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Beautiful things might amaze and rouse us, but the sublime affects us in a more profound way. It’s overwhelming, even frightening, and can leave us with a deep and lasting sense of wonder. But why do potential dangers, such as a foreboding storm on the horizon or the view from the edge of a cliff, exhilarate the human mind? The 18th-century philosopher and writer Edmund Burke thought that the sublime involves the possibility of pain, which triggers feelings of self-preservation – a visceral response that moves from the body to the mind.
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Food and drink
Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
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Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
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Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes
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Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
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War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
9 minutes
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Language and linguistics
The little Peruvian guide to public speaking that conjures up a grandiose world
7 minutes