She is the host of the Nerdette podcast where she explains how her job is to reflect on everything from literature and physics to astronomy and art. – “Guilt is the flip side of prestige and they’re both horrible reasons to do something.” Maria Popova Podcast – “I am driven by the yearning to learn how to live how to lead a meaningful life the fear of not having yet learned how to die.” – “Literature is the original Internet – every footnote, every citation, every allusion is essentially a hyperlink to another text, to another mind.” – “those who stand to gain from the manipulation of truth often prey on those bereft of critical thinking.” – “Nobody knows what goes on between two hearts including, more often than not, the people in whose chests they beat.” – “History is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgment and chance.” Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement and the poet Emily Dickinson.Įmanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman-and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.– “Greatness is consistency driven by a deep love of the work.”

Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists-mostly women, mostly queer-whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE AND BOOKPAGEįiguring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries-beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.

Figuring maria popova