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Wow Place #157: Awe Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about the phenomenon of “awe”. So much so, in fact, that I delivered a speech on the topic a couple of nights ago at my local Toastmasters chapter. Here’s a copy of that speech, which references an “awe-some” experience you may be familiar with, […]

It seems to be true that we humans seek pleasure (and dopamine) while avoiding pain and discomfort. Left to our own devices, we’ll choose idleness and/or enjoyment over unpleasant activities that take us out of our comfort zone. If so, that probably explains why I drag my feet when we arrive in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, […]

“Show me your driver’s logbook, please.” “Here you go.” “It seems to be filled out incorrectly. That will be a $700 fine.” “What?!!” I really wanted to hate Yosemite National Park. As a tour driver back in the 90s driving a 13-seater van, I took 2 separate groups of people to Yosemite in the same […]

In 1995, Clint Eastwood romanced Meryl Streep in a film called The Bridges of Madison County. The movie was okay; I hear the book was better. But as I’m watching the film, I can’t help thinking, “I came for the bridges? Where are all the bridges? Shouldn’t there be a big sign saying, “Welcome to […]

There are many kinds of awe, according to Professor Dacher Keltner of the University of California at Berkeley. In his new book, “The Thrilling New Science of Awe,” he talks about spiritual awe, that feeling of wonder you feel when you’re praying or worshipping. He discusses musical awe, that transcendence that comes over you when […]

You all remember, I’m sure, the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones is deciding how to steal the golden artifact he finds inside a secret tomb. When his strategy to replace the treasure with a bag of sand doesn’t quite work out as expected, he’s forced to make a run […]

There’s a very silly show on Netflix called “Is it Cake?” in which the host, Mikey Day from Saturday Night Live, asks cake artists to create replicas of ordinary objects like handbags, sewing machines, and bowling balls. The judges then have to determine which objects are just objects, and which ones are actually cake. The […]

While traveling in India, you’ll often hear people say, “You have to see the Taj Mahal. There’s nothing like it!” Well, with all due respect, there IS something almost exactly like it in the small Indian town of Aurangabad. When Donica and I arrive at the Bibi Ka Maqbara, we do a major double take. […]

I didn’t listen to my body last night. Although it was screaming for sleep, my body’s protestations were completely ignored as I stayed up way past midnight to watch my favorite basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, play the New Orleans Pelicans. (Only in sports can you have “warriors” battling “sea birds”!) This isn’t uncommon […]

We were probably 15 years old when my childhood friend, Mike, told me, “I’m going to make the world’s largest magic square.” What’s a magic square, you ask? It’s essentially a grid filled with numbers, where the sums of the numbers in each row, each column, and both main diagonals are all the same. If […]