Bonus Holiday Re-Issue: Maria Popova

only been listening for a year. I picked the episodes because either a I think it's a really great episode or B I think it talks about behavior change, which we're heading into the new year, and that's on a lot of people's mind. Speaking of which, we are going to try something this new year. We're going to try the first one You Feed Group Transformation program. It will be a hundred dollars for a month. We're gonna limit

it to ten people. We will meet online four times that month, will discuss tips and tricks and different ways to ensure that you stay on track behavior wise. You'll be able to ask questions of me, and we'll do some things where you're paired up as a group so that you can get some support outside of the calls as well to make sure you get the new year off to a great start. So if you're interested, just send an email to me Eric at one you feed

dot net. I hope you enjoy these episodes. I listened back to a couple of them, and um, let's just leave it at we are getting better at what we do. In the very first one, I sound very nervous and I was so. Anyway, it's still a great interview. Enjoy these, have a happy new year. Thank you for listening, and

we will talk to you soon. Bye. 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 and 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 seize 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. 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 brain pickings dot org, which features her writing on culture, books and many other subjects. Brain Pickings has seen by

millions of readers every month. Maria describes her work as a human power 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 one you feed dot 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 program aims that we're offering, send an email to Eric at one you feed dot net. Thanks. I'm 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 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 listened to it just on my own, is that you actually have conversations as opposed

to Q and A type interviews, right right, Yeah. I usually 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 I got that that vibe more from from Krista Tippett, who I know you are also so sure we we had her on and that it was like cooking for Juliet Julia Childs to have to try and lead her

in the conversation. But so you've been doing brain Pickings for about 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 about, um, what brain pickings is, but maybe you could put it into your own words for our listeners, for you know, a couple

of sentences. Um, 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 uh that that makes me excited to get up basically, and that record comes in the form of all these different ideas that I that I encounter 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, you're I mean, I'm I'm such a fan of of

what you do. I think you do it so well and I one of the things you've got out there that you say, and you're when you're talking about you're describing your show as 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 ten or fifteen 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 um presence are 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, 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 say are really grab bad terms that we have, things like happiness and love and creativity. I mean, they they're 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 and practical resonance at the same time. So I kind of try to

stay away from things that are overly umbrella alike. But the reason why these themes are so recurring in 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 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 Cookings 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 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 a little over eight years, have you

got another thing to add to the list? An eighth things? I have many, many, many things that sort of were

left off the list. Um. 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 and back to this question of the most core things being kind of cliches but being vital, This quality be of kindness, I would say, and practicing it and recognizing it in others is increasingly it reveals itself as 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. Um, So that would be I guess the eighth one. Yeah, kindness is a is a good one. You've one of them that you have is be generous and one of the lines that you say to be 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, through that view mm hmm, 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 most 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 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 prequisite for any kind of dialogue, whether it's in terms of affirming one another's point of view or disagreeing with them. And 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 view in 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 descriving, 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 be, would rather react than respond because it's faster.

And actually was listening a couple of days ago to a very short episode you did on on Knowing Versus Acting and 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 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 ten ten of history's most expensive art paintings, you know, Why Why would you think about what makes great art and how it moves to it and and what makes a painting extraordinary when you can see a list of, you know, the ten 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 the It's that old idea of when you're when you're having a conversation with someone is if you can it's 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 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 and and get under that person's skin and understand what's 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 of wrong and and would go to extreme lens 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 is coming from and what are those more deep seated beliefs and issues and traumas and experiences that inform their point of view of the world, it might cause you to change your point of view. And of course, every time we change something, and you can even use user behavior on the internet as as a great sort of parable 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. And I think that ties to one of your one of your other or 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 is a flip flopper. And it always is interesting to me that we don't I mean it. 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, they're the studies that are out there on this more and more where we realize that we we decide emotionally and then use our brain to come up with a logical you know, so we can tell a logical story

about what's happening. That's so so fascinating to me. And then you start getting into all the the biases, you know, the confirmation bias and and all these different things it is really to be in to be an open minded thinking person, I think takes an awful lot of effort. It goes against I think a lot of our our programming. Yeah, and especially because it really begins being open minded, really begins by being open hearted, and and that implies a

level of vulnerability that is often intolerable and vulnerable. Vulnerability as another one of these terms that have become kind of a you know, grab bag business world cliche, but but it's but it's a very core thing that that we experience, who experienced 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 where to digger heels

in and not be willing to change your 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 of insecurity and this this um idea that the more we try and cling you know, we're really trying to cling to that not knowing is really can be really really scary, and that so we try and put things into a way that makes sense to us, because that I think Pemma, the Pema children, the Buddhist nun uses the word the groundlessness is if you really

experience that 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 and 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 know, go to school, you graduate, or you drop out, and you make a million dollars untiliconvow, you start a family, or you create a major work of cultural contribution. All these sort of checkpoint checklist items

on what we 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 our our own lives, while actually being absent from them to go. And you talk about autopilots 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've never gone to a sort of retreat, like a formal organized meditation retreat. And I went, and first of all, I was very kind of aware in a way that was scarrier than and if a day life of privilege, and the fact that most people there were very wealthy white people, you know. And I went with my best friend actually, who was the only non white person 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 um self transcendence or enlightenment or whatever whatever we call this, you know, this sort of thing that we seek by going to these places.

I don't doubt that there was earnestness and that, but I also fear that perhaps there was a part of her, in a part of a lot of us, but in that place more more of a character or of that that sees that thing, the enlightenment or self transendors 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 another kind of hedonic treadmill hamster wheel thing. Yeah, it's it's I've got a cup. I've got a bunch of thoughts about what you just said. But we had a guest on chosen, 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. I was my whole focus in life was always changing myself. And and uh, and I think that's an interesting you can find. You can find that sort of in the personal development, self help culture, whatever you want to call it. I think where we 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 and 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 I have gotten. I get caught up in my mind sometimes feeling like those things are they can that they're

mutually exclusive. I don't think they are, as I've talked more about it. But I'm interested in your your 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 great teachers is Eastern philosophy in the West and the common theme as the sort of m HM 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 their beings, and that the self is sort

of this this illusion. Right, But how we think in in the West and the traditional sort of Western psychology tradition of the improvement of the human experiences 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 um

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 Wattson, Tara Brock and all these teachers used. It feeds in to 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 that we're talking about in terms of being wrong and seeing other's 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 am I so attached this experience of the self as an individual asked to miss nine of what's going on around me? As to cast other people is wrong? And all these all these things that's spring from just our very vulnerable feeling of if I don't fortify the self,

then I don't matter that I don't exist. Boy, that's that idea of not being a distinct self, and that 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 that 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 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, this feeling of being, this separate self, is so strong and the evidence feels so compelling to to some degree that I always, as I look at sort of a spiritual practice, I always am wondering should I be spending more focused on that piece or should I be spending more focus on more tangible things like being kinder and um And not that those things are exclusive, it's just that as I as I think through those ideas, I 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 too with 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 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 a sort of snap judgments the way to talk about these things just to say, well, he was a hypocrite, you know, how could he teach

all these things and not practicing in his life. But and we do that a lot in culture, by the way we point the fingers 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 seize existing because we try to will it to do. So, Yeah, boy, I love what you just said.

They're about that being a fool's errand of trying to resolve those those contradictions, or or the inability to embrace paradox because it seems to be right at the heart of a lot of this end And yet as a as a thinking person, I tend to try very often to um to find. You know, I think one of the things that's been interesting me as I 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 gonna be some answer, and uh, 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 Rilka on your site, and uh, you know, certainly that's one of those there that learning to love the questions

and live the questions. Maybe we could talk about Rocca 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 that you have gotten from from his work? Um. I love a lot of what he says about this sort of another another inability to embrace opposites right body and soul um and he basically says that it's foolish to try to prioritize one at the expense of the other to sort of, um, make make yourself be the

sort of soulful creature by denying the body. And then he has this one really beautiful line where he says something like, um, I am not a person who neglects the body in order to make it a sacrificial offering to the soul, since my soul was 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 in their beliefs, beliefs

that are bar the way constantly evolving. But they're also are 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 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 who are off laughing, um, you know when they 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 Ky Guard, the great non humorist of philosophy, actually um said that basically the task of the of He said something like, it's it's man's destiny to amuse himself. Um. And and that's in a long, long essay on boredom that he hadn't either or and which is very grave and very uh,

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 that article or that I don't know what what what do you call what you put out there opposed a story and article? Uh? 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've missed you from sort of magazines and stuff. Um, I guess I don't define things by the technology and which they live, which is why posts is a little kind of neither here nor there exactly exactly. Well, I'll call them. I'll think of him as articles. Or I think Danielle Report has things she calls truth bombs. You could you could call your own truth bombs, which might be that's that has certain hubris do it, but

it is uh, it's it's a question question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yours are are definitely that. So that that Guard article was interesting because you you explored along with him the ideas of boredom versus idleness, and and we sort of flew by this idea of presence and you know, being more important than productivity, and then I think we 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 presents. 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 w n y C, which is the NPR affiliate here in New York, UM called Board and 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 remember this and thinking, because a lot of what I write about is really all of it is really what I think about to 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 and and Susan slan Hug, who basically say boredom is essential to creativity, to contemplation, it's it's Adam Phillips calls it a developmental

achievement for the child. Um. And then I remembered Carricter Guard who and distinctly remembered the line boredom is the root of all evil, and I thought, wait, there must be more depth to that. It can just bet he can't just be this. I mean, he's one of the

greatest thinkers of humanity. He can 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 uh doesn't work in alleviating boredom, which he defines as a sort of existential emptiness, a sense of emptiness.

And I love that for for a separate sort of reason, which is that it actually explains why all the cat's life shows on the internet are not gonna fix your existential empt and as for you, you know, and I love that he a hundred fifth 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, and in fact, it's its

cautterpoint uh. And he says that idleness is not evil, and it can be said that it's the greatest, the most divine good, uh, 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 the

sort of passive just droning, you know. But but he makes a case for how creating these pockets of stillness right into our own lives are actually is actually essential to to being able to to 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 an instinct. Um. So I am very much a proponent of this, of this

deliberate engineering of stillness into everyday life. And uh, 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 w

NYC event. They have some sort of app called Moments that tracks how people are using their phones, and apparently the average person spent 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 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 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 it's just a couple

of minutes, those really add up. And I think the other thing that I really liked about that Cure Guard article is that I think that those things actually increase my uh, existential emptiness, Like I'm doing it to fill that whole 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 um. 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, you know. And if I'm not using Facebook, maybe 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 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 still the next thing I need to do. But boy, if I if I focus, you know, you I can I

can get a lot done. I can use those four minutes in a valuable way versus just saying, uh, 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 like that? Are we really that compulsively, you know, addicted to producing as opposed to just living? And I am very much. Again, we're

all woman of these contradictions. I'm culpable of myself, and you're actually implicated in that because I listened to podcasts primarily when I commute on my bike, which I do a lot here in New York. That's just how I

get around. But I even though most of the podcast all of the podcasts I listened to have a very strong element of contemplation and sort of philosophical thought and Christa's you know, on Being and the One you See It and things like this, but I found myself at one point feeling like the second sometimes the length the duration of an episode of shorter than the duration of

my ride. And then it ends, and I feel this too, 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 uh 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 towards answering another email or some other productivity task is not nearly as valuable as four minutes with their own mind and just seeing

what your inner life says to you in those four minutes. Yes, So this idea of presence versus productivity, and I think it's something I think we all wrestle with if we are both. UM feel feel a desire to contribute something in the world, and yet also I feel like being present. And I know that you. I'll use the term work um 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 present? Where do you see that time as productivity? Or is it both? Sometimes? And where's the distinction? It can be both um 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 bring pickings is for me, Transforming that into some sort of quotea feeling filling activity for no reason, because there really is no reason. I have no boss I have. I don't run ads on

my site, so it's not like I pay. I played the page view aim, which is, you know what the ad supported internet does, and it's not. It doesn't. It just doesn't make any difference other than to my own very compulsive I am a uh there, I have a

compulsive personality, I guess um. And so I had created the structure for myself that was just completely unreasonable because in in when I made a very deliberate choice to no longer do any freelance writing for anybody, anybody else at the time I was writing for Wired and Business Week and design observing 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, you know, there were at the time. I didn't have many books because I had lived on two continents, three coasts, six cities, and like twelve apartments over the course of two years. So it's point being I just 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 of hundred words to now, on average two thousand words. Um. And I didn't adjust

the pace for that. I kept doing three a day of those, and you know, January one 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 I'm sure I will keep sort of playing around with 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, when their work is their life and vice versa. It's 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. Um, it just constantly tinkering with it and really listening to what your inner voice says about isn't 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 you I don't think you need to feel pressured to get three of those out there, because there is I'm not even in the neighborhood to keep it up. So you know, 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, will wait a minute, If my partner can't read all

of it, who would? But I mean it's 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, 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 doesn't matter that other people don't keep up if I keep up, and you know, yeah, I mean absolutely was 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 appreciate the assurance, and I

could I could use it. 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 um 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. And also, you know, I was like, I'm just gonna make the show that I wish I could listen to. And I think that's such um.

There's such a freedom in in in doing that, and uh, I'm just I'm grateful to to be able to have that mindset. And and I can almost always recognize it when I see somebody else who's doing something and I think none of us are there's no you know, back to that, there's a blend. None of us are so pure. It's like, oh, I don't you know, 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 they're 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 is um gives me energy and gives me strength first as

the other way around. Well, Austin Cleon, who is a friend and an artist and just a kindred spirit he has, he likes to say, you know, make the thing you want to see in the world right right, 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 in a in a way that is somehow better, somehow better and not I don't mean better and by my own self righteous standard, you know, but better or for humanity in some way. And this actually goes back to your the

parable after which your show is titled. And I mean, I do believe that we have a choice in which will we feed, especially in a culture in which snark and cynicism rain rampants and are frequently rewarded, and in which people do truly horrible things to one another from behind the veil of anonymity, and in which is just generally easier to be a critic than than a celebrator.

And I believe that we have choices in this, both large existential ones by which we resolved to live our lives a certain way, but also small daily ones by which we affirm that direction. And so I choose, for myself varied deliberately when I started bring pickings nearly nine years ago now, and also every day to to feed the celebrator rather than the critics, both in myself and

in my readers. That's great, And I completely forgot. 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 uh wow, Well, I'm glad you you you 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 a more metaway, which I actually think is perhaps even more important, which is that much of what I do deals with archival and historical materials and coming from them, all of these enduring ideas and how to live. And this requires both understanding those ideas in the original context and re contextualizing them in our present culture. At this intersection, you

know of the timeless and the time. But here's the thing. Our present culture is very much one of short termism, and it's 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 in

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 metaway is this that take, for instance,

this parable about the jew 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 eight I think, was booked 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 disc faced 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. Thank you, as do you well? Thank you so Um,

we're pastime. I could probably do this for about six hours, but I'm going to end with one 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 learning as one should. Um, I think she kind of she nails this thing that it 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 um, 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 character guard 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, even if you look at what kinds of people are being spotlighted in the mainstream media, and um, how the people who achieve success by their own measure, how their stories are told. Um. 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 send, Well, twenty two years of writing, and they're calling me an overnight success, you know, and we have that It's funny, but it's at least sad because we have that mentality that either you make it right away or or you make it after a long stretch of time, and that long stretch is completely

erased from your history, and you're hailed as an overnight success. Yeah. And I think in addition to being an ill informed way to look at the world, I think the other thing that comes out of that is that when we 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 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 was actually very important in 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. It's kind of like because my site is like public radio. It's just it's all of it. It's free, it's ad free, and it's supported by people volunteering to donate whatever they feel like the ques. 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 that was beyond broke, you know, I was, and not only beyond broke, but beyond broke, and without any kind of assurance that this would ever quote unquote work, you know, And and so I do know. I never I never know what to tell people in a way that doesn't

mislead them to think it's all plus. But also it's 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

even have your own answer. And that goes back 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 and 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 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. 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 seemed to be doing similar things and 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 to 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's called weight but Why U, which I discovered only recently because I live under a cultural rock the size of the moon. But but this guy who runs it, his name is Tim urban uh answers questions about sort of science psychologist fal blosophy 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, uh 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 any one 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 is nothing about the show. It's nothing about the ideas of the questions that I get that are from other people in the business is what's your monetization plan? And oh my god, I don't break out kind of 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 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, um 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 you know, the vast, vast, vast majority of aren't to start with, and the rest that do will probably do it over you know, a substantial period of time by doing something similar to what 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 you know people like Austin Cleon are who they are is that you can tell that it doesn't that it didn't originate from a place of me, makes some content the word I hate most in the world, and make some money with it. You know, it's 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 an and meaningful impact is if the question of monetization or whatever system is is secondary and and only when it's a byproduct, 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 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 that the crucial difference and culturally between the things that matter and the things that don't, and back to Carcy Guards boredom and idleness and meaningless distraction, is that if buzz seed were to put a donate button on their site, nobody in the world would pay if nobody would pay, and they know that, which is why AD supported sites are the awfulness that most of them are, you know, 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. So I think it's important to have critical judgment, which is not the same as being a critic in the saints of a in the sense of a hater. Right, it's in that generous part that I keep coming back

to your seven lists. There's a 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 and addition, and and I have a hard time criticizing people who 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 ten Easy Ways to make your Cat Smile is a little bit different. Brought to you by Liturgy. All right, Well, we've gone an hour, which is far further than uh 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 gonna 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, they'll be links to to brain pickings and and I am I'm 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 horse of goodwill hidden valley 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. 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 dot net. Thanks. You can learn more about Maria Popova and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash Maria