Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Through her multifaceted work, the Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based writer, reader, and researcher Maria Popova, founder of the “free, ad-free, A.I.-free, fully human” website and newsletter The Marginalian, braids together literature, science, philosophy, poetry, and art in beautiful, alchemical ways. Traversing centuries, she approaches various ideas and thinkers, living and dead, as active references in the expansive, ongoing project of learning what it means to be human. Now, nearly 20 years since the site’s founding, she continues to cultivate a singular space on the internet—one devoted not so much to information but to illumination. Her latest book, Traversal, which links figures such as Mary Shelley and Walt Whitman, alongside other writers, poets, physicists, and philosophers, serves as an intellectual journey and an across-time meditation on creativity, consciousness, and interconnectedness.

On this episode of Time Sensitive, Popova discusses the idea of “spiritual ancestors,” why today’s A.I. debates are fundamentally modern versions of age-old questions about the soul, and the mystery of being alive.

Show notes:

Maria Popova

[03:14] Traversal (2026)

[04:04] René Descartes

[05:07] Aristotle

[05:07] Susan Sontag

[05:15] Alan Lightman

[06:33] Mary Shelley

[06:33] Walt Whitman

[08:00] Frankenstein (1818)

[12:21] Frances “Fanny” Wright

[14:21] Rube Goldberg

[15:34] Freeman Dyson

[15:34] Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters (2018)

[20:43] Nina Simone

[21:40] Dan Frank

[21:40] Figuring (2019)

[31:24] The Marginalian

[40:18] T.S. Elliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)

[42:12] Iris Murdoch

[42:33] The Universe in Verse (2024)

[42:54] Patti Smith

[42:54] Rebecca Elson

[42:58] Vera Rubin

[43:33] “Urns for Living”

[51:18] Dacher Keltner’s Awe (2023)

[55:09] Sylvia Plath

[55:41] Leaves of Grass (1855)

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(160)

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten’s lifelong fascination with craft and making runs deep. He grew up in a multigenerational family of retailers and tailors in Antwerp, and in the 1980s, he was part of the famed avant-g...

24 Kesä 59min

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Through PIN–UP, the German-born, New York–based editor, curator, and founder Felix Burrichter continues to expand the possibilities of what an architecture magazine can be. He constructs intuitive bri...

17 Kesä 1h 20min

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

For our latest “site-specific” episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer meets Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, where she has called home for more than 60 yea...

27 Touko 1h 4min

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

The singer-songwriter Valerie June has a gift for writing contemporary songs that feel timeless and as though they could also have existed at various points across the past century. Her expansive laye...

13 Touko 1h 13min

George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World

George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World

The novelist, essayist, and short-story writer George Saunders—widely celebrated for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), which won the Man Booker Prize, and book of short stories Tenth of December ...

6 Touko 1h 11min

Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art

Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art

There’s an animate quality to the biomorphic sculptures of the self-taught, Utah-born artist Alma Allen. His works, carved from wood, marble, and bronze—and informed by his deep appreciation for the n...

22 Huhti 1h 6min

Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound

Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound

To be in a room with one of the artist and audiophile Devon Turnbull’s texture-rich Ojas hi-fi audio systems may be the closest one can get to being in the studio with the musicians themselves. It’s n...

8 Huhti 1h 4min

Suosittua kategoriassa Liike-elämä ja talous

sijotuskasti
mimmit-sijoittaa
psykopodiaa-podcast
ostan-asuntoja-podcast
rss-rahapodi
rss-sami-miettinen-neuvottelija
rss-inderes
rahapuhetta
pari-sanaa-lastensuojelusta
rss-porssipodi
hyva-paha-johtaminen
rss-lahtijat
rss-startup-ministerio
asuntoasiaa-paivakirjat
rss-oivalluksia-rahasta-elamasta
pomojen-suusta
rss-johtajatabut-aiheita-joista-ei-ole-tapana-puhua
rss-paasipodi
rss-bisneksen-pehmea-puoli
pelkkana-korvana