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Brain Pickings
www.brainpickings.org
150
interestingness, curated.
#9173 in All

The Self Illusion: How Our Social Brain Constructs Who We Are

Hume was a neuroscientist, or what early aviation has to do with the psychology of identity. We’ve already seen that the notions of stable character and fixed personality are a myth. And yet, o...

18 h ago 1 person likes this

How a Virus Conquers the World, Animated

Dynamic animated anatomy of going viral. Viruses are everywhere — in our bodies, in the news, and, thanks to Hollywood, in some of our worst-case apocalyptic scenarios. But how, exactly, do the...

18 h ago

The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves

Lessons in the art of embracing identity from some of today’s most celebrated authors. After centuries of politically sanctioned bigotry, LGBT rights are finally achieving human rights status &...

19 h ago

A Girl and Her Room: Portraits of Teenage Girls’ Inner Worlds Through Their Bedroom Interiors

“I was discovering a person on the cusp on becoming an adult, but desperately holding on to the child she barely outgrew, a person on the edge between two worlds.” We’ve already see...

1 day ago

Color Harmony: An Animated Explanation of How Color Vision Works circa 1938

Vintage black-and-white film explains the wonders of color vision. Human vision is one of the most remarkable capacities of our bodies, its precise mechanism the subject of much fascination, from gor...

1 day ago

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

What undersea cables have to do with Brooklyn squirrels. Do you ever stop to think what happens when a web page, like this one, manifests as digital text and image on your screen to transmit ideas be...

1 day ago 1 person likes this

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution

Mapping 450 years of mankind’s curiosity about the living world and the relationships between organisms. Since the dawn of recorded history, humanity has been turning to the visual realm as a s...

2 days ago

Live the Questions: Jacqueline Novogratz’s Advice to Graduates

“Inspiring hope in a cynical world might be the most radical thing you can possibly do.” ‘Tis the season for exceptional graduation speeches, in which cultural icons bequeath their ...

2 days ago 1 person likes this

Get Dressed: Celebrated Graphic Designer Seymour Chwast Makes the Mundane Magical

Because the mundane can be magical, whatever your age. On the heels of last month’s omnibus of children’s books by famous graphic designers comes the charming Get Dressed! (public library...

2 days ago

I Am Science: Short Film Traces Unconventional Paths to Life in Science

The road to science is paved with failed intentions. To celebrate their second birthday, my friends at The Story Collider, the finest science storytelling show around, teamed up with American Museum ...

3 days ago

Alice in Wonderland, in 24 Vintage Magic Lantern Slides

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” As a lover of all things Alice in Wonderland, I was so taken with these glass lantern slides origin...

3 days ago

The Art of Chance-Opportunis m in Creativity and Scientific Discovery: A 1957 Guide

“To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think.” What a magical Rube Goldberg machine of di...

6 days ago

How We Measure the Universe, Animated

How to determine the distance of stars using standard candles. Somewhere between Fibonacci’s invention of arithmetic, which changed the world of numbers as we know it, and scientists’ amb...

6 days ago

Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson

Fear and loathing in six panels. The past few years have given us some stellar graphic nonfiction, lending the comic book genre to “grown-up” storytelling ranging from photojournalism to ...

6 days ago

Women Are Heroes: A Global Portrait of Strength in Hardship by French Guerrilla Artist-Activist JR

Poignant and powerful portraits of physical and emotional survival amidst atrocity. Last year, French guerrilla street artist JR won the $100,000 TED Prize for his Inside Out project — a global...

24 may 12

Love Is Wise, Hatred Is Foolish: Bertrand Russell on Rationality and Tolerance, 1959

What the cult of fact has to do with the essential condition for the survival of the human race. One need only look to British philosopher, mathematician, and sociocultural critic Bertrand Russell...

24 may 12

Brian Cox on the Heart of Science

“We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.” The precise purpose of and drive for science has been debated by some of hist...

24 may 12

Carl Sagan on Mastering the Vital Balance of Skepticism & Openness

Fine-tuning the machinery of distinguishing the valid from the non-valid. Seven years ago this week, David Foster Wallace argued that “learning how to think really means learning how to exercis...

23 may 12

Prophetic Animation: Douglas Adams Traces the Evolution of the Book from Rock to Silicon and Predic...

How we went from boulders to scrolls to screens. In 1968, Arthur C. Clarke predicted the iPad; in 1991, Francis Ford Coppola predicted YouTube; in 1993, Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’...

23 may 12

The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” The poet John Keats once described the ideal state of the psyche as negative capability — the ability “of being in uncert...

23 may 12 1 person likes this

Book Spine Poetry vol. 5: The Meaning of Life

Stumbling on happiness in pursuit of the unknown. National Poetry Month might be over, but the celebration of book spine poetry doesn’t have to be. The latest installment tackles The Big One &#...

22 may 12

8 Bits of Wisdom on Being a Creator from Neil Gaiman

“Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid, or evil, or it’s all been done before? Make good art.” On the heels of last week’s timeless commencement add...

22 may 12

Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See

The art-science of walking the fine line between keen and crass. Since its inception in 1925, The New Yorker has garnered remarkable reverence as much for its editorial style as it has for its inimit...

22 may 12

To Do: Gertrude Stein’s Posthumous Alphabet Book

“Don’t bother about the commas which aren’t there, read the words. Don’t worry about the sense that is there, read the words faster.” In 1939, Gertrude Stein penned her ...

21 may 12

Joan Didion on Self-Respect

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” For the past half-century, Joan Didion has been diss...

21 may 12 1 person likes this

Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life: Ray Bradbury on Creative Purpose in the Face of Rejection

“The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.” Famous advice on writing abounds — Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 tips on how to make a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no...

21 may 12

100 Ideas That Changed Film

How the seventh art went from magic lanterns to state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery in 100 years. When a small handful of enthusiasts gathered at the first cinema show at the Grand Cafe in Pa...

18 may 12 1 person likes this

5½ Timeless Commencement Speeches to Teach You to Define Your Own Success

The great and terrible truth of clichés, why success is a dangerous bedfellow, and how disappointment paves the way for originality. It’s that time of year again, the time when cultural icons a...

18 may 12 1 person likes this

C. S. Lewis on Why “School Stories” and Media Distortion Are a More Deceptive Fiction Than Fiction

“Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women...

18 may 12

Hippopposites: A Minimalist Lesson in Opposites and Aesthetics for Little Designers

Navigating the complex web of simple terms with the help of a red hippo. This must be the season for sensational picture books. The latest addition comes from French graphic designer Janik Coat: In H...

17 may 12 1 person likes this

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