The One You Feed - Maria Popova of Brain Pickings

Episode Date: March 2, 2015

[powerpress]  This week we talk to Maria Popova about Brain Pickings and living a good life. Our guest today is Maria Popova: a writer, blogger, and critic living Brooklyn, NY.  She is best known for Brainpickings.org, which features her writing on culture, books, and many other subjects. Brain Pickings is seen by millions of readers every month. Maria’s describes her work as  a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are…. For more information, show notes and a free resource guide for staying inspired visit our website.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In order to be able to have peace at all with ourselves and with other people, we need to be able to acknowledge that there is contradiction in everything, and that is the beauty of life. And trying to resolve that contradiction is a fool's errand that's only ever going to make us feel disappointed, because one part is not going to cease existing because we try to will it to do so. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.

And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Maria Popova, a writer, blogger, and critic living in Brooklyn, New York. She's best known for BrainPickings.org,

which features her writing on culture, books, and many other subjects. BrainPickings is seen by millions of readers every month. Maria describes her work as a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you to things you didn't know you were interested in, until you are. Before we start the interview today, I wanted to let you know that we have a free download at OneUFeed.net. It's a resource guide we can all use to keep us inspired. So don't forget to check that out.

And here's Eric with a quick message, followed by the interview. I believe we're all doing the best we can in our lives with the abilities that we have and the things that we know. But sometimes getting some new methods or getting some accountability and support can really help us in feeding our good wolf and moving our lives forward. If this is something you're interested in learning more about, some of the programs that we're offering, send an email to eric at oneufeed.net. Thanks. Hi, Maria. Welcome to the show. Such a pleasure to be with you.

Thank you so much for taking the time. I know that you are not a big fan of interviews all the time. And you are extremely busy. So I genuinely appreciate you taking a few minutes. Well, I'm not a fan of interviews, but I am a big fan of human conversation. And what makes the one you feed so special to me, and I listen to it just on my own, is that you actually have conversations as opposed to Q&A type interviews. Right, right. Yeah, I usually try and stay away from the word interview. It's what I used for a while. And I was like, well, that's not really what I want to be doing. I want to be having conversations, which is certainly I got that vibe more from Krista Tippett, who I know you like also. So we had her on, and I joked that it was like cooking for Julia Childs

to have to try and lead her in the conversation. So you've been doing brain pickings for a little over eight years at this point, right? Yep, turning nine in a few months. And so we've got a little intro about what brain pickings is, but maybe you could put it into your own words for our listeners for a couple sentences. It's mostly a record of my effort to figure out how to live and how to live a life that is meaningful and inspired and intelligent. And that that makes me excited to get up basically. And that record comes in the form of all these different ideas that I encountered through reading, mostly from very old books,

and how they apply to our daily lives in a way that's both timely and timeless. Yeah, I mean, I'm such a fan of what you do. I think you do it so well. And one of the things you've got out there that you say when you're talking about think you do it so well. And I, you, I, one of the things you've got out there that you say in your, when you're talking about, you're describing your show is you, you say the core ethos behind brain pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force. It's our ability to tap into our mental pool of resources and, you know, all the fragments. And I just am so amazed by you do that so well, you pull these, these different pieces together in a really, really elegant way. I'm curious, do you have

like a list of 10 or 15 core themes that that you're that you're sort of scanning for when you're out there doing your reading? Could you define those in your own mind? Like, these are the main things that, I mean, I could probably pick some of them pretty easily, like creativity or presence or some different things, but do you have that sort of list in your mind of the core themes? And then as you read something, you go, oh, yep, that fits in that bucket. This ties back to that. Is that sort of how your mind approaches that? Yes and no. I would say all of these sort of things that you cite are really grab bag terms that we have. Things like happiness and love and creativity. I mean, they're so vast and so broad that they're kind of empty of meaning unless you contextualize them in a way that actually adds dimension and practical resonance at the same time. So I kind of try to stay away from things that are overly umbrella-like,

but the reason why these themes are so recurring in the history of humanity really is because, well, actually when you think about it, the core human concerns, the core inquiries of just human life and the human experience are kind of cliche. And they're cliche because they matter to us so deeply and so repeatedly that they recur. And so it's a fine line between talking about these things that are so fundamental in a way that actually enriches that conversation and talking about them in a way that just sort of regurgitates these used phrases. But I actually want to go back to something you said just a minute ago when you were quoting from my about page and you said, my show. And I think it's interesting that you use that word because this sort of mental glitch of calling something that is textual a show it actually reveals something which is goes back to this question of conversation and human

conversation and perhaps the reason I feel such a kinship of spirit with what you do and perhaps you with me by making that verbal mistake is that actually brain cookingings is a kind of, to me, a conversation between the present and the past through one person's life, but also through all these many lives. And so in a way, there's almost this radio-like experience for me being the radio coordinator in that conversation. Yeah, it definitely does have that feel to it. So one of the posts that you have out there on brain pickings is the seven things that you learned in seven years of doing this project. And so I'd like to explore some of those. But I'd first like to ask now that you're at a little over eight years, have you got another thing to add to the list, an eighth thing? I have many, many, many things that sort of were left off the list.

I think I touched on that a little bit in one of the points, which I don't right now off the top of my head remember the order of them. But I think, and back to this question of the most core things being kind of cliches but being vital this quality of kindness I would say and and practicing it and recognizing it in others is increasingly it reveals itself is increasingly important as I'm learning more and more that ultimately how intelligent a person is, how talented, how creative, how driven can all be completely invalidated if they are not kind. So that would be, I guess, the eighth one. Yeah, kindness is a good one. the eighth one. Yeah, kindness is a good one. One of them that you have is be generous.

And one of the lines that you say, to understand and be understood, those are among life's greatest gifts. And every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them. And I love seeing the world through that view. Yeah, I mean, I think very often for people who put any portion of themselves out there for the world to sort of experience and respond to, the hardest thing about criticism is not the people who disagree with you, because then you actually get to have a conversation. And that can be very stimulating. And I'm all for sort of evolving and sometimes changing your point of view based on those types of conversations. But the kind of criticism that burns the most is from people that you feel profoundly misunderstood by. Because when you're not understood, there isn't any more of that framework of agreement and disagreement, because the very point you're trying to make is not the

point that they're reading. And so the conversation is broken by default. It just can't happen. So I do think that mutuality of understanding is the prerequisite for any kind of dialogue, whether it's in terms of affirming one another's point of view or disagreeing with them. That's a really interesting way to think about that. Do you think that there are people that it's difficult to ever get to dialogue on because our core framework or our way of viewing the world is so different that it sometimes can't be overcome? I think the majority of disagreement or sort of that hurdle that you're describing, most of it comes not from being unable to overcome our differences, but being so impatient as to not consider the root of that difference and whether beneath that there might be some sort of shared

value or shared aspiration. And we very much live in a culture of instant opinions. You know, people would rather react than respond because it's faster. And I actually was listening a couple days ago to a very short episode you did on knowing versus acting, in which you basically say that there's this disconnect between what we know and how we're able to act in the world. And I both agree and disagree because I think what's happening is that knowledge is this static place. And once people know something and are not willing to further that and transmute that into wisdom, which is a kind of dynamic understanding of the world, they're more likely to just assert their opinions, the static knowing. And we've almost kind of lost the capacity for thinking or have become bored with thinking. We want to instantly know, you

know, which is why all these listicles, 10 of history's most expensive art paintings, you know, why would you think about what makes great art and how it moves you and what makes a painting extraordinary when you can see a list of, you know, the 10 most expensive ones? And so I think a lot of that disconnect between knowing and understanding is actually at the root of conflict. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with that. I think that is a, it's that old idea of when you're having a conversation with someone is if you can, again, it's back to cliches, but if you can try and understand really where they're coming from and their view of the world. It makes all those things happen so much better. But most of us, at least in a lot of meaningful conversations, I've certainly been this way and work on it. It becomes very much a defensive thing very quickly versus an ability to really sort of stop and get under that person's skin and understand what is it that's driving what's happening there.

That is a really hard thing to do sometimes, particularly with subjects that mean a lot to us. Especially because we have a pretty core and sort of almost biological aversion and fear of being wrong. We are just, we are incapable of being wrong and would go to extreme lengths to avoid the just soul-crushing feeling of that. And very often, you know, when you actually come to understand, as you say, where a person's coming from and what are those more deep-seated beliefs and issues and traumas and experiences that inform their point of view of that every time we change, implicit to that is the kind of awareness that the former way, the older way was somehow inferior to the way that we're adopting now, which is why people hate every time Facebook redesigns, it's this or that, you know, we just don't like this being told that here's a better way to do something, because

what we hear is, oh, the way you're doing it now is wrong. Yep. And I think that ties to one of your other seven things you learned, which is allowing yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. And one of the things that I'm always so fascinated by is in our culture, how much we hate, the ultimate insult to call a politician is a flip-flopper. And it always is interesting to me that we don't, I mean, I guess it's not that interesting if you look at our overall cultural mentality.

It's not surprising that that's, but I think that that is actually a good thing in a lot of, I mean, depending on what's driving it. But I think if, at least for me, if I'm not changing my mind on certain things, I'm probably not really being very open to the world. Oh, absolutely. And then the scariest part to me is there's a fair amount of behavioral research showing that the more intelligent people are, the better they're able to use that intelligence to rationalize and affirm their existing beliefs and sort of create these infrastructures, supporting infrastructures around

them as to bolster these sort of fixed beliefs, and the less likely they are to actually branch out and change their mind. Yeah, the studies that are out there on this more and more where we realize that we decide emotionally and then use our brain to come up with a logical, so we can tell a logical story about what's happening. That's so fascinating to me. And then you start getting into all the biases, you know, the confirmation bias and all these different things. It is really, to be an open-minded thinking person, I think takes an awful lot of effort. It goes against, I think, a lot of our programming. Yeah. And especially because it really begins, being open-minded really begins by being open-hearted.

And that implies a level of vulnerability that is often intolerable. And vulnerability is another one of these terms that have become kind of a, you know, grab-bag business world cliche, but it's a very core thing that we experience, and we experience daily. And all these things that we just talked about, you know, criticism, disagreement, the mutuality of understanding, there's always the higher the stakes are in terms of vulnerability, the more likely we are to dig our heels in and not be willing to change our minds. But of course, the only way to do that is to be open hearted. And then we can be open

minded. That's a great point. And it makes me think of you've got a really lovely posting about Alan Watts and the wisdom of insecurity. And this idea that the more we try and cling, you know, we're really trying to cling to that that not knowing is really, can be really, really scary. And that, so we try and put things into a way that, that makes sense to us, because that, I think Pema, the Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun uses the word, the groundlessness, is, if you really experience that, is, is kind of unsettling. Oh yeah, and which is why, I mean, most world religions exist to alleviate that groundlessness. Yep. One of the things that is a is a very consistent theme on your blog that I want to talk about, and it is one of your, it is one of your seven things that you learned. And it

just it repeats throughout, I would say, if I had to identify some of your core themes, and it's this idea that presence is far more intricate and rewarding in art than productivity. Can you elaborate on that? I think I know because I am part of it and culpable of it. We live in a culture that approaches life in general as a series of tasks to be accomplished. You go to school, you graduate, or you drop out and you make a million dollars in Silicon Valley, you start a family, or you create a major work of cultural contribution, all these sort of checklist items on what we think is a successful life. think is a successful life. And the rub is that it becomes very easy to sort of keep showing up for these things for our own lives while actually being absent from them to go. And you talk about autopilot a lot and, you know, this notion of just cruising through what we think the course of a

great life is, but not really experiencing each moment as it comes. And I had a very disorienting experience recently. I've been meditating for years, but I'd never gone to a sort of retreat, like a formal organized meditation retreat. And I went and I, first of all, I was very kind of aware in a on the entire state. And this was like probably a few thousand people because there were multiple retreats going on at the place at the same time. And that was one thing. But the other thing, one woman was talking about, oh, I debated whether to take my Porsche down or not, and I decided against it. And it was kind of this moment, I don't doubt that some part of her has the genuine desire for self-transcendence or enlightenment or whatever we call this, this sort of thing that we seek by going to these places.

I don't doubt that there was earnestness in that, but I also fear that perhaps there was a part of her and a part of a lot of us, but in that place, more of a caricature of that, that sees that thing, the enlightenment or self-transcendence or whatever, as another checklist item on our conception of the good life and not as a thing to be attained, you know? And I think when we

approach these things in such a way, we're no longer present with the unfolding of our experience. We're just sort of performing another kind of hedonic treadmill hamster wheel thing. Yeah, I've got a bunch of thoughts about what you just said. But we had a guest on shows and Jack Hobner, who wrote a book called Zen Confidential, which is a remarkable memoir of his time in a, in a Zen monastery, funny and enlightening. But he's got a part in there that I think speaks to this. And he says, I had become largely a person who worked on changing themselves. That's what I was.

My whole focus in life was always changing myself. And I think that's an interesting, you can find that sort of in the personal development, self-help culture, whatever you want to call it, I think, where we can get so caught up in, I need to be better, I need to be different. And I'm always fascinated by that. And I'd be interested in your thought on it, how we find that, that line, or how we hold these two, what sometimes feel like exclusive states of mind. One is the striving and the desire to, to do better, to become better, to produce important things. And then the other is the acceptance and the presence of being right where we are.

And I have gotten, I get caught up in my mind sometimes feeling like those things are, that they're mutually exclusive. I don't think they are, as I've talked more about it, but I'm interested in your thought on that. Because it gets right to this productivity versus presence piece. thought on that? Because it gets right to this productivity versus presence piece. Well, I think what's interesting is that you look at somebody like Alan Watts or any of the sort of great teachers of Eastern philosophy in the West, and the common theme is the sort of dispelling the illusion of the self as an entity that's separate from the rest of everything, from the rest of the universe and all other beings, and that the self is sort of this illusion, right? But how we think in the West, in the traditional sort of Western psychology tradition

of the improvement of the human experience is in terms of self-improvement. the improvement of the human experience is in terms of self-improvement. So it doesn't just mean improving oneself as a person. It also means improving the self itself, the sense of self, the sort of this fortifying of this, essentially this illusion. And I think that's where it gets kind of toxic because that feeds into our illusion of separateness, which is a phrase that Alan Watts and Tara Brock and all these teachers use. It feeds into our sense of dividedness from everybody else. And this extreme individualism is often the root of a lot of conflict and a lot of desire to be right. And even if you think about self-righteousness, which goes back to all these things we were

talking about in terms of being wrong and seeing others' points of view, I mean, self-righteousness is also predicated on a strong, solid, and static self. And so I think the only way to reconcile these conflicting drives is to constantly revisit this question of, am I really such a separate self? And am I so attached to this experience of the self as an individual as to miss 90% of what's going on around me as to cast other people as wrong? And all these things that spring from just our very vulnerable feeling of if I don't fortify the self, then I don't matter, then I don't exist. Boy, that idea of not being a distinct self and that is at the heart of a lot of Eastern

philosophy is something that I have really, I struggle with on and off over the years. Because on one hand, I think it sounds like that's kind of the whole enchilada on some degree, right? And then on the other hand, I go, boy, that feels so intangible to me. I don't know what to do with that. Like even if I, that's one for me that feels like the real difference between an intellectual understanding and a deep wisdom or an emotional connection to it. Because in my mind, I can think through that. But boy, this feeling of being this separate self is so strong and the evidence feels so compelling to some degree that I always, as I look at sort of a spiritual practice, I always am wondering, should I be spending more

focus on that piece? Or should I be spending more focus on more tangible things like being kinder? And, and not that those things are exclusive. It's just that as I, as I think through those ideas, I often get, I get kind of lost in that one. Well, you see, I think actually part of our anguish comes from the very fact that we approach this question to what the goal-oriented mindset of this needs to be resolved. And even, I mean, we are creatures of contradiction and of constant flux and that's really the notion of the self as an illusion isn't about saying that we don't exist or denying our nature or spirit or whatever you want to call it it's more about being able to hold multiple things together at the same time and even if you look at Alan Watts I mean he died an alcoholic and he was also wonderfully wise and witty, but also kind of arrogant, and he had all these contradictions.

And I think the immature and sort of snap-judgment-y way to talk about these things is to say, well, he was a hypocrite. How could he teach all these things and not practice them in his life? And we do that a lot in culture, by the way. We point the finger at other people's so-called hypocrisy. But what really is happening is that in order to be able to have peace at all with ourselves and with other people, we need to be able to acknowledge that there is contradiction in everything, and that is the beauty of life. And trying to resolve that contradiction is a fool's errand that's only ever going to make us feel disappointed because one part is not going to cease existing because we try to will it to do so. Yeah, boy, I love what you just said there about that being a fool's errand of trying to resolve those contradictions or the inability to embrace paradox because it seems to be right at the heart of a lot of this. And yet, as a thinking person, I tend to try very often to find, you know, I think one of the things that's been interesting to me as I've done the show longer

is I think I thought I'm going to ask all these people some of these questions and there's going to be some answer. And I think I knew on some level that wasn't true, be some answer. And I was, I think I knew on some level that wasn't true. But it's become more and more clear to me that there there are not answers to a lot of these things. It's it's the human condition. This is what being human is. And it's, it's about relaxing into that. And I know that you are, you have a lot of stuff about Rilke on your site. And, you know, certainly that's one of those there that learning to love the questions. And live the questions. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who

figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you two? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about

Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHe it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe we could talk about Roka for a second because I think there's so much there's so much in there. What would be the first thing besides that quote that I that I brought up there that you have gotten from his work? I love a lot of what he says about this sort of another inability to embrace opposites, right? Body and soul. And he basically says that it's foolish to try to prioritize one at the expense of the other to sort

of make yourself be this sort of soulful creature by denying the body. And then he has this one really beautiful line where he says something like, I am not a person who neglects the body in order to make it a sacrificial offering to the soul since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.

And he's sort of being, again, witty and wise, which is, I think these are qualities that a lot of the great, enduring thinkers have, where they are very clear in their beliefs, beliefs that are, by the way, constantly evolving, but they're also reluctant to take themselves too seriously, because I think that's when we stop evolving. And so a lot of them have a level of humor about things that are actually very deep and very

important, but they're not articulated in a preachy and sort of self-righteous way. I think cliches are a theme of this conversation, but there's always that idea of the Zen monks who are off laughing. You know, when they really finally, you know, achieve some degree of insight, you know, often it seems that that's accompanied by a certain degree of laughter, humor. I certainly think levity is a underappreciated virtue. Oh, absolutely.

And even, you know, Kierkegaard, the great non-humorist of philosophy, actually said that basically the task of... He said something like, it's man's destiny to amuse himself. And that's in a long, long essay on boredom that he had in Either Or, which is very grave and very sort of grumpy and serious. But then he has this weird oddball line, which actually reminds you, wait, that's why most people tussle with ideas, because they want to not only enlighten themselves, but also feel the levity of life in that enlightenment. Yeah, that article, or that, I don't know what to, what do you call what you put out there? A post, a story, an article? Do you ever,

is there a particular term for it? I don't particularly care. I guess I call it an article because it's what I'm used to from sort of magazines and such. I guess I don't define things by the technology in which they live which is why post is a little kind of neither here nor there exactly exactly well i'll call them i'll think of them as articles or i think uh danielle laporte has things she calls truth bombs you could you could call your own truth bombs which might be that's that has a certain hubris to it but it is is, it's a clever term. Or question bombs are for me.

Question bombs, yeah, yeah. Big inquiry bombs. Yeah, yours are definitely that. So that Kierkegaard article was interesting because you explored along with him the ideas of boredom versus idleness. And we sort of flew by this idea of presence and, you know, being more important than productivity. And then I think we spiraled out somewhere from there. So I'll use that as a way to sort of, to bring us back, because I think he made a distinction. And there is a distinction

between boredom. And the term he used is idleness, which I think semantically probably doesn't culturally fit with what we're doing. But he had a very different meaning. And I think, again, it gets back to presence. Can you go off that for a minute? Yeah. Well, so first of all, the reason I remembered this, reading this many years ago, is that actually last night I did this little event with WNYC, which is the NPR affiliate here in New York, called Boredom Brilliant. And they have this project, I guess, ongoing project about boredom and how we can break free from the tyranny of our devices and just be more present.

And so I did a little thing with them and remembered this and thinking, because a lot of what I write about is really, all of it is really what I think about. So the day before I was thinking about boredom and I've covered that many times before, and mostly from the perspective of people like Adam Phillips and Susan Sontag, who basically say boredom is essential to creativity, to contemplation. It's, Adam Phillips calls it a developmental achievement for the child. And then I remembered Kierkegaard, who distinctly remembered the line, boredom is the root of all evil. And I thought, wait, there must be more depth to that. It can't just be, he can't just be this. I mean, he's one of the greatest thinkers of humanity. He can't

just be that absurdly, no pun intended, you know, narrow. And so I went back to this work. It comes from Either Or. And sure enough, he goes on this very, very long rant on boredom, in which he basically also talks about why distraction doesn't work in alleviating boredom, which he defines as a sort of existential emptiness, a sense of emptiness. And I love that for a separate sort of reason, which is that it actually explains why all the cat slideshows on the internet are not going to fix your existential emptiness for you. And I love that he, 150 years ago, could peer into these issues that we're dealing with today. But then after his massive rant,

he actually says, idleness is not the root of all evil. In fact, it's its counterpoint. And he says that idleness is not evil, and it can be said that it's the greatest, the most divine good, if one is not bored. And the way that he uses idleness is very much as we would today use presence, which is now on the verge of becoming another one of those grab bag terms, you know, or stillness or contemplation. And it's not this sort of passive, just droning, you know, but he makes a case for how creating these pockets of stillness, right, into our own lives is actually essential to being able to raise ourselves, he says, to the human level, because those who are not able to do that are at the animal level of just driven by a basic need and instinct.

So I am very much a proponent of this, of this deliberate engineering of stillness into everyday life. And I think we don't do it enough. and we don't do it enough for reasons that are pretty trivial and easily resolved if we actually decide to resolve it. A lot of them are kind of these micro-compulsive behaviors that we have. And one thing I learned from that WNYC event, they have some sort of app called Moments that tracks how people are using their phones. of app called Moment that tracks how people are using their phones. And apparently the average person spends two hours a day looking at their phone. And most of it is for no specific purpose. It's not like they're writing an email to their mother. It's just checking the time or just

mindlessly scanning Instagram feeds and things that we do as a habit that we've formed. But I'm very much with William James on the point about habit, that that's how we weave our destinies. And some of these habits are actually not that hard to change. Yeah, I have been wrestling with that one a little bit, trying to be more cognizant of that, those, those small chunks of time that it seems easy to just pick up the phone and look at, at, you know, at Twitter or Facebook or whatever and go, yeah, it's just a couple minutes. But those really add up. And I think the other thing that I really liked about that Kierkegaard article is that I, I think that those things actually increase my existential emptiness. Like I'm doing it to fill that hole and it's having, it has, I don't know that I can articulate

what it is, but it weakens me in some way that I don't, I don't quite have the words for. But so I've recently gone to, you know, all right, I'm just taking that stuff off the phone. And then the question becomes, okay, now, I've got two and a half minutes, right? I'm standing in line at a place, I've got two and a half minutes. Boy, I don't even know that I know what to do with that time anymore. I'm reading a book on the Kindle, which, you know, on one hand, I go, well, that's, you know, there's something good about that. But it is that inability to sort of be present for any time. And so I'm right in the midst of exploring that more for myself right now and seeing, because I've, one of the things that I've, I think about productivity wise is that those small chunks of time, I tend to write them off, like, I've only got four minutes till the next thing I need to do. to write them off like, oh, I've only got four minutes till the next thing I need to do. But boy, if I focus, I can get a lot done. I can use those four minutes in a valuable way versus just saying,

well, they're just four minutes. I'll just kind of throw them away. Well, I think that's absolutely true. But there's also the parallel question of, do we really need to get something done every four minutes of our lives? Are we really that compulsively addicted to producing as opposed to just living? And I am very much, again, we're all woven of these contradictions. I'm culpable myself. And you're actually implicated in that because I listen to podcasts primarily when I commute on my bike, which I do a lot here in New York. It's just how I get around. But I, even though most of the podcast, all of the podcasts I listen to have a very strong element

of contemplation and sort of philosophical thought and Chris is, you know, on being and the one you feed and things like this. But I found myself at one point feeling like the second, sometimes the length, the duration of an episode is shorter than the duration of my ride. And then it ends and I feel this sort of sense of panic at the silence. And that frightened me because I don't want to be, I don't want to live that way. And so now I've been making an effort to sort of deliberately not listen to things on some of my rides and some of my commutes, because I think four minutes put toward answering another email or some other productivity task is not nearly as valuable as four minutes with your own mind and just seeing what your inner life says to you in those four minutes. Yeah, so this idea of presence versus productivity,

and I think it's something I think we all wrestle with if we both feel a desire to contribute something to the world and yet also feel like being present. And I know that you, I'll use the term work a lot, right? You put a lot of effort and time into the reading and writing that you do for brain pickings. And I'm curious, do you see a lot of that time as being present? Or do you see that time as productivity? Or is it both sometimes? And where's the distinction? both sometimes and where's the distinction? It can be both. One thing, and again, all of that stuff is a constant case of dialing in with your own sense of where you are and trying to readjust course if it doesn't feel right. And so in the beginning of this year, one thing I actually realized I was doing is transforming what is or should be or has been historically a very present thing for me, which is reading and thinking and text, which is really,

you know, what brain pickings is for me, transforming that into some sort of quota filling activity for no reason, because there really is no reason. I have no boss. I don't run ads on my site. So it's not like I play the page view game, which is, you know, what the ad supported internet does. And it's not, it doesn doesn't it just doesn't make any difference other than to my own very compulsive I am a I have a compulsive personality I guess and so I had created the structure for myself that was just completely unreasonable because in in 2010 when I made a very deliberate choice to no longer do any freelance writing for anybody else. At the time, I was writing for Wired and Businessweek and Design Observer and things like that. And to reallocate that time into my own labor of love, into brain pickings,

I started doing three articles a day, Monday through Friday, going from one a day. But they were very short. At the time, I didn't have many books because I'd lived on two continents, three coasts, six cities, and like 12 apartments over the course of two years. So point being, I didn't have any physical stillness in my life to have mental and spiritual stillness. So there were very short sort of little snippets of what I was looking at. But over time, when I settled in New York, and I got all my old books back, and I started getting more and more and more, my apartment is now infested with books, the articles became longer. And I mean, seriously longer, they went from maybe a couple hundred words to now on average 2000 words. And I didn't adjust the pace for that. I kept

doing three a day of those and, you know, January 1st this year, I just found myself thinking, oh my God, why, why do I do this? I mean, I don't have time to breathe and to live. And granted, I'm very stimulated by what I do and excited by it, but there comes a tipping point past which it's actually draining because, you know, um, and so I've been trying to dial back to this place where it does feel like a present activity, a present, a present thing. And, and I'm sure I will keep sort of playing around with the, the actual pace and schedule until it works better. But I think there's always this interplay. For people who have a very strong integration between so-called work and so-called life, you know, when their work is their life and vice versa, it's a constant osmosis between these two, you know, the present and the

productive part. And again, back to the not having to resolve it right away thing. It just constantly tinkering with it and really listening to what your inner voice says about, is it working? Is it charging me or is it draining me? And in either case, how do I, you know, retune the dial on that? Yep. And that gets to one of your other seven things you learned, which is doing nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. And, uh, and so I think that ties right into that. And I can tell you as a reader that there is no, I can't, there's no way I can even keep up as a reader. So I don't think you need to feel pressure to get three of those out there a day because there is, I mean, I'm not even in the neighborhood of keeping up.

Oh, look, even my partner, who is the most dedicated reader of the site, obviously, cannot reasonably read everything every day. And there comes a point in which I think, well, wait a minute, if my partner can't read all of it, who would? But I mean, it's a fine line, too, because I have often said, and I still really believe that I actually write for myself. Whether it's some sort of, I don't know, psychoanalyze me, you know, some kind of hedge against immortality and trying to keep a record of my thought and trying to not forget, you know, because a large part of why I write is so I don't forget what I read and what I think about. I don't know. I mean, there's that. There's how, what chunk of it am I doing for me?

And do I, do I, does it matter that other people don't keep up if I keep up? And, you know. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. All I was saying is I don't think that if there's any external pressure that enters your equation, I don't, I don't think it needs to be there. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make

the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've heard you say that before about that you do the site largely for yourself. And this podcast, for me, that was sort of the, you know, there's certainly a big part of that for me, too. It was a combination of things. One was I just wanted to, it's a way to keep myself off autopilot, spiritual autopilot. I was like, I'm just going to make the show that I wish I could listen to. And I think there's such a freedom in doing that. And I'm grateful to be able to have that mindset. And I can almost always recognize it when I see somebody else who's doing something.

And I think none of us are. Back to that, there's a blend. None of us are so pure. It's like, oh, I don't care what you know i put it out into the world whatever happens i have no preference i don't think anybody's that ideologically pure but but certainly there the the for me the more that i can stay on the why i'm doing this and tying it back to what's going on inside me, the more of it remains something that gives me energy, gives me strength versus the other way around. Well, Austin Kleon, who's a friend and an artist and just a kindred spirit, he likes to say, make the thing you want to see

in the world. Write the books that you want to read, do the art you want to see, make the thing you want to see in the world, write the books that you want to read, do the art you want to see, make the music you want to hear and all of that. And I very much believe it. But I also think really what's at the root of that is put the values into the world that you would like to see thrive and persevere. And so when you frame it that way, then yes, absolutely, you're doing it for yourself.

But there's also this element of, I actually want to help other people live in a way that is somehow better, somehow better. And not, I don't mean better by my own self-righteous standard, but better for humanity in some way. And this actually goes back to the parable after which your show is titled. And I mean, I do believe that we have a choice in which wolf we feed, especially in a culture in which snark and cynicism reign rampant and are frequently rewarded and in which people do truly horrible things to one another from behind the veil of anonym rewarded and in which people do truly horrible things to one another from behind the veil of anonymity and in which it's just generally easier to be a critic than a celebrator. And I believe that we have choices in this, both large existential ones by which we resolve to

live our lives a certain way, but also small daily ones by which we affirm that direction. And so I choose for myself very deliberately, when I started brain pickings nearly nine years ago now, and also every day, to feed the celebrator rather than the critic, both in myself and in my readers. That's great. And I completely forgot, did I completely forget to ask you the wolf question, didn't I? I think I was so excited to talk to you that I completely forgot, did I completely forget to ask you the wolf question, didn't I? I think I was so excited to talk to you that I completely missed the intro. And wow, well, I'm glad you nailed it right there. So that's good. I may end up having to move that earlier in the interview. We'll see.

To that end, though, I have to say another thing about how the wolf parable applies to my life, which is a more meta way, which I actually think is perhaps even more important. Which is that much of what I do deals with archival and historical materials and culling from them all of these enduring ideas on how to live. and this requires both understanding those ideas in the original context and recontextualizing them in our present culture at this intersection you know of the timeless and the timely but here's the thing our present culture is very much one of short-termism and is very often divorced from historical context and we assume that if something isn't on the internet, it doesn't matter or doesn't exist at all. And what is on the internet is, we assume, accurate and valid. But what's on the internet is often misattributed quotes and fragmentary ideas

stripped of original context and reclaimed in a different way, which doesn't necessarily preserve the integrity of the original idea. And so the meta way is this, that take, for instance, this parable about the two wolves. Now, the internet is rife with citations of it, regurgitating it as this old Cherokee legend. But in fact, as you know, it first appeared in that book, the 1978, I think, was book, The Holy Spirit by an evangelical Christian minister named Billy Graham. And now this context might change things for some people. It can make the parable all the more compelling for Christians, for instance, or be off-putting to those of us who have a distaste for organized religion.

who have a distaste for organized religion. And yet the message, the core message of that little fable is an important one. But I believe the role of a great writer or editor or podcaster or museum curator is to equip people with the appropriate context and critical tools to make a decision both inspired and informed about which aspects of an idea or ideology they want to subscribe to and carry forward. Well, you do that very well. Oh, thank you. As do you.

Well, thank you. So we're past time. I could probably do this for about six hours, but I'm going to end with one more of your seven lessons, and you just talked about it, which is this idea. And it's one that, that comes up in, in what I talk about all the time. And you just referred to it in the, in the way of our culture, but this short term, um, mentality that things should be quick, they should be easy. Um, and you, you've got a quote from Debbie Millman that says, expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.

And can you give us maybe just a couple thoughts on that before we end? Sure. I mean, first of all, Debbie is my partner, which is why I quote her in my life learnings, as one should. I think she kind of, she nails this thing that really bespeaks an idea that's that's very deep in our culture but to which we have such resistance which is that you can't you cannot make it overnight and whatever your definition of make it is and the more more sort of spiritual and less material your definition of make it is, the more true that is. Because perhaps you can have an overnight success by building a really successful startup and selling it off to Google in a year and a half. You know, that's a certain kind of

success. But if you're after things like the things that Kierkegaard was talking about, like filling that existential emptiness and living with the sense of presence and purpose. And again, back to all those kind of cliche, but kind of inevitably true things that we all want, then you can't do it overnight. And yet so much of our cultural mythology is focused on that. And yet so much of our cultural mythology is focused on that. Even if you look at what kinds of people are being spotlighted in the mainstream media and how the people who achieve success by their own measure, how their stories are told. I don't remember which writer it was. I read an interview with his son in The Guardian maybe five or six years ago. It was a UK writer. And the father had just won the National Book Award or some other major honor.

And he had said to his son, well, 22 years of writing and they're calling me an overnight success. And we have that. It's funny, but it's really sad because we have that mentality that either you make it right away or you make it after a long stretch of time and that long stretch embark on something new, we tend to think that we should be as good as what we're seeing out there without. And if we don't realize how long, you know, how long it took, you know, I bet if we went back and looked at the first few articles you wrote for Brain Pickings, we would, right, right. We'd say, and, and, and a lot, everything dreadful. Yeah. And, and yet that wasn't a measure of your competence or your capability. It was a measure of your current skill level, which can be improved.

Well, one thing related to that, which is actually very important and something that I get so many young people, I assume young people, asking me about is the very, very recurring question, please tell me, does the donation-based model work? And it's kind of like, because my site is like public radio. It's just all of it is free. It's ad-free, and it's supported by people volunteering to donate whatever they feel like. Right.

And the answer to that question is yes and no. It works really well now, nine years into it, and I'm at a point where I can actually afford very fancy servers, which I actually need, you know, and all these things that I can pay my rent, I can do things that you can say in a valid way, it works. But for the first six years, I was beyond broke. And not only beyond broke, but beyond broke, and without any kind of assurance that this would ever quote, unquote, work, you know, and so I don't know, I never, I never know what to tell people in a way that doesn't mislead them to think it's all hopeless,

but also is very clear in letting them know that if you want to make it work, you have to be willing to kind of suffer through a bunch of stuff and mostly suffer through uncertainty for a long period of time before you can have your own answer. to the overnight success thing that even, I mean, look, Kickstarter, I think has done tremendous things for creative culture today. And I am a regular and very sort of avid supporter of projects on Kickstarter. But I also think it's breeding a certain mentality in people that they want the safety net, the assurance before they even begin. And for certain things, that's great when it's a product based thing. I mean, that's that's great when it's a product-based thing. I mean, that's perfect. But if it's a long-term commitment, there is no safety net. You weave your own safety net like a little spider chipping away every single morning when you wake up. And not everybody has a tolerance for that. But back to the point of putting into the world the

kinds of things that you want to see, I would love to see more people do that. But back to the point of putting into the world the kinds of things that you want to see, I would love to see more people do that. And I actually keep this list of sites that I love that I come across somehow randomly, because I rarely read the internet anymore, who seem to be doing similar things of just doing writing about what they feel matters, right? And because that's what writers do for people. They help us figure out what matters in the world and why it matters. And doing that and having it be donation-based and doing it quietly and with perseverance and just doing it and not knowing where it's going to go.

And some of them, there's a wonderful site, I don't know if you know it, called Wait But Why. No, I don't know if you know it, called Wait But Why. No, I don't. Which I discovered only recently because I live under a cultural rock the size of the moon. But this guy who runs it, his name is Tim Urban, answers questions about sort of science, psychology, philosophy in a very thoughtful way, very long form. And he's been doing it for a while. And it's tipping now into a point where it, quote unquote, works. It's also donation based. And I just love seeing that because I believe it's possible. But when these

young people ask me in an email, does it work? It's very hard to say it will work in nine years because to a 21 year old, nine years is eternity, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I think that's, I mean, that's the number one question I get asked by people about the show. You know, we've had some success with iTunes. Pickiness is one of the best and all that. And the question I get asked all the time, it's nothing about the show. It's nothing about the ideas. You know, 98% of the questions that I get that are from other people in the business is what's your monetization plan. And I'm like, I don't really have one. Now I'm, I'm fortunate that I have other things that I also do in addition to this, that enable me not to need this to make money, to, to survive. I've got other things that I do that I also do in addition to this that enable me not to need this to make money to

survive. I've got other things that I do that I like doing that are, but it's just not where my mind has been with it. And it's always, I always say, I'll think about that. And then it never really happens more than in passing. But, but I'm just, I'm, I'm, I think podcasts right now are culturally very hot. And so it's the gold rush, right? And everybody's rushing in and it's about how they're going to make money doing it. And the vast, vast, vast majority of them aren't to start with. And the rest that do will probably do it over a substantial period of time by doing something similar to what you've done, which is building something that's worth supporting. Well, here's the thing, though.

One reason why what you've done has become what it is and why people like Austin Kleon are who they are is that you can tell that it didn't originate from a place of, let me make some content, the word I hate most in the world, and make some money with it. You can tell, the word I hate most in the world, and make some money with it. You can tell the spirit in which it comes into the world. And I think the only way that things like this, cultural material really, have enduring and meaningful impact is if the question of monetization or whatever system is is secondary and it and only when it's a byproduct yeah because that's the only and and of course that does require that

you do it for a while with no pay and probably no money to live on and depending on your tolerance for that. But I guess one reason, you say, you know, you have another way of making a living, but I bet you that if today you put a big, big old donate button on the site, people would actually do it and it would become a living. And the difference, the crucial difference, I think, culturally between the things that matter and the things that don't, and back to Kierkegaard's boredom and idleness and meaningless distraction, is that if BuzzFeed were to put a donate button on their site, nobody in the world would pay. Nobody would pay. And they know that, which is why ad-supported sites are the awfulness that most of them are, you know. Right.

And I say this very mindfully as a critic because I also don't believe the whole celebrator-critic equation should be to the detriment of being able to discern between what is good and what is bad in the world and the kind of values that you want to support. between what is good and what is bad in the world and the kind of values that you want to support. So I think it's important to have critical judgment, which is not the same as being a critic in the sense of a hater. Right. It's in that generous part. I keep coming back to your seven lists. There's a theme here. But the generous part, which is that behind every work of creation is a real human. But there's a lot of stuff out there that you'd be stretching a little bit to call it a work of real thoughtful creation, right? You know, I do music

in addition, and I have a hard time criticizing people who put out, you know, a full record, because there's a certain amount of effort that has gone into that, and they've chosen to spend that time in a certain way, but 10 easy waysays to Make Your Cat Smile is a little bit different. Brought to you by Litter Genie. All right. Well, we've gone an hour, which is far further than normally we take these shows. And I know you've got time constraints. Like I said, I could probably do this for another two hours.

But I am going to wrap it up here. So thank you so much, Maria, for taking the time. This has been a really fun conversation. Like I've said, there'll be links to brain pickings and I am a big fan. It's one of the very few places that I actually go to on any kind of regular basis. So thanks so much for what you're doing with that. And thank you, Eric, for being kind of a force of goodwill and value in the world. It really means a lot. And I don't speak just for myself. Well, thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. You too. Bye. Bye. As a reminder, if you're interested in doing some one-on-one work with me,

send an email to eric at one you feed.net. Thanks. You can learn more about Maria Popova and this podcast at OneYouFeed.net slash Maria.