2019–2026

2026 176

October 2026

1. 31 OctMusic and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song
2. 30 OctHalloween’s Lost Heroes: Michael Pollan on Radical Gardening and the Insurgent Botanical Origin of the Broomstick in Flying-Witch Legends
3. 30 OctTruth, Fact, and the Patterning of Reality: Virginia Woolf on How We Come to Know the World
4. 30 OctWhen Your Parents Are Dying: Some of the Simplest, Most Difficult and Redemptive Life-Advice You’ll Ever Receive
5. 29 OctWhat Is Your Refugium?
6. 29 OctThe Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother
7. 28 OctWhat It Takes to Be Free
8. 27 OctSylvia Plath on Living with the Darkness and Making Art from the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being
9. 27 OctMarcus Aurelius on the Good Luck of Your Bad Luck
10. 26 OctWalt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life
11. 26 OctBob Dylan on the Unconscious Mind and the Ideal Conditions for Creative Work
12. 25 Oct20 Favorite Children’s Books from 20 Years of The Marginalian
13. 25 OctThe Dark Wood of the Golden Birds: Margaret Wise Brown’s Lost Masterpiece about Mortality and the Meaning of Life, Newly Illustrated
14. 25 Oct20 Favorite Books from 20 Years of The Marginalian
15. 24 OctThe Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Timeless Tenets of Critical Thinking
16. 24 OctDostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life
17. 23 OctHow to Be Transformed When Things Fall Apart
18. 23 OctThe Wildest Bet Is the Winning Bet
19. 22 OctUrsula K. Le Guin on the Meaning of Life
20. 22 OctNathaniel Hawthorne on How to Look and Really See
21. 22 OctIntroducing the Museum of Delight
22. 22 OctHow to Hold Your Heart with Golden Hands
23. 21 OctCorrective for a Broken Heart
24. 21 OctHow to Be Un-Dead: Notes on Waking Up from the Trance of Near-Living
25. 20 OctHow to Grow Old without Letting Life Become a Parody of Itself
26. 20 OctThe Constitution of the Inner Country: Leonard Cohen on Language and the Poetry of Presence
27. 20 OctHow to Stop Waiting and Start Living: A Jolt from Henry James
28. 19 OctLove After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife
29. 19 OctWhen Relationships Change: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing the Intermittency and Mutability of Love
30. 18 OctNineteen Truths and One Beguiling Lie about Life from 20 Years of The Marginalian
31. 18 OctHow to Unself in Order to Be Who You Really Are
32. 18 OctCelebrating 20 Years of The Marginalian and the Search for Meaning: Free Livestream This Friday
33. 17 OctThe Map to the Route of Your Life
34. 17 OctBloom: A Touching Animated Short Film about Depression and What It Takes to Recover the Light of Being
35. 17 OctThe Single Most Effective Remedy for Despair: Advice from T.H. White’s Merlyn
36. 16 OctThe Day Dostoyevsky Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Dream
37. 16 OctThe Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and Compulsory Coupledom
38. 16 OctBruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness
39. 15 OctHow to Hold Your Helplessness: Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell’s Salve for the Anxiety of Overwhelm
40. 15 OctHow Not to Waste Your Life
41. 14 OctAn Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of Candid Connection
42. 14 OctNostradamusGPT: The Psychology of Prophecy and How to Break Free from the Prison of Predictive Technologies
43. 11 OctJames Baldwin on How Love (Finally) Finds You
44. 10 OctHow to Doubt Your Way into a Truer Life
45. 9 OctSleeping Beauties: David Byrne on Why Transformative Ideas Fall Dormant and How They Awaken to Change the World
46. 6 OctA Constellation of Amazements: An Illustrated Love Letter to the Joy of Collecting Things
47. 4 OctDostoyevsky on What Makes a Good Person
48. 3 OctThe Dandelion and the Meaning of Life: G.K. Chesterton on How to Live in Wonder
49. 3 OctOcean of Stars: A Painted Poem About How to Bear the Astonishment of Life
50. 1 OctHow to Say “YES” to Life

September 2026

1. 30 SepC.S. Lewis on How to Structure the Days of a Creative Life and Train the Receptive Imagination
2. 26 SepHow to Handle a Narcissistic and Abusive Parent: Kafka’s Remarkable Letter to Father
3. 26 SepHow to Speak Forest
4. 24 SepHow to Fall in Love Better: A Field Guide to Enlightened Enchantment
5. 23 SepHow to Be a Poet: Elizabeth Alexander on the Yin-Yang of Connection and Contradiction
6. 20 SepAre You Working: In Defense of the Invisible Labors of Creativitiy
7. 17 SepOn Losing a Parent
8. 16 SepHow to Promise and How to Keep Promises from Breaking
9. 15 SepJ.R.R. Tolkien on How to Fall in Love with Life
10. 13 SepThe Moving Story of the Dawn Redwood: How a Fossil Came Back to Life to Bring Humanity Together in the Middle of Our Deadliest War
11. 11 SepThe Unspeakable World: Alan Watts on How to Touch the Pulse of Life
12. 9 SepHow to Change Your Life
13. 8 SepHow to Break Free from the Tyranny of Certainty: The Japanese Concept of “Ma”
14. 6 SepThe True Purpose of Tarot
15. 5 SepHow to Reconcile Your Most Painful Mistakes: The Life-Shaping Difference Between Regret and Remorse
16. 4 SepThe Power of Being a Threshold Person: Liminality, Communitas, and the Anti-structures of Possibility
17. 2 SepWendell Berry on Hope, Despair, and the Measure of Effective Protest
18. 1 SepJoan Didion on Letting Go

August 2026

1. 30 AugMatter, Memory, and the Paradox of Perception: Henri Bergson on How to See Reality
2. 28 AugThe Tree and the River: A Wordless Love Letter to How Nature Always Wins
3. 27 AugThe Moving Letter James Baldwin Received from His Childhood Teacher at the Peak of His Fame and His Heartbreak
4. 25 AugThe Vocabulary of Vulnerability: 10 Wonderfully Untranslatable Words from Around the World for Complex and Difficult Emotions
5. 22 AugThe Loveliness of Letting Go: An Illustrated Ode to Life’s Lasts
6. 20 AugThe Resilience of Uncertainty: How to Hold the Universe in You
7. 18 AugHow to Be a Sea: Albert Camus on Learning to Die and Learning to Live
8. 15 AugActuality vs. Possibility and How to Hear the Signal of Your Life
9. 14 AugHow Love Comes to You
10. 10 AugThe Wisdom of Water: Alan Watts on the Ocean and the Meaning of Life
11. 7 AugHow to Hold What Harrows You
12. 2 AugThe Grasshopper and the “Lusory Attitude” Essential for Playing the Game of Life
13. 1 AugDeath and How to Be More Alive: Carl Jung on Immortality and the Rebirth of Middle Age

July 2026

1. 31 JulBlackie & Co.: A Blackbird’s Lesson in Friendship
2. 27 JulThe Bird in You, the World in You, and the Art of Trusting Time: Ceramics, Serpentine, and How to Get Over Heartbreak
3. 24 JulDr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and Ms. Boodle: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Advice on Writing to a Young Woman Aspiring to Be an Author
4. 19 JulFrom Mitochondria to Minds: The Illustrated Science of the Psychedelic Dream Called Life
5. 15 JulHow to Bear Your Sorrows: Nick Cave on Integrating the Darkness of Loss with the Bright Ongoingness of Life
6. 14 JulHow to Help Someone Change: The Samurai Guide to Giving Feedback
7. 10 JulThe Art of Dignity Beyond Pride: How to Move Through Heartbreak Like Frida Kahlo
8. 8 Jul20 Ways of Surfacing from the Blues: Sydney Smith’s 200-year-old Strategies for Raising Low Spirits in a Letter of Advice to a 13-year-old Girl
9. 4 JulThe Art of Losing and the Art of Beckoning Love Back: The Story Behind One of the Greatest Poems Ever Written
10. 1 JulThe Violinist Who Solved the Ancient Riddle of How the World Holds Together
11. 1 JulNow Yourself: The Elusive Science of What the Present Moment Is Made of and How It Makes You Who You Are

June 2026

1. 27 JunLegendary Artist Sheila Hicks, at 92, on the Secret to Creative Vitality
2. 27 JunTrue Love Will Find You in the End: Kurt Vonnegut on When to Stop Trying and When to Try Again
3. 24 JunDiatoms and the Meaning of Life
4. 21 JunLife Is a Story That Begins in the Middle: Bayo Akomolafe on the Rewilding Power of Obstacles
5. 20 JunThe Man Who Thought with His Heart: George Forster and the Birth of Sensitive Science
6. 17 JunThe Meaning of Maturity: Ursula K. Le Guin on What It Really Takes to Grow Up
7. 16 JunHow to Be More Alive: The Samurai Guide to Dying Every Day
8. 11 JunHow to See a Bird: Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s Exquisite Illustrated Field Guide to the Wonder of the Winged
9. 8 JunRobert Louis Stevenson on Falling in Love and Loving Beyond the Fall
10. 6 JunUrsula K. Le Guin on the Meaning of Life
11. 6 JunHow Nature Imagined the Figment of You
12. 4 JunVery Necessary Qualifications of a Great Storyteller
13. 3 JunEinstein and the Eagle: How Relativity Is Saving Earth’s Rarest Raptor
14. 1 JunThe Only Three Distinctions Between People

May 2026

1. 30 MayHow Phrenology Queered Language: Walt Whitman and the Evolving Lexicon of Love
2. 27 MayExistentialist Embroidery
3. 24 MaySwimming and the Meaning of Life
4. 22 MayHow Not to Be Imprisoned in the Past
5. 21 MayTruth, Fact, and the Patterning of Reality: Virginia Woolf on How We Come to Know the World
6. 19 Maybell hooks on the Power of Being in the Margins
7. 17 MayWhat It’s Like to Be a Panda
8. 14 MayIn Praise of the Useless: Bertrand Russell’s Salve for Hard Times
9. 13 MayThe Enemy Outside and the Enemy Within: Audre Lorde’s Antidote to Despair
10. 10 MayZadie Smith on the Courage to Be More Than Yourself
11. 9 MayMartian Gargoyles and Lunar Fish: Chilean Artist Alejandra Acosta’s Wondrous Embroidered Illustrations for This World’s First Book Theorizing Life on Other Worlds
12. 8 MayPoetry: I Too, Dislike It
13. 6 MayEmpire, Emoji, and the Ecology of Love: The Bittersweet Story of the Ancient Plant That Originated the Heart Symbol
14. 5 MayViktor Frankl on the Secret to Success
15. 5 MaySimone de Beauvoir on Marriage and the Freedom to Change
16. 1 MayThe Wildest Bet Is the Winning Bet

April 2026

1. 27 AprThe Black Robin and the Power of Tenacious Tenderness: How a Single Mother Brought an Entire Species Back from the Brink of Extinction
2. 26 AprThe Force and the Flower: Poet and Potter M.C. Richards on Creativity
3. 24 AprThe Bird That Is Your Life
4. 23 AprMarianne Moore on the Three Elements of Persuasive Writing
5. 21 AprA Place for Intimacy: bell hooks on Language and Desire
6. 18 AprWalt Whitman’s Field Guide to Being Yourself: The Trial and Triumph of Leaves of Grass
7. 17 AprRehabilitating the Active Imagination: Samantha Harvey on How to Be a Reader in the Age of Fractured Attention
8. 14 AprIs This Blue: Chilean Philosophers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela on Love and How We Know the World
9. 12 AprHow to Make the Impossible Possible: Cristina Campo on the Crucial Difference Between Hope and Trust
10. 9 AprBrian Eno’s Remedy for Burnout and Despair
11. 7 AprBetween the User and the Used
12. 6 AprSentinels of the Soul: Kahlil Gibran’s Moving Letter to a Soldier in a Senseless War
13. 4 AprWherever You Think There Is Nothing
14. 1 AprThe Courage of Vulnerability: Teenage Frida Kahlo’s Moving Letters to Her First Love

March 2026

1. 31 MarHow Flamingos Got Their Pink
2. 27 MarCorrective for a Broken Heart
3. 23 MarSomething Deeper Than Hope: Terry Tempest Williams on Our Stays Against Despair
4. 20 MarWhere Love Goes When It Goes
5. 19 MarReweaving the Rainbow: Divinations for Living from the Science of Life
6. 15 MarRoots and the Meaning of Life
7. 14 MarPi and the Seductions of Infinity
8. 13 MarHow to Feel Whole in a Broken World: An Astronaut’s Antidote to Despair
9. 11 MarHow Patterns Change
10. 10 MarFinding Sanity in Sprezzatura: The Lost 16th-century Italian Art of Living with Fluency, Serenity, and Openness to Wonder
11. 8 MarHow the Bicycle Was Born: Mount Tambora, the Year Without a Summer, and the Stubborn Courage to Reimagine the Possible
12. 5 MarHow to Be a Tree: Notes on the Resilience of Letting Go
13. 3 MarPablo Neruda on How to Hold Time
14. 2 MarThe Figments of Love and the Hallucinations of Reason

February 2026

1. 27 FebFanny Wright and the Radical Courage of Being Real: The Forgotten Woman Who Pioneered Scientific Thinking and Free Love in America
2. 26 FebHow to Get Over Someone: Help for Heartbreak from the Evolutionary History of Hiccups
3. 24 FebA Cosmic Pastoral: Diane Ackerman on the Intimate in the Infinite and the Responsibility of Rapture
4. 24 FebSleep and the Meaning of Life: Fernando Pessoa on the Existential Dimension of the Horizontal Hours
5. 22 FebThe Mattering Instinct
6. 19 FebThe Color of Wonder and the Chemical Code of Creation
7. 18 FebHow to Shed the Surface-Self: The Forgotten Visionary Evelyn Underhill on Touching the Depths of Being
8. 11 FebWhy You
9. 8 FebThe Blessing of Burnout: Samin Nosrat’s Simple Recipe for the Good Life
10. 6 FebThe Madman Who Saved Mothers: The Invention of Handwashing and the Bittersweet True Love Story Behind ‘Frankenstein’

January 2026

1. 30 JanThe Majesty and Mystery of Ice: 200 Years of Artists Reverencing the Wonder of Water’s Wintry Face
2. 27 JanWhat It’s Like to Touch the Bottom of the World
3. 24 JanThe Purest Definition of Love, the Qualities of a Lasting Relationship, and the Salve for the Betrayals of Time
4. 22 JanA Spell Against Fear: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry and The Art of Productive Impatience
5. 20 JanHow to Be an Instrument of Kindness in a Harsh World: George Saunders on Unthinking the Mind, Unstorying the Self, and the 3 Antidotes to Your Suffering
6. 18 JanElif Shafak on the Three Roots of Hate and How to Be a Star Student of Life
7. 16 JanEmerson on How to Touch the Universe
8. 14 JanHow Not to Be a Victim of Time: Rebecca West on Music and Life
9. 13 JanHow to Hold the Darkness: Notes on Living Through Uncertainty
10. 11 JanStrata: The Consolations and Invitations of Deep Time
11. 9 JanHow to Hold on to the Light of the World
12. 7 JanThe Trouble with Love
13. 5 JanSaved by Wonder: The Ziegler Polar Expedition and the Aurora Borealis
14. 2 JanTraversal: Particles, Poetry, Blue, and Our Search for Meaning
15. 2 JanCover Song for the Second Law: A Poem for Beginnings
16. 1 JanThe Body as Revolution: Che Guevara on Social Medicine and Personal Health as a Political Act

2025 154

December 2025

1. 30 DecLove, Lichen, and the Art of Trusting Time: The Best of The Marginalian 2025
2. 29 DecThe Continuous Creative Act of Holding on and Letting Go: 10 Beautiful Minds on the Art of Growing Older
3. 27 DecHow to Bioluminesce: Artist Ash Eliza Williams’s Reveries of Wonder
4. 26 DecWhen Friends Become Lovers: H.G. Wells on Navigating Blurring Boundaries
5. 23 DecHow to Live Fully: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Remedy for Our Resistance to Change
6. 20 DecIf Birds Ran the World
7. 19 DecThe Little Leaf that Wouldn’t Fall: A Tender Illustrated Parable about the Measure and Meaning of Love
8. 18 DecThe Woman Who Mapped Labrador and Revolutionized the Literature of Exploration
9. 14 DecA Decalogue for the Dignity of Growing Old: Eva Perón’s Revolutionary Rights of the Elderly
10. 13 DecFavorite Books of 2025
11. 10 DecMore Love, Less Sorrow: Poet John Keene’s Spell Against Despair
12. 9 DecThe Lighthouse Keeper: A Tender Illustrated Meditation on What Saves Us
13. 7 DecStreet Library Divinations: Searching for the Meaning of Life in Discarded Books and Found Objects
14. 5 DecThe Indissoluble Filament Connecting Us All: Patti Smith on What It Means to Be an Artist
15. 4 DecAldo Leopold on How to Hear the Song of Life
16. 2 DecAlphabet in Motion: Artist Kelli Anderson’s Wondrous Pop-up Biography of the Letters

November 2025

1. 29 NovHow to Be Human: Kahlil Gibran’s Recipe for Our Spiritual Perfection as a Species
2. 26 NovThanks: W.S. Merwin’s Ode to the Defiant Courage of Gratitude in a Broken World
3. 24 NovLove Against Probability
4. 21 NovA Lamentation for Linnaeus: In Praise of Confusion and Rewilding Wonder
5. 19 NovIf You Forget Me: Pablo Neruda’s Staggering (Un)breakup Poem
6. 18 NovChasing Fog: The Science and Spirituality of Nature’s Grounded Cloud
7. 16 NovHow to Love the World More: Artist and Poet Rachel Hébert’s Breathtaking Catalogue of Gratitudes
8. 13 NovMidnight Motorbike: A Lullaby of Wonder for the Sleepless, Inspired by the Whimsy of South India
9. 11 NovHow to Fix Breakdowns in Communication
10. 10 NovAgainst the Cartesian Myth of Work/Life Balance: André Gregory’s Extraordinary Letter to Richard Avedon about the Nature of Creativity
11. 5 NovWords: Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Language
12. 2 NovHow to Be a Lichen: Adaptive Strategies for the Vulnerabilities of Being Human from Nature’s Tiny Titans of Tenacity

October 2025

1. 31 OctHow Not to Waste Your Life
2. 29 OctThe Beginning and the End of War, in a Stunning Watercolor Reckoning with Humanity
3. 28 OctWhat It’s Like to Meet an Orca
4. 25 OctEndless Forms of Wonder: The Nautilus, the Leopard, and the Spirituality of Wildness
5. 23 OctThe Search for Meaning Cast in Clay: 19 Years of The Marginalian in 19 Ceramic Sentences
6. 21 OctAlain de Botton on Friendship
7. 19 OctPerfect Mind: The Gnostic Field Guide to Wholeness and Hearing the Voice of Truth
8. 17 OctThe Engine of Our Redemption: Nick Cave on How to Use Your Suffering
9. 16 OctI Feel, Therefore I Understand: Humboldt on the Essence of Science and How to Read the Poetry of Nature
10. 14 OctThe Weasel and the Meaning of It All: Annie Dillard on How to Live
11. 13 OctThe Gentle Giant: Oliver Sacks and the Art of Choosing Empathy Over Vengeance
12. 13 OctHow to Be a Good Explorer on the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself
13. 10 OctHow to See the Milky Way: Instructions for Being More Alive
14. 9 OctHow Not to Be a Victim of Success
15. 5 OctThe Three Elements of the Good Life
16. 5 OctHeed Your Daemon: Rudyard Kipling on Writing
17. 3 OctEight Takes: How to Tell a Truer Love Story
18. 2 OctThe Measure of a True Visionary: Jane Goodall on the Indivisibility of Art and Science
19. 1 OctThe Feather Detective: How Roxie Laybourne Pioneered Forensic Ornithology

September 2025

1. 28 SepThe Cell vs. the Crystal: The Philosopher-Naturalist John Burroughs on What Makes a Great Poem and a Great Person
2. 26 SepFernando Pessoa on Unselfing into Who You Really Are
3. 23 SepHow Humanity Saved the Ginkgo
4. 20 SepYou Need a Good Pen to Write the Book of Love
5. 16 SepThe Heart of the Andes and the Invention of Virtual Reality: Frederic Edwin Church’s Immersive 19th-century Paintings of Natural Wonders
6. 13 SepThe Coziest Place on the Moon: Or, How to Bear Your Loneliness
7. 11 SepArundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success
8. 9 SepVirginia Woolf on Love
9. 6 SepBy Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of Faith, and the Courage of Heresy
10. 4 SepOn Looking: Poet Lia Purpura on the Art of Noticing
11. 1 SepEmbodiment and the (Re)invention of Emoji, from the Aztecs to Humboldt and Darwin to AI

August 2025

1. 29 AugA Heron, a Red Leaf, and a Hole in a Blue Star: Poet Jane Kenyon on the Art of Letting Go
2. 26 AugUndersound: The Secret Lives of Ponds and the Mysterious Musicality of the World
3. 22 AugDecoding the Mystery of Intuition: AI Prophet Margaret Boden on the Three Elements of Creativity
4. 21 AugOrcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful and Creative Predator
5. 20 AugCarnival as Culture: Brian Eno on Saving Civilization from Itself
6. 14 AugDawn: A Watercolor Ode to the Primeval Conversation Between Our Living Planet and Its Dying Star
7. 11 AugWonder, Play, and How to Be More Alive
8. 9 AugThings Become Other Things: Walking, Forgiveness, and Belonging in the Mountains of Japan
9. 4 AugBlink Twice to Quell a Quasar: Carl Sagan on Superstition

July 2025

1. 31 JulHow to Be a Happier Creature
2. 29 JulThe Paradox of Knowing Who You Are and What You Want: Cristina Campo on Fairy Tales, Time, and the Meaning of Maturity
3. 26 JulPoet Ellen Bass’s Antidote to Helplessness
4. 26 JulHOLD ON LET GO: Urns for Living and the Art of Trusting Time
5. 23 JulA Plasticity of Being: What a Rare Bird of Prey Reveals about the Deepest Meaning of Intelligence
6. 17 JulDoris Lessing on How to Read a Book and How to Read the World
7. 16 JulThe Canyon and the Meaning of Life
8. 13 JulIs It Not Wonderful to Be Alive: Edward Lear’s Parrots
9. 12 JulBats, the Pitfalls of Prediction, and the Triumph of the Possible Over the Probable
10. 7 JulUncoding Creativity in the Age of AI: What Makes a Great Poem, What Makes a Great Storyteller, and What Makes Great Person
11. 4 JulA Defense of Joy
12. 2 JulVision of the Womb and Vision of the Brain: H.D. on the Two Kinds of Seeing and the Key to Over-mind Consciousness

June 2025

1. 30 JunUncaging the Bird in the Mind: William Henry Hudson and the Gift of the Ruin of Your Best Laid Plans
2. 27 JunAnima: One Woman’s Search for Meaning in the Footsteps of Bulgarian Mountain Shepherds
3. 25 JunDivinations of the First Light: A Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory
4. 21 JunHow to Be a Stone: Three Poems for Trusting Time
5. 19 JunAgainst Death: Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti on Grieving a Parent, Grieving the World, and What Makes Life Worth Living
6. 17 JunThe Whole of It
7. 12 JunSilence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine Monastery
8. 11 JunThe Arguers: A Charming Illustrated Parable about the Absurdity of Self-righteousness
9. 8 JunAgainst the Pleasurable Luxury of Despair and the Aridity of Self-pity: Doris Lessing on the Artist’s Task in Trying Times
10. 7 JunThe Grammar of Fantasy and the Fantastic Binomial: Beloved Italian Children’s Book Author Gianni Rodari on Creativity and the Key to Great Storytelling
11. 4 JunMushrooms and Our Search for Meaning
12. 4 JunThe Majesty of Mountains and the Mountains of the Mind
13. 3 JunThe One Hundred Milliseconds Between the World and You: Oliver Sacks on Perception

May 2025

1. 31 MayImagine Water Otherwise: Robert Macfarlane on the Personhood of Rivers and the Meaning of Aliveness
2. 29 MayThe Wanting Monster: A Tender Modern Fable about the Difficult Art of Resting at the Still Point of Enough
3. 28 MayRaising Hare: The Moving Story of How a Helpless Creature Helped a Workaholic Wake Up from the Trance of Near-living and Rewild Her Soul
4. 23 MayOwl Lake: A Vintage Treasure from Japanese Artist Keizaburo Tejima
5. 21 MayA Pioneering Scientist’s Lucid Love Letter to the Possibility of Peace
6. 18 MayThe Pain in You and the God in You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and Creativity
7. 16 MayHow Should You Live Your Life: Marie Howe’s Spare, Stunning Poem “The Maples”
8. 15 MayAnnie Dillard on Unselfconsciousness
9. 14 MayIsotopes, Vikings, Mars
10. 11 MayVáclav Havel, Writing from Prison, on How to Hold Your Failure
11. 7 MayOcean Vuong on Anger
12. 5 MayHope Is the Thing with Feathers, and with Fangs: The Alchemy of Unrequited Love and the Story Behind Emily Dickinson’s Most Famous Poem
13. 3 MayStalactite & Stalagmite: A Brief Illustrated History of Earth and One Great Truth about Love
14. 2 MayArt and the Creative Unconscious: Erich Neumann on the Psychology of Transformation

April 2025

1. 29 AprChance, Choice, and How to Claim Your Life
2. 25 AprThe Art of Befriending Time and Change: Debbie Millman’s Illustrated Love Letter to Gardening as a Portal to Self-discovery
3. 25 AprThe Whole Is Simpler than Its Parts: Poet Muriel Rukeyser’s Ode to Creativity Lensed Through the Life of the Forgotten Genius Willard Gibbs
4. 20 AprThe Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships
5. 17 AprTwenty Ways to Matter
6. 14 Apr3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever
7. 11 AprHow Two Souls Can Interact with One Another: Simone de Beauvoir on Love and Friendship
8. 9 AprCarl Jung on Creativity
9. 6 AprHow to Be More Alive: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Breaking the Trance of Near-living
10. 3 AprLights On: Consciousness, the Mystery of Felt Experience, and the Fundamental Music of Reality
11. 2 AprCarl Linnaeus’s Flower Clock

March 2025

1. 29 MarWalt Whitman on How to Really Own Your Own Life
2. 27 MarHow Play Made Us and Keeps Us Human
3. 25 MarComets, Orbits, and the Mystery We Are: The Enchanted Celestial Mechanics of Australian Artist Shane Drinkwater
4. 21 MarThe Half Room of Living and Loving
5. 19 MarHow to Get Out of Your Own Way: John Berryman on the Three Demons of Creative Work
6. 18 MarHow to Meet Your Mystery: Thomas Merton on Solitude and the Soul
7. 15 MarHow to Bear Your Desolations
8. 12 MarThe Strength to Remember and the Strength to Forget: James Baldwin on What Makes a Hero
9. 10 MarMiss Leoparda: A Painted Parable of How to Remake a World
10. 9 MarObsidian and the Birds: An Odyssey of Wonder from the Aztecs to the Quantum World
11. 6 MarAgainst Self-Improvement: Adam Phillips on the Danger of Treating Ourselves as Pathological Patients in Need of a Cure
12. 3 MarInsomnia and the Secret Life of Ideas: Kafka on the Relationship Between Sleeplessness and Creativity

February 2025

1. 28 FebThe Souls of Animals
2. 26 FebMatrescence: The Cellular Science of the Unself
3. 22 FebGary Snyder on Craft vs. Creativity
4. 19 FebEdward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die
5. 17 Feb19-year-old Simone de Beauvoir’s Resolutions for a Life Worth Living
6. 12 FebLiving Against Time: Virginia Woolf on the Art of Presence and the “Moments of Being” That Make You Who You Are
7. 9 FebLetting in the Golden Light: Oliver Sacks on How Love Changes What We See
8. 6 FebThe Stubborn Art of Turning Suffering into Strength: Václav Havel’s Extraordinary Letters from Prison
9. 4 FebAn Illustrated Love Letter to Words and the Meaning Between Them
10. 3 FebReworldling Humanity: E.B. White’s Magnificent 1943 Response to a Politician Who Wanted to Make the Pacific Ocean an American Lake

January 2025

1. 31 JanGary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World
2. 29 JanThe Lily vs. the Eagle: D.H. Lawrence on the Key to Balancing Intimacy and Independence in Love
3. 28 JanYour Soul Is a Blue Marble: How to See with an Astronaut’s Eyes
4. 26 JanDarwin on How to Evolve Your Imagination
5. 22 JanOn Consolation: Notes on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Resignation
6. 21 JanChange, Presence, and the Imperative of Self-Renewal: Existential Lessons from Islands
7. 18 JanForgiveness
8. 17 JanHow to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872
9. 16 JanThe Light in the Abyss Between Us
10. 16 JanOn Love: Saint Paul and the Egret
11. 14 JanThe Countercultural Sanity of the Irrational: Pioneering Psychiatrist Otto Rank on the Blind Spots of Reason
12. 10 JanDo Not Spare Yourself: An Antidote to Feeling Like You Are Waiting to Start Living
13. 9 JanThe Hot Shower as a Form of Prayer
14. 8 JanDon’t Waste Your Greening Life-Force: Hildegard’s Prophetic Enchanted Ecology
15. 4 JanHow to Stop Doing and Start Living

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December 2024

1. 31 DecSome Blessings to Begin with
2. 31 DecThe Promethean Power of Burnout
3. 25 DecBirds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024
4. 24 DecThe Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration
5. 22 DecA Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality
6. 20 DecHow You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas Tree
7. 17 DecFavorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More
8. 14 DecHow to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love
9. 12 DecThank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World
10. 11 DecSomething in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing and the Power of Words to Remake the World
11. 6 DecA Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death
12. 3 DecDavid Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy
13. 1 DecA Cosmic Nativity Story of the Cosmos You Are

November 2024

1. 29 NovHow to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Fable about Cherishing the Particular
2. 26 NovDelight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
3. 24 NovHow to Live a Miraculous Life
4. 22 NovGrace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V Formation
5. 22 NovThere’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery
6. 19 NovThe Avenging Heroes Among Us: John Berger on the Courage to Create
7. 17 NovKafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection
8. 16 NovA Lighthouse for Dark Times
9. 15 NovThe Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult Question of How to Be Yourself
10. 14 NovThe Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence
11. 13 NovLouise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
12. 11 NovNobel Laureate Doris Lessing on Breaking Free from the Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
13. 8 NovOliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life
14. 4 NovThe Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which Is Life
15. 2 NovThe Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest Humanity
16. 1 NovEmerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for These Luminous Liminal Days Today)

October 2024

1. 31 OctThe Strength of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the Relationship Between Creativity and Democracy
2. 29 OctBeautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
3. 23 Oct18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
4. 22 OctThe Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom
5. 22 OctKafka’s Approach to Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gifts
6. 20 OctEverything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the Life-Force
7. 17 OctComet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
8. 14 OctThe Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn
9. 13 OctHow Not to Waste Your Wildness
10. 13 OctOctavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America

September 2024

1. 26 SepErik Erikson’s Stages of Psychological Development: The 8 Inner Conflicts That Shape Who We Are
2. 25 SepHow to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair
3. 22 SepPioneering Psychiatrist Donald Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy and the Most Dangerous Type of Person
4. 22 SepCuriosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau’s Touching Account of 24 Hours with a Tiny Owl
5. 19 SepFrom Stars to Souls: The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne
6. 19 SepThe 12 Kinds of Time and How to Be More Fully Alive
7. 16 SepBetween Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea Graff
8. 15 SepAn Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge
9. 11 SepThe Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning
10. 11 SepKinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love, Sympathy, and Solidarity
11. 9 SepThe Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest Form of Faith
12. 5 SepThe Paradox of Joy, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem
13. 5 SepMaking Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
14. 3 SepAudubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals
15. 1 SepFrom the Labor Camp to the Literary Canon: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer

August 2024

1. 30 AugKamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Making the Impossible Possible
2. 27 AugHow to Wait Better: The Psychology of Withstanding Absence and Missing Someone You Love
3. 25 AugYou and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective
4. 22 AugRupture Precedes Revolution: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries and Limits as Frontiers of Transformation and Growth
5. 20 AugPioneering Psychiatrist Donald Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
6. 17 AugHow Evolution Invented Faith: The Patience of the Penguin and the Art of Withstanding Abandonment
7. 17 AugTurning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
8. 16 AugWe Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
9. 13 AugBatter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Your Own Heart
10. 11 AugOf Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
11. 8 AugYour Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Sound Visualizations
12. 6 AugHow to See More Clearly and Love More Purely: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
13. 2 AugTrauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal
14. 1 AugGrace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives

July 2024

1. 30 JulWhat Makes Life Alive and Worth Living: Vasily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness
2. 26 JulAn Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days
3. 26 JulBeyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships
4. 23 JulThree Ways of Being: Life as Fairy Tale, Novel, or Poem
5. 18 JulLeonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance
6. 16 JulThe Canon of Solitude: 200 Years of Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Fertile Aloneness
7. 13 JulAn Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds
8. 10 JulPoetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine
9. 9 JulThe Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect
10. 5 JulLet the Last Thing Be Song
11. 3 JulWhat Birds Dream About: How Evolution Invented REM in the Avian Brain So We May Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
12. 1 JulHow to Think Like a Sunflower: Wendell Berry on Turning Conflict into Collaboration

June 2024

1. 28 JunNobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom
2. 27 JunThere Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the Inner World
3. 23 JunAlbert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World
4. 20 JunThe Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the Moon to Unify the World’s First Empire
5. 18 JunOn Change and Denial
6. 14 JunThe Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea
7. 13 JunThe Pleasure of Being Left Alone
8. 11 JunA Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly
9. 7 JunSwan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of Belonging
10. 6 JunThe Paradoxes and Possibilities of Transformation: Adam Phillips on Our Ambivalent Desire for Change
11. 3 JunJohn Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success

May 2024

1. 29 MayThunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
2. 26 MayBetween Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist Emma Kunz
3. 25 MayThe New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind
4. 21 MayNo One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on Loss and the Meaning of Life
5. 19 MayThe Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature
6. 17 MayAdam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to Change Your Mind
7. 15 MayJohn Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding Meaning
8. 13 MayNothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music and the Art of Listening Through Silence
9. 10 MayWhat It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being
10. 8 MayFlowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
11. 5 MayNature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing
12. 3 MayPolyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity
13. 1 MayThe Universe in Verse Book
14. 1 MayThe Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes of Meaning

April 2024

1. 29 AprThe Wild Iris: Nobel Laureate Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering
2. 26 AprThe Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
3. 24 AprHow to Tell Love from Not-Love: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing
4. 21 AprThe Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence
5. 19 AprFacts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the Moon Is Leaving Us
6. 17 AprShame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd on the Uncomfortable Path to Wholeness
7. 12 AprThe Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
8. 12 AprHome: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings
9. 10 AprHow to Be a Living Unison: D. H. Lawrence on Harmonizing the Conflicting Parts We Live With
10. 7 AprBut We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about How to Be More Alive
11. 4 AprMarie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated
12. 3 AprWilliam James on Love

March 2024

1. 30 MarBetween Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age
2. 27 MarThe Ecology of Intimacy
3. 22 MarLove Anyway
4. 21 MarAwakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice
5. 15 MarWe Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of Beginning Afresh
6. 13 MarSomething About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and Illustrated by Artist Nikki McClure
7. 11 MarGeorge Saunders on the Antidote to Regret
8. 9 MarCordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi
9. 7 MarMoonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary
10. 3 MarThe Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife
11. 2 MarThe Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence

February 2024

1. 28 FebJonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland
2. 23 FebHow Emotions Are Made
3. 19 FebHermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
4. 16 FebThe Last Bird
5. 15 FebThe Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao
6. 13 FebHow to Hold Your Remorse: Maira Kalman’s Illustrated Meditation on Wresting Defiant Joy in Living from an Imperfect Life
7. 7 FebThe Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks about the Blessed Overwhelm of Transformation
8. 4 FebFifty Million Years of Wonder: Paleontologist and Poet Loren Eiseley on How to Touch the Magic in the Mundane
9. 3 FebThich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge

January 2024

1. 31 JanTime and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning
2. 28 JanHow to Make a World: A Poem
3. 26 JanThe Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with Uncertainty
4. 24 JanWar, Peace, and Our Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote to Media Manipulation
5. 21 JanYes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective
6. 18 JanWhat Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie de Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and Teachers
7. 17 JanThe Story Behind Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and the Poet’s Own Stirring Reading of His Masterpiece
8. 15 JanThe Fairy Tale Tree: The Vintage Czech Children’s Book that Inspired Nick Cave
9. 13 JanSentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments
10. 11 JanBlue Glass
11. 9 JanThe Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful Flower Pigment Prints via a Victorian Imaging Process
12. 7 JanThe Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit
13. 4 JanA Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How a Forgotten Medieval Woman Gave Groups of Birds Their Strange Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith
14. 3 JanLove and the Sacred

2023 201

December 2023

1. 31 DecA Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings
2. 28 DecOf Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
3. 25 DecWe Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life Alive
4. 24 DecWhat It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange and Wondrous Science of Seeing with Sound
5. 20 DecFavorite Children’s Books of 2023
6. 20 DecFavorite Books of 2023
7. 17 DecWorking Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative Work
8. 14 DecThe Power of a Thin Skin
9. 12 DecThe Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes
10. 10 DecHow the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life on Our Pale Blue Dot
11. 9 DecHow to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
12. 7 DecWonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise
13. 5 DecPoetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder
14. 3 DecIn the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear
15. 2 DecA Brief History of the Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and How the Limits of Logic Can Liberate Us

November 2023

1. 28 NovNick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life
2. 28 NovHow to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Vulnerabilities of Being Human
3. 26 NovAlone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude
4. 24 NovOliver Sacks on the Necessity of Our Illusions
5. 23 NovHermann Hesse on How to Read a Book and How to Read Yourself
6. 18 NovThe Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music
7. 17 NovA Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love
8. 16 NovAbout War
9. 13 NovTurning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of Regeneration
10. 12 NovNecessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
11. 10 NovThe Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary
12. 8 NovThe Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes
13. 7 NovMay Sarton on Generosity
14. 5 NovThe Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected Ongoingness of Life
15. 4 Novbell hooks on Love
16. 3 NovFrom Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation
17. 1 NovOctavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis

October 2023

1. 31 OctThe Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime
2. 29 OctBlue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird
3. 26 OctAlain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind
4. 25 OctStarlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living Wonders
5. 23 Oct17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
6. 21 OctHow to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work and the Healing Power of Connection
7. 19 OctYellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive
8. 17 OctTo Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition
9. 15 OctThe Universe Turned Inside Out
10. 14 OctA Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory
11. 11 OctWhat Makes a Soul Mate: Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love
12. 9 OctMilan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
13. 7 OctThe Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith
14. 4 OctOctavio Paz on Freedom
15. 3 OctAfter Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing

September 2023

1. 30 SepUrsula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
2. 28 SepI Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Fable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light
3. 26 SepHow to Be Reborn Each Day
4. 24 SepHow to Recover Your “Human-Heartedness”: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen
5. 22 SepHow to Befriend Time: The Gospel of Pete Seeger and Nina Simone
6. 20 SepOctavia Butler’s Advice on Writing
7. 18 SepMars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life
8. 16 SepThe Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: An Uncommon Meditation on Presence and the Aperture of Wonder
9. 16 SepThe Living Wonder of Leafcutter Ants, in Mesmerizing Stop Motion
10. 12 SepEunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the Greenhouse Effect
11. 12 SepThe Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul
12. 11 SepMilan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives
13. 10 SepThe Half-Life of Hope
14. 6 SepHow to Live in Light: A Blind Hero of the French Resistance on Seeing the Heart of Life and Contacting the Oneness of Being
15. 5 SepKate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and Flowers
16. 4 SepThe Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression

August 2023

1. 31 AugLeaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
2. 29 AugD.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo
3. 27 AugNotes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being
4. 24 AugThe Poetic Science of the Ghost Pipe: Emily Dickinson and the Secret of Earth’s Most Supernatural Flower
5. 22 AugAlbert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work
6. 20 AugSpell Against Indifference: A Poem
7. 19 AugInto the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the Deep Ocean
8. 18 AugUses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power
9. 17 AugTerror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Lives from the Nazis
10. 15 AugDoris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection
11. 8 AugLittle Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss
12. 6 AugWhat Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art in Human Life
13. 5 AugThe Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself
14. 3 AugThe Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love

July 2023

1. 29 JulThe Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem About the Meaning and Measure of Enough
2. 29 JulExcellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly’s Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier
3. 27 JulSimone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
4. 23 JulThe Donkey and the Meaning of Life
5. 22 JulHow to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life
6. 20 JulMake Yourself a Seer: The Teenage Arthur Rimbaud on How to Be a Poet and a Prophet of Possibility
7. 18 Jul“Little Women” Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single
8. 15 JulThe Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded the Western Imagination
9. 13 JulLove’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
10. 11 JulBunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life Livable
11. 10 JulHow to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature
12. 8 JulThe Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking, Emotional Imagination, and How to Rehumanize the World
13. 6 JulHow to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
14. 4 JulHow People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of Self-Transcendence
15. 3 JulLook Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for Measuring the Universe
16. 1 JulFox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard Dioramas

June 2023

1. 29 JunReason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments of a Fulfilling Life
2. 29 JunThe Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself
3. 27 JunA Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music
4. 25 JunArchives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being
5. 22 JunMister Rogers on the Most Important Mindset for a Parent
6. 21 JunWonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop
7. 20 JunThe Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the Mind Renders Reality
8. 18 JunBetween Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
9. 17 JunEverything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions
10. 15 JunA Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
11. 10 JunKierkegaard on the Value of Despair
12. 8 JunThe Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer
13. 7 JunA Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts, the Psychology of Hopelessness, and the Path to Wholeness
14. 5 JunRobert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living
15. 2 JunThe Delicate Art of Connection: William James on the Most Important Attitude for Relationships

May 2023

1. 31 MayEnchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
2. 30 MayHow the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods
3. 27 MaySome Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe
4. 25 MayWholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality
5. 22 MayThe Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
6. 20 MayDead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
7. 17 MaySundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired Hilma af Klint
8. 17 MayMay Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
9. 16 MayWhat We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the Universe
10. 15 MayLove and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love
11. 14 MayWhat It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization
12. 13 MayThe Paradox of Free Will
13. 11 MayStunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi
14. 10 MayHow We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
15. 9 MayThe Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It
16. 7 MayBeethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians
17. 6 MayThe Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred
18. 4 MayThe Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
19. 2 MayConsciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30 Years Before ChatGPT

April 2023

1. 30 AprLoving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality
2. 28 AprPractical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and Seeing the Heart of Reality
3. 26 AprHenry James on Losing a Mother
4. 25 AprHeroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential Longing
5. 23 AprLet Your Heart Be Broken
6. 20 AprHow to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old
7. 19 AprMay Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work
8. 16 AprThe Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death
9. 13 AprMagnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism
10. 11 AprThe Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish Productivity and Compulsive Distraction
11. 9 AprHow to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty
12. 7 AprJealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our Most Destructive Emotion
13. 6 AprThe Broadest Portal to Joy
14. 5 AprKahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming Yourself Across the Sweep of Life

March 2023

1. 31 MarThe Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness
2. 28 MarColeridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love
3. 27 MarMay Sarton on Grieving a Pet
4. 25 MarLichens and the Meaning of Life
5. 21 MarFrom Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Was Born
6. 20 MarO Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring
7. 18 MarIn Praise of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on the Value of Generative Mistakes
8. 17 MarMay Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent
9. 17 MarStunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds
10. 14 MarThe Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
11. 14 MarThe Life of Trees: A Poem
12. 12 Mar2,000 Years of Kindness
13. 11 MarHow to Bear Your Loneliness
14. 9 MarThe Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda
15. 8 MarNikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and the Tragic Hero of Science Who Set Out to End Humanity’s Suffering
16. 7 MarThe Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated
17. 4 MarHow to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and Burnout
18. 4 MarTrust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
19. 2 MarGod, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
20. 1 MarThoreau on Living Through Loss
21. 1 MarHow to Survive Hopelessness: The Remarkable Story of a Shipwrecked Family

February 2023

1. 25 FebDostoyevsky on Animal Rights and the Deepest Meaning of Human Love
2. 24 FebThe Balancing Monsters of Love: Leonard Cohen on the Saints Among Us
3. 23 FebBear: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Life with and Liberation from Depression
4. 21 FebBertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness
5. 20 FebThe Poetry of Science: A Victorian Portal to Wonder
6. 18 FebSaying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence
7. 17 FebEinstein on Free Will and the Power of the Imagination
8. 15 FebIf You Fail at Love
9. 15 FebUser-Friendly Self-Deception: Philosopher Amélie Rorty on the Value of Our Delusions and the Antidote to the Self-Defeating Ones
10. 12 FebMeditation in Sunlight: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About the Relationship Between Presence, Solitude, and Love
11. 11 FebThe Creative Accident: Visionary Ceramicist Edith Heath on Serendipity, the Antidote to Obsolescence, and the Five Pillars of Timelessness
12. 7 FebNick Cave on the Art of Growing Older
13. 7 FebDinosaurs of the Sky: Consummate 19th-Century Scottish Natural History Illustrations of Birds
14. 6 FebThe Stoic Key to Fulfilling Your Destiny: Seneca on Nature and Human Nature
15. 5 FebIn Search of the Sacred: Pico Iyer on Our Models of Paradise
16. 4 FebThe Unphotographabe: Walt Whitman on Birds Migrating at Midnight
17. 3 FebThe 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

January 2023

1. 31 JanThe Two Objects of the Good Life: Mary Shelley’s Father on the Relationship Between Personal Happiness, Imagination, and Social Harmony
2. 29 JanAudre Lorde on What to Do When Difference Ruptures Society
3. 27 JanLewis Hyde on Work vs. Labor and How to Sustain the Creative Spirit
4. 26 JanWays of Being: Rethinking Intelligence
5. 25 JanWhat the Heart Keeps When the Mind Goes: May Sarton on Loving a Loved One Through Dementia
6. 23 JanTurning Loss and Loneliness into Wonder: How the Victorian Visionary Marianne North Revolutionized Art and Science with Her Botanical Paintings
7. 22 JanRootedness and Reclaiming the Sacred
8. 21 JanAgainst the Cult of Originality: Emerson on the True Nature of Genius
9. 21 JanThe Unphotographable: The Moon, the Tide, and the Living Shore
10. 19 JanThe Footpath to Yourself: Robert Macfarlane on Landscape as a Lens on Inner Life
11. 16 JanHow to Bear Each Other’s Suffering: Elie Wiesel on the Antidote to Our Paralysis in the Face of World-Overwhelm
12. 15 JanThe Homecoming of the Soul: Alfred Kazin on Music
13. 13 JanHow to Be Less Harsh with Yourself (and Others): Ram Dass on the Spiritual Lessons of Trees
14. 12 JanA Responsibility to Wonder: Pioneering Neuroscientist Charles Scott Sherrington on the Spirituality of Nature
15. 11 JanLet This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times
16. 10 JanThe Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother
17. 8 JanMaya Angelou on Writing and Our Responsibility to Our Creative Gifts
18. 6 JanThe Neurophysiology of Enchantment: How Music Casts Its Spell on Us
19. 6 JanRichard Powers on Rewriting Our Future History
20. 4 JanBees and the Nectar of Our Gifts: Seneca on Creativity
21. 3 JanThe Tragic Miracle of Consciousness: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning and Purpose of Hope
22. 1 JanMay Sarton on How to Live Openheartedly in a Harsh World

2022 237

December 2022

1. 29 DecLove, Music, Solitude, and How to Be More Alive: The Best of The Marginalian 2022
2. 29 DecNick Cave on the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness
3. 26 DecThe Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence
4. 26 DecTo a Wreath of Snow: Patti Smith Reads Emily Brontë
5. 23 DecMusic and the Price of What We Cherish: Margaret Atwood on the Bonds and Obligations of Creative Gifts
6. 22 DecHerbie Hancock’s Antidote to Burnout
7. 21 DecSymbiosis and the Unself: Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on How Interbeing Shapes Life on Earth
8. 20 DecRam Dass on Love
9. 18 DecIn Praise of Walking: A Poetic Manifesto for Our Simplest Instrument of Discovery, Transformation, and Transcendence
10. 18 DecThe Labyrinth of Consciousness: Walter Benjamin on Dreams and the Undertow of the Mind
11. 17 DecVirginia Woolf on Self-Knowledge and the Limits of Empathy
12. 17 DecThe Unphotographable: Henry Williamson on the Transcendence of the Winter Sky After a Blizzard
13. 16 DecHow to Savor Winter: A Century-Old Poetic Recipe for Bliss in the Bleakest Season
14. 14 DecVictorian Instagram: The 19th Century’s Most Adorable Natural History Illustrations of Monkeys, Lemurs, and Other Tree-Dwelling Mammals
15. 13 DecWhat Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone
16. 13 Dec“Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Radical and Rapturous Life, Illustrated
17. 12 DecWhat America Means: Poet Muriel Rukeyser on the Source of Character and Creativity
18. 11 DecNature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves
19. 10 DecFavorite Books of 2022
20. 6 DecThe Boltzmann Brain Paradox: An Animated Thought Experiment About the Hallucination of Reality
21. 5 DecMontaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge
22. 4 DecTrees, Rivers, and the Exquisite Interdependence of Life: Artist Meredith Nemirov’s Consummate Map Paintings
23. 3 DecAffirmation in Solitude: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Poetry of Penguins
24. 2 DecHow the Psychedelic Amanita Muscaria Mushroom May Have Inspired the Santa Legend of Lapland
25. 1 DecThe Art of Divination: D.H. Lawrence on the Power of Pure Attention
26. 1 DecThe Poetry of Science and Wonder as an Antidote to Self-Destruction: Rachel Carson’s Magnificent 1952 National Book Award Acceptance Speech

November 2022

1. 29 NovFarmhouse: Sophie Blackall’s Poetic Illustrated Tribute to Time and Tenderness
2. 28 NovThe First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature
3. 26 NovTwenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny by Papa: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Almost Unbearably Sweet Account of Sole-Parenting His Small Son
4. 25 NovThe Choreography of Everyday Life: A Leaping Antidote to Our Modern Loneliness
5. 25 NovDavid Bowie on Creativity and His Advice to Artists
6. 23 NovHow the Great Zen Master and Peace Activist Thich Nhat Hanh Found Himself and Lost His Self in a Library Epiphany
7. 22 NovStorytelling and the Art of Tenderness: Olga Tokarczuk’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
8. 21 NovThe Art of Receiving: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning of Gratitude
9. 20 NovHow the Eel Almost Became America’s Thanksgiving Food
10. 19 NovThe Poetic Science of the Aurora Borealis
11. 17 NovHow We Co-Create and Recreate the World: Octavio Paz on Sor Juana, Poetry as Rebellion, and the Creative Collaboration Between Writers and Readers
12. 16 NovM.C. Escher on Creativity and Grasping the Largest Mystery Through the Immense Beauty of the Very Small
13. 15 NovLe Monde de la Mer: Stunning 19th-Century French Illustrations of the Wonders of the Sea
14. 14 NovThe First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking
15. 13 NovNature Is Always Listening: The Wondrous Science of How Mushrooms Respond to Music
16. 12 NovThe Unphotographable: Jack Kerouac’s Soaring Diary Entry About Self-Understanding and the Elemental Vastness of the Windblown World
17. 10 NovNobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska’s Poem “Love at First Sight,” Illustrated
18. 10 NovNick Cave on Music, Mystery, and the Relationship Between Vulnerability and Freedom
19. 9 NovThe Log from the Sea of Cortez: John Steinbeck’s Forgotten Masterpiece on How to Think and the Art of Seeing the Pattern Beyond the Particular
20. 7 NovThe Temple of Flora: Stunning Illustrations of Flowers Inspired by Erasmus Darwin’s Radical Scientific Poem About the Sexual Reproduction of Plants
21. 6 NovHow to Be a Swimmer in the Stream of Time: Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on the Antidote to Disorientation and Isolation
22. 3 NovThe Woman Who Saved Native Song
23. 2 NovReclaiming Our Human Potential in the Age of Technological “Progress”

October 2022

1. 31 OctBeethoven and the Art of Amends
2. 31 OctThe Otherworldly Wonders of This World: Stunning 19th-Century Natural History Illustrations of Lizards
3. 29 OctThe Unphotographable: Richard Powers on the Majestic Mass Migration of Sandhill Cranes
4. 28 OctThe Spirit of Revolt: The Radical Russian Dissident Prince Peter Kropotkin on How to Reboot a Complacent Society
5. 27 OctHow to Move a Mind: Barry Lopez on the Power of Metaphor Over Data
6. 26 OctWomen Holding Things: Artist Maira Kalman’s Tender and Quirky Ode to the Weight of the World and the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being
7. 25 OctRepentance, Repair, and What True Forgiveness Takes: Lessons from Maimonides for the Modern World
8. 23 Oct16 Life-Learnings from 16 Years of The Marginalian
9. 22 OctDostoyevsky in Love
10. 20 OctC.S. Lewis on Our Task in Troubled Times
11. 19 OctJames Baldwin on Reconciling Acceptance and Action
12. 19 OctHow to Cherish Your Human Condition: The Poetic Naturalist Loren Eiseley on the Meaning of Life
13. 16 OctNick Cave on Creative Work as an Instrument of Self-Forgiveness and the Courage of Hope in Cynical Times
14. 15 OctMusic and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song
15. 14 OctAgainst Brute Force: D.H. Lawrence on the Superpower of Vulnerability
16. 14 OctFirst Kiss: An Animated Ode to One of Life’s Great Felicities
17. 12 OctArtist Nina Katchadourian’s Otherworldly Plants Made of Trash and Tenderness
18. 8 OctHenry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community
19. 5 OctMushrooms: The Story Behind Sylvia Plath’s Poem About the Tenacity of the Creative Spirit
20. 4 OctM.C. Escher on Loneliness, Creativity, and How Rachel Carson Inspired His Art, with a Side of Bach
21. 2 OctPeter Pan in Kensington Gardens: Arthur Rackham’s Haunting Illustrations for the Barrie Classic

September 2022

1. 30 SepThe Dark Wood of the Golden Birds: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Philosophical Children’s Book About Love and Loss
2. 28 SepHow to Make the Best of Life: A Visionary Victorian Recipe for Lasting Self-Actualization
3. 25 SepAn Irishwoman’s Fierce and Poetic Record of Traversing the World on a Bicycle in the Middle of the Cold War
4. 24 SepMesmerizing Microphotography of the Hairs of Different Animals Under Polarized Light
5. 23 SepKierkegaard on How to Save Yourself
6. 22 SepKahlil Gibran on How Storms Catalyze Creativity
7. 22 SepApple Meditation: John Burroughs on the Portable Philosophy of Humanity’s Favorite Fruit
8. 21 SepCreativity at the End: Leonard Cohen on Preparing for Death
9. 20 SepA Different Solitude: Pioneering Aviator Beryl Markham on What She Learned About Life in the Bottomless Night
10. 18 SepBarry Lopez on the Cure for Our Existential Loneliness and the Three Tenets of a Full Life
11. 17 SepVirginia Woolf on the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater and the Remedy for Self-Doubt
12. 15 SepDarwin Among the Machines: A Victorian Visionary’s Prophetic Admonition for Saving Ourselves from Enslavement by Artificial Intelligence
13. 12 SepEmerson on How to Trust Yourself
14. 12 SepFluid Becoming Solid Becoming Wonder: Artist Meghann Riepenhoff’s Otherworldly Cyanotype Prints of Ice Formation
15. 10 SepThe Banquet of Life: Some of the Finest Advice on Growing Old, Growing Young, and Becoming Your Fullest Self
16. 10 SepUnselfing Social
17. 9 SepThe Eel and the Meaning of Life: The Science and Mystery of Earth’s Most Enigmatic Creature
18. 8 SepLeo Tolstoy on the Obsolescence of the State as a Form of Government and the Antidote to Violence
19. 7 SepRelationship Rupture and the Limbic System: The Physiology of Abandonment and Separation
20. 5 SepAstronomy as Existential Calibration: A Poetic Manifesto for Science from Two Centuries Before the Golden Age of Space Telescopes
21. 4 SepThe Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing
22. 3 SepHow Money Was Born: The Small Seashell and the Fierce Maldivian Queen That Made the Modern World
23. 1 SepHow to Live with Loneliness: A Tender Illustrated Parable About Feeling Alien and the Redemptive Power of Love

August 2022

1. 31 AugLoneliness and the Trinity of Creativity: Ada Lovelace, the Poles of the Mind, and the Source of Her Imaginative Powers
2. 31 AugWisdom Engines: A Visual Meditation on Consciousness, the Elasticity of Time, and the Nature of Happiness
3. 28 AugThe Eternal Lyric of Love and Loss: “Goodnight Moon” Author Margaret Wise Brown’s Little-Known Poems for the Tragic Love of Her Life
4. 27 AugThe Unphotographable: Georgia O’Keeffe on the Grandeur of Machu Picchu and Peru’s Otherworldly Mountains
5. 26 AugBook of Questions: Pablo Neruda’s Poetic Reckonings with the Magic and Mystery of Life, Illustrated
6. 26 AugA Chaos of Delight: Darwin on the Sublimity and Transcendence of Nature
7. 24 Aug3 Things to Learn from a Child, 7 from a Thief: Bob Dylan’s Favorite Rabbi Teaching
8. 23 AugHenry Miller on the Secret to Growth, in Art and in Life
9. 22 AugThe Everlasting Wonder of Being: How a Cold Cosmos Kindles the Glow of Consciousness
10. 21 AugThe Unphotographable: Iris Murdoch’s Portal to Transcendence, from the Sea to the Stars
11. 20 AugWhat Makes Us and What We Make: Kwame Anthony Appiah on the Mutability of Identity and the Limiting Lens of Cultural Appropriation
12. 19 AugThe World Brain: H.G. Wells’s Prophetic 1930s Vision for the Internet and How to Fix Its Ugliest Present Breaking Point
13. 17 AugNathaniel Hawthorne on How to Look and Really See
14. 15 AugA Language for the Exhilaration of Being Alive: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Music and the Universe
15. 15 AugFrom Living Tree Bridges to AI Systems: A Design Catalogue of Optimism and Resilience for a More Livable Future
16. 14 AugWhy Are We Not Better Than We Are
17. 13 AugInner Space, Outer Space, and How to Be an Astronaut in the Cosmos of Connection: Eric Berne on the Key to True Intimacy
18. 12 AugHow to Bear Your Suffering: The Young Poet Anne Reeve Aldrich’s Extraordinary Letter to Emily Dickinson
19. 10 AugPsychedelic Dinosaurs, Four-Dimensional Hummingbirds, and How We Got Our Vision: Color, Consciousness, and the Dazzling Universe of Tetrachromacy
20. 9 AugThe Milky Way, the Pond, and the Meaning of Life: Thoreau on Solitude, Sympathy, and the Salve for Melancholy
21. 7 AugThe Soul, the Universe, and the Vastness of Music: Composer Caroline Shaw Brings Whitman and Tennyson to Life in the Spirit of the Golden Record
22. 7 AugFantastic Toys: German Artist Monika Beisner’s Vintage Celebration of the Unselfconscious Imagination
23. 6 AugThe Unphotographable: Alaskan Paradise with Rockwell Kent
24. 5 AugNick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious
25. 4 AugLife and Death and More Life: Leo Tolstoy on Science, Spirituality, and Our Search for Meaning
26. 3 AugSappho and the Fevered Heart: Anne Carson on Jealousy
27. 2 AugHow to Be a Citizen of Earth: Learning from the Children of Palau

July 2022

1. 31 JulControl for Surrender: Henry Miller’s Stunning Letter to Anaïs Nin About the Value of and the Antidote to Despair
2. 30 JulThe Unphotographable: Alpine Transcendence with Mary Shelley
3. 30 JulIn a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books
4. 27 JulThe Great Naturalist John Burroughs on the Art of Noticing and What Artists Can Learn from Naturalists
5. 24 JulSwimming as the Poetry of the Body
6. 24 JulThe Planter of Modern Life: How a Forgotten Visionary Pioneered Permaculture and Revolutionized Our Relationship with the Land
7. 24 JulThe Unphotographable: A Desert Sunset in the American Southwest
8. 22 JulTo the Young Who Want to Die: Roxane Gay Reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s Lifeline of a Poem
9. 22 JulSeashells and the Spiral of Wonder at the Intersection of Art and Science
10. 19 JulCloud Chambers and Cosmic Rays: The Quest to Unravel One of the Most Dazzling Mysteries of the Universe
11. 18 JulCarrots and the Roots of Kindness, from Leo and Sophia Tolstoy to Ross Gay
12. 16 JulWhat We Keep in Loss: William Blake’s Stirring Letter to a Bereaved Father
13. 13 JulThe Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love
14. 13 JulChance, Choice, and the Avocado: The Strange Evolutionary and Creative History of Earth’s Most Nutritious Fruit
15. 13 JulGames People Play: The Revolutionary 1964 Model of Human Relationships That Changed How We (Mis)Understand Ourselves and Each Other
16. 10 JulThe Bittersweet Story of the Real-Life Peaceful Bull Who Inspired Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s Ferdinand
17. 8 JulWhat Makes Great Art: The Single Most Important Element in Creative Work
18. 8 JulA Penguin’s Antidote to Abandonment
19. 6 JulImprovisation and the Quantum of Consciousness
20. 6 JulThe Story of the Stunning Victorian Algae Herbarium and the Eccentric Balloonist Who Awakened the Terrestrial Imagination to the Enchanted Forest of the Sea
21. 4 JulKeith Haring on Change and Creativity
22. 3 JulJuly 3, 1947: The Young Jack Kerouac Coins “Beat” While Grieving His Father
23. 1 JulThe Sea and the Soul: Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on the Elemental Blues of Being
24. 1 JulNature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain

June 2022

1. 30 JunMyths, Facts, and Poetic Truth: Amy Lowell on Legends as a Lens on Our Elemental Limitations and Powers
2. 29 JunAnne Pratt’s Flowers, Ferns, and Quiet Ferocity: How a Middle-Aged Victorian Woman Became One of the Great Masters of Scientific Illustration
3. 26 JunInto the Heart of Life: Richard Powers on Living with Bewilderment at the Otherworldly Wonder of Our World
4. 24 JunRebecca Solnit on Writing, Gardening, and the Life of the Mind
5. 24 JunIris Murdoch on the Myth of Closure and the Beautiful, Maddening Blind Spots of Our Self-Knowledge
6. 22 JunOctavia Butler on Change and the Meaning of God
7. 21 JunArtist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Our Existential Wanderlust
8. 20 JunHumanity’s First Cosmic Gallery of Children’s Art: What the Youngest Members of Our Young Species Most Cherish About Life on Earth
9. 18 JunThe Most Valiant Way to Complain Is to Create: William Blake and the Stubborn Courage of the Unexampled
10. 18 JunBarry Lopez on Storytelling and His Advice on the Three Steps to Becoming a Writer
11. 17 JunThe Human Kaleidoscope and the Unwritten Story of the World: “Radiolab” Creator Jad Abumrad’s Superb Caltech Commencement Address
12. 16 JunJune 16, 1816: The Inception of Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s Prescient Warning About Reproductive Rights
13. 15 JunTwenty Reasons for Being
14. 15 JunBronson Alcott on the Meaning of Family and How Our Friendships Humanize Us: His Ecstatic Diary Entry Upon His Daughter Louisa May’s Birth
15. 14 JunThe Beginning and the End: Robinson Jeffers’s Epic Poem About the Interwoven Mystery of Mind and Universe
16. 12 JunThe Grandmother, the Mermaid, and the Soul: Poet Elizabeth Alexander on How Literature Widens the Portal of the Possible
17. 10 JunThe Solace of Open Spaces
18. 9 JunThe Art of Living: The Contemplative Cartoonist Grant Snider’s Illustrated Love Letter to Noticing and Manifesto for Self-Liberation from Striving
19. 9 JunDismantling the Dogmas of Life and Death: How the Forgotten Prodigy William James Sidis Presaged the Quantum Undoing of Time and Thermodynamics
20. 8 JunThe Day Hermann Hesse Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Tree
21. 7 JunConsciousness and the Constellations: Cognitive Scientist Alexandra Horowitz Reads and Reflects on Robert Frost
22. 5 JunThe Power of the Bittersweet: Susan Cain on Longing as the Fulcrum of Creativity
23. 5 JunThe Cello and the Nightingales: Beatrice Harrison and How the World’s First Fake News United Humanity in Our First Collective Empathy for Nature
24. 3 JunOctopus Blues and the Poetry of the Possible
25. 2 JunThe Stoic Key to Kindness

May 2022

1. 31 MayPoet Mark Doty on Connection and Creativity
2. 31 MayHaunting Cyanotype Portraits of Flowers by Artist Rosalind Hobley
3. 29 MayCatching the Light of the World: The Entwined History of Vision and Consciousness
4. 28 MayIris Murdoch on the Five Phases of Freedom, in Literature and Life
5. 27 MayHow to Bear Your Fear and What It Means to Love: A Tender Meditation in Ink, Watercolor, and Wonder
6. 25 MayYour Brain on Grief, Your Heart on Healing
7. 25 MaySo I Danced Again: A Vibrant Animated Meditation on the Limits of Words and the Power of Embodied Music in our Search for Meaning
8. 22 MayThe Healing Power of Nature and Beauty: Florence Nightingale on Expediting Recovery from Illness and Burnout
9. 21 MayTrees at Night: Rebecca Solnit Reads and Reflects on a Stunning Century-Old Poem by the Young Harlem Renaissance Poet Helene Johnson
10. 17 MayTrial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
11. 14 MayThe Faith of the “Naturist”: John Burroughs’s Superb Century-Old Manifesto for Spirituality in the Age of Science
12. 13 MayThings to Look Forward to: An Illustrated Celebration of Living with Presence in Uncertain Times, Disguised as a Love Letter to the Future
13. 10 MayThe Science of Working Out the Body and the Soul: How the Art of Exercise Was Born, Lost, and Rediscovered
14. 7 MayGardening and the Creative Spirit: 200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Rewards of Soil and Seed
15. 6 MayBiking Through Time: Brooklyn Youth Chorus Sings Composer Paola Prestini’s Anthem for Women’s Freedom of Body and Mind
16. 4 MayFinn’s Feather: A Tender Illustrated Meditation on Rediscovering the Joy of Being Alive After Loss

April 2022

1. 30 AprThe Ever-Present Origin: Swiss Poet, Philosopher, and Linguist Jean Gebser’s Prescient 1949 Vision for the Evolution of Consciousness
2. 29 AprKosmos: Artist Dustin Yellin Reads Walt Whitman’s Timeless Hymn to Human Nature as a Miniature of the Universe
3. 26 AprYou Are a Wonder, You Are a Nobody, You Are an Ever-Drifting Ship: Melville on the Mystery of What Makes Us Who We Are
4. 24 AprEmily Dickinson’s Botanical Inspiration: Stunning 19th-Century Flower Paintings by the Forgotten Artist and Poet Clarissa Munger Badger
5. 22 AprAtoms with Consciousness: Yo-Yo Ma Performs Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Wonder of Life, Animated
6. 20 AprThe Art of Putting Your Talent in the Service of the World: The Russian Prince Turned Anarchist and Pioneering Scientist Peter Kropotkin’s Advice to the Young
7. 14 AprOctopus Empire: An Animated Poem
8. 12 AprWe Are Made of Music, We Are Made of Time: Violinist Natalie Hodges on the Poetic Science of Sound and Feeling
9. 7 AprThe More Loving One: The Science of Entropy and the Art of Alternative Endings
10. 7 AprHow to Face the Years with Confidence: The Mystery of the World’s Most Majestic Tree
11. 6 AprThe Remedy for Despair
12. 2 AprThe Art of Choosing Love Over Not-Love: Rumi’s Antidote to Our Human Tragedy

March 2022

1. 30 MarIris Murdoch on Truth, the Meaning of Goodness, and How Attention Unmasks the Universe
2. 28 MarMargaret Wise Brown and the Puzzle of What Makes a Thing Itself (and You Yourself)
3. 26 MarDirge Without Music: Emmy Noether, Symmetry, and the Conservation of Energy (Amanda Palmer Reads Edna St. Vincent Millay, Animated by Sophie Blackall)
4. 24 MarDavid Byrne’s Illustrated History of the Possible Future
5. 22 MarThe Fascinating Science of How We Think Not with the Brain But with the World
6. 20 MarWonder, Hungry Wolves, and the Whimsy of Resilience: Arthur Rackham’s Haunting 1920 Illustrations for Irish Fairy Tales
7. 15 MarCosmic Consolation for Human Hardship: The Great Naturalist John Burroughs on How to Live with Life
8. 11 MarHow to Fix a World: A Four-Year-Old’s Prayerful Poem, Animated by a Ukrainian Artist
9. 10 MarLosing Love, Finding Love, and How to Live with the Fragility of It All
10. 7 MarThe Building Blocks of Peace: Pioneering X-Ray Crystallographer and Activist Kathleen Lonsdale’s Quiet Masterpiece on Moral Courage and Our Personal Power
11. 4 MarSingularity: An Animated Ode to Our Primeval Bond with Nature and Each Other (Toshi Reagon Sings Marissa Davis)
12. 3 MarThe Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death
13. 2 MarThe Fragile Species: A Forgotten Masterpiece of Perspective on How to Live with Our Human Nature
14. 1 MarNina Simone’s Gum and the Shimmering Strangeness of How Art Casts Its Transcendent Spell on Us

February 2022

1. 25 FebLet There Always Be Light: Dark Matter and the Mystery of Our Mortal Stardust (Patti Smith Reads Rebecca Elson)
2. 24 FebThe Atom and the Doctrine of Identity: Quantum Pioneer Erwin Schrödinger on Bridging Eastern Philosophy and Western Science to Illuminate Consciousness
3. 22 FebAloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work
4. 21 FebThe Flower and the Meaning of Life: Emily Dickinson, Michael Pollan, and The Little Prince
5. 18 FebAchieving Perspective: Trailblazing Astronomer Maria Mitchell and the Poetry of the Cosmic Perspective (David Byrne Reads Pattiann Rogers)
6. 16 FebJohn Lennon on Creativity
7. 16 FebWilderness, Solitude, and Creativity: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent’s Century-Old Meditations on Art and Life During Seven Months on a Small Alaskan Island
8. 11 FebMy God, It’s Full of Stars: Henrietta Leavitt, Edwin Hubble, and Our Human Hunger to Know the Universe (Tracy K. Smith Reads Tracy K. Smith)
9. 9 FebRebecca Solnit on Trees and the Shape of Time
10. 4 FebThe Birth of Ecology: Ernst Haeckel, Emily Dickinson, and How Life on Earth Came Abloom
11. 3 FebPattern, Perspective, and Trust: Barry Lopez on Storytelling
12. 2 FebFor Warmth: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Poetic Antidote to Anger
13. 1 FebThe Light Between Us

January 2022

1. 28 JanHighlights in Hindsight: Favorite Books of the Past Year
2. 28 JanTeenage Artist Virginia Frances Sterrett’s Hauntingly Beautiful Century-Old Dreamscapes for French Fairy Tales
3. 22 JanSonic Hieroglyphics and Acoustic X-Ray Vision: The Fascinating Science of How Dolphins and Whales Communicate
4. 20 JanNick Cave on Creativity, the Myth of Originality, and How to Find Your Voice
5. 18 JanThe Antidote to Melancholy: Robert Burton’s Centuries-Old Salve for Depression, Epochs Ahead of Science
6. 16 JanWhat Is Love? A Tender and Poetic Illustrated Celebration of the Elemental Human Quest
7. 15 JanInto the Submarine Fairyland: How Scientific Artist Else Bostelmann Invited the Terrestrial Imagination into the Wonder-World of the Deep Sea
8. 10 JanWhat Happens When We Die
9. 8 JanWhat Love Really Means: Iris Murdoch on Unselfing, the Symmetry Between Art and Morality, and How We Unblind Ourselves to Each Other’s Realities
10. 3 JanLet Them Not Say: Krista Tippett Reads Jane Hirshfield’s Prayerful Poem of Promise to the Future
11. 2 JanAlmost Nothing, yet Everything: A Stunning Japanese Illustrated Poem Celebrating Water and the Wonder of Life
12. 2 JanResolutions for a Life Worth Living: Attainable Aspirations Inspired by Great Humans of the Past
13. 1 JanThe Secret to Superhuman Strength: Alison Bechdel’s Illustrated Meditation on the Life of the Body, the Death of the Self, and Our Search for Meaning

2021 157

December 2021

1. 31 DecOf Trees, Solitude, Love, Loss, and the Stubborn Symphony of Aliveness: The Best of Brain Pickings / The Marginalian 2021
2. 26 DecJane Goodall on the Meaning of Wisdom and the Deepest Wellspring of Hope
3. 26 DecUnselfing into Oneness with the All: The Forgotten Visionary Margaret Fuller on Transcendence
4. 25 DecI Feel, Therefore I Am: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on Consciousness as a Full-Body Phenomenon
5. 20 DecEscaping the Trap of Efficiency: The Counterintuitive Antidote to the Time-Anxiety That Haunts and Hampers Our Search for Meaning
6. 19 DecThe Loveliest Children’s Books of 2021
7. 17 DecBefore I Grew Up: A Stunning Illustrated Elegy of Life, Loss, Our Search for Light, and Loneliness as a Crucible of Creativity
8. 14 DecDreams, Consciousness, and the Nature of the Universe
9. 12 DecNietzsche on Walking and Creativity
10. 10 DecOrwell’s Roses: Rebecca Solnit on How Nature Sustains Us, Beauty as Fuel for Change, and the Value of the Meaningless Things That Give Our Lives Meaning
11. 7 DecDo the Next Right Thing: Carl Jung on How to Live and the Origin of His Famous Tenet for Navigating Uncertainty
12. 5 DecThe Scar: A Tender Illustrated French Meditation on Loss and Healing
13. 5 DecMusic, the Neural Harmonics of Emotion, and How Love Recomposes the Brain

November 2021

1. 29 NovWinter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness
2. 28 NovDarwin’s Greatest Regret and His Deathbed Reflection on What Makes Life Worth Living
3. 25 NovLove and Limerence: The Forgotten Psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s Revelatory Research into the Confusions of Bonding
4. 21 NovTrailblazing Composer Julia Perry on Music as the Universal Language of Love and Mutual Understanding
5. 19 NovLife, Death, and What Fills the Interlude with Meaning: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stirring Diary Reflections on His Dying Mother and His Five-Year-Old Daughter
6. 16 NovShifting the Silence to Find the Meaning: 95-Year-Old Artist, Poet, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on How to Live and How to Die
7. 14 NovWomen in Trees: Sweet and Subversive Vintage Photographs of Defiant Delight
8. 12 NovWhen Your Parents Are Dying: Some of the Simplest, Most Difficult and Redemptive Life-Advice You’ll Ever Receive
9. 11 NovGravity, Grace, and What Binds Us: Poet Jane Hirshfield’s Timeless Hymn to Love and the Proud Scars of the Heart
10. 11 NovThe Geometry of Grief: A Mathematician on How Fractals Can Help Us Fathom Loss and Reorient to the Ongoingness of Life
11. 5 NovDrawing a Tree: Uncommon Vintage Italian Meditation on the Existential Poetics of Diversity and Resilience Through the Art and Science of Trees
12. 3 NovWhat Makes You You Makes the Universe: Nobel Laureate Erwin Schrödinger on Quantum Physics, Vedanta, and the Ongoing Mystery of What We Are
13. 1 NovMake Meatballs Sing: A Loving Illustrated Celebration of the Radical Nun, Artist, Teacher, and Activist Corita Kent

October 2021

1. 29 OctHalloween’s Forbidden Fruit: Michael Pollan on Gardening as Radicalism and the Scandalous Botanical Origin of the Broomstick in Flying-Witch Legends
2. 26 OctWhy Leaves Change Color and How We Become Who We Are: The Science of Chlorophyll and the Poetics of Personhood
3. 26 OctBlessing Sound, Blessing Light: David Whyte’s Poems for the Small Miracles of Presence that Awaken Us to the Wonder of Being Alive
4. 24 OctA General Theory of Possibility: The Abstract Art of Otherwise and the Physics of Resilience
5. 23 OctBecoming the Marginalian: After 15 Years, Brain Pickings Reborn
6. 21 OctHow to Get Love Less Wrong: George Saunders on Breaking the Patterns that Break Our Hearts
7. 21 OctKinship: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Love Poem to Trees, Transience, and Eternity
8. 18 OctThe Century-Old Field Guide to Wonder and the Forgotten Woman Who Laid the Groundwork for the Youth Climate Action Movement
9. 16 OctThe Art of Solitude: Buddhist Scholar and Teacher Stephen Batchelor on Contemplative Practice and Creativity
10. 13 OctThe Importance of Breakdowns: Crisis as a Clarifying Force for Authenticity
11. 12 OctThe Beauty of the Overlooked: Philip Henry Gosse’s Stunning 19th-Century Illustrations of Coastal Creatures and Reflections on the Delicate Kinship of Life
12. 10 OctThe 3 Buddhist Steps to Repairing a Relationship
13. 9 OctFuneral March for the First Cosmonaut: Artist, Poet, and Philosopher Etel Adnan’s Stunning Painted Poem About Life, Death, Loneliness, and Our Cosmic Redemption
14. 7 OctMLK’s Lost Lectures on Technology, Alienation, Activism, and the Three Ways of Resisting the System
15. 3 OctBroken Tulips: The Mystery of the World’s Most Prized Flower

September 2021

1. 30 SepA Process for the Transfer of Energy and Feeling: George Saunders on the Key to Great Storytelling
2. 28 SepSeptember 28, 1951: Alan Turing, the World’s First Digital Music, and the Poetry of Possibility
3. 26 SepLove, Death, and Whitman: Poet Mark Doty on the Paradox of Desire and the Courage to Love Against the Certitude of Loss
4. 25 SepPlace, Personhood, and the Hippocampus: The Fascinating Science of Magnetism, Autonoeic Consciousness, and What Makes Us Who We Are
5. 20 SepBetween Restlessness and Rapture: Autumn and the Sensual Urgency of Aliveness
6. 19 SepMarcus Aurelius on the Good Luck of Your Bad Luck: The Stoic Strategy for Weathering Life’s Waves and Turning Suffering into Strength
7. 17 SepThe Gifted Listener: Composer Aaron Copland on Honing Your Talent for Listening to Music
8. 14 SepBlue Floats Away: A Tender Illustrated Fable About Our Capacity for Change, Told Through the Story of Water
9. 12 SepRichard Powers on the Most Important Attitude You Can Take Toward Your Life and the World
10. 9 SepBridging the Island Universes of Our Experience: Aldous Huxley on Making Sense of Ourselves and Each Other
11. 9 SepThe Blue Horses of Our Destiny: Artist Franz Marc, the Wisdom of Animals, and the Triumph of Beauty Over Brutality
12. 3 SepThe Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality

August 2021

1. 31 AugHow to Feel More Alive Each Day and Night: A Cosmic Nightwalk with Derek Jarman
2. 31 AugProblems vs. Questions: Chekhov on Writing and the Essence of Creative Work
3. 28 AugEinstein’s Dreams: Physicist Alan Lightman’s Poetic Exploration of Time and the Antidote to Our Existential Anxiety
4. 27 AugBob Dylan on Vulnerability, the Meaning of Integrity, and Music as an Instrument of Truth
5. 25 AugAn Illustrated Love Letter to Rivers
6. 24 AugMary’s Room: An Animated Inquiry into the Limits of Knowledge and the Mystery of Consciousness
7. 22 AugMusic and the Mystery of Aliveness
8. 19 AugRecovering the Wonder of Flight: “Little Prince” Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on Finding the Miraculous in the Mechanical
9. 17 AugConsciousness and the Nature of the Universe: How Panpsychism and Its Fault Lines Shade in the Ongoing Mystery of What We Are
10. 14 AugTrees, Whales, and Our Digital Future: George Dyson on Nature, Human Nature, and the Relationship Between Our Minds and Our Machines
11. 13 AugThe Unbearable Lightness of Being a Mystery to Ourselves: Milan Kundera on Writing and the Key to Great Storytelling
12. 10 AugWater as a Portal to Transcendence
13. 7 AugThe Optimism of the Oyster

July 2021

1. 30 JulJosé Ortega y Gasset on the True Meaning and Measure of Intelligence
2. 26 JulThe Truelove: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Reaching Beyond Our Limiting Beliefs About the Love We Deserve
3. 25 JulRichard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death
4. 24 JulHumanity’s Most Successful Scientific Theory, Animated
5. 22 JulTree Islands and Networked Resilience: Biomimicry Pioneer Janine Benyus on the Power of Reciprocity in Nature and Our Human Future
6. 22 JulRocky Mountain Flowers: The Daring Life and Art of Pioneering Plant Ecologist Edith Clements
7. 19 JulArt and Aliveness: Willa Cather on the Senses as the Key to Creativity
8. 17 JulCan People Change? The Psychological Möbius Strip That Keeps Us from Ending Painful Relationships
9. 14 JulThe Antidote to the Irreversibility of Life: Hannah Arendt on What Forgiveness Really Means
10. 11 JulPleasure and Spaciousness: Poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s Advice on Writing, Discipline, and the Two Driving Forces of Creativity
11. 9 JulFrom Coffee to Cacao to Clitoria: Luscious Antique Botanical Illustrations of the Most Vibrant Flora of the Americas
12. 7 JulThe Handle on the Door to a New World: Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Magic and Power of Metaphor, Animated
13. 6 JulColtrane on Creativity, Perseverance Against Rejection, and How Hardship Fuels Art
14. 3 JulPerfect Flowers: Adventures in Nature’s Nonbinary Botany, with a Side of Emily Dickinson

June 2021

1. 30 JunHow Memory Makes Us and Breaks Truth: The Rashomon Effect and the Science of How Memories Form and Falter in the Brain
2. 29 JunRilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity
3. 27 JunA Love Story on Two Wheels: The Life and Legacy of Pioneering Photographer and Bicyclist Alice Austen
4. 25 JunWhom We Love and Who We Are: José Ortega y Gasset on Love, Attention, and the Invisible Architecture of Our Being
5. 22 JunDarling Baby: Artist Maira Kalman’s Painted Serenade to Attention, Aliveness, and the Vibrancy of Seeing the World with Newborn Eyes
6. 18 JunSylvia Plath and the Loneliness of Love
7. 16 JunSarah Mapps Douglass’s Flowers: The First Surviving Art Signed by an African-American Woman
8. 14 JunProbable Impossibilities: Physicist Alan Lightman on Beginnings, Endings, and What Makes Life Worth Living
9. 10 JunBorges’s Mirror of Enigmas: Chance, Meaning, and the Fragility of Knowing Who We Are
10. 7 JunThe Ocean and the Meaning of Life
11. 6 JunJames Baldwin on Love, the Illusion of Choice, and the Paradox of Freedom
12. 2 JunThe Conscience of Color, from Chemistry to Culture
13. 2 JunAlain de Botton on How to Get Over Rejection and Heartbreak

May 2021

1. 31 MayMatter, Music, and the Mind
2. 29 MayI Measure Every Grief I Meet: Emily Dickinson on Love and Loss
3. 27 MayCitizen Science, the Cosmos, and the Meaning of Life: How the Comet That Might One Day Destroy Us Gives Us the Most Transcendent Celestial Spectacle
4. 25 MayThoreau on Nature and Human Nature, the Tonic of Wildness, and the Value of the Unexplored
5. 20 MayThe Secret of Happiness: Bronson Alcott on Gardening and Genius
6. 19 MayThe Vast Wonder of the World: Ernest Everett Just’s Trailblazing Life and Life-Illuminating Science, Illustrated
7. 16 MaySylvia Plath on Living with the Darkness and Making Art from the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being
8. 14 MayThe Tree House: A Tender Wordless Story about Our Relationship to Nature
9. 12 MayAldous Huxley on Love, Knowledge vs. Understanding, and the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness
10. 8 MayBetween Science and Magic: How Hummingbirds Hover at the Edge of the Possible
11. 4 MayKeith Haring on Creativity, Empathy, and What Makes Us Who We Are
12. 3 MayTracing the Roots of the Big Apple: The Mysterious Origins of the World’s Most Famous City Moniker

April 2021

1. 30 AprWaking Up: David Whyte on the Power of Poetry and Silence as Portal to Presence
2. 29 AprThe Woman Who Saved the Hawks
3. 28 AprLove and Symmetry: Poet A. Van Jordan Imagines the Undelivered Feynman Lecture About the Mystery Lying Between Scientific Truth and Human Meaning
4. 23 AprGardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise
5. 22 AprThe Spirituality of Science and the Wonder of the Wilderness: Ornithologist and Wildlife Ecologist J. Drew Lanham on Nature as Worship
6. 21 AprOur Cosmic Humanity: Astronomer Jill Tarter Reads Nobel-Winning Polish Poet Wisława Szymborska
7. 17 AprThe Tree in Me: A Tender Painted Poem About Growing Our Capacity for Joy, Strength, and Love
8. 16 AprKiss of the Sun: Poetry, Love, and Our Search for Meaning at the End of Time
9. 13 AprThe Stoic Antidote to Frustration: Marcus Aurelius on How to Keep Your Mental Composure and Emotional Equanimity When People Let You Down
10. 10 AprRare Butterflies and Unsung Pollinators: Gorgeous 18th-Century Drawings by the First Artist and Naturalist to Depict the Wing-borne Beauty of the New World
11. 7 AprTangerine Meditation: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Simple, Profound Mindfulness Practice to Magnify Your Capacity for Joy
12. 5 AprGrowing Through Grief: Derek Jarman on Gardening as Creative Redemption, Consecration of Time, and Training Ground for Presence
13. 3 AprMaria Mitchell’s Telescope and the Kickstarting of Popular Astronomy: The Heartening Story of the World’s First Crowdfunding Campaign for Science
14. 2 AprNaomi Shihab Nye’s Beloved Ode to Kindness, Animated

March 2021

1. 31 MarGertrude Stein on Writing and Belonging
2. 28 MarSeeking an Aurora: A Wondrous Illustrated Celebration of Earth’s Most Otherworldly Spectacle of Light and Color
3. 25 MarSecrets from the Center of the World: Poet Joy Harjo’s Reflections on Science and Meaning in Response to an Astronomer’s Otherworldly Photographs of Earth
4. 23 MarOur Greatest Misconception About Love: Philosopher-Psychiatrist Esther Perel on Modern Loneliness as Ambiguous Loss and the Essential Elements of Healthy Relationships
5. 22 MarOf Trees, Tenderness, and the Moon: Hasui Kawase’s Stunning Japanese Woodblock Prints from the 1920s-1950s
6. 20 MarImmunity, Interdependence, and the Shared Root of Our Safety and Our Sanity: Eula Biss on the Science and Social Dynamics of Health as Communal Trust
7. 18 MarA Cenotaph for Newton: The Poetry of Public Spaces, the Architecture of Shadow, and How Trees Inspired the World’s First Planetarium Design
8. 16 MarAlan Watts on Love, the Meaning of Freedom, and the Only Real Antidote to Fear
9. 12 MarThe Peace of Wild Things: Wendell Berry’s Poetic Antidote to Despair, Animated
10. 10 MarProximity: A Meditative Tree-Inspired Visual Poem About Reaching for Something You Can’t Quite Grasp
11. 10 MarDorothy Lathrop’s Dreamscapes: Haunting Century-Old Illustrations of Fairy-Poems by the Woman Who Became the First to Win the Caldecott Medal
12. 6 MarWintering: Resilience, the Wisdom of Sadness, and How the Science of Trees Illuminates the Art of Self-Renewal Through Difficult Times
13. 2 MarHow Pythagoras and Sappho Radicalized Music and Revolutionized the World

February 2021

1. 27 FebItalo Calvino on Reading and Sex
2. 25 FebArt and the Human Spirit: Olivia Laing on What the Lives of Great Artists Reveal About Vulnerability, Love, Loneliness, Resistance, and Our Search for Meaning
3. 22 FebThe Pattern Inside the Pattern: Fractals, the Hidden Order Beneath Chaos, and the Story of the Refugee Who Revolutionized the Mathematics of Reality
4. 22 FebWe Are Water Protectors: An Illustrated Celebration of Nature, Native Heritage, and the Courage to Stand Up for Earth
5. 20 FebA Scientist’s Advice on Healing: A Soulful Animated Poem About Getting to the Other Side of Heartbreak
6. 19 FebRoad to Survival: Wisdom on Resilience from the Forgotten Visionary Who Shaped the Modern Environmental Movement
7. 17 FebStunning Celestial Art from the 1750 Astronomy Book That First Described the Spiral Shape of the Milky Way and Dared Imagine the Existence of Other Galaxies
8. 14 FebSnails and the Symphony of Love: A Sensual Interlude from the Orchestra of Evolution
9. 12 FebLove, Loss, and the Banality of Survival: Charles Darwin, His Beloved Daughter, and How We Find Meaning in Mortality
10. 12 FebFrida Kahlo’s Passionate Love Letter to Photographer Nickolas Muray, Who Took Her Most Famous Portrait
11. 1 FebOne Art: The Decades-Old Classic That Remains the Ultimate Consolation for Loss

January 2021

1. 31 JanMass, Energy, and How Literature Transforms the Dead Weight of Being: Jeanette Winterson on Why We Read
2. 30 JanMurmuration: A Stunning Animated Poem About Our Connection to Nature and to Each Other
3. 27 JanConfucius on Good Government, the 6 Steps to a Harmonious Society, and Self-Discipline as the Key to Democracy
4. 24 JanThe Boy Whose Head Was Filled with Stars: The Inspiring Illustrated Story of How Edwin Hubble Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Universe
5. 22 JanEinstein on the Political Power of Art
6. 21 JanDotspotting Expressionist Science: What the Mysterious Color-Markings on Storm Drains Have to Do with Rachel Carson’s Legacy and the War on a Deadly Virus
7. 19 JanLoops, the Limits of Language, the Paradoxical Loneliness of “I Love You,” and What Keeps Love Alive
8. 15 JanThe Blue Hour: A Stunning Illustrated Celebration of Nature’s Rarest Color
9. 12 JanDignity, Daring, and Disability: The Pioneering Queer Composer and Defiant Genius Ethel Smyth on Making Music While Going Deaf
10. 10 JanConchology, or, the Natural History of Shells: Stunning 19th-Century Illustrations from the World’s First Color Encyclopedia of Mollusks
11. 7 JanWhy We Like What We Like: Poet and Philosopher George Santayana on the Formation and Confirmation of Our Standards and Sensibilities
12. 6 JanChild of Glass: A Soulful Italian Illustrated Meditation on How to Live with Our Human Fragility
13. 3 JanToni Morrison on the Body as an Instrument of Joy, Sanity, and Self-Love
14. 2 JanThe Snail with the Right Heart: A True Story of Science and Love

2020 165

December 2020

1. 31 DecNew Year’s Eve: Astronomer and Poet Rebecca Elson’s Spare, Stunning Meditation on the Mystery of Being
2. 29 DecThe Best of Brain Pickings 2020
3. 26 DecHow to Live with Our Human Limitations: Physicist Brian Greene Reads and Reflects on Rilke’s Profoundest Elegy
4. 24 DecBeing an Earth Ecstatic: Poet Diane Ackerman on the Spirituality of Wonder Without Religion
5. 19 DecFavorite Books of 2020
6. 16 DecOn the Beach Alone at Night: Meshell Ndegeocello Reads Walt Whitman’s Ode to the Interconnectedness of Life
7. 16 DecThe Radical Act of Letting Things Hurt: How (Not) to Help a Friend in Sorrow
8. 15 DecOur Need for Each Other and Our Need for Our Selves: Muriel Rukeyser on Our Source of Strength in Times of Turmoil
9. 12 DecAlfred Russel Wallace’s Prophetic Prescription for Course-Correcting Away from Ecological Catastrophe and Toward Widespread Human Happiness
10. 8 DecThe Biggest Bluff: Control, Chance, and How the Psychology of Poker Illuminates the Art of Thriving Through Uncertainty
11. 5 DecIf You Come to Earth: A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Ways to Be Human and What Makes Our Miraculous Planet a World
12. 3 DecHow to Remake Yourself When You Are Undone: Lincoln and the Gift of His Suicidal Depression
13. 1 DecThe Four Buddhist Mantras for Turning Fear into Love

November 2020

1. 30 NovAmerican Utopia: Maira Kalman’s Spare Visual Poems Drawn from David Byrne’s Masterpiece of Anticynical Humanism
2. 28 NovAlain de Botton on Emotional Generosity and the Difficult, Largehearted Art of Charity of Interpretation
3. 25 NovAs If to Demonstrate an Eclipse: Billy Collins’s Delightful Ode to Gratitude
4. 25 NovCreativity, the Commonplace, and the Cosmos: Joseph Cornell’s Formative Visit to the Hayden Planetarium
5. 21 NovThe Lost Spells: A Rewilding of the Human Heart in a Lyrical Illustrated Invocation of Nature
6. 19 Nov250-year-old Natural History Illustrations of Some of Earth’s Strangest, Sweetest, and Most Otherworldly Creatures
7. 15 NovThe Twin Root of Our Confusion and Our Power in Times of Turmoil: Muriel Rukeyser on the Wellspring of Aliveness
8. 12 NovWalt Whitman on What Makes a Great Person and What Wisdom Really Means
9. 11 NovTo Believe in Things: Poet Joseph Pintauro’s Lost Love Poem to Life, Illustrated by the Radical Nun and Visionary Artist Sister Corita Kent
10. 7 NovThe Secret Life of Trees: Stunning Sylvan Drawings by Indigenous Artists Based on Indian Mythology
11. 4 NovBeyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche on Love, Perseverance, and the True Mark of Greatness
12. 1 NovThe Gospel of James Baldwin: Musician Meshell Ndegeocello Rekindles the Fire of Truth for This Time

October 2020

1. 31 OctOctavia Butler on Creativity, the Generative Power of Our Obsessions, and How We Become Who We Are
2. 30 OctThe Shadow Elephant: A Tender Illustrated Fable About What It Takes to Unblue Our Sorrows and Lighten the Load of Our Heaviest Emotions
3. 27 OctTrees, Stars, and the Wonder of Being Human: Astronomer Natalie Batalha Reads Dylan Thomas’s Cosmic Serenade to What We Are
4. 22 OctEssential Life-Learnings from 14 Years of Brain Pickings
5. 21 OctThe Science of How Alive You Really Are: Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life
6. 21 OctTenacity, the Art of Integration, and the Key to a Flexible Mind: Wisdom from the Life of Mary Somerville, for Whom the Word “Scientist” Was Coined
7. 18 OctAudre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing
8. 16 OctBruce Lee on Death and What It Takes to Be an Artist of Life
9. 13 OctEvery Color of Light: A Stunning Japanese Illustrated Celebration of Change, the Sky, and the Fullness of Life
10. 12 OctNobel Laureate Louise Glück’s Love Poem to Life at the Horizon of Death
11. 8 OctThe Unwinding: An Uncommonly Enchanting Painted Poem Celebrating the Wilderness of the Imagination and Our Capacity for Love, Trust, and Hope
12. 7 OctJohn Muir on the Calm Assurance of Autumn as a Time of Renewal and Nature as a Tonic for Mental and Physical Health
13. 5 OctEmily Dickinson’s Revolutionary and Reclusive Life, in a Lyrical Picture-Book from the Lacuna Between Fact and Myth
14. 2 OctThe Big Picture: Ellen Bass’s Immense and Intimate Poem of Perspective and Persistence, Read by Amanda Palmer

September 2020

1. 29 SepSappho’s Timeless Elegy for Heartbreak at the End of Love, Reimagined in a Haunting Choral Invocation
2. 28 SepThe Love of Truth and the Truth of Love: Bertrand Russell on the Two Pillars of Human Flourishing
3. 24 SepHow an Artist is Like a Tree: Paul Klee on Creativity
4. 22 SepFrederick Douglass on the Wisdom of the Minority and the Real Meaning of Solidarity
5. 20 Sep13-Year-Old Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Prejudice, Its Antidote, and the Five Documents That Shaped Humanity
6. 18 Sep“I Go Down to the Shore”: Natascha McElhone Reads Mary Oliver’s Spare, Splendid Antidote to Melancholy and Personal Misery
7. 17 SepProust on the Essence of Creativity and the Hallmark of Artistic Genius
8. 16 SepThe Sun, the Shadow, and the Unselved Self: Helen Macdonald on Eclipses as an Antidote to Ideologies of Otherness and a Portal to Human Connection
9. 11 SepKeith Haring on Creativity, Self-Doubt, and the Love of Life in the Face of Death
10. 8 SepBetween Owls and Roses: Mary Oliver on the Meaning of Life
11. 6 SepComing Out in the Time of COVID: A 90-Year-Old Man’s Moving Conversation with His Daughter During the Quarantine
12. 2 SepThe Mountain and the Meaning of Life: René Daumal’s Alpine Allegory of Courage and the Measure of Wisdom

August 2020

1. 29 AugArtist Maira Kalman Illustrates the Extraordinary Love Story of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
2. 23 AugOctavia Butler on How (Not) to Choose Our Leaders
3. 23 AugNeuroscientist David Eagleman on How the Physiology of Drug Withdrawal Explains the Psychology of Heartbreak and Loss
4. 19 AugSometimes: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming
5. 15 AugPsychedelic Fishes from the World’s First Natural History Encyclopedia of Marine Creatures Illustrated in Color
6. 13 AugCreativity in the Time of COVID: Zadie Smith on Writing, Love, and What Echoes Through the Hallway of Time Suddenly Emptied of Habit
7. 11 AugHow to Master the Ancient Art of Walking Meditation in Modern Life: A Field Guide from the Pioneering Buddhist Teacher Sylvia Boorstein
8. 7 AugHow the World Holds Together: Patti Smith Reads Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Premonition of Particle Physics
9. 6 AugChinua Achebe on Art as a Form of Citizenship: Lessons in Creativity as “Collective Communal Enterprise” from the Igbo Tradition of Mbari
10. 4 AugA Cat: Leonard Michaels’s Playful and Poignant Meditations on the Enigma of Our Feline Companions and How They Reveal Us to Ourselves
11. 1 AugThe Children’s Moon: Marilyn Nelson’s Lovely Poem about Wonder and the Grandeur of the Universe as the Antidote to Our Manufactured Divides

July 2020

1. 30 JulThe Science and Splendor of Australian Butterflies: How Two 19th-Century Teenage Sisters’ Forgotten Paintings Sparked a Triumph of Modern Conservation
2. 29 JulJohn McPhee on Writing and the Relationship Between Artistic Originality and Self-Doubt
3. 27 JulNick Cave on Living with Loss and the Central Paradox of Grief as a Portal to Aliveness
4. 27 JulThe Building Blocks of Moral Revolution: Jacqueline Novogratz on the Art of Accompaniment Along the Path to Justice and the Courage to Defy Cynicism in the Face of Staggering Requisite for Change
5. 25 JulAn Illustrated Love Letter to Gardening
6. 24 JulOde to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt: Poet Ross Gay’s Subtle, Stunning Meditation on Learning to Live and Learning to Die
7. 22 JulD.H. Lawrence on Trees, Solitude, and How We Root Ourselves When Relationships Collapse
8. 18 JulJohn Lewis on Love, Forgiveness, and the Seedbed of Personal Strength
9. 17 JulViktor Frankl on How Music, Nature, and Our Love for Each Other Succor Our Survival and Give Meaning to Our Lives
10. 14 JulThe Poet of the People Sings of Freedom: Carl Sandburg on Human Nature’s Greatest Hindrance to Social Justice and How to Transcend It
11. 13 JulTwo Friends: A Lovely Illustrated Celebration of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony’s Entwined Paths as Pioneers of Freedom, Justice, and Equality
12. 10 JulAll Human Beings: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Reimagined as a Soulful Serenade to Diversity and Dignity by Composer Max Richter
13. 8 JulThe Storm, the Rainbow, and the Soul: Coleridge on the Interplay of Terror and Transcendence in Nature and Human Nature
14. 5 JulA Young Poet’s Love Letter to Earth and to the Double Courage of Facing a Broken Reality While Refusing to Cease Cherishing This Astonishing World in Its Brokenness
15. 3 JulMary Shelley on the Courage to Speak Up Against Injustice and the Power of Words in Revising the World
16. 2 JulThe Stuff of Stars: A Stunning Marbled Serenade to the Native Poetry of Science and the Cosmic Interleaving of Life

June 2020

1. 29 JunSnakes, Dragons, and the Power of Music: Strange and Wondrous 18th-Century Illustrations of Real and Mythic Serpents
2. 27 JunDrawing on Walls: An Illustrated Homage to Keith Haring, His Irrepressible Art of Hope, and His Beautiful Bond with Children
3. 24 JunAstronomy, Race, and the Unwitnessed Radiance Inside History’s Blind Spots
4. 19 JunAs an Antidote to Fear of Death, I Eat the Stars: Vintage Science Face Masks
5. 18 JunLeibniz’s Blades of Grass: The Philosophy of Plants, Difference as the Wellspring of Identity, and How Diversity Gives Meaning to the World
6. 17 JunA Poem for Peter: A Lyrical Illustrated Tribute to Ezra Jack Keats and the Making of the First Mainstream Children’s Book Starring a Black Child
7. 14 JunAcross the Centuries of Sadness: Beloved Writers on the Mightiest Antidote to Depression
8. 13 JunI Long to Read More in the Book of You: Moomins Creator Tove Jansson’s Tender and Passionate Letters to the Love of Her Life
9. 11 JunUnforgetting a Forgotten Pioneer: How the 19th-Century Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Blazed the Path for Women of Color in the Fine Arts
10. 9 JunPoet, Philosopher, and Pioneering LGBT Rights Advocate Edward Carpenter’s Moving Love Letter of Gratitude to Walt Whitman
11. 6 JunRonald McNair’s Civil Disobedience: The Illustrated Story of How a Little Boy Who Grew Up to Be a Trailblazing Astronaut Fought Segregation at the Public Library
12. 4 JunOctavio Paz on Being Other, the Courage of Responsibility, the Meaning of Hope, and the Only Fruitful Portal to Change
13. 2 JunGrammy Award-Winning Jazz Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant Reads Audre Lorde’s Poignant Poem “The Bees”

May 2020

1. 31 MaySpell to Be Said against Hatred: Poet Jane Hirshfield’s Miniature Masterwork of Insistence, Persistence, and Compassionate Courage
2. 29 MayThe Osbick Bird: Edward Gorey’s Tender and Surprising Vintage Illustrated Allegory About the Meaning of True Love
3. 27 MayThrush Song: A Stunning Harmonic Tribute to Rachel Carson’s Courage by Composer Paola Prestini and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
4. 25 MayWhen Did Time Really Begin? The Little Loophole in the Big Bang
5. 23 MayPoet and Philosopher David Whyte’s Gorgeous Letter to Children About Reading, Amazement, and the Exhilaration of Discovering the Undiscovered
6. 22 MayNothing Is Fixed: James Baldwin on Keeping the Light Alive Amid the Entropic Darkness of Being, Set to Music
7. 20 MayWonder and the Sacred Search for Truth: Ann Druyan on Why the Scientific Method Is Like Love
8. 17 MayYes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning
9. 14 MayOne Fine Day: David Byrne Performs His Hymn of Optimism and Countercultural Anthem of Resistance and Resilience with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus
10. 13 MayUrsa Major: Elizabeth Gilbert Reads a Poignant Forgotten Poem About the Big Dipper and Our Cosmic Humanity
11. 11 MayThe Great Barrier Reef: Stunning 19th-Century Illustrations from the World’s First Encyclopedia of One of Earth’s Most Vibrant and Delicate Ecosystems
12. 7 MayLove Beyond Label: Lisel Mueller’s Tender Poem About the Lush, Unclassifiable Bond Between Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
13. 6 MayKierkegaard on the Spiritual and Sensual Power of Music, the Essence of Genius, and the Key to a Timeless Work of Art
14. 4 MayWander: Natascha McElhone Reads Hermann Hesse’s 100-Year-Old Love Letter to the Wisdom of Trees in a Cinematic Walk Through Kew Gardens
15. 4 MayAnd So It Goes: A Lyrical Illustrated Meditation on the Cycle of Life
16. 1 MayBeyond the Blues: Poet Mary Ruefle’s Stunning Color Spectrum of Sadnesses

April 2020

1. 29 AprDrawings by Children: Lisel Mueller’s Subtle Poem About Breaking Free from Our Frames of Reference
2. 29 AprConscience in Revolt: Sophie Scholl on Suffering, Strength, and the Deepest Wellspring of Courage
3. 27 AprThe Cosmic Miracle of Trees: Astronaut Leland Melvin Reads Pablo Neruda’s Love Letter to Earth’s Forests
4. 24 AprPhysicist Brian Greene on Mortality, Our Search for Meaning, and the Most Important Fact of the Universe
5. 24 AprSingularity: Marie Howe’s Ode to Stephen Hawking, Our Cosmic Belonging, and the Meaning of Home, in a Stunning Animated Short Film
6. 24 AprJames Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe
7. 22 AprBrokenness as Belonging: “lake-loop” by Mojave American Poet Natalie Diaz, in a Stunning Animated Short Film by Artist Ohara Hale
8. 18 AprEinstein’s Mother: A Poem by Tracy K. Smith
9. 16 AprFrankenstein Author Mary Shelley on the Surest Remedy for a Sunken Spirit and What Makes Life Worth Living
10. 14 AprThe Universe in Verse 2019: Full Show
11. 14 AprPhilip, the Last Sweet Potato: A Non-Binary Quarantine Love Story from Beloved Children’s Book Author and Illustrator Sophie Blackall
12. 14 AprThe Value of Being Uncomfortable: Herman Melville on Privation as a Portal to Appreciation and Aliveness
13. 10 AprAntidotes to Fear of Death: Astronomer and Poet Rebecca Elson’s Stunning Cosmic Salve for Existential Tremors
14. 10 AprAnne Lamott’s Wondrous Letter to Children About Books as Antidotes to Isolation, Portals to Perspective, and Crucibles of Self-Discovery
15. 8 AprBicycling for Ladies: An Illustrated 1896 Manifesto for the Universal Splendors of the Bicycle as an Instrument of Self-Reliance, a Training Machine for Living with Uncertainty, and a Portal to Joy
16. 6 AprStanding on the Shoulders of Solitude: Newton, the Plague, and How Quarantine Fomented the Greatest Leap in Science
17. 3 AprVirginia Woolf on Finding Beauty in the Uncertainty of Time, Space, and Being
18. 1 AprStillness as a Form of Action: De Tocqueville on Cataclysm as an Antidote to Cultural Complacency and a Catalyst for Growth

March 2020

1. 31 MarThis Is Chance: The Story of the 1964 Alaska Earthquake and the Remarkable Woman Who Magnetized People into Rising Together as Their World Fell Apart
2. 26 MarCrossing Brooklyn Ferry: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Walt Whitman’s Stunning Serenade to Our Interlaced Lives Across Space and Time
3. 26 MarThe Otherworldly Beauty of Jellyfish: How Ernst Haeckel Turned Personal Tragedy into Transcendent Art in the World’s First Encyclopedia of Medusae
4. 23 MarAn Antidote to Helplessness and Disorientation: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Our Human Fragility as the Key to Our Survival and Our Sanity
5. 20 MarRebecca Solnit on Growing Up, Growing Whole, and How We Compose Ourselves
6. 18 MarFiguring Forward in an Uncertain World
7. 17 MarAgainst Aloneness in the Web of Life: Ernst Haeckel, Charles Darwin, and the Art of Turning Personal Tragedy into a Portal to Transcendence
8. 15 MarToday, Another Universe: Jane Hirshfield’s Stunning Poem of Perspective and Consolation
9. 11 MarThe Psychology of Selfing: Pioneering Sociologist Elsie Clews Parsons’s Prophetic Century-Old Study of Power, the Rise of Divisiveness, and Why We Classify Ourselves and Others
10. 9 MarJosh Groban Reads Auden’s “After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics” and Tells the Inspiring Story of His Rebel Astronomer Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather
11. 6 MarThe Body Politic Electric: Walt Whitman on Women’s Centrality to Democracy
12. 3 MarCephalopod Atlas: Stunning, Sensual Illustrations from the World’s First Encyclopedia of Octopus and Squid Wonders from the Ocean Depths
13. 1 MarLife, Death, Chance, and Freeman Dyson

February 2020

1. 26 FebBetween the Body and the Soul: Neri Oxman Reads Walt Whitman
2. 26 FebCreativity as a Way of Being: Poet and Potter M.C. Richards on Wholeness, the Measure of Our Wisdom, and What It Really Means to Be an Artist
3. 24 FebImmortality in Passing: Poet Lisel Mueller, Who Lived to 96, on What Gives Meaning to Our Ephemeral Lives
4. 22 FebPhysicist Brian Greene on Finding Meaning Amid the Indifference of the Universe
5. 18 FebWhat It Takes to Grow Up, What It Means to Have Grown
6. 17 FebMarcus Aurelius in Love: The Future Stoic Philosopher and Roman Emperor’s Passionate Teenage Love Letters to His Tutor
7. 13 FebThe Poetics of Outer Toughness and Inner Tenderness: Gorgeous 19th-Century Engravings of Cacti
8. 12 FebAnne Gilchrist on Inner Wholeness, Our Greatest Obstacle to Happiness, and the Body as the Seedbed of a Flourishing Soul
9. 10 FebWilliam Godwin on the Advantages of the Multilingual Mind
10. 7 FebThe Moral of Flowers: An Illustrated Victorian Encyclopedia of Poetic Lessons from the Garden
11. 3 FebHow to Live and How to Die
12. 2 FebPatti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books

January 2020

1. 31 JanHow Hans Christian Andersen Turned His Heartbreak into One of the Most Beloved Fairy Tales of All Time
2. 29 JanA Curious Herbal: Gorgeous Illustrations from Elizabeth Blackwell’s 18th-Century Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants
3. 27 JanBach and the Cosmos of Belonging: Michael Pollan on the Medicinal Power of Music
4. 24 JanVirginia Woolf on Why We Read and What Great Works of Art Have in Common
5. 23 JanMy Mother’s Eyes: A Soulful Animated Short Film About Loss and the Unbreakable Bonds of Love
6. 21 JanCalculating the Incalculable: Thoreau on the True Value of a Tree
7. 19 JanThe Haunting Beauty of Snowflakes: Wilson Bentley’s Pioneering 19th-Century Photomicroscopy of Snow Crystals
8. 17 JanHow to Raise a Reader: Mary Shelley’s Father on Parenting and How an Early Love of Books Paves the Path to Lifelong Happiness
9. 16 JanHere and Now: An Illustrated Guided Meditation Inviting the Practice of Noticing as a Portal to Presence
10. 15 JanPoet Ross Gay on the Body as an Instrument of Thought and the Delights of Writing by Hand
11. 9 JanWhat You Need to Be Warm: Neil Gaiman Reads His Humanistic Poem for Refugees, Composed from a Thousand Definitions of Warmth from Around the World
12. 7 JanThe Spirit of the Woods: Poet and Painter Rebecca Hey’s Gorgeous 19th-Century Illustrations for the World’s First Encyclopedia of Trees
13. 6 JanKahlil Gibran on Befriending Time
14. 4 JanThe Art of Centering: Potter and Poet M.C. Richards on What She Learned at the Wheel About Non-Dualism, Creative Wholeness, and the Poetry of Personhood
15. 2 JanFigures of Thought: Krista Tippett Reads Howard Nemerov’s Mathematical-Existential Poem About the Interconnectedness of the Universe

2019 196

December 2019

1. 28 DecThe Best of Brain Pickings 2019
2. 26 DecHow Kepler Invented Science Fiction and Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial While Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Universe
3. 20 DecFavorite Books of 2019
4. 18 DecThe Universe in Verse: Sarah Kay Reads Whitman and Performs Her Splendid Song-Poem “Astronaut”
5. 17 DecFavorite Children’s Books of 2019
6. 12 DecGorgeous Vintage Japanese Illustrations of Animals and Scientific Phenomena
7. 11 DecHow to Give Sensitively: 18th-century Philosopher Edmund Burke’s Remarkable Letter to His Children About Generosity and the Importance of Honoring the Dignity of Those in Need
8. 10 DecWhat Color Is Night? Grant Snider’s Illustrated Invitation to Discover the Subtle Beauty of Darkness
9. 9 DecMargaret Atwood on Marriage
10. 6 DecThe Fate of Fausto: Oliver Jeffers’s Lovely Painted Fable About the Absurdity of Greed and the Existential Triumph of Enoughness, Inspired by Vonnegut
11. 5 DecDostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life
12. 4 DecThe Shortest Day: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Presence with the Passage of Time, Our Ancient Relationship with the Sun, and the Cycles of Life
13. 1 DecHow to Delight in Your Days: Poet and Gardener Ross Gay’s Yearlong Experiment in Willful Gladness

November 2019

1. 30 NovFrench Artist Paul Sougy’s Stunning Mid-Century Scientific Illustrations of Plants, Animals, and the Human Body
2. 28 NovDebbie Millman’s Touching Letter to Children About How Books Solace Our Heartbreak and Salve Our Existential Loneliness
3. 25 NovAlain de Botton on Existential Maturity and What Emotional Intelligence Really Means
4. 25 NovThe Mushroom Hunters: Neil Gaiman’s Subversive Feminist Celebration of Science and the Human Hunger for Truth, in a Gorgeous Animated Short Film
5. 21 NovKahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself
6. 20 NovDelight as a Daily Practice: A Poetic Illustrated Meditation on the Meaning of Happiness and Its Quiet Everyday Sources
7. 19 NovStephen Hawking’s Black Hole Information Paradox: An Animated Explanation of the Greatest Unsolved Challenge to Our Understanding of Reality
8. 17 NovThe Measure of a Rich Life: Wendell Berry on Delight as a Force of Resistance and the Key to Felicitous Sanity During Hardship
9. 13 NovThe Key to Good Love: Relationship Lessons from Trees
10. 13 NovBertrand Russell on How to Heal an Ailing and Divided World
11. 12 NovBeginnings at the End of Love: Rebecca West’s Extraordinary Love Letter to H.G. Wells in the Wake of Heartbreak
12. 11 NovNature’s Lessons in Gender Equality, Gender Diversity, and True Love: The Male Pregnancy of the Seahorse and the Fearless Trans Fish of the Coral Seas
13. 6 NovPatti Smith’s Imaginative Remedy for Insomnia
14. 4 NovEdward Weston on the Most Fruitful Attitude Toward Life, Art, and Other People
15. 4 NovAbraham Lincoln on Equality, the Slippery Slope of Exclusion, and How Nationalism Betrays the Nation’s Founding Ideals
16. 1 NovEngraving Is Eternal Work: How to Dodge a Deadline Like William Blake

October 2019

1. 30 OctRoar Like a Dandelion: Beloved Children’s Book Author and Poet Ruth Krauss’s Lost Alphabet of Joy, Illustrated
2. 29 OctIn Transit: Neil Gaiman Reads His Touching Tribute to the Lonely Genius Arthur Eddington, Who Confirmed Einstein’s Relativity
3. 28 OctLosing the Birds, Finding the Words: Eve Ensler’s Extraordinary Letter of Apology to Mother Earth
4. 24 Oct13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings
5. 23 OctThe Weighing: Jane Hirshfield’s Stunning Ode to Resilience
6. 21 OctUrsula K. Le Guin’s Playful and Profound Children’s Poem about the Power of Books and Why We Read
7. 19 OctEvery Atom Belonging to Me as Good Belongs to You: Whitman’s Immortal Words, Illustrated in Stunning Cyanotype
8. 17 OctThe Shape of Music: Maurice Sendak’s Insightful Forgotten Meditation on Fantasy, Feeling, and the Key to Great Storytelling
9. 14 OctHow to Disappear: The Art of Listening to Silence in a Noisy World
10. 14 OctTales of Mystery and Imagination: Rare, Arresting Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories by the Irish Stained Glass and Book Artist Harry Clarke
11. 11 OctAutumn Light: Pico Iyer on Finding Beauty in Impermanence and Luminosity in Loss
12. 10 OctThe Universe in Verse: Bill T. Jones Performs Poet Ross Gay’s Ode to Our Highest Human Potentialities
13. 8 OctThe Stunning Astronomical Beadwork of Native Artist Margaret Nazon
14. 7 OctLorraine Hansberry on Depression and Its Most Reliable Antidote
15. 3 OctKevin Kelly’s Letter to Children About the Glory of Books and the Superpower of Reading in an Image-Based Digital Culture
16. 1 OctWhat Miss Mitchell Saw: An Illustrated Celebration of How 19th-Century Astronomer Maria Mitchell Blazed the Way for Women in Science

September 2019

1. 30 SepShelley on Poetry and the Art of Seeing
2. 24 SepPatti Smith on Love, Loss, Dreams, and Mending the Broken Realities of Life
3. 24 SepWhen I Am Among the Trees: Mary Oliver’s Spare and Stunning Ode to Serenity
4. 22 SepThe Great Czech Playwright Turned Dissident Turned President Václav Havel on Hope
5. 19 SepAn Illustrated Ode to Attentiveness and the Art of Listening as a Wellspring of Self-Understanding, Empathy for Others, and Reverence for the Loveliness of Life
6. 18 SepExtraordinary Letters on Love, Life, Death, Courage, and Moral Purpose Without Religion from a Victorian Woman Who Lived and Died with Uncommon Bravery
7. 16 SepChaos, Time, and the Origin of Everything: Stephen Fry on How Ancient Greek Mythology and Modern Science Meet to Illuminate the Cradle of Being
8. 15 SepA Pioneering Case for the Value of Citizen Science from the Polymathic Astronomer John Herschel
9. 10 SepThe First Surviving Photograph of the Moon: John Adams Whipple and How the Birth of Astrophotography Bridged Impermanence and Immortality
10. 9 SepOn Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran
11. 6 SepDoes Your Dog Really Love You and What Does That Really Mean? A Journey in Cognitive Science and Moral Philosophy
12. 5 SepThrough the First Antarctic Night: A Pioneering Polar Explorer on the Resilience of the Human Spirit
13. 3 SepArt, Atheism, and the Freedom of Expression: Frida Kahlo’s Searing Protest Letter to the President of Mexico
14. 2 SepI Like You: An Almost Unbearably Lovely Vintage Illustrated Ode to Friendship

August 2019

1. 29 AugAdvice to a Daughter from Pioneering Political Philosopher and Feminism Founding Mother Mary Wollstonecraft
2. 27 AugAncestor Worship with Mother Nature: How Indigenous Death Rituals Illuminate the Web of Life
3. 22 AugHow to Find Your Artistic Voice: Ben Folds on Empathy, Creativity, and the Courage to Know Yourself
4. 21 AugHow Nature Works, in Stunning Psychedelic Illustrations of Scientific Processes and Phenomena from a 19th-Century French Physics Textbook
5. 20 AugViktor Frankl on Humor as a Lifeline to Sanity and Survival
6. 19 Aug20-Year-Old Lord Byron’s Moving Elegy for His Beloved Dog
7. 16 AugUnderland: An Enchanting Journey into the Hidden Universe Beneath Our Feet
8. 14 AugAgainst the Slippery Slope of Injustice: Amanda Palmer Reads Wendell Berry’s Stunningly Prescient Poem “Questionnaire”
9. 13 AugEating the Sun: A Lovely Illustrated Celebration of Wonder, the Science of How the Universe Works, and the Existential Mystery of Being Human
10. 12 AugHow to Punctuate with Style: Lewis Thomas’s Charming Meditation on the Subtleties of Language
11. 9 AugNellie Bly Makes the News: An Animated Documentary About the Investigative Journalism Pioneer Who Paved the Way for Women in Media
12. 7 AugTrees at Night: Stunning Rorschach Silhouettes from the 1920s
13. 6 AugBorders and Belonging: Toni Morrison’s Prescient Wisdom on the Refugee Struggle, the Violence of Otherness, and the Meaning of Home
14. 6 AugFaster Than Light: Marilyn Nelson Reads Her Exquisite Poem About the Purpose of Life and How Our Impermanence Both Frustrates and Fuels Our Creative Drive
15. 4 AugThe Antidote to Prejudice: Walter Lippmann on Overriding the Mind’s Propensity for Preconceptions
16. 1 AugTrailblazing 19th-Century Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Social Change and the Life of the Mind
17. 1 AugRelationship Happiness and Your DNA: How One Gene Encodes Emotional Sensitivity

July 2019

1. 31 JulMeditations on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp: Polish Painter Józef Czapski on Literature, Survival, and the Human Soul
2. 30 JulWhat If: A French Illustrated Celebration of a More Possible World for the Children of Tomorrow
3. 26 JulThe Lioness in the Tall Grass: Farmer and Poet Laura Brown-Lavoie’s Extraordinary Letter to Children About the Power of Storytelling
4. 24 JulPoetic Symbology of the Heroine’s Journey: Artist Nancy Castille’s Stunning Homage to the Sumerian Proto-Feminist Goddess Inanna
5. 22 JulLorraine Hansberry, the Love of Freedom, and the Freedom of Love
6. 22 JulLeo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love
7. 19 JulAltered States of Consciousness: The Neuropsychology of How Time Perception Modulates Our Experience of Self, from Depression to Boredom to Creative Flow
8. 17 JulIs There a God? Stephen Hawking Gives the Definitive Answer to the Eternal Question
9. 16 JulDo You See What I See? A Poetic Vintage Art-Science Primer on the Building Blocks of the Perceptual World
10. 15 JulA Fuller Picture of Human Personality: Iris Murdoch on How Art Helps Us Reimagine Freedom, Moral Life, and Our Inner Worlds
11. 11 JulThe Universe in Verse: Cosmologist and Saxophonist Stephon Alexander Reads “Explaining Relativity” by Astronomer and Poet Rebecca Elson
12. 10 JulThe Fascinating Science of How Trees Communicate, Animated
13. 9 JulVisionary Maps of Time, Space, and Thought by America’s First Female Cartographer and Information Visualization Designer
14. 7 JulEcologist and Philosopher David Abram on the Language of Nature and the Secret Wisdom of the More-Than-Human World
15. 6 JulMiddle Age and the Art of Self-Renewal: An Extraordinary Letter from Pioneering Education Reformer Elizabeth Peabody
16. 4 JulThere Are Infinitely Many Kinds of Beautiful Lives: A Reading from “Figuring” Accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma, Benefitting Refugee Children
17. 2 JulKeats on the Measure of Compassion
18. 1 JulThe Great 19th-Century Biologist and Anatomist T.H. Huxley on Darwin’s Legacy and What Makes Us Human

June 2019

1. 28 JunA Day in the Life of the Jungle: A Poetic Vintage Illustrated Ode to the Wilderness and the Glorious Diversity of Life on Earth
2. 26 JunHow to Get Back Up and Keep Running: Amanda Palmer on Making Art When Life Unmakes You
3. 24 JunLangston Hughes’s Ardent Public Fan Letter to the Young Nina Simone
4. 20 JunKahlil Gibran on Friendship and the Building Blocks of Meaningful Connection
5. 19 JunHow John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor’s Pioneering Intimate Partnership of Equals Shaped the Building Blocks of Social Equality and Liberty for the Modern World
6. 18 JunThe Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature
7. 15 JunThomas Bernhard on Walking, Thinking, and the Paradox of Self-Reflection
8. 13 JunKeats on Depression and the Mightiest Consolation for a Heavy Heart
9. 12 JunRelativity, the Absolute, the Human Search for Truth: Nobel Laureate and Quantum Theory Originator Max Planck on Science and Mystery
10. 11 JunAlexander Chee’s Lovely Letter to Children About How Books Save Us
11. 10 JunWilliam Godwin’s Stunning 1794 Advice to a Young Activist on How to Confront the Status Quo with Self-Possession, Dignity, and Persuasive Conviction
12. 7 JunThe Everlasting Self: U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s Soulful Meditation on the Looping, Haunting Mystery of Being
13. 5 JunThe Conflicted Love Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller: How an Intense Unclassifiable Relationship Shaped the History of Modern Thought
14. 4 JunPlanting Trees as Resistance and Empowerment: The Remarkable Illustrated Story of Wangari Maathai, the First African Woman to Win the Nobel Peace Prize
15. 3 JunRobinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind

May 2019

1. 31 MayWhen I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer: Walt Whitman’s Timeless Reckoning with the Limits of Science
2. 31 May101-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Helen Fagin Reads Walt Whitman
3. 29 MayPrincipia vs. Príncipe: The Story of the Historic Eclipse Expedition That Refuted Newton, Confirmed Einstein’s Relativity, and United Humanity
4. 28 May“Little Prince” Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on Friendship
5. 27 MayThe Healing Power of Gardens: Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature
6. 23 MayMy Heart: An Emotional Intelligence Primer in the Form of an Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Poem About Our Capacity for Love
7. 23 MayTrailblazing Writer and Feminist Margaret Fuller on the Social Value of Intellectual Labor and Why Artists Ought to Be Paid
8. 22 MayWhy We Walk: A Manifesto for Peripatetic Empowerment
9. 21 MayShelley’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and the Spiritual Value of Vegetarianism
10. 20 MayMarcus Aurelius on Embracing Mortality and the Key to Living with Presence
11. 17 MayRebecca Solnit on Love, Purposeful Work, and the Meaning of Liberty: An Empowered Retelling of Cinderella
12. 16 MayToni Morrison on the Power of Art and the Writer’s Singular Service to Humanity
13. 15 May“Little Prince” Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on Love, Mortality, and Night as an Existential Clarifying Force for the Deepest Truths of the Heart
14. 14 MayReading for Life: Polish Poet Aleksander Wat on How Books Helped Him Survive in a Soviet Prison
15. 13 MayMoon: A Peek-Through Picture-Book About the Most Beloved Fixture of the Night Sky
16. 9 MayLost Radio Talks from the Harvard Observatory: Cecilia Payne, Who Discovered the Chemical Fingerprint of the Universe, on the Science of Stars and the Muse of All Great Scientists
17. 8 MayMoral Wisdom in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Cybernetics Pioneer Norbert Wiener’s Prophetic Admonition About Technology and Ethics
18. 7 MayRobert Browning on Artistic Integrity, Withstanding Criticism, and the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater
19. 6 MayVirginia Woolf on Being Ill as a Portal to Self-Understanding
20. 2 MayVisionary Photographer Edward Weston on the Importance of Cross-Disciplinary Curiosity in Creative Work
21. 1 MayOliver Sacks on Libraries

April 2019

1. 30 AprThe Universe in Verse: Regina Spektor Reads “Theories of Everything” by Astronomer, Poet, and Tragic Genius Rebecca Elson
2. 29 AprWhat It Means to Be a Writer: John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech About Slicing Through Humanity’s Confusion
3. 26 AprAdrienne Rich’s Haunting Poem About Love and the Cosmic Perspective
4. 26 AprThe Complementarity of Multiple Loves: The Victorian Philosopher Edward Carpenter on How Freedom Strengthens Togetherness in Long-Term Relationships
5. 18 AprSpring with Emily Dickinson
6. 17 AprThe Stoic Key to Living with Presence: Seneca on Time Spent vs. Saved vs. Wasted
7. 16 AprZadie Smith Reads Frank O’Hara’s Love Poem to Time via an Old-Fashioned Telephone Line
8. 15 AprJacqueline Woodson’s Lovely Letter to Children About Kindness, Presence, and How Books Transform Us
9. 12 AprHow to Save a World: Rachel Carson’s Advice to Posterity
10. 12 AprHow Eleanor Roosevelt Revolutionized Politics
11. 11 AprThe Six Steps to Cosmic Consciousness: A Pioneering Theory of Transcendence by the 19th-Century Psychiatrist and Adventurer Maurice Bucke
12. 8 AprThe Power of Antagonistic Cooperation: Albert Murray on Heroism and How Storytelling Redeems Our Broken Cultural Mythology
13. 3 AprThe Birth of Photography and the Death of Letters: Virginia Woolf on the Fate of Every Technology
14. 3 AprArthur Rackham’s Stunning 1926 Illustrations for “The Tempest”
15. 2 AprThe Universe in Verse 2018: Full Show
16. 1 AprLove, Pain, and Growth: The Forgotten Philosopher, Poet, and Pioneering LGBT Rights Activist Edward Carpenter on How to Survive the Agony of Falling in Love

March 2019

1. 29 MarAlain de Botton’s Lovely Letter to Children About Why We Read
2. 27 MarLincoln on How to Handle Criticism
3. 25 MarThe Jazz of Physics: Cosmologist and Saxophonist Stephon Alexander on Decoding the Song of the Universe
4. 22 MarAdvice on Writing from Emily Dickinson’s Editor
5. 21 MarThomas Mann on Justice, Human Dignity, and Why We Must Keep Revising and Renewing Our Ideals
6. 20 MarCrescendo: A Watercolor Ode to the Science, Strangeness, and Splendor of Pregnancy
7. 18 MarThe Single Best Piece of Advice on the Creative Life
8. 18 MarArt and the Nocturnal Imagination: Painter, Poet, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on Dreaming and Creativity
9. 13 MarNobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on Science, Spirit, and Our Search for Meaning
10. 12 MarTrailblazing 18th-Century Artist Sarah Stone’s Stunning Natural History Paintings of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Species
11. 11 MarThese Truths: Jill Lepore on How the Shift from Mythology to Science Shaped the Early Dream of Democracy
12. 7 MarOver the Rooftops, Under the Moon: A Lyrical Illustrated Meditation on How We Transmute Loneliness into Belonging
13. 6 MarThe Source of Self-Regard: Toni Morrison on Wisdom in the Age of Information
14. 6 MarElizabeth Barrett Browning on Art as the Crucible of Progress and the Dangerous Cult of Blind Innovation, with Rare Woodcuts by Artist Elfriede Abbe
15. 5 MarAnne Gilchrist’s Beautiful and Heartbreaking Love Letters to Walt Whitman
16. 4 Mar15-Year-Old Susan Sontag on the Explosive Elasticity of the Self

February 2019

1. 27 FebHarriet Hosmer on Art and Ambition: The World’s First Successful Woman Sculptor on What It Takes to Be a Great Artist
2. 26 FebThe Devil Teaches Thermodynamics: Sean Ono Lennon Reads Nobel-Winning Chemist and Poet Roald Hoffmann’s Ode to Entropy
3. 25 FebHannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss
4. 21 FebThe Year of the Whale: A Lyrical Illustrated Serenade to One of Our Planet’s Most Precious Creatures
5. 20 FebThoreau on the Long Cycles of Social Change and the Importance of Not Mistaking Politics for Progress
6. 20 FebEmblem of My Work: Artists Reimagine Laurence Sterne’s Iconic Marbled Page
7. 18 FebRomanian Philosopher Emil Cioran on the Courage to Disillusion Yourself
8. 14 FebHerman Melville’s Passionate, Beautiful, Heartbreaking Love Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne
9. 13 FebOtherness, Belonging, and the Web of Life: The Great Nature Writer Henry Beston on Our Fellow Creatures and the Dignity of Difference
10. 12 FebSalvation by Words: Iris Murdoch on Language as a Vehicle of Truth and Art as a Force of Resistance to Tyranny
11. 12 FebRachel Carson’s Birdsong Notation, Set to Music
12. 11 FebAnatomy of Deception and Self-Delusion: Walter Lippmann on Public Opinion, Our Slippery Grasp of Truth, and the Discipline of Apprehending Reality Clearly
13. 8 FebAfter Silence: Amanda Palmer Reads Neil Gaiman’s Stunning Poem Celebrating Rachel Carson’s Legacy of Culture-Shifting Courage
14. 7 FebYou Can’t Have It All
15. 6 FebJourney to Mount Tamalpais: Lebanese-American Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on Time, Self, Impermanence, and Transcendence
16. 5 FebThe More Loving One: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads W.H. Auden’s Sublime Ode to Our Unrequited Love for the Universe
17. 4 FebThe Great Naturalist John Burroughs on Art, the Courage to Defy Convention, and the Measure of a Visionary

January 2019

1. 31 JanJane Goodall’s Lovely Letter to Children About How Reading Shaped Her Life
2. 29 JanFrench Philosopher Maurice Blanchot on Writing, the Dual Power of Language to Reveal and Conceal, and What It Really Means to See
3. 27 JanIn Search of the Canary Tree: What a Disappearing Ancient Forest Can Teach Us About Resilience and Grace in a Changing World
4. 24 JanMusic, Feeling, and Transcendence: Nick Cave on AI, Awe, and the Splendor of Our Human Limitations
5. 23 JanPoet and Philosopher David Whyte on Love and Resisting the Tyranny of Relationship Labels
6. 22 JanStunning 19th-Century French Natural History Illustrations of Beetles
7. 21 JanHow to Rewire Your Broken Behavioral Patterns: Shakespeare’s Advice on Acquiring Better Habits
8. 17 JanThe Influence of Physical Causes Upon the Moral Faculty: How Founding Father Benjamin Rush Revolutionized Our Understanding of Mental Health
9. 16 JanBeing Against Becoming: Susan Sontag on Our Ambivalent Historical Conscience
10. 15 JanHermann Hesse on Solitude, the Value of Hardship, the Courage to Be Yourself, and How to Find Your Destiny
11. 14 JanMary Oliver’s Advice on Writing
12. 9 Jan“Dracula” Author Bram Stoker’s Extraordinary Love Letter to Walt Whitman
13. 8 JanNeil Gaiman Reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ode to Timelessness to His 100-Year-Old Cousin
14. 6 JanThe Astronomical Art of Maria Clara Eimmart: Stunning 17th-Century Drawings of Comets, Planets, and Moon Phases by a Self-Taught Artist and Astronomer
15. 4 JanRebecca Solnit’s Lovely Letter to Children About How Books Solace, Empower, and Transform Us
16. 3 JanHow to Keep Criticism from Sinking Your Soul: Walt Whitman and the Discipline of Creative Confidence
17. 2 JanThe Art-Science of Perspective: How an Innovation in Figurative Drawing Powered Galileo’s Astronomical Revolution