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.

Appearances

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

Bad things are going to happen.

And this is going to come back to a lot of parallels in culture today.

And he figured out that people just never changed behavior that way.

So he united them against the common enemy, which is big tobacco that exploits them.

And suddenly smoking rates dropped within a year.

Amazing.

So then he started this agency hoping to change the world with the communication arts.

Well, re-enchantment, your mission.

Your mission, yeah.

So...

I noticed that what they were circulating for inspiration, like office-wide forward emails, was just other work that other agencies had done.

And I, at 21, was like, let me tell you how to do your job.

This is not how creativity works.

And I was like, why don't you look at things that have nothing to do with your field and then combine them in interesting ways?

So I said, let me send every Friday three things that I learned this week that I think are interesting.

And it could be anything from like a neuroscience paper to like Japanese wood blocks from the 16th century to street art from my neighborhood in West Philly.

So they were like, okay.

So I started sending these emails and very quickly they were like, oh, can you add my girlfriend?

Oh, my dad wants to join.

And I was like, guys, I have a full college course load and four jobs.

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