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 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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The Nature Of with Willow Defebaugh · Maria Popova on Turning Matter Into Meaning · 12 May 2026 podcast

So in a way, evolution invented REM in the bird brain.

REM evolved in the bird brain in order for us to practice the possible into the real.

And I thought that was so beautiful.

Yes, we do.

So then I thought I was going to look at images of birds from these books that I love every night, pick one visually, just some kind of bird that appealed to me that day.

I would read the scientific description in the book.

I would sleep.

and in the morning see what the unconscious mind makes of the language i would reread the description and cut out words and compose of them little meditations on whatever was on my half conscious mind that day friendship love heartbreak suffering tiny little meditations and i would design them over the bird illustration from the book and i made cards of them so

So anyway, I had just done a workshop where I invited people to do their own with the first one I ever did, which was the Great Blue Heron from John James Audubon's Birds of America.

10 pages he wrote about the Great Blue Heron in the most poetic language.

And you did a beautiful one.

Wait, do you have it still?

We should read it.

And then somehow or other, I thought, because I knew we were going to be friends the moment we met, I thought we could start by doing an exercise every Saturday.

We would choose a piece of science news, and we would apply that process to make a divination from whatever the news that day was.

And we've been doing this every single week since, what, September, end of September?

Yeah.

And we called it reweaving the rainbow.

Because?

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