The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “culture”

The Universe in Verse: John Cameron Mitchell Reads Walt Whitman’s Beautiful Least Known Poem
The Universe in Verse: John Cameron Mitchell Reads Walt Whitman’s Beautiful Least Known Poem

A lyrical serenade to a world we barely dare imagine and to our kinship with those creatures most different from us.

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Pythagoras on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom
Pythagoras on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom

Abiding insight into the aim of human existence from the man who revolutionized science and coined the word “philosopher.”

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The Trailblazing 18th-Century Woman of Letters Germaine de Staël on Ambition and the Crucial Difference Between Ego and Genius
The Trailblazing 18th-Century Woman of Letters Germaine de Staël on Ambition and the Crucial Difference Between Ego and Genius

“True glory cannot be obtained by relative celebrity.”

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Life, Loss, and the Wisdom of Rivers
Life, Loss, and the Wisdom of Rivers

“It’s a mercy that time runs in one direction only, that we see the past but darkly and the future not at all.”

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Optimism: A Poetic Stop-Motion Celebration of Nature’s Resilience and the Persistence of Life Against All Odds
Optimism: A Poetic Stop-Motion Celebration of Nature’s Resilience and the Persistence of Life Against All Odds

A spare and lovely ode to that which we so easily forget yet which animates the center of existence.

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How to Befriend the Universe: Philosopher and Comedian Emily Levine on the Art of Meeting Reality on Its Own Terms
How to Befriend the Universe: Philosopher and Comedian Emily Levine on the Art of Meeting Reality on Its Own Terms

From Newton to quantum physics to Hannah Arendt, a mind-bending, heart-opening invitation to welcome nature exactly as it is and ourselves exactly as we are.

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Singularity: Poet Marie Howe’s Beautiful Tribute to Stephen Hawking and Our Belonging to the Universe
Singularity: Poet Marie Howe’s Beautiful Tribute to Stephen Hawking and Our Belonging to the Universe

“Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were?”

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Two Hundred Years of Blue
Two Hundred Years of Blue

Cerulean splendor from Goethe, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Rachel Carson, Toni Morrison, and other literary masters.

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Nabokov’s Synesthetic Alphabet: From the Weathered Wood of A to the Thundercloud of Z
Nabokov’s Synesthetic Alphabet: From the Weathered Wood of A to the Thundercloud of Z

“The long A of the English alphabet… has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French A evokes polished ebony.”

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Pioneering Mathematician G.H. Hardy on How to Find Your Purpose and What Is Most Worth Aspiring for
Pioneering Mathematician G.H. Hardy on How to Find Your Purpose and What Is Most Worth Aspiring for

“If a man has any genuine talent he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.”

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