that I called an almanac of birds, divinations" }, { "i": 179, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "for uncertain days, only out of the joy of this other time where people saw the world more completely, in a way. The poets went to scientific lectures. The scientists read, many of them wrote, poetry in their journals." }, { "i": 180, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "It was so much more integrated. It didn't I don't think there was this kind of disciplinary boundary that this is one way of seeing and this is another way of seeing and you have to choose because" }, { "i": 181, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "the world was a lot more unitary. >> It is pretty wild. I mean, now if you think of what it means to go to college, you basically have to make a fundamental choice. There's like a fork in the road." }, { "i": 182, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I'm either going to do the thing that makes me money but will not feed my soul or the thing that feeds my soul but will not make me money." }, { "i": 183, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> And either either way you still have to declare a major and choose a way in which you're going to do whichever one of these things you you chose. I mean, I started my project which at the time was" }, { "i": 184, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "called Brain Pickings when I was in college because I felt so betrayed by the promise of the liberal arts education. Uh I mean, I had come I had I I grew up in Bulgaria. I went to high school in Bulgaria." }, { "i": 185, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And I came to the US not easily, believe me, to for that liberal arts promise which I thought was going to teach me how to live." }, { "i": 186, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "How to be a person in the world and instead I was shoved into this factory model education with the 400-person lecture hall and the standardized testing and I was being taught how to take tests, not how to how to live." }, { "i": 187, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> And I was I was I felt trapped. There was no going back. I was working four jobs to pay for this deeply disappointing experience. So, I just started keeping a record of I I went to the library at night. I went" }, { "i": 188, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "on the early internet. I mean, it wasn't that early but it was like, you know, the early 2000s internet. I would walk the streets of Philly and you know, wander into bookstores. And whatever I" }, { "i": 189, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "did to just trying to grab at some foothold on how to live. And I kept a record of it for myself, and that was the beginning of my site." }, { "i": 190, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> So, if I said if I bestowed upon you some grand sum of money and a building in New York City for your own liberal arts education, how would you structure it?" }, { "i": 191, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Well, I wouldn't. I I wouldn't do a factory model education. I think people need to be in the world and live and read and be in contact each other and contact reality and just keep keep testing their hypotheses" }, { "i": 192, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "against reality with some help from prior times and lives of people who have managed to live somewhat full, honorable lives in the past." }, { "i": 193, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "There's a wonderful uh Life magazine interview with James Baldwin from May of 1963, and in it he says, \"You think your pain and suffering are alone in the history of the world, and then you read.\"" }, { "i": 194, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I mean, I I I started reading for that reason, too. I mean, I I was having a really hard time in my 20s, really hard time on so many levels. And I needed that assurance. And some of the first things I really really devoured were diaries and biographies, a lot of biographies." }, { "i": 195, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh people I'd never heard of who then I learned a little bit about and thought they were so interesting that I would go get the biography, and it would comfort me so much to read about how they" }, { "i": 196, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "suffered. >> Mhm. You used the word devoured, and I think that's such a good word. The When you said that the image that came to my mind was, you know, like when you're hiking in the desert and you're so" }, { "i": 197, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "thirsty, and you finally get some water, and you just drink and drink and gulp and gulp, and you're like, \"I forgot that water could taste so good.\" There have been times in my life, whether it's suffering" }, { "i": 198, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "through something or a problem, and it's like you find the right book, the right person for that moment, and you devour their writing." }, { "i": 199, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> But isn't it so true, too, that the right moment, that reading is a relationship between you, the author, and time? >> Totally." }, { "i": 200, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Time. Yeah, I mean, I I've looked back on some things I've written so passionately about like 10, 15 years ago, and I'm like, >> [laughter] >> You know, and and and conversely, I" }, { "i": 201, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "would revisit some things, and they would I would feel them even more deeply, or they would give me another layer of uh metabolism, right, for my present experience. There are certain books that to me I reread often and always give me something new." }, { "i": 202, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> It speaks to the fluidity of self. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. With seasons, with years, with emotions, hormones, whatever it is you want to call it." }, { "i": 203, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "But that, as much as anything, is some of the best proof I have for how fluid the self can be, is how much you can either be drawn to things that you've written in worked so hard in the past, or be almost repulsed by them." }, { "i": 204, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I mean, I think if you're not a little bit embarrassed of who [snorts] you were and how you lived, maybe the the the process of growth >> [laughter] >> is not quite working." }, { "i": 205, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Describe for me the process of epiphany." }, { "i": 206, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Like, for you, is it a >> believe in >> epiphany. >> Really? >> No. >> How come? >> I believe in incremental revelation. I mean, I I have experienced epiphanies." }, { "i": 207, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "It's not that they don't exist, but I I don't believe what they say, meaning they don't stick for me. It would be a glimpse for a moment that I get really excited about, and then it has to" }, { "i": 208, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "integrate with everything else that predates it in order for it to stick. And epiphanies are just these shiny little distractions that don't really change much." }, { "i": 209, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> For me." }, { "i": 210, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Change much meaning that they don't >> They don't change much afterwards. That much of your process, much of your life, much of your mind uh They are like a kind of curtain parting to reveal this really" }, { "i": 211, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "bright light, but when the light dies down, you see that there's just the world as you know it. My experience of the most profound transformations for me intellectually, creatively, personally have only been incremental. So, the difference between metamorphosis and transformation." }, { "i": 212, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> There it's never for me metamorphosis. It's always transformation. >> Huh. >> Well, have you had epiphanies that have profoundly changed your subsequent way of doing something or thinking about something?" }, { "i": 213, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> I'm trying to The answer's definitely yes. I'm trying to think of an example right now." }, { "i": 214, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I guess where I struggle with epiphanies is that many times I've had the experience of maybe suddenly or incrementally, whatever, seeing let's say a pattern that I have. Being like, \"Oh my god, I do this.\"" }, { "i": 215, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Revelation. But then the gap between recognizing it and changing it or doing something about it is wide and slow and deep and there's so much that goes into it. So, the revelation itself doesn't" }, { "i": 216, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "have the effect of a existential epiphany in the sense of it changes your life. It changes your perspective on your life, but it doesn't really it overnight, I mean. That's what I mean about epiphany." }, { "i": 217, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I don't think it's overnight. You can have the insight, but then what makes the transformation is work." }, { "i": 218, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Mhm. What I want to do is I want to go through some um some quotes that I really like and from others that you've shared and I want to get your reactions to them. >> Okay." }, { "i": 219, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> All right. First one, Oscar Wilde. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public and that the public art to him is non-existent." }, { "i": 220, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I'm having a very cynical reaction to it right now. This is something from like I've written about in 2012 or God knows, you know, it's a long time ago." }, { "i": 221, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Uh I think in an ideal world every artist would like to think they're creating out of sheer creative vitality and being a channel for this greater force and uh I mean, Oscar Wilde was a dandy. He" }, { "i": 222, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "dressed up. He performed. His quotes were quotable. His thoughts were quotes." }, { "i": 223, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And the moment you make an aphorism, it's already for an audience. It's not You don't make aphorisms for yourself in the shower. Uh so, you know, I think it's okay for us to live with" }, { "i": 224, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "ambivalence between our aspirational self and our actual self. I think maybe maybe with the exception of William Blake, there is no artist who's impervious to reception and audience in the sense of" }, { "i": 225, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "other, you know. Uh but I do think uh to me a truly creative person can hold that lightly and and create authentically despite that. >> Despite making for others?" }, { "i": 226, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Despite knowing there will be someone else experiencing, despite knowing the work will be approved or disapproved, lauded or criticized, that there will be a feedback loop. You can be aware of that but not let it change what you make and how you make it." }, { "i": 227, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Tchaikovsky, a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood." }, { "i": 228, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> [laughter] >> Yes. Uh this is from a letter to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck. And it was about him being too slow with some concerto. And it's him kind of defending He's He's almost writing to himself." }, { "i": 229, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Saying, \"I don't have the right to say the muse is not with me and therefore I'm not delivering. I have to just show up for the work.\" And so he's assuring her that he has work ethic and he's not" }, { "i": 230, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "waiting around for inspiration and that he's on it, basically. And I believe that. I think The whole thing of inspiration, of course, there are times when you're more creatively sparkly and times when you're not, but showing up has its own effect of opening the portal." }, { "i": 231, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Mhm. You really do realize over the course of time that the fundamental difference in terms of both the quality and the quantity of your output really comes down to showing up, but on a" }, { "i": 232, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "day-to-day basis, it does not feel like that at all. >> Yeah, I mean, I think in any creative practice, you have to be okay with your own mediocrity or your own inconsistency because every day you show up it's not going to all be great, you know? But the" }, { "i": 233, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "fact that you're making something counts for your own even your own sanity or own self-respect, your own growth as a whatever you are a writer, a woodworker, you know? I think that's how you become better by doing more and accepting that not all of it is going to be great." }, { "i": 234, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> As you look at the world right now with the rise of with everyone talk about AI, with AI coming into writing, in what ways does that excite you and in what ways do you feel averse" }, { "i": 235, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "to it? >> I have no real contact with or experience with AI, so I'm probably not the right person to ask about its trends. I will say I was horrified when somebody wrote to me about those bird divination cards, the the and said, \"I need to know if AI was involved [laughter] in this.\"" }, { "i": 236, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Because that moment she asked, I I could see how it can. You could give Audubon's ornithological writings and say to the AI, \"Make a poem in the style of Maria.\" And it'll give you something." }, { "i": 237, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "And nobody but me will know because that one thing that only the artist has access to is the feeling out of which something was created. The AI will never have feeling. AI will have the simulacrum of feeling." }, { "i": 238, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "AI will never write the great American poem, the great French poem there because it hasn't suffered. I mean, AI has not the capacity to suffer because even if you try to make it suffer," }, { "i": 239, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "meaning write a command that is to execute failure, it'll already be succeeding at executing failure. It will never know what it's like to collide with its own impossibility. So, AI can only ever succeed. And without suffering, what kind of true art can there be?" }, { "i": 240, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> But that is what the essence of art is." }, { "i": 241, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I'm not I I don't subscribe to the tortured genius myth. I don't think it's necessary to suffer in order to create, but I do think that out of what we have suffered and do suffer, comes that" }, { "i": 242, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "restlessness to find meaning, to find beauty, to find wonder, to give voice and shape to what we feel that can be so lonely. I mean, I guess it goes back to the question, why do we read? >> Hm." }, { "i": 243, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> And if we read to be moved and to be changed, I think there are ways to change intellectually, which is with information, and AI can do that. It AI can tell me about the eye of the" }, { "i": 244, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "scallop without me spending many days and many, you know, scientific journals and papers. It can give me a pretty good enough, you know, but had I not spent all those days, I wouldn't have written about it with feeling. >> Right." }, { "i": 245, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> And I think all the writing for me that moves me is made of feeling and time, of which AI has neither. >> It's an instantaneous, unfeeling delivery of pure information. >> There's no soul." }, { "i": 246, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> How do you define soul? >> It is like the anima. It is like the fundamental unit of life. >> And what is it made of? >> It's something that's beyond material that I can't explain, but I think that that is like the core thing of life." }, { "i": 247, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "Once you like reduce and reduce and reduce, it's like the soul is the fundamental thing that is alive inside of a human being. And then I think above the soul is like the spirit. And if the soul dies, the spirit dies, but I think that you can have be dispirited, but still have a soul that's alive." }, { "i": 248, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I'm very ambivalent about the soul because I do believe in the laws of physics. Uh I do believe that reality is knowable. Uh but I also I think the function of what we call soul is real, whatever it's made of, whatever it is. And the part that I worry about is that today most people live on the level of" }, { "i": 249, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "the self and not the level of the soul, which is the costume of personality over the soul. It's what the self is." }, { "i": 250, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "And I don't find that terribly interesting. >> The costume of personality, that's a good turn of phrase. Explain that." }, { "i": 251, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Yeah, it's the performance of personhood, not the essence of personhood, the self. And you know, today most people lead with identities and opinions, which I think are the least interesting, least true parts of people because they're the most mutable and the least anchored in what you call" }, { "i": 252, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "the soul. And yet our culture is just all about that." }, { "i": 253, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Interesting. You are ambivalent because you had the I love that word. That's a word I love. Ambivalent to kind of be strong on both sides cuz you started by saying I'm skeptical of the soul" }, { "i": 254, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "but then you ended by saying that's sort of the core thing, yeah?" }, { "i": 255, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> Well, I'm skeptical that it's immaterial. I do believe fundamentally that the universe is knowable. I'm not one of those people that will say, \"Well, there's always going to be mystery that's beyond the reach of knowability.\"" }, { "i": 256, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I think the history of our species is mistaking the limits of the known for the limits of the knowable and over and over discoveries have surprised us and and the region of the known has grown and grown and grown." }, { "i": 257, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "I do think it's knowable. I think we're very far from discovering what that is. That very real thing that we live with that that we can tell is true and there, but I think it's a cop" }, { "i": 258, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "out to say, \"Oh, it's like we'll never know what it's made of. It's just like mystical stuff.\" No, we just haven't gotten there." }, { "i": 259, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": "I do have a one more quote. >> Yes, bring it. >> Um Susan Sontag. Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all." }, { "i": 260, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I mean, I love that because she wrote that long before you we used that horrific word content to describe cultural material today. And this was like long before the social web and the" }, { "i": 261, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "internet as we know it. Uh and yet we have reduced creative work, cultural matter to what we call content, which presumes a container. And in a way it's an accurate description because the container is advertising." }, { "i": 262, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "This is what carries the modern internet, you know, and uh, we're making everything creative subservient to that. It's the content of the package that is being sold. And I just hate that I'm allergic to the word content." }, { "i": 263, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> So the thing that bothers you bothers you the most about it is that it's units of information that are created in order to drive attention to >> to the container." }, { "i": 264, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> To the ads. >> Yes. Yes, the the the content is used to sell the container, which is your attention in the advertising. I mean, I obviously I I'm very uh, I mean, an extreme because I've never had advertising on my site. Uh, which is a pretty radical choice on the internet for, you know, 20 years of it." }, { "i": 265, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Um, but unfortunately the course that the web has taken has been towards reducing human beings to eyeballs and writing to content." }, { "i": 266, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Is this part of the reason that you've moved towards books?" }, { "i": 267, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> I think it's a vicious cycle. I don't want to end on a cynical note as the old lady who's been online for 20 years, you know. Um, I do think because content is rewarded in certain ways," }, { "i": 268, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "clickbait, which works because it sells pages, and they want to sell pages because they want to sell ads, there's been more and more and more a kind of a shallowing of of cultural material as the internet" }, { "i": 269, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "has moved more and more toward clickbait and listicles and 10 ways to, you know, and I just find it unsatisfying. I'm not moving away from it on moral grounds, although I don't agree with a lot of the business choices" }, { "i": 270, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Silicon Valley has made. I'm just moving away from it as a human being who doesn't find it compelling. I think every artist's art is a coping mechanism for whatever it is they're living through. Thoreau has written beautifully about the love of nature. Anais Nin has written beautifully about erotic love." }, { "i": 271, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "Alan Lightman writes beautifully about our love of knowledge and illumination of the universe. And I think I do write a lot about love because I have not figured it out. I've had wonderful relationships, have wonderful relationships, but in some sense uh I feel that that is the great mystery." }, { "i": 272, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": "How to love each other better. I mean, that's what we're here for, right? >> Other people. >> Each other. >> Each other." }, { "i": 273, "speaker": "Speaker 1", "text": ">> Too. Maria, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> It was good to meet you." }, { "i": 274, "speaker": "Maria Popova", "text": ">> You too." } ]