Maria Popova

People's careers were tanked for it, you know?

And you can't understand volcanism without understanding, you know, the tectonic nature of the earth, the idea that there are these plates, there are these fault lines.

And everything is so connected to these other questions of how we live our lives.

Back to the question of science is not separate.

Science is life.

Well, I also very much choose the people based on whatever it is I'm living through in my personal life and trying to sort through.

I mean, I believe in two kinds of self-help.

One is science, which unselfs you, right, unselfs you.

And it makes it very hard to worry about your breakup when you know you're suspended between nebulae and microbiomes, you know.

And the other is biography, because I find it deeply comforting.

First of all, lives that are already foreclosed, there's something comforting about knowing how a life ended.

They can't disappoint you.

You know exactly what happened.

Yeah.

And also, there's a wonderful profile of James Baldwin that Life magazine did in 1963.

And in it, it's kind of his most revealing interview.

And there's one line where he says,

You think your pain and suffering are unique in the history of the world, and then you read.

I've always read biographies, diaries, and letters in order to feel less alone in whatever it is I'm living through, because guess what?

Somebody else lived through it and suffered and survived.