themarginalian.org

Oliver Sacks on Memory, Originality, and Why Forgetting is Necessary for Creativity

I suspect that such forgettings occur for everyone, and they may be especially common in those who write or paint or compose, for creativity may require such forgettings, in order that one's memories and ideas can be born again and seen in new contexts and perspectives.

themarginalian.org

The Log from the Sea of Cortez: John Steinbeck’s Forgotten Masterpiece on How to Think and the Art of Seeing the Pattern Beyond the Particular

The trouble with opinion is that it instantly islands us in the stream of life, cutting off its subject — and us along with it — from the interconnected totality of deep truth.

3quarksdaily.com

Genetic studies support what historians have argued for decades: ancient India was a place of migration and mixture

the history of how that history has been imagined, framed and written at different times by different people over the past 200 years is almost equally enthralling.

notboring.co

Weekly Dose of Optimism #189

It's hard to recognize you're in a sci-fi novel when you're living through it, but if you zoom out a little bit, it sure looks like we are.

longreads.com

The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt

I was trying to find the human side of history, and humans were often my best source. When I thought about Sacajawea in the Rockies, trying to keep her infant son alive, I thought about my own kids at that age—about my wife breastfeeding them, both parties always hungry, always thirsty.

personalcanon.com

everything i read in february & march 2026

It will disturb your pre-established understanding of the world and offer a subtler, richer, deeper experience of reality.

whyisthisinteresting

The Monday Media Diet with Celeste Blewitt

During the pandemic, Australia was closed to the world, international and domestic borders closed for nearly two years. WITI gave me the opportunity to time travel all over the globe.

themarginalian.org

Corrective for a Broken Heart

Why all the threadbare drama, the stale catastrophism of calling it broken? It still beats, doesn't it, still trembles at the sight of fog flowing through the forest like a slow dance song. It was only dislocated, lost its locus for a while, popped out of the socket of good sense.

themarginalian.org

How to Stop Doing and Start Living

Maybe it was the sudden sense of death dislodged, however temporarily, that made me look at the small, seasonal deaths around me with a feeling of kinship. Fallen leaves soften the path I walk on, but not for my sake. The leaves fall to feed the trees, to shelter the creatures who are essential to this forest in a way that I will never be.

whyisthisinteresting

The Saturday Selection, Vol. 97

How are things different now from the way they were in the golden age? The best way to answer that might be to imagine what someone from the golden age would notice if we brought him here in a time machine.