The essay is about the difficulty of attaining an accurate perspective on life while it’s happening, about the ways our mind warps experience—so Emerson warps the reading experience in turn. But to look at this as a stand-alone literary work:most of the essays poorly break some rules that make the arguments fall flat or the writing feel disjointed.

But the genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the Lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we can’t shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Emerson condemns the “decaying church” for dwelling with “noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus,” when he is only a man with the same access to the Infinite Soul as everyone else. Our greatest need is to be recognized—to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. In these four essays—“Nature,” “The American Scholar,” “The Divinity School Address,” and “Self-Reliance”—Emerson lays out his special brand of transcendentalism.Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. Emmy-award winning gadfly Mike Rowe presents a ridiculously entertaining, seriously fascinating collection of his favorite episodes from America’s number-one short-form podcast, The Way I Heard It, along with a host of memories, ruminations, and insights.

Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. Maybe he felt as vulnerable as I did, but spoke his truth nonetheless, believing it to be more valuable than a life without embarrassment.A pioneer of the “video essay” format, his YouTube videos — in which he critiques fine art, film, literature and more — have more than 223 million views. that we would happily give up every crumb of personal information for packages delivered a few days sooner?