
Maria Popova
blogger + brain picker
Maria Popova got her start in advertising but found her niche in blogging and web curation with a host of innovative, reader-supported projects. A self-described "interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large," Maria spends her days collecting...conscientiously selecting + sharing brilliant bits of "timeless and timely" insight that traverse time, space and discipline.
Originally from Bulgaria, the 21st-century author now resides in New York where she works 100+ hours a week as a "curiosity architect" for her more than a million followers. As any Brain Pickings' subscriber will tell you, Maria appreciates a good {sourced} quote!
blogging | Brain Pickings
tweeting | 87k tweets, 471k followers and counting
combinatorial creativity | the belief that innovation comes from the cross-pollination and reconfiguration of diverse, existing ideas + inspirations
2006 | started an informal weekly digest of interestingness for her coworkers at a small ad agency (1 of 4 part-time gigs taken on to pay her tuition at Penn) that would eventually morph into her mega-popular blog, Brain Pickings
2011 | named as an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow in recognition of her visionary work on the social web, and tapped to speak on "The Ethics and Politics of Curation in a Spreadable Media World" at their 2012 conference
2012 | featured by Forbes Magazine in their "30 under 30" issue and honored by Fast Company Magazine as 1 of the "Top 100 Most Creative People in Business"
from | to
staffer at a small Philly ad agency | award-winning digital media guru with a million+ followers
born on
July 28, 1984
born in
Bulgaria
resides in
Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA
educated at
American College of Sofia
University of Pennsylvania
studied
communications | English | web design
advocate for
cross-disciplinary creativity
innovative, noncommercial author platforms
in her spare time
brews kombucha
listens to a huge spectrum of music
does yoga
bikes
tweets
@brainpicker
image credits
FontShop
Elizabeth Lippman | New York Times
collapse bio bits"[We're] in this epidemic of what I call 'skim culture'—the inability to give our attention fully to any one thing, stirred by the constant anxiety that there’s something better, more interesting, more urgent happening elsewhere."
Focus on Focus: Rapt | july 2009
"In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas."
Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity | may 2011
"Imitation might well be the sincerest form of ideation."
Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity | may 2011
"Creativity itself is the original open-source code."
Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity | may 2011
"Enrich people with creative resources, and over time, these Lego bricks that end up in their heads eventually build this enormous, incredible castle."
Maria Popova's Beautiful Mind | january 2012
"I myself am a firm believer in the power of curiosity and choice as the engine of fulfillment, but precisely how you arrive at your true calling is an intricate and highly individual dance of discovery."
How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love | february 2012
"I'm of the philosophy that there will always be someone who can do it better than you do—what hope for humanity is there, otherwise?"
I'm Maria Popova, and This Is How I Work | september 2012
"Omission is as much a tool of political oppression in the construction of cultural mythology as propaganda."
Oppression by Omission: Women Soldiers who Dressed and Fought as Men in the Civil War | february 2013
"Life—the world—only ever changes when we actively refuse to accept its givens and choose to build new alternatives."
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams on How Our Choices Shape the World | may 2013
"Despite what we know about the value of 'deliberate practice' in attaining excellence in any endeavor...we remain gobsmackingly naive about the practice of love, approaching it instead with the magical-thinking expectation that we’re born excellent at it."
A 'Dynamic Interaction': Leo Buscaglia on Why Love Is a Learned Language | june 2014
"We’ve plunged into the era of productivity and operate largely out of a sense of obligation, even if self-elected, rather than a sense of true purpose and passion."
Swami Vivekananda on the Secret of Work | july 2014
"Humanity’s history of mapping the cosmos is as long as our margin of error in explaining the universe is wide."
A Graph of Cosmogony | january 2015
"All of us are links in the evolutionary chain of ideas, much like each butterfly species discovered is a link in the evolutionary chain of natural history."
The Paradox of Intellectual Promiscuity | january 2015
"Understanding the infinite—both as a mathematical possibility and an impossibility of the physical universe—might be more a matter of coming to terms with infinite simplicity than with infinite complexity."
The Absurdity of Infinity | january 2015
curated with care by Alicia Williamson {july 2014}
Brain Pickings Top 10:2010 - Once Around the Sun
This film cleverly animates Brain Picking's top ten posts of 2010.
Jer Thorp
Flipboard’s Most Favorite of 2010
The Webby-winning app Flipboard picked Maria's blog at their favorite feed of the year.
Inside Flipboard
Creative Mornings: Maria Popova on Content Curation
A hand-drawn interpretation of Maria's ideas about curation, cross-pollination and the creative process shared in May 2011 at General Assembly for the NYC Creative Mornings lecture series, which as become an international phenomenon.
Dean Meyers
CC BY