Bonus Holiday Re-Issue: Maria Popova

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….  In This Interview Maria and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable. The critical importance of kindness. The 7 things she has learned from 7 years of Brain Pickings. Being so impatient that we don't dig deeper to understand peoples motivations. The difference between wisdom and knowledge. How we've become bored with thinking. How we have a biological aversion to being wrong. The uncomfortable luxury of changing our minds. How being open minded requires being open hearted. That as the stakes get higher we are less likely to be willing to change our mind. How most world religions exist to take away the feeling of not knowing. Presence is more important than productivity. How we can see spiritual growth as another thing to mark off on our checklist. Dispelling the illusion of the self. How we are creatures of contradictions. Trying to remove contradictions from our lives is a fools errand. Learning to love and live the questions. How it's silly to try and choose between the body and the soul, both are equally important. Why cat pictures on the internet will not relieve your existential emptiness. The average person spends two hours a day looking at their phone. That habit is how we weave our destiny. Whether we need to get something done every 4 minutes of our lives? Balancing presence and productivity. How it's easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time. There is no such thing as an overnight success.

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