Brain Pickings Icon
Brain Pickings

Reads by Maria Popova

How Pythagoras and Sappho Radicalized Music and Revolutionized the World
How Pythagoras and Sappho Radicalized Music and Revolutionized the World

The story of the invention of the love song, the world’s first algorithm, and the mathematics of transcendence.

read article

Art and the Human Spirit: Olivia Laing on What the Lives of Great Artists Reveal About Vulnerability, Love, Loneliness, Resistance, and Our Search for Meaning
Art and the Human Spirit: Olivia Laing on What the Lives of Great Artists Reveal About Vulnerability, Love, Loneliness, Resistance, and Our Search for Meaning

“We’re so often told that art can’t really change anything. But… it shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living.”

read article

We Are Water Protectors: An Illustrated Celebration of Nature, Native Heritage, and the Courage to Stand Up for Earth
We Are Water Protectors: An Illustrated Celebration of Nature, Native Heritage, and the Courage to Stand Up for Earth

An inspired signal from that sacred place where the spirit of wakeful action meets the bone of ancient wisdom.

read article

How Reading Is Like Love: Italo Calvino on the Ecstasy of Surrendering to Other Dimensions of Experience
How Reading Is Like Love: Italo Calvino on the Ecstasy of Surrendering to Other Dimensions of Experience

“Lovers’ reading of each other’s bodies… differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear… What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.”

read article

The Pattern Inside the Pattern: Fractals, the Hidden Order Beneath Chaos, and the Story of the Refugee Who Revolutionized the Mathematics of Reality
The Pattern Inside the Pattern: Fractals, the Hidden Order Beneath Chaos, and the Story of the Refugee Who Revolutionized the Mathematics of Reality

“In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.”

read article

A Scientist’s Advice on Healing: A Soulful Animated Poem About Getting to the Other Side of Heartbreak
A Scientist’s Advice on Healing: A Soulful Animated Poem About Getting to the Other Side of Heartbreak

“Try to accept this fat red hurt is your starting point.”

read article

View Full Site

Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I receive a small percentage of its price. Privacy policy.