Constellating Wonder

At the dawn of her twenties, Maria Popova began keeping a small personal record of her marginalia on the search for meaning. On October 23, 2006, she began sharing it in an office email to seven colleagues at one of the four jobs she held to pay her way through college. They in turn began sharing it with friends, who began sharing it with friends. The fractal grew and, within a few years, the Library of Congress had included it in its permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. It changed shape (the essays grew longer, the questions deeper) and name (Brain Pickings became The Marginalian) but  continued beating with the same heart, reckoning with the ongoing bewilderment of being alive – sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children’s books, always through the lens of wonder. Without staff, without advertising, it has remained a thoroughly one-woman labor of love beloved by millions.

To celebrate twenty years of it, Maria is inviting friends from various walks of life – poets and physicists, musicians and actors, artists and historians of science – to read passages from the books that have most touched her over the years, each of which she will introduce with a reflection on its resonance to the eternal questions we live with: what do we make of our suffering, why did the world have to be beautiful, how do we see more clearly and love more purely. With the format of her popular show The Universe in Verse and the feeling-tone of her Marginalian essays, the evening will feature live appearances and special contributions across spacetime by a constellation of friends, among them Krista Tippett, Marie Howe, Diane Ackerman, James Gleick, Natascha McElhone, Debbie Millman, Sophie Blackall, Uma Thurman, Stephon Alexander, Natalie Batalha, Willow Defebaugh, Paola Prestini, Wendy MacNaughton, Zoë Keating, Joan As Police Woman, Nick Cave, and surprise guests.

Accompanying the show will be a pop-up “Museum of Delights,” where some of Maria’s handmade ceramics and other creations will be given away by the impartial hand of chance in a raffle, and a curated bookstore, featuring Maria’s twenty favorite books of all time and signed copies of her own.  Vegan food offerings will also be available for purchase onsite.

To honor the spirit by which The Marginalian has endured over the years, offered freely and supported by donations, tickets are available on a pay-what-you-please basis, ranging from basic operating costs to the extremes of appreciation.

Complimentary tickets will also be available by request for those who need them. Please contact boxoffice@spac.org to request.

Please note: a 3% Credit Card Fee will be added at checkout, per ticket. For cash or check payments, please contact boxoffice@spac.org.

A livestream viewing option will also be available for audiences unable to attend in person.

This event is made possible through the generous support of Walt & Whitman

Maria Popova thinks and writes about our search for meaning, lensed sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children’s books, always through wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian (born in 2006 under the name Brain Pickings), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. Her books and projects include Traversal, The Universe in Verse, Figuring, The Coziest Place on the Moon, and An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days.