Let’s take a break from the daily awful and focus instead on the awe-full. Dana Milbank went looking for some awe and wonder on the walls of the National Art Museum. It turns out that’s not a bad place to start. “New research out of King’s College London gauged people’s physiological responses while they viewed works by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for 20 minutes. The study, now in preprint, found that participants’ levels of the stress hormone cortisol dropped by 22 percent on average, while markers of inflammation dropped even more sharply and heart rhythms indicated greater relaxation.” (I’m guessing that those results have almost as much to do with what you’re not looking at as what you are; it’s a distinction between experiencing the power of wonder and looking at your phone and wondering what the hell is happening.) Whether art is your awe-seeking drug of choice or not, there are probably some lessons here that we can all use over the holiday season. WaPo (Gift Article): Feeling wonder every day improves our health. Here’s how to do it. “In the days after my visit, I found myself pausing to marvel at things I often take for granted: A Christmas fern poking through the snow, the intricate forms of lichens on a tree, a sweet birch clinging to a rocky hillside, the pink and orange in a winter sunset, the power of a house-rattling windstorm. The more you seek awe, the more you find it.” (By opening about 75 news tabs a day, I’m probably looking for wonder in all the wrong places. But as long as I can keep digging up some examples, I’ll try to combine our daily series of unfortunate events with the occasional splash of awe-some sauce.) 2Reddit CreditEnding an incredibly stressful week in Providence, the Brown shooting suspect killed himself after being cornered by authorities (with a lot of help from citizens). The break came when the shooter was linked to another crime. CNN: How investigators zeroed in on the Brown University shooting suspect and linked him to the killing of an MIT professor. 3This is Just How They Roll“When Carlos Gomez’s recent flight from Guadalajara was delayed, he asked a gate attendant why. It wasn’t weather or crew shortages. There were 25 wheelchair passengers holding up boarding. There were no such delays when Gomez’s flight landed. Most of the same passengers stood up without assistance and bounded off toward the baggage claim.” WSJ (Gift Article) on a seemingly viral travel hack you might witness during your holiday journeys, as some of your fellow travelers are using wheelchairs to board a little quicker. They Get Wheeled on Flights and Miraculously Walk Off. Praise ‘Jetway Jesus.’ 4Weekend WhatsWhat to Movie: One Battle After Another is now available to watch on HBO. It’s nearly three hours of pretty heavy duty and quite entertaining action, and seems to be the best picture frontrunner at this point. 5Extra, ExtraThe Exed Files: You better sit down for this one. I don’t want to shock you. US legislators say the Justice Department is violating the law by not releasing all Epstein files. (They’ll release the files that make others look bad...) 6Feel Good Friday“Mr. Dalton and Mr. May work 24-hour shifts (yes, you can knock on their trailer door in the middle of the night) selling trees for $30 to $500. Although they say the money is good — around $5,000 to $10,000 for the season, depending on the area and foot traffic — they aren’t out there just for the cash.” NYT (Gift Article): Up All Night in New York, Selling Christmas Trees.
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Friday, December 19, 2025
The Shock of Awe
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