Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Why Your Brain Turns The Miraculous Into The Mundane—And How To Fix It | Maria Popova

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Smart and practical strategies for living, in Maria's words, wonder-smitten by reality.Maria Popova thinks and writes about our search for meaning — sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian (born in 2006 under the name Brain Pickings), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials, author of Figuring, and maker of the live show The Universe in Verse — a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry, which is now also a book.In this episode we talk about:Wonder as a tool for improving all of your relationshipsThe tyranny of the word shouldHow the hardest thing in life is not getting what you want, it's knowing what you wantWhy she doesn't believe in making meditation a tool, even though she's been practicing for 14 yearsThe illusion of certaintyThe immense value of intellectual humilityStrategies for outgrowing your old habitsHer new book, The Universe in Verse, which is a combination of science and poetryFrom The Marginalian: How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of UncertaintyRelated Episodes:Bill Hader on Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, and Leaning Intro DiscomfortThe Science Of Getting Out Of Your Head | Annie Murphy PaulGeorge Saunders on: “Holy Befuddlement” and How to Be Less of a “Turd”The Profound Upside of Self-Diminishment | George SaundersA Radical Approach to Productivity, Self-Compassion Series | Jocelyn K. GleiSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/maria-popova-818See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, how we doing? It is very easy when you're stuck in your head or just trying to get by, checking things off your to-do list, anxious, scrolling, stressed about the news. It is very easy in your everyday life to forget how miraculous and mysterious it is that you are alive in the first place. What is this experience we're having? The deadening effect of habit and routine which numb us to the magnificent, it really should be resisted.

The cultivation of awe, the research shows, can lead to all sorts of benefits. Improved mood, reduced stress and and anxiety increased creativity and open-mindedness Not to mention increases in immune function and cardiovascular health My guest today has made it her life's work to cultivate awe in fact She believes it's a responsibility and she has some really smart and practical strategies for living and these are her words Wonders smitten by reality. Although to be very clear and you'll hear her say this, she does not consider herself to be an advice giver.

Nonetheless, I have to say the strategies she's come up with for herself are, I think, extremely practical and smart. Anyway, just some background here. I've been trying to get Maria Popova on this show for years. This speaks very well of her because she's, unlike me, not a publicity hound. I've been reading her website, The Marginalian, for many years in which she discusses the books she's reading and what they can tell us about infusing meaning into our lives. It has helped me enormously, both as a human and also as a writer as I

work on my own creative projects. So I reached out to her a while ago and asked her to come on the show and she hemmed and she hawed and then we met in person and we got along quite well but still she was a little resistant. Finally however with the help of my trusty and persistent and very persuasive producer Marissa Schneiderman we got her. She does not disappoint as you will hear. We talk about how we are madder searching for meaning, how to find portals for joy, how much of our suffering is judgment, and how wonder can help you turn down the volume on that. We talk about wonder as a tool for improving all of your relationships, the tyranny of the word should, how the hardest thing in life is

not getting what you want, it's knowing what you want, why she doesn't believe in making meditation a tool, even though she's been meditating for 14 years, the illusion of certainty and the immense value of intellectual humility, strategies for outgrowing your old habits, and we talk about her new book, which is called The Universe Inverse,

which is a combination of science and poetry. Before we dive in, I want to note that this episode is brought to us exclusively by our friends over at Audible, who have been incredible supporters of the show, enabling us to do what we do for you. As a voracious reader myself, I appreciate that Audible makes it easier for me to listen to my favorite audiobooks wherever I am,

to chase down my latest curiosities, cultivate a sense of wonder, and open myself up to wider perspectives on the regular. In fact, in this interview, you're going to hear Maria quote James Baldwin, and the quote is, you think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. I love that quote. One last thing to say on this tip, which is that Maria's new book, which again is called The Universe in Verse, 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science and Poetry, is available for pre-order on Audible now. She also has another book which she wrote a few years ago

called Figuring, where she explores life's big questions through the lives of historical figures. That title too is available on Audible. Maria Popova at long last, coming up. But first some blatant self-promotion. This will be quick. One of the biggest problems that many of us face in terms of keeping our meditation habit going

is that we don't know other people who do it. And actually having that social support can be a huge, huge deal, which is the operating thesis behind the meditation party retreats that I've been throwing with Jeff Warren and Sebenay Selassie. We've got another one coming up on October 11th at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. You can do it in person or online. BIPOC scholarships are available.

Go to eomega.org for more information. Meanwhile, I want to put in a summertime pitch for the 10% Happier app. Whether you're soaking up the sun or gearing up for fall, the library of over 500 guided meditations can help you stay relaxed and present. Download the 10% Happier app right now wherever you get your apps. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and ultimately your overall well-being. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible Originals, all in one easy app. Enjoy Audible anytime while doing other things, household chores, exercising on the road, commuting, you name it. My wife Bianca and I have been listening to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards.

Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listened to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So audiobooks, yes, Audible, yes, love it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-dayday audible trial and your first audiobook is free

visit audible dot ca audible dot ca Alice and Matt here from British scandal Matt if we had a bingo card, what would be on there? Oh, um compelling storytelling Egotistical white men and do be a humour. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. Maria Popova, welcome to the show. What a delight, Dan.

You say that, but you're the hardest booking I've ever pursued. It's been a long time to get you on this show. I've wanted to have you on for years. I've been reading your email. I really love your email. It's really helped me in many ways. So I'm glad I finally inveigled you into this. Well, thank you.

Thank you for persisting and for saying such nice things. In the discussions about finally getting you on the show, one of the things that came up was a desire in your part, which I love, to focus on wonder or awe. And I actually saw in one of your emails, you quoted the astronomer poet, Rebecca Elson, who talked about how we have a responsibility to awe. And so I'd just love to get a sense from you,

like why did you pick that as a focus? And obviously it courses through all of your work. Right, well, it's not so much an overt focus as what I have over the years. I mean, I've been doing this now for 18 years. I've identified as the kind of undercurrent beneath everything I think about or anything I write about and out of a kind of necessity because I started my little project when I was in my 20 twenties in a deep depression trying to pull myself out of the hole with reasons for being and over and over it is wonder it is all. That does that most effectively for me and I think for just us human beings because the thing is the thing with wonder is first of all.

human beings. Because the thing is, the thing with wonder is, first of all, wonder and judgment can coexist. There is no wonder when there is a judgment. And a lot of our suffering is a form of judgment of reality, resistance to reality, judgment of ourselves, judgment of a situation, of other people, you know, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge. And the other thing too is that it is the ultimate portal to unselfing. I mean, wonder is this feeling of something larger than yourself. And depression, which I still live with, is an incredibly self-involved state, psychically, mentally. So having that constant practice of outwardness really helps me. That's really interesting. So the focus on wonder or awe, the germ of it for you is relief of your own unhappiness,

suffering, misery, depression, existential angst, that whole bucket of ills. Yes. I'm going to quote you back to you, and this is not the last time I'm going to do this. I've got a couple sheets of Maria in front of me You write to live wonder smitten with reality is the gladdest way to live Can you say a little bit more about how one can become wonder smitten with reality? Well the thing about reality Sentences that begin with the thing about reality are a trap.

But the thing about reality is that it's a story we tell ourselves about what the world is and what the world should be. There's a real divergence between our experience of reality and the nature of reality as a physical, universal set of phenomena and forces that have nothing to do with us or our wishes or our hopes or our fears. And part of why I like science, for example, is that it is a way of meeting reality on its own terms where there is no room for opinion or story. We are just contemplating, discovering elemental truths that have to do with what we are, what we're made of, what we belong to. And I like this kind of disabling of the

capacity for judgment and opinion and resisting reality, essentially, which is so unnatural to us humans, meeting reality on its own terms, not suffering over how you wish things were different or, you know, the tyranny of should, which is the ultimate negation of reality, right? Wander, being wondersmitten by reality is just finding the things in reality as it is to be glad about, to be grateful for, to be delighted by. And you know, I say these things and they sound so trite, but the thing about those kind of fundamental experiences is that they are so basic, they're so universal. We all ultimately feel and desire the same things and when you put language to it, it just sounds so

hollow but when you live it, it is so rich. I totally agree with that. It's been one of the big frustrations of this whole thing. I'm newer to, I don't know what word I'm even looking for here because even these words are annoying, but I'm you know Spiritual growth personal development whatever the term is I'm newer to it than you But the big problem for me is so many of the books and thinkers and so much of the language that's used is just so annoying or twee I Just turns me off

But you kind of just have to get over yourself the comedian Bill Hader was on the show a couple months ago that's used is just so annoying or twee, it just turns me off. But you kind of just have to get over yourself. The comedian Bill Hader was on the show a couple months ago and he was joking about how the hippies were right and how annoying that is. And I think that's just kind of the deal. Yes, but I also think there is a way to get to these pretty basic universal truths with language that is fresh and inviting and

original. I mean, look at Whitman. He spent his whole life writing and rewriting Leaves of Grass, which was his search for meaning, right? Search for coherence. I mean, I prefer that term to spiritual or growth or whatever. We're just looking for meaning. We are matter, looking for meaning, which is hard because we are matter, which means an admission of our mortality. And that's really what it's all about. How do we bear our mortality? And I think wonder is the best way we have of doing that.

I was gonna ask you, because meaning is another huge part of what you're up to. I mean, your self-description is you're somebody who thinks and writes about our search for meaning. What is the connection between meaning and wonder? That's a fantastic question because wonder, as I said, presupposes the absence of story and meaning is a kind of story we tell ourselves about how things go here. I think there is a way of stepping into wonder as a portal to meaning because wonder is a training of attention essentially or

consecration of our capacity to pay attention. Out of that capacity comes any experience of meaning we have. I mean, meaning is essentially a focal point of attention at something that we then deem meaningful. Yeah. So if wonder is a kind of skill, which again, I want to go quite deeply into how we develop that skill. But if wonder is a kind of skill, the point of it or one of the points of it is to give life a sense of meaning. Or to make the meaninglessness bearable. Because ultimately there is no meaning. There is no meaning. We exist and then we don't.

When what we fill that interlude with is what we call meaning, but we paid a very high price evolutionarily for our consciousness, which is an awareness of our mortality. Most other animals to the extent that we understand don't have an awareness of mortality as such. Of course, in 400 years, we could find otherwise because 400 years ago Descartes thought that other animals were automatons and have no consciousness at all. So I'm wary of these types of generalizations,

but there is a kind of complexity that comes with our consciousness that makes us inescapably aware of the fact that we're mortal. As soon as you're aware of that, your first question is then what's the meaning of it? Then what's the point if we're just here and then we have to give it all up? I do think wonder is what fills this interlude with meaning. Is it the only thing that fills the interlude with meaning? Oh, absolutely not. Love does, poetry does, connection,

generosity, kindness, all those things, all these very trite words that are the fundamentals of why we're alive. And there's wonder in all of those things and all of those things can also be portals to wonder. Yes and I have found in my life for anyone in those things where. for any one of those things where the ratio is skewed between wonder and judgment, then it's not real. So for example, in love, if you are governed by a sense of it should be different, a sense of lack, a sense of judgment, and not enough wonder, the miracle of having met each other, sharing the sliver of space-time with the wonder that is you and the wonder that is the other person,

I have found that a lot of the kind of self-delusions that we have come from that ratio being off. Hmm. Say more about that. I am thinking specifically now about love. There are many things we mistake for love. Need, longing, desire. When we're in it, it feels very internally persuasive that it is love. But that barometer, because all those other states are not a kind of unconditional presence with the other person and with the relationship, wonder is profoundly unconditional. It is

the ultimate open presence without need. Not to say that there is such a thing as love without need. I mean, we're not that enlightened this creature is, you know, but I do find that it helps calibrate some of the things that feel like they might be love but are not to keep coming back to that place of sort of open, odd presence versus longing, judgment, need and so forth. Hmm. All right, so what I'm hearing there, as this goes through my filter,

and the filter could warp what you're saying, so I'm gonna test and see if I'm hearing it correctly, is that I'm hearing that as like wonder as a tool to make you better at your relationships. You're not positing that we can ever be devoid of a wanting or a conditionality or anything like that in our relationships. But if we can come back to a baseline,

if we can make it a habit or a practice to come back to a sense of wonder and awe in the face of whoever's face we're looking at, that can be a North Star toward what love Really is which is not wanting somebody to be another way or not wanting some sort of reciprocity that may not be on offer It's kind of like a and what you said before, you know an open presence That's beautifully put much more articulate than my real-time brainstorm.

Yes, ultimately, I feel the most purest form of love for another person when I see them as a wonder and not as something there to meet my needs or fulfill my desires or fit into some pre-existing template of what I think love should be, it's just very clarifying because it's so pure. When you feel that sense of wonder at a person or an experience or a thing, it is just extremely clear in a way that all these other convolutions of inner storytelling are not. all these other convolutions of inner storytelling or not. I'm leafing through my vast collection of sheets of paper that are part of my preparation for this interview because I'm looking for, you know, one of the great services you provide is that you go

through and pull these incredible quotes from the great thinkers of human history. And you have one from Walt Whitman that I'm having trouble finding right now, but it's about looking at everybody as their own cosmos. Well, he wrote of himself as a cosmos in Leaves of Grass, actually, even though it's famous for the line, I celebrate myself in Leaves of Grass, the most frequently used word is the word you. So he was, in fact, using himself as a lens on humanity and therefore

implying that we are each a cosmos. And interestingly, he spelled it with a K, the German way, because he had just read Alexander von Humboldt's work. I mean Humboldt basically pioneered the concept of nature as a web of interconnected relationships, a kind of earthly cosmos, right? And his book was called Cosmos with a K, but it was about the natural world. What is so beautiful about Whitman reminding us of that is this profound connection between nature and human nature that we're actually one thing, which is directly related to our experience of wonder. It is a way of remembering what we are and where we belong that is the most direct way we have.

And how often can you do that in a relationship to feel this pure love that you're describing where you look at them as this wondrous, self-contained cosmos connected, of course, a hitch to everything else. Can you do that when somebody's chewing too loudly or insisting on playing music in the car that you find grating? Well, I think that's the point in which you remember the cosmos that they are, Well, I think that's the point at which you remember the cosmos that they are and that you change any one variable and it wouldn't be the same person. You know, it's like the human genome, we can't really tinker with it because we don't know

how changing one gene will dismantle the whole cathedral of being. And so too with the psyche of a person that sure, you can have your spouse not be the loud chewing person in the car, but that wouldn't be the person you fell in love with. That would be another person. Yeah, yes, I can imagine people thinking, but when my spouse does that, I start thinking maybe, maybe it was a mistake to fall in love in the first place with This person but see that is a judgment And that's what I mean about the storylines that take us away from presence and wonder and love because that's the moment you're thinking My need for a quiet car ride right now is not being met by this person

You're instantly operationalizing them into a thing to meet your need for non-chewing, right? You're no longer honoring the person themselves. And I would say when wonder fails, tenderness helps. Just holding it with tenderness. Your own annoyance, the part of you that wants it otherwise, but also not using that as evidence of the relationship being wrong. Right. I hear a lot of contemplative or meditative skill in what you're describing. I can imagine it would be hard to deploy these tactics that you're describing without a meditation practice, but without some way to work with the mind in the moment is meditation part of your personal recipe for accessing wonder and then using it in the world and your life. I have a daily meditation practice that I have had for 14 years now, but I don't see it as a self-improvement tool. It is just a way to begin the day with openness and awareness and not for the purpose of. And in addition to that formal practice, I would say my most meditative time in the sense of clearing my head, annealing my thoughts, and leaving room for unfelt feelings, all the things that contemplative space gives us. For me,

that's time and nature. I spend a lot of time outdoors. Walking in particular, I think best in motion. I do most of my writing on foot. Then what happens at the keyboard is transcription. Particularly with the bigger things, the 500 page book projects are so complex and have so much, so many threads to weave together and so much figuring out that for me happens best when I'm in motion.

Before we started recording, we were kind of joking about some of the, maybe superficial, maybe not superficial, similarities between the two of us. You know, we both like smoothies a lot. We both work at standing desks. I can't remember, there was one other at least. And that's- Bathroom breaks.

What's that again? Oh, bathroom breaks. We both have small bladders, so we're going to take a break in the middle of this interview. We're very hydrated people. Yes, yes. So the listeners won't hear us taking a break, but our bladders will know. Another one is that I think best on my feet too. Absolutely. And I actually just recently posted an interview with Annie Murphy-Paul, who wrote a book called The Extended Mind about the fact that we... Wonderful book.

Yeah, so a great, great book. I suspect you would have heard of it, probably read it as well. As you know, she talks about how we think with more than just our brains, and we think with our bodies, we think with our relationships, we think with our surroundings, and... The world. We think with the world. Yes. Exactly. And our motion through the world we think with the world. Yes, exactly. And our motion through the world. Yes. But we're not that unique in that. Beethoven walked so much, composed a lot of things while walking.

Mozart like doing it in the back of a horse drawn carriage, Mark Twain paced and dictated. I mean, there's a million other such things. It's interesting, too, that in college, I somehow conditioned myself to read best on the elliptical. I do think there's something about your body discharging the kinetic energy, this kind of extra static that makes your mind better able to focus. And to this day, I do my deepest reading at the gym

huh Annie said in our interview I'll put a link to it in the show notes But Annie said that for some people there's so much extra energy required to sit still that moving while Thinking is actually clearing away the stuff. don't want. Oh, interesting. I would believe that, yes. You said something a minute ago before I made it all about myself

with this similarity we have about not thinking about meditation as a tool. I don't know what I think about this. I mean, you're unquestionably correct that if you approach your meditation practice with an agenda, that is going to screw you up. As I often joke and listeners to the show will have heard me say this a million times, meditation is like a crazy video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward.

The wanting is a hurdle. And yet, I still think about and talk about, and maybe I should stop thinking about it and talking about it this way, as a kind of tool, and maybe it's about the definition of that word, but it does help me and I think many others in an instrumental way that seems hard to dismiss.

It has health benefits, it has cognitive benefits, it helps me in my relationships not be so emotionally reactive. I honestly don't know, I mean, has health benefits, it has cognitive benefits, it helps me in my relationships not be so emotionally reactive. I honestly don't know what I think about this, but I'd be interested to see if we can figure it out together or make any progress on this question of whether it's appropriate or useful to think of meditation in any way as an instrument. Okay, so many thoughts on this. And these are wonderful questions that we as products of

Western culture can't but grapple with. I think there is a danger to teleological thinking, thinking about what the purpose of a thing is, as if everything has a purpose and some things just are. There is a way possibly to decouple the very legitimate and real practical benefits of meditation from the sense that that is its purpose. Because when you go in with that mindset, I'm doing this in order to attain those benefits, you make of it a purpose that robs you of the pure gift of being. For me what meditation does, and I obviously, even 14 years in, imperfect at it. I sit down every morning and half the time I'm coming up with a poem or working out my relationships or I'm not able to be fully present in a perfect way all the time. But what it gives me is an expansion of being, a kind of broadening and deepening of the inner sea.

That is not something you can approach with purpose. You can just show up for it and meet it on its own terms. I have no disagreement with anything you're saying. I'm just trying to wrestle with it in real time. You look almost peened. Because it's such an interesting question. And I'm also kind of interpolating back to the way I've not only thought about it in my own life,

but argued for it in the lives of others. I am really very much a product of American capitalism. And so I can stumble into these traps of thinking about things in an instrumental way. And you're right, the moments in meditation that seem to matter the most, at least to me, are when there is nothing to want. And the whole point of it, from the Buddha himself,

if you're practicing in a Buddhist context as I am, is letting go. There's no gaining idea in this. It is all about letting go and even letting go of the self. And yet there are benefits. And for people who like my audiences, not necessarily in this podcast, but when I go out and if I'm on network television

or I'm giving a speech to a convention of lawyers or whatever, I wanna meet people where they are and talk about what the benefits might be. Anyway, I'm bl a speech to a convention of lawyers or whatever, I want to meet people where they are and talk about what the benefits might be. Anyway, I'm blabbering now. No, no, these are such fundamental questions. I have no illusion about the fact that we do enter into meditation out of a practical need, which is to suffer less.

Nobody starts meditation because they're like, well, that's just a great idea. It's just a great idea to sit, you know, everybody's suffering in some way. The shape of suffering might differ, but we all approach it in order to allay our suffering. I mean, the Buddha himself, he went at it from a place of suffering and feeling trapped in this princely life that he was born into and wanting to be free. And that's a form of suffering that's very clear. I think it's important to kind of own that. I guess I really struggle with transactional things. I think anything that is transactional fundamentally belittles both what is given and what is received. I don't have an answer, but I would like to find a way to approach meditation in a non-transactional

way. Maybe it's about riding the flawed horse of ego all the way to non-transactionality, not wanting, no plan, nothing to gain. We gotta work with what we've got and then hopefully, I've been joking a little bit with my meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein about how enlightenment, and I've never experienced it, so I'm guessing at it, is a little bit like when you turn on your iPhone for the first time, when you get a new iPhone and you're teaching it facial recognition, you have to like hover it around your face or I'm sure this is true for phones that aren't Apple phones, but you're moving around your

face and it's gathering data and gathering data and at some point the circle closes and bing, it's got it. You've given it enough data. And I feel, and Joseph seemed to co-sign on this because he was laughing at me in a positive way that there's something similar happening in meditation yeah we come at it with an agenda because that's the way we're wired but if you give the mind enough data in the right way it will the clenched fist will open yes I would love to believe that. I think part of the problem is that we are so opaque to ourselves, and we were only really aware of 10% in our lives. And the moment you feel like you've turned the

corner on enlightenment in one regard, getting the facial recognition data points of like one aspect of your life, you turn around and all of a sudden there's this whole new vista of confusion. We have to live with our incompleteness. And I think part of what I was restless about with this approach to meditation as an achievement practice is that anything that is experienced on a vector of purpose and achievement presupposes an endpoint or a destination or like a completeness, like an enlightenment, even the notion like I'm going to reach enlightenment. And the fact of the matter is that we are going to die opaque to ourselves.

And the question is how much light can we shine at different times and different parts of our lives and just keep doing that until there's more light than darkness, but we're never going to be fully clear to ourselves. I just don't believe that. I agree with you. At least I haven't met anybody who's fit that description. And if you meet the people who say they are, beware. Yes.

Yes. Where? Yes, yes. Coming up, Maria Popova talks about intellectual humility as a portal to wonder and the practices she uses to check this very human impulse towards certainty. Welcome to The Offensive Line. You guys, on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some s***, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie

Agar. So here's how this show's going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like no offense. No offense, Travis Kelce, but you gotta step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter. Is it Brandon Iuke, T. Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode

on Wondery Plus, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday Night Football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. What's up guys, it's your girl Kiki

and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you, it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay? Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Poehler,

Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to Baby, This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget we've got the Meditation Party retreat coming up in the not too distant future. You can sign up at eOmega.org. Also over on the 10% Happier App. Don't forget there are more than 500 guided meditations in the library there that can help you stay relaxed and present in the waning days of summer.

Download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps. I feel like this is kind of leading me to another thing that I've wanted to talk to you about. I think this is my term. I'm not sure if it's the term you use and we can quibble about it afterwards is intellectual humility. I've seen in some of your

newsletters you coming back to this theme of open-mindedness reconsideration as a Portal to wonder really we started with this what's gonna strangle wonder in the crib more effectively than Thinking you know what's going on. Let me just read Maria Popova back to Maria Popova. I apologize if that's annoying. We all have to live with the selves we've been so I'm just going to take it. Take it as a compliment. Nothing, not one thing,

hurts us more or causes us to hurt others more than our certainties. Now I love that. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to this particular newsletter of yours, in which I believe, if I haven't cobbled together my notes incorrectly, you also then go on to quote George Saunders, who's been on this show a couple of times and is an incredible writer. I love this man. What a human being.

What a writer. What a human being. What a writer. Oh, what a human being. Absolutely. I'm just going to read one of the because I again, I really do think your brilliance lies not only in what you write, but also in what you choose to include from other people. And this quote is a good example of that. This is George talking, he uses a term here, scaz, S K A Z. It's a Russianussian term and it kind of has to do with a stories storytelling the storytelling function in the mind which is what we're all doing all the time just Yammering about what's happening internally and externally and so here's George the entire drama of life on earth is colon Scaz headed person number one steps outside where he encounters scass headed person number two. Both seeing themselves as the center of the universe, thinking highly of themselves,

immediately slightly misunderstand everything. In a world full of people who seem to know everything passionately, based on little, often slanted information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure. That is perpetually curious. He's writing here about Chekhov, by the way, brilliant writer, but he was a physician and in that line of work you have to be continually unsure and inquisitive about what the diagnosis is, what is actually going on, because certainty can cost someone's life. I wrote about that because I find it so tragic and oppressive, this era we live in, where

certainty is mistaken for power. I think opinions and identities are the least interesting things about people. They're the least interesting. They're the contraction of a human being's possibility and the cosmos contracted to a particle. And yet, we live in an era of identities and opinions warring with each other over some ground of certainty. To what end? You know, there's so much satisfaction people get out of being right over understanding or being curious. I just feel tremendous cultural pain over that.

What practices do you use to check this very human impulse towards certainty? Well, I think the number one thing is that I always remind myself it's not about me. If I'm having a thing with another person, there are 99,000 factors and variables going on in their life right now that have nothing to do with me that are impacting their choices, their behaviors, their attitude, everything. And I am the one data point I'm aware of in their own life, like me, one data point, and there's the whole other universe of their life with all the myriad other data points that are completely opaque to me. I think so much of our problems come from this continual self-reference. The other thing, too, is the illusion of certainty is very soothing. Of course we want a foothold

of assurance, because ultimately life is profoundly uncertain. We don't know any of the outcomes of any of our hopes, any of our wishes, any situation. I have empathy for this coping mechanism we've invented, which is certainty. I think part of what meditation does is it teaches you to tolerate discomfort. Every time you don't break sitting to scratch your eyebrow, some miniature part of you is learning

to tolerate discomfort. There's no greater discomfort than not knowing what's gonna happen to you, to life, to people you love, to situations you care about. It's a practice. Certainties of compulsion and it's nobody's fault. I think it is another price we pay for our consciousness because our capacity for future planning is something magnificent that we have. But this need to know how things turn out and to be sure about our estimation can be so limiting and so punitive. estimation can be so limiting and so punitive. I love everything you just said. And I have a suspicion and you'll confirm it or deny it, that another tool for you consciously or subconsciously in this regard might be reading.

I imagine we've only met one other time before this. My image of your day-to-day is that you have your nose in a book frequently and you read so widely and voraciously that you are forcing yourself to inhabit other minds, other points of views, and that that might be a check on your own compulsion to use that word toward certainty. Yes, I think that's absolutely a function of reading, particularly fiction. This notion that there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful, interesting lives out

there. My project when I started with Stole Brain Pickings, it started out as a way of trying to find consolation in other lives of people who have lived through things that I was living through. And it's that great James Baldwin line from one of his essays where he says, you think your pain and suffering are unique in the history of the world. And then you read, right? And so I read for resonance and similarity more so than for difference, but at the same time, there's something really beautiful about reading about someone having an experience similar to what you're living through,

but seeing it turn out for them very differently than how you fear it might turn out for you. Yes, I think reading as a tool, particularly fiction, for both empathy and also as a check against what we keep describing as the human compulsion towards certainty is, in my own end of one laboratory, has been very helpful. Just staying with this theme of how to live a life where you're not turning the magnificent into the mundane. One of the things that blocks me in this regard and also blocks me in terms of love is anxiety. For me, it's my biggest struggle. And I think it's I think we live in an age of rising anxiety. So this seems like a good thing to talk about. I'm going to do my little thing of Reading you back to you. This is a section on anxiety where you

Do your thing of writing really well and then weaving in these incredibly well chosen quotes So this one starts with a quote the truth is we know so little about life We don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is Kurt Vonnegut observed in discussing Hamlet during his influential lecture on the shapes of stories. The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it's really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad. Alan Watts wrote a generation earlier in his sobering case for learning not to think in terms of gain or loss. And yet most of us spend swaths of our days worrying

about the prospect of events we judge to be negative, potential losses driven by what we perceive to be bad news. In the 1930s, one pastor itemized anxiety into five categories of worries, four of which imaginary, and the fifth, and this is another quote, worries that have a real foundation, occupying possibly 8% of the total. Anyway, this quote goes on.

I don't wanna take up too much airtime here, but I'd love to have you build on it in any way you see fit. Well, you mentioned this is coming to mind for you in the context of love. The fundamental spark of anxiety is the fact that we know the price of life is death, we know that the price of love is loss, and yet somehow we must go on choosing to live anyway, to love anyway. Of course there is anxiety woven into the basic

premise of that. Then we will lose what we love either to death, dissolution, indifference, any number of things, or just lose our own life and in doing so give up everything we love. That's the only certain outcome. Look I don't have an answer to that. It is something I struggle with myself a great, great, great deal. My coping mechanism is probably not the healthiest, which is an over-reliance on plans and structure, which I find very soothing, but that of course is another mechanism of certainty because the universe will always intercede impersonally and impartially in your plans. I don't have an answer. I mean, okay, here's a really big picture thing about our conversation. I really admire what you're doing, which is trying to help people have tools to live their lives in a better way.

I am very uncomfortable being a giver of advice or wisdom. I am so suspicious of these self-appointed gurus that are culture is rife with. And the whole point of doing what I do is that I'm just trying to figure out how to be. And I am in conversation with these dead people from centuries prior, because I'm looking to them to tell me how to be. Why are you suspicious of them? Because their lives are over,

so the conclusion is foreclosed. You know how it turned out for them. That I find that extremely soothing and Also because the test case for life is its living and these are people who made a real-time Record of their living that we now can see frozen in time Rubber stamped by history by the passage of time and if it it's still holds, then they did something right. This is a tricky one because, you know, I share your ambivalence and definitely there are some self-appointed gurus who I, you know, I have more than

ambivalence about and yet, you know, there are science and contemplative traditions have given us some pretty good time tested tools for doing life better. So it makes sense to share those with people. I think, for me, I just try to include in their intellectual humility or not knowing not knowing is a one of the central pieces of Zen Buddhism as part of it, you know, and that includes my own not knowing and my own fallibility. And I feel like on some important level, you and I and many of the people that we respect are doing the same thing. I agree, I agree. I think we still can help ourselves asking for certainty and assurance,

asking for people who have the answers. I mean, even this conversation about how to be better at love, what is more fundamental in our human experience than that? And nobody has gotten it right. And also, everyone gets it right who loves. It's both. Just loving is getting it right. And also you can be completely devastated by the outcomes no matter. I don't know.

I just feel like when we are walking on a territory that is so rife with uncertainty by its basic premise, it's really dangerous to give footholds of certainty. I agree, and I think maybe the middle path, and I'm being a little cute here because the Buddha, by whom I've been influenced quite deeply, talks about the middle path a lot in pretty much every regard, the middle path between poles, and in this regard, maybe he struck the right compromise the Buddha did by talking about the notion of trying it out for yourself. A central phrase in Buddhism is, ehi pasiko, that's Pali, the ancient language of Pali. In Pali, it means come see for yourself. And I love that.

Well, in science, we call it empiricism. It's the same thing. Exactly. Yes. Yes. So I don't think it's about dispensing certainties and being overly prescriptive. I think it's about saying, hey, this worked for me or it's worked for other people. And there's some data to suggest it works X percentage of the time, you know, and not

that science is perfect. But so try it. That's a wonderful subtle nuance distinction. Thank you. Yes. Coming up, Maria talks about how the hardest thing in life is not getting what you want. It is knowing what you want. What she means when she uses the phrase choosing joy

and how it involves integrating despair. And we talk about the human tendency to dismiss what we don't understand. In April 1912, the luxury ocean liner RMS Titanic embarked on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, en route to New York. Spirits were high, but as the ship sailed into the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, danger was lurking. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values,

our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, we'll take you to the early hours of April 15, 1912, when the Titanic strikes an iceberg, 2200 passengers and crew are left scrambling for the lifeboats and their lives. Follow American History Tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge this season of American History Tellers on the Titanic early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Another thing, this little note I wrote to myself about something you said a couple of paragraphs back about you building structure and plan into your life as a way to stave off uncertainty. I do the same thing on my whiteboard trying to plan out the future of my business, whatever, and a thousand percent, it's, I don't know if it's a thousand percent, but it's some huge percent driven by fear.

The Buddhist prescription for the middle path here is non-attachment to results. The idea that there's nothing wrong with making plans, but just don't be attached to the outcome. And so be willing to change. Like I made a number of plans for this interview, but then I listen to you, and if you're taking me in a different direction, I'll just go there. I love that. I wish it were easier to do in real life for me. I mean, we all have different kinds of vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms. I grew up with a great deal of instability and unsafety and just

ruptures of continuity and constancy. And I think I coped by making my life be one great hell of predictability and constancy. And I think I coped by making my life be one great hell of predictability and constancy. I am only just starting to try to outgrow that because it served me for a long time. And then it started really limiting me in my creative life and my relationships, it is not a way to be when you are safe. And yet the automation so hardwired that it takes a lot to break out of it as any habit. What is the outgrowing for you look like specifically? Well, I'm trying to have more spontaneity. One of the things about

over planning your day, your meals, all of that is that it excludes the possibility of knowing what you actually want because you preempt the possibility of wanting by telling yourself what you should be having or doing or, you know, and I realized only recently, I mean, I'm about to turn 40. So it's taken me a long time to realize that, oh my God, the notion, for example, when people say I have a hankering for X, Y or Z, alien to me, I don't know how to have a hankering. I would like to have a hankering. You know? You know? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha We come up with incredibly inventive ways of bypassing the difficulty of knowing what we want. Everything from arranged marriages to meal plans is a way of not really doing the hard work.

Yeah. Well, not to talk about meditation too instrumentally, but I do think that meditation can help you hear what your body wants, what your mind wants more effectively. Yes, because it quiets all of the shoulds that we live with. Most of us live under the tyranny of should in various forms, and when the shoulds fall away, we don't really know who we are. This question is coming up in my mind. I'm trying to remember her name.

She came on the show, she's got a podcast called Hurry Slowly, and it's about how to be productive. Jocelyn K. Gly. Yes, Marissa just waited. Oh, I know Jocelyn, she's lovely. Yes, that was Marissa's voice, everybody. Marissa Schneiderman, ace producer on the show, Jocelyn K. Gly, and her provocative question is,

who are you without the doing? That's right, that's right. So you, on the lip of 40, it feels like you're kind of trying to investigate. I am, and I mean, this has been going on for a little while. It's not like I'm just starting, but it's tricky too, because I am in a very lucky position where the thing I do is the thing I want to be doing. That it's a pure and direct expression of my creative force, my expression of my creative force, my longing for meaning, my internal life is being lived fully in what I do. And of course, the price for that was very high starting out. I mean,

you don't get to that point without turning away a lot of the shoulds that are very enticing along the way. But I paid the price gladly and now I'm left with this question of is it even possible to not be doing because my form of doing is just me being me. So it is a form of being, right? This is very interesting loop where sure I can take away some of the more kind of pragmatic aspects of what I do. But because it is such a pure expression of who I am, I don't know where to go without that, you know? Well, here we are at another point of similarity between the two of us. What does Joseph say about that?

Joseph's. Constantly, I want to say haranguing, but he's not really haranguing, encouraging me to do less, to do fewer things and make them excellent. That's been his exhortation. It kind of reminds me of a quote that you chose and included in one of your newsletters from Debbie Millman. And the quote is, expect anything worthwhile to take a long time. And yeah, so instead of doing banging out three books really quickly, I've spent the last six years working on one book, which may suck. I don't even know if the book's any good. That's my attempt to address what I think it is we're talking about. So Debbie is my former partner,

now one of my two closest friends. And at the time, she actually said, I remember once we were driving somewhere, she pulled the car over. I think I had my computer open on my lap in the car. She pulled over the car and she said in a very loving way, you wouldn't know who you are without what you do. And it just like jolted me awake.

I was publishing three essays a day. And by the way, you can keep calling it a newsletter, but what I do is actually a website. The newsletter is just like a partial selection of what I publish on my site. So you get three things a week in your email. I used to at the time publish 15 a week on the site. They weren't hasty. They were just all I did all day every day. I'm very vigilant in myself of anything that feels like a compulsion.

And I've only recently in recent years come to find this litmus test for unhealthy behavior. And I was being very compulsive about this thing that on the surface is like a good thing, you know, kind of creative, productive, healthy. No, internally the awful feeling of not doing it was just like a like a drug withdrawal or something, you know. I mean this is back to our conversation about wonder, which is not unrelated to joy. I kept trying to force myself to go toward where the joy is and magnify that in my life. Do less of everything else and more and deeper of the things that are the most and more and deeper of the things that are the most full of wonder and joy and curiosity,

which preempts the shoulds, the tyranny of should. And it's imperfect. I still feel extremely uneasy if I don't write for a day, but it's a practice. Yeah. Self-knowledge is a practice. That's the hardest thing that we're really talking about here, because meditation is part of that practice. Yes. Yes. And since the self is fundamentally an illusion, and since our inner life is changing all the time, because everything's changing all the time, it's a moving target.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Which is why it's very funny to have things read back to you that you wrote that in a prior self. Well, I don't hold you responsible in any way, although I am going to do it again because you brought up joy and it's funny, I was reading something you wrote on your website, which came to me in the form of a newsletter. So sorry for continuing to mess that up. And you wrote this list of things

that you've learned over the years of doing this work at the Marginalian. And one of the entries- I just want to footnote this by saying that this list, which I do once a year on the anniversary of the site, they are really notes to myself. Even though they use the word you, these came from my diary addressing myself. They're not the guru style preachings to the congregation. I think as an audience member now, that's the best kind of advice. So it's not really advice. You're just talking about what you tested out in your own lab and what's worked for

you. That's what I want. I don't want somebody finger wagging at me and telling me this is the way things are So I take your advice and I believe in the spirit in which you intended as non-advice Well, that's beautiful. Thank you for saying that So anyway back to this Post it was a list of things that you had learned and there are a few others I want to ask you about and many of them we've already covered. At first I was like, oh my God,

I don't know if I like this, because it was another case of words that don't land for me, which is of course like one of the biggest obstacles in this work. But you wrote choose joy. And at first I was like, oh man, that sounds like something you put on a t-shirt, but then you have this sentence that is really great.

Here it is. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus and inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. I mean, the Buddha could have said this. So anyway, I'm gonna shut up and I would love to hear you say more about this. Well, I also should add, I think I wrote that back then.

This was several years ago, but I do think it's also important to acknowledge that there are reasons, legitimate reasons for sorrow in the world that are so real and joy is not this kind of turning away from, but the integration and the choice that despite the despair, the suffering, the negation of hope that we encounter every day in our personal, political, cultural lives, there is a choice to be made of what to pay attention to in the inner life. Joy is what saves us, ultimately.

The capacity for joy is what makes all that other stuff bearable. I'm going to say this for the umpteenth time. I totally agree with you. And joy, and I think this applies to gratitude too, which may be even the subset of joy, it's not denial and it's not compartmentalization, it's perspective. It's seeing what is also there. So all of the horrors are also there. But if you're just owned by those, you're actually, you're missing a lot and you're reducing your capacity to deal with the problems that we all need to deal with. I mean, we don't choose the cards who have been dealt or the conditions that formed our ability to experience the world in certain ways.

I do come from a tremendous privilege of growing up in communist Bulgaria where things were not exactly easy. There wasn't that much. I didn't really have toys. I had maybe like two toys and one of them my mother hand sewed. And when you have that as the baseline, but you're not aware that it's in any way lesser than anything else, because everybody was at that level. It trains you to find your own joys. I mean, I as a child, the natural world was really what saved me and that's a gift I didn't choose. Those were the circumstances of my life and it gave me a gift for life to be able to spend an hour sitting at a flower and observing the little petals and the stem and just kind of a strange way of being present with the living world that shaped me as a person.

And everybody has that in the conditions that made them so different for different people. But I do think for us to have survived our lives to this point, we all have found portals to joy, consciously or not, in the conditions we were given. And it's so important to keep trying to broaden those portals and to keep visiting and revisiting them in every way possible. And I think meditation is really good for this

because it gives you a sense that there's an inner menu. There are countless things going on in the mind at any moment. And so what do you want to choose off that menu? Do you want to choose your capacity for muttering under your breath and complaining about everything that's happening right now for sorrow? Or do you want to choose your capacity for joy, gratitude? And again, the mind is so rapid that all that stuff is going to be there anyway. But you do have some agency in the face of this onslaught. I just think that's immensely.

Empowering and you write a lot about this word freedom. I think that is a real form of freedom. It's like to choose to use your words, what you're going to attend to. Yes. Let me ask you, because we don't have a ton of time left, sadly, for me, we're in a time where there's a lot of, we talked about anxiety, but there's also a lot of depression and cynicism and despair.

A lot of this, in my opinion, and I think you probably agree, given what I read from you about social media, which you often put in quotes because it can be anti-social. There are a couple of quotes that you found and gave to me, not directly, but through your work, that I found very helpful in terms of providing some perspective on these times, which for many people feel somehow uniquely dark. And so I'm just going to read these two quotes to you and then get you to sort of just hold forth in whatever way you feel appropriate on the other side. One of them comes from John Steinbeck and it was a letter he wrote to a friend at the

peak of World War II. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn't that the evil thing wins, it never will, but that it doesn't die. And then here's another quote from James Baldwin who we've referenced. It is said that, and he's writing about Shakespeare. It's about Shakespeare, yeah. Yeah. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it. No time can be easy if, but I doubt it.

No time can be easy if one is living through it. Well, I think a big part of what I do for myself and hopefully for other people, but everything I write about is a form of self-conciliation. I think it's so important to counter the ahistorical perspective that we live with in our individual lives and at this point in our culture. Because it is true, things have happened in the past in strikingly similar ways to how

they're happening now. And at the same time though, I would say, I mean, if you look throughout history, it is not even, the terrain is not even. There are craters of despair at certain periods that are just legitimately different from more even times in history. And the question is, I mean, it's interesting, I recently did a, I really don't like kind of forum questionnaires and such, but I love Orion magazine and they have their own version of the proof questionnaire. I did it. And one of the

questions on there is, are you optimistic about the future? And I really struggled with it. I got angry at the word optimism. I got angry about the fact that who knows the future. And ultimately where I landed was I am optimistic about my willingness to show up for it with the best I've got. And I think that's all there is ever. There's no point in comparing our time in history to some other time. It is just a matter of rising to it. Cause again, meeting reality on its own terms, right? I'm nodding my head.

This may be a bit of a leap of logic, but it kind of brings me to what is probably the last question I have time for. I don't know if there's connective tissue here. I, I'll see if I can see it once I, once I asked the question, but this goes back to the category of love. And so I'm going to read to you something you wrote and then it includes a quote. Everything is eventually recompensed. Every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for. What redeems all of life's disappointments, what makes all of its heartbreaks bearable,

is the ability to see how the dissolution of a dream becomes the fertile compost of possibility. Buried between parentheses in the middle of leaves of grass is Whitman's testament to this elemental truth, which turned his greatest heartbreak into his greatest masterpiece. And here's Whitman. Sometimes, with one I love, I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love. But now I think there is no unreturned love. The pay is certain one way or another. I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not returned yet out of that I've written

these songs. So yeah, this connects in my mind to what you said about your optimism for lack of a better word which is that your optimism is that like I'll show up and do my best no matter what's going on as long as I'm alive. And maybe there is no connection here, but it seems to me that what Whitman's saying and you by extension is that anything we love, anyone we love, and love is more than just romantic love.

It's not for naught, even if it doesn't turn out the way we want. Well, this goes right back to non-attachment to results. That's right. And it also goes back to really resisting the compulsion of certainty, because we think we know what the optimal outcome is of a situation, of a relationship, of a project. of a project. And oftentimes in that not coming to pass, we are given some great gift we never could have imagined otherwise. Some kind of experience, some kind of sidewise gleam on a part of ourselves that was unbefriended before, out of which comes all this creative fertility. I think remaining open to what's possible beyond the limits of our own imagination

for what things can be is so important, is so important. Is there some place you were kind of hoping we would go during this interview that we didn't get to? Well, only because it's been such a big part of my life these past seven years, the crossing point of poetry and science as a way of finding coherence between our search for truth and our longing for meaning. For me, that's been very perspectival and soothing.

I keep using the word soothing. I think I'm feeling very restless right now for some reason. And I keep coming back to the things that have given me a kind of unassailable serenity, which is, I think, what we seek with meditation too. I have a past life in science. I did some very intense math as a child and always found it very assuring, this notion that there is no room for opinion in science. That when Einstein wrote E equals MC squared, nobody said, well, what did he mean? The way you say about Wittgenstein, for example. And yet, I have found it difficult to find in elemental truth a kind of reservoir of meaning, which is what we long for. And poetry, to which I'm a very late-comer in life, I dismissed it

so contemptuously as people tend to anything in which they're not literate. I mean, we really dismiss what we don't understand, and I was just very kind of cavalier about it. And then across the aisle on a transatlantic flight, I met this wonderful woman Emily Levine, who was 50 years older than me and an incredible philosopher of science, comedian, but great lover of poetry. And we became friends and she started educating me in poetry, sending me a poem a day, and it opened my world to this other way of putting language to experiences that we don't know we have. In the years since, I somehow have found so much magnification of life by bringing poetry and science together. So I do the show The Universe Inverse that I tell stories from the history of science, the discoveries of certain phenomena or processes.

And I mean, hardcore science, you know, how dark matter works, the evolution of flowers, entropy. hardcore science, you know, how dark matter works, the evolution of flowers, entropy, I mean, real, real science. And then I bring in poems that shine a sidewise gleam on that aspect through the portal of feeling, through this backdoor of feeling, which is, of course, our first valve of understanding. We feel first and reason second. We reason our feelings. That's how we understand anything. For me, it's been very wonderful because, I mean, talk about wonder, right? That this is the wondrous kind of the meeting point of reality with feeling. Anyway, that's just something that has been a big part of my life and also something that came out of a relationship that was very consonant

with that Whitman verse that you read that did not turn out the way I had hoped, but it gave me this in a way. Hmm. These shows, if we want to see them, how can we do that? How can we find where they are? And I believe you turned them into a book as well. Yeah, so I made a site for it called theuniversenverse.org, which will redirect you to kind of a repository of some of them. I haven't posted the full recordings,

but there are highlights of units. So each unit is a science story and a poem. The poems are usually read by neither scientists nor poets, musicians, actors, you know, people who are kind of other ways of the creative sphere. But anyway, if you go to universeinverse.org, there will be some kind of little intro. And I did make a book of it, comes out in October, October 1st. That is 15 essays about science with 15 poems and some beautiful art by this artist, Ofer Amit. That's also out there or will be. Before I let you go, can you just tell everybody a little bit

about the margin alien? The margin alien is what I do with my life. It started in 2006. I was in my twenties. It was then under the name Brain Pickings, which I very quickly came to hate. And eventually 15 years into it, I renamed it to The Marginalian. It is essentially my marginalia on the search for meaning, my personal search for meaning through what I read and what I encounter. It's a kind of ongoing through what I read and what I encounter. It's a kind of ongoing log of becoming as a person, you know, but it's in a way impersonal. I don't write about myself overtly, but in a way it's

entirely an expression of me as an individual human being, lensed through the writings of people over the years, the centuries that I have read and that I found resonant and that have taught me something about my blind spots, my vulnerabilities, and how to be alive. I mean, I guess it's just an experiment and trying to figure out how to be. Yeah, I highly recommend it to everybody. I consume it in the form of newsletters, but you can obviously go to the site and it's basically just a brilliant, omnivorous mind trying to figure out what this is all about

and how to get better at life. So Maria, we finally got you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for expanding my willingness with your kindness. Absolute pleasure. I hope it's not the last time. Thanks again to Maria.

Great to finally get her on the show. Don't forget her new book, The Universe Inverse, and her slightly older title Figuring are both available for listening on Audible and thanks again to Audible for sponsoring this episode. Love those guys. They've been incredible supporters of what we do. Don't forget to check out danharris.com where you can sign up for my newsletter where I sum up my favorite takeaways from the week's episodes. And before I go, I also want to just thank everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Carolyn Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager,

Marissa Schneiderman, who did such a great job convincing Maria to come on today, is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our managing producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.