Maria Popova
speaker
931 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 22 Jun
Maria Popova’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I've come around.
The Nature Of with Willow Defebaugh · Maria Popova on Turning Matter Into Meaning · 12 May 2026
podcast
We are matter, trembling with the longing for meaning.
And whether we know it or not, we're constantly making it.
With every little choice, everything we do is an attempt at meaning.
We use science to find the truth, and we use poetry to give the truth meaning.
Neither can really, we can't really be fully alive without these two wings of life.
Yes.
Well, I think most of our human problems are problems of selfing, this narrative spiral that burrows inward and inward and inward to the incremental exclusion of all that is not us.
And to me, wonder, which is, first of all, it requires the suspension of certainty, of not knowing, and therefore the suspension of the self, because the self is a cathedral of certainties, in a way, narrative certainties.
Wonder is the way out.
And for me, it saves me.
It saves me every day.
I mean, I am prone, like all of us, to rumination and all the, you know, maladies of selfing.
And nothing takes me out more than looking outward, looking at what I don't fully understand, but kind of apprehend with more than the mind.
Yeah.
Although I will say searching for wonder might not really be the way.
I think when you search, you already have a search image.
You already know what you're looking for.
It's more about being receptive and open to wonder and letting it ambush you when you least expect it.
The difference between search and discovery, I guess, which is where the internet has failed us.
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