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The Marginalian

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interestingness, curated.

Improvisation and the Quantum of Consciousness

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The Story of the Stunning Victorian Algae Herbarium and the Eccentric Balloonist Who Awakened the Terrestrial Imagination to the Enchanted Forest of the Sea

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Keith Haring on Our Resistance to Change, the Dangers of Certainty, and the Root of Creativity

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July 3, 1947: The Young Jack Kerouac Coins “Beat” While Grieving His Father

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The Sea and the Soul: Poet, Painter, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on the Elemental Blues of Being

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Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Presses the Reset Button of the Brain’s Default Mode Network

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Myths, Facts, and Poetic Truth: Amy Lowell on Legends as a Lens on Our Elemental Limitations and Powers

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Anne Pratt’s Flowers, Ferns, Quiet Ferocity: How a Middle-Aged Victorian Woman Became One of the Great Masters of Scientific Illustration

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Into the Heart of Life: Richard Powers on Living with Bewilderment at the Otherworldly Wonder of Our World

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Rebecca Solnit on Writing, Gardening, and the Life of the Mind

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Iris Murdoch on the Myth of Closure and the Beautiful, Maddening Blind Spots of Our Self-Knowledge

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Octavia Butler on the Meaning of God

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Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Our Existential Wanderlust

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Humanity’s First Cosmic Gallery of Children’s Art: What the Youngest Members of Our Young Species Most Cherish About Life on Earth

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The Only Valiant Way to Complain Is to Create: William Blake and the Stubborn Courage of the Unexampled

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Barry Lopez on Storytelling and His Advice on the Three Steps to Becoming a Writer

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The Human Kaleidoscope and the Unwritten Story of the World: “Radiolab” Creator Jad Abumrad’s Superb Caltech Commencement Address

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June 16, 1816: The Inception of Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s Prescient Warning About Reproductive Rights

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Twenty Reasons for Being

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Bronson Alcott on the Meaning of Family and How Our Friendships Humanize Us: His Ecstatic Diary Entry Upon His Daughter Louisa May’s Birth

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The Beginning and the End: Robinson Jeffers’s Epic Poem About the Interwoven Mystery of Mind and Universe

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The Dandelion and the Meaning of Life: G.K. Chesterton on How to Dig for the “Submerged Sunrise of Wonder”

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The Grandmother, the Mermaid, and the Soul: Poet Elizabeth Alexander on How Literature Widens the Portal of the Possible

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The Solace of Open Spaces

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The Art of Living: The Contemplative Cartoonist Grant Snider’s Illustrated Love Letter to Noticing and Manifesto for Self-Liberation from Striving

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Dismantling the Dogmas of Life and Death: How the Forgotten Prodigy William James Sidis Presaged the Quantum Undoing of Time and Thermodynamics

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The Day Hermann Hesse Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Tree

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Consciousness and the Constellations: Cognitive Scientist Alexandra Horowitz Reads and Reflects on Robert Frost

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The Power of the Bittersweet: Susan Cain on Longing as the Fulcrum of Creativity

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The Cello and the Nightingales: Beatrice Harrison and How the World’s First Fake News United Humanity in Our First Collective Empathy for Nature

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Octopus Blues and the Poetry of the Possible

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The Stoic Key to Kindness

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Poet Mark Doty on Connection and Creativity

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Haunting Cyanotype Portraits of Flowers by Artist Rosalind Hobley

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Catching the Light of the World: The Entwined History of Vision and Consciousness

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Iris Murdoch’s Pocket History of the Five Phases of Freedom, in Literature and Life

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How to Live with Fear and What It Means to Love: A Tender Meditation in Ink, Watercolor, and Wonder

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Your Brain on Grief, Your Heart on Healing

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So I Danced Again: A Vibrant Animated Meditation on the Limits of Words and the Power of Embodied Music in our Search for Meaning

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The Healing Power of Nature and Beauty: Florence Nightingale on Expediting Recovery from Illness and Burnout

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Trees at Night: Rebecca Solnit Reads and Reflects on a Stunning Century-Old Poem by the Young Harlem Renaissance Poet Helene Johnson

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Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”

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The Faith of the “Naturist”: John Burroughs’s Superb Century-Old Manifesto for Spirituality in the Age of Science

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Things to Look Forward to: An Illustrated Celebration of Living with Presence in Uncertain Times, Disguised as a Love Letter to the Future

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The Science of Working Out the Body and the Soul: How the Art of Exercise Was Born, Lost, and Rediscovered

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200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Gardening

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Biking Through Time: Brooklyn Youth Chorus Sings Composer Paola Prestini’s Anthem for Women’s Freedom of Body and Mind

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Finn’s Feather: A Tender Illustrated Meditation on Rediscovering the Joy of Aliveness on the Other Side of Loss

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The Ever-Present Origin: Swiss Poet, Philosopher, and Linguist Jean Gebser’s Prescient 1949 Vision for the Evolution of Consciousness

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Kosmos: Artist Dustin Yellin Reads Walt Whitman’s Timeless Hymn to Human Nature as a Miniature of the Universe

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