Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what will?
Speaker 2: What's that mango mug?
Speaker 1: You smell that mug?
Speaker 2: Mug like a mug of coffee or hot chocolate or
Speaker 2: something like that. No, just like pure mug. Can't you
Speaker 2: smell that? It's like such a strong mug. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what's happening here. I can't smell just an empty
Speaker 2: ceramic mug, can you?
Speaker 1: Of course, this place is fragrant with mug right now.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I've ever smelled mug. What's wrong
Speaker 2: with me?
Speaker 1: So nothing? Everyone smells different stuff. It turns out our
Speaker 1: sense of smell is so complex that there's about a
Speaker 1: thirty percent difference between what I smell, which is mug,
Speaker 1: and what you smell, which is nothing right now. But
Speaker 1: on top of that, new sensor being introduced into our
Speaker 1: environment all the time, and other sensor disappearing.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, sensor disappearing like going extinct or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes there are flowers that don't exist anymore. Civilization evolves,
Speaker 1: but the case of the disappearing sense is a little
Speaker 1: more complicated. And that's something I thought we could tackle today.
Speaker 2: I love it. I find that super interesting. So let's
Speaker 2: dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 2: I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
Speaker 2: good friend Mangesha Ticketer and sitting behind that great big booth.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I was wondering what he was going to
Speaker 2: do there. So for all of our listeners, we have
Speaker 2: this gigantic whiteboard that rotates. You know, I can flip
Speaker 2: to the other side. And usually Dylan is pretty humble
Speaker 2: and sort of subtle about what he does, but I
Speaker 2: could tell he was very excited, and right as I
Speaker 2: went into this, he flipped the board and there is
Speaker 2: the most accurate, anatomically drawn picture of a note. I mean,
Speaker 2: we were talking brazen natural that artist or medical student, no,
Speaker 2: and that big of a show off. He was really
Speaker 2: in this for the big reveal. But anyway, let's dive
Speaker 2: in mango. What can you tell me about disappearing smells?
Speaker 2: Let's get right into it. To understand why certain smells
Speaker 2: have disappeared, we need a little primer on the science
Speaker 2: of smell because it is super complex. So let's compare
Speaker 2: smell to the way we see light. Scientists figured out
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century that all the varied hues from
Speaker 2: red to violet are produced by just three types of
Speaker 2: receptors in human retinas. But the nose, or rather the
Speaker 2: clump of sensory neurons that are high inside your nostrils,
Speaker 2: boasts about four hundred receptors, which is obviously way more complex.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, Richard Axel and Linda Buck
Speaker 2: were award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for
Speaker 2: discovering that on these receptors there are genes that encode them,
Speaker 2: and these genes sit on top of specialized neurons which
Speaker 2: shoot information down leggy axons into the brain, eventually landing
Speaker 2: on one of two olfactory bulbs. And this is where
Speaker 2: the smells are processed. But here's the thing, we don't
Speaker 2: actually know which smells those receptors recognize. All right, So
Speaker 2: I'm scribbling down some notes here. You know, I'm a
Speaker 2: pretty good note taker. So I've got hundreds of receptors
Speaker 2: responding to some smells, driven by genetic encoding that sends
Speaker 2: those smells down into the old factory bulbs in your brain.
Speaker 2: All so you can go, mmmm, saffron, I get that.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, especially the saffron part.
Speaker 2: But nailed it. On top of how your.
Speaker 1: Brain receives this information, you know, the input of smells
Speaker 1: is much more complex than light. Light is electromagnetic radiation,
Speaker 1: and the same three colored receptors can combine to process
Speaker 1: a range of wavelengths covering the entire rainbow of visible light.
Speaker 1: But smells aren't wavelengths, and they aren't coasting along a
Speaker 1: smooth spectrum. They have all a complex mix of chemical particles,
Speaker 1: all kind of bobbing around in the air. So, in fact,
Speaker 1: there's this twenty fourteen paper, it was in the journal
Speaker 1: Science where researchers at Rockefeller University estimated that humans can distinguish,
Speaker 1: give or take at least a trillion distinct smells on
Speaker 1: planet Earth. Plus all those odor receptors have lots of variants,
Speaker 1: like some of them are less sensitive or fully nonfunctional
Speaker 1: in large chunks of the population.
Speaker 2: Which is whise you were talking about. I guess you
Speaker 2: and I have about thirty percent variation between what we
Speaker 2: can each smell, Like some of my receptors are more
Speaker 2: sensitive than yours and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Right, So maybe you walk around smelling all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff that I've never smelled, but you know, additionally, there
Speaker 1: seem to be about six hundred smell pseudogenes.
Speaker 2: Wait, so what's a pseudogene? I mean, I fully know
Speaker 2: what a pseudogene is, but I mean for our listeners,
Speaker 2: what can you tell them what a pseudogene?
Speaker 1: You're right, you had that pseudogen poster over your bed
Speaker 1: in college. But where listeners? A pseudogene is a non
Speaker 1: functional segment of DNA that resembles functional genes, and scientists
Speaker 1: think that they are about six hundred smell pseudogenes that
Speaker 1: don't code for working receptors in anybody alive today.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so it means they just don't work or what?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So some researchers take this chunk of dormant DNA
Speaker 1: as evidence of the noses terminal decline. But basically the
Speaker 1: theory is that we used to be able to smell
Speaker 1: stuff that we can't smell anymore.
Speaker 2: That is so interesting, And is this nasal decline something
Speaker 2: we should be worried about as a species.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, we aren't the only
Speaker 1: species that this has happened to. Bottlenosed dolphins and whales
Speaker 1: give up a lot of their sense of smell long ago,
Speaker 1: possibly to free up headspace for echolocation.
Speaker 2: Huh. I mean, but those are both underwater creature. So
Speaker 2: why do you think we're losing our precious sense of smell?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there could be a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One is evolution, right, like our sense of smell started
Speaker 1: roding when we changed the way we select our mates
Speaker 1: and prioritizing other factors above scent. That's not tracking for
Speaker 1: me because that's actually how I chose my wife, But
Speaker 1: either way, go on, Okay. Well, the second is pollution.
Speaker 1: So basically, pollution particles can pass through the olfactory bulb
Speaker 1: and directly into the brain, causing inflammation. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: a team of British researchers found that tiny metal particles
Speaker 1: in human brain tissue have appeared to have passed through
Speaker 1: the ol factory bulb, which is you know, it's obviously scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know. One thing I was thinking about
Speaker 2: just the other day that it's the fact that we
Speaker 2: sort of all took the sense of smell for granted
Speaker 2: until COVID.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. I mean, obviously there are like chunks
Speaker 1: of the population who don't have a sense of smell,
Speaker 1: but COVID definitely made that concern more mean stream And
Speaker 1: you know this happened to me, like I used to
Speaker 1: have a much better sense of smell until I had COVID,
Speaker 1: and then I haven't fully gotten it back.
Speaker 2: M M, yeah, I remember pre COVID used to be
Speaker 2: a much better three point shooter. I think something about
Speaker 2: COVID just really yeah, gotcha there. But it's so weird,
Speaker 2: like we experienced so much through smell, and until you
Speaker 2: lose that sense, you kind of take it for granted.
Speaker 2: And of course everyone knows smells play a much bigger
Speaker 2: role in triggering memories, sort of like Prousd with his part.
Speaker 2: You know, I was going to say madelines, but sure
Speaker 2: is passing gas too. But when you were talking about
Speaker 2: sinse that have disappeared, I was thinking about how they're
Speaker 2: scientists actually trying to recreate smells from the past. But
Speaker 2: before we get into that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
Speaker 1: disappearing sense. So will Before the break, you were telling
Speaker 1: us about how scientists have begun to recreate scents from
Speaker 1: the past using biomolecular tech, which you know, sounds fascinating.
Speaker 2: It really is, all right. So most smells stem from
Speaker 2: biological materials. You've got plants, foods, human, animal bodies, all
Speaker 2: sorts of biological materials like that, and they decay rapidly,
Speaker 2: evaporate into the air, and once the source of the
Speaker 2: smell is gone, the smell has disappeared. But if they
Speaker 2: are imperceptible biomolecular residues left on these items from the past,
Speaker 2: you think of things like incense burners or perfume bottles,
Speaker 2: cooking pots, food stores, jars, all sorts of things like this.
Speaker 2: Scientists can use chromatography to basically decode the smells, and
Speaker 2: one German researcher has used some of these residues from
Speaker 2: archaeological artifacts to reconstruct the scent of a five thousand
Speaker 2: year old oasis. This was in Saudi Arabia. It's so interesting.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. But I want to walk us through what
Speaker 1: chromatogus actually.
Speaker 2: I feel like you should explain it, Mango, because I
Speaker 2: know what a huge chromatography head you are, so this
Speaker 2: is all you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I did do a lot of chromatography and
Speaker 1: gel electrophoresis and stuff like that. When you know, I
Speaker 1: worked in a university lab in high school. But it's
Speaker 1: been it's been a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been been a minute. But simply put, chromatography
Speaker 2: is a process for separating components in a mixture, combined
Speaker 2: with mass spectrometry, which can detect different compounds. By calculating
Speaker 2: the weight of different molecules, scientists can essentially reverse engineer
Speaker 2: the way a perfume smelled, and they do this by
Speaker 2: using the molecules left in the bottle.
Speaker 1: So then you could like potentially buy a perfume and
Speaker 1: smell like an ancient.
Speaker 2: Egyptian, not just any ancient Egyptian, you could actually smell
Speaker 2: like Cleopatra herself.
Speaker 1: What that's insane?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. Cleopatra wore a perfume called mendagean and
Speaker 2: sometimes referred to as the chanelle number five of ancient Egypt.
Speaker 2: And amazingly, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and documents describe recipes
Speaker 2: for several perfumes, including this one, but the precise ingredients
Speaker 2: and preparation methods those aren't quite as well known. So
Speaker 2: this egyptologist named Dora Goldsmith and a historian of Greco
Speaker 2: Roman philosophy and science named Sean Coughlin they started experimenting
Speaker 2: with the ingredients. They were looking at things like desert
Speaker 2: dat oil, mr cinnamon pine resin, and they eventually produced
Speaker 2: the scent that they suspect approximates what Cleopatra wore. Is
Speaker 2: this very strong, but pleasant, long lasting blend of spiciness
Speaker 2: and sweetness. Apparently, it's pretty cool they were able to recreate.
Speaker 1: This, which you know, is fascinating, but it sounds a
Speaker 1: little more like trial and error of using a recipe
Speaker 1: rather than just going back to the molecules, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are two distinct methods. The EU
Speaker 2: funded project ODOROPA puts it like this, if you're working
Speaker 2: from a historical recipe, as the Cleopatric perfume people did
Speaker 2: recreating a scent, now, if you're using chemical analysis techniques
Speaker 2: of actual ancient scent molecules, you are then quote reconstructing it.
Speaker 2: So researchers at ODOROPA have even created this heritage smell
Speaker 2: library that documents historically significant smells. Oh wow, they've yeah,
Speaker 2: they've reproduced the smell of the library at Saint Paul's
Speaker 2: Cathedral in London of potpourri from the seventeen fifties and
Speaker 2: even Royal car p five.
Speaker 1: B Royal car P. Five B. What is that?
Speaker 2: That would be the car used by Queen Elizabeth the second.
Speaker 2: So they were able to reconstruct the smellscape of the
Speaker 2: interior based on this analytical data.
Speaker 1: That is so weird. I really hope that long after
Speaker 1: I'm dead, no one tries to reconstruct the scent of
Speaker 1: our prius.
Speaker 2: Because that would be all.
Speaker 1: But how exactly do they capture these, you know, historic scents.
Speaker 2: Well, according to this one researcher, Cecilia Bimbibra, she uses
Speaker 2: a method called the headspace technie where she places an
Speaker 2: object inside a clean sealed bag, has this valve on it,
Speaker 2: and then they seal the volatile organic compounds. These are
Speaker 2: the things that actually make up the odor. Then she
Speaker 2: inserts an absorbent carbon fiber into the valve to soak
Speaker 2: up the ambient compounds that have been isolated inside, and
Speaker 2: once the carbon fiber is all loaded up with organic compounds,
Speaker 2: she runs it through a gas chromatographer. In the end,
Speaker 2: it gives her this sort of electocardiogram, but really more
Speaker 2: for smells, I guess, which she can use to identify
Speaker 2: the various chemicals in a smell.
Speaker 1: I feel like you just have like a word salad
Speaker 1: of scientific words. But it is it sounds pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: One day you'll understand it's pretty complicated.
Speaker 1: It is also wild to learn about, like the very
Speaker 1: precise and almost like clinical process of unpacking what is
Speaker 1: such a human experience, right like, because you know you
Speaker 1: said it before, smell is so emotional and whether it's
Speaker 1: pheromones or childhood memories or just the way home smells,
Speaker 1: right like, these are very human experiences. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I thought was fascinating was I
Speaker 1: found this study from twenty twelve where two researchers interviewed
Speaker 1: thirty residents of Krakow in Poland, and they were all
Speaker 1: old enough to remember the transition in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: out of communism, and they tracked that transition with the
Speaker 1: smell of their neighbors cooking. Like the smell showed them
Speaker 1: the degree to which they lacked privacy in these socialist flats,
Speaker 1: and that all changed in the transition to capitalism. This
Speaker 1: was kind of mind blowing to be in the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties Russians distanced themselves from capitalist America through smell. It
Speaker 1: was like one of the propaganda things and communists felt
Speaker 1: that they were living in a fragrant world where everything smells,
Speaker 1: while Americans only experienced land sterile air.
Speaker 2: Wow. So I guess capitalism literally smells different than socialism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which actually makes sense, right. So think about how
Speaker 1: different cities have a smell, like these potpourries of everything
Speaker 1: that contributes to that city's culture. Like there's a distinct
Speaker 1: smell when you land in Beijing. I know when I've
Speaker 1: been to Bangalore, like in the monsoons, there's a distinct
Speaker 1: smell there and it immediately evokes certain memories. America has
Speaker 1: this too. I was talking to a friend who was
Speaker 1: telling me how the Denver airport has this distinct smell
Speaker 1: to her, and so does the Path train in New York.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that some cities and countries are
Speaker 1: actually making an effort to recognize the value of their odors.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and one, Japan's environment minister classified
Speaker 1: the country's top one hundred best smelling spots, which ran
Speaker 1: the gamut from hedges to grill deal.
Speaker 2: I'd actually love to see this list, and it definitely
Speaker 2: makes sense for a country that prides itself on stopping
Speaker 2: to smell the scent of nature and forest bathing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Japan isn't the only one. In istanbul Coach
Speaker 1: University's Research Center for Anatolian'sviations has opened an exhibition called
Speaker 1: Sense in the City to explore four thousand years of
Speaker 1: civilization through its smells.
Speaker 2: There is something just so cool about the fact that
Speaker 2: you can land in another country, take this deep sniff
Speaker 2: and go yep, that's Athens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a huge component of travel experience. There's this
Speaker 1: professor from Goldsmith's University, Alex Rhees Taylor, who specializes in
Speaker 1: multisensory experience of urban space, and he says, quote, you
Speaker 1: can learn a lot about a city's economy, a lot
Speaker 1: about its culture through the sense of smell. But he
Speaker 1: also says that a lot of those specific smells are
Speaker 1: starting to disappear and are being replaced by what he
Speaker 1: calls a transnational aroma scape. And he goes on to
Speaker 1: say this, it is pretty much the same in every
Speaker 1: global city now. Smells of pulled pork, flat whites, roasting
Speaker 1: coffee beans is an increasing one, and microbreweries. There's a
Speaker 1: global constellation of transnational aromas and flavors associated with transnational
Speaker 1: class people that move around from city to city.
Speaker 2: I guess that's the smell of globalization.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like the macdonalization of culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, there's this community hell belief that the modern
Speaker 2: era has been one of deodorization, that is, the belief
Speaker 2: that we've gotten less smelly the more that we advance. Sure,
Speaker 2: but what's interesting is that this isn't entirely true. So
Speaker 2: first of all, we've been dividing and judging people on
Speaker 2: the basis of smell for centuries. Socrates thought that slaves
Speaker 2: smelled differently and that the use of perfumes threatened to
Speaker 2: confuse the ability to tell them apart from free men.
Speaker 1: That is so weird. I feel like the more you
Speaker 1: learn about so creates less cool. He seems to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good callback to Bill and Ted there. And it
Speaker 2: can start to get pretty discriminatory, as you pointed out,
Speaker 2: with kind of racists and colonial ideas that actually aren't accurate.
Speaker 2: Historian Mark Jenner has written how when society has quote
Speaker 2: deodorized ourselves to an extent, we've swapped one set of
Speaker 2: smells for another, like fabriz plugins in every bathroom, or
Speaker 2: hospitals smelling like bleach, those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like pine trees hanging in every uber. But right,
Speaker 1: you know, back to what you were saying before. Because
Speaker 1: smell is so emotional and really so cultural, it can
Speaker 1: actually have a lot to do with power. So in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century along the California coast, there was
Speaker 1: an odor of squid and sardines that really polarized opinion.
Speaker 1: The tourism industry thought this fishy smell was intolerable, but
Speaker 1: you know, the fishing industry just considered it this minor
Speaker 1: note in the smellscape of modern ray and environmental historians
Speaker 1: look at examples like this to see how conflicting interpretations
Speaker 1: of the same smell tend to be adjudicated according to
Speaker 1: who has more power.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that. Speaking of power, remember at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the episode, you were actually talking about
Speaker 2: how there are organic materials that are disappearing so their
Speaker 2: sense will be extinct soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was a long time ago, but yes, I
Speaker 1: remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Well there's this one smell in particular that
Speaker 2: is extremely sought after by hot, rich people and it's
Speaker 2: called ood.
Speaker 1: Oh I know oud, but not because I'm rich or hot,
Speaker 1: I just like colones.
Speaker 2: Well then you probably also know that ood is in
Speaker 2: a lot of luxury fragrances from brands like tom Ford,
Speaker 2: Christian Dior, Joe Malone. But real ood comes from the
Speaker 2: resin of wild agerwood trees.
Speaker 1: Oh, I had no idea where the sun came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently those trees are under serious threat from
Speaker 2: over harvesting kilo for kilo, ood is actually more costly
Speaker 2: than gold. And as wild harvesting has been banned in
Speaker 2: Thailand and other South Asian countries, this is where the
Speaker 2: agerwood trees grow. There's been a boom in plantations growing
Speaker 2: cultivated agerwood. But cultivated ood just isn't that good because
Speaker 2: it tends to get harvested when the trees are between
Speaker 2: five and ten years old. And generally speaking, good ood
Speaker 2: you want to let the trees cook for really about
Speaker 2: one hundred years, so a lot lot longer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I let that ood cook. But that's right. But
Speaker 1: you know, Wil, there actually is precedent for recreating sense
Speaker 1: from extinct plants.
Speaker 2: Well, that is super interesting and I want to get
Speaker 2: into that. But before we do that, let's take a
Speaker 2: quick break. Welcome back to Part time Genius. We're talking
Speaker 2: about disappearing sense, all right, Mango you were just about
Speaker 2: to tell us about scientists recreating scents and smells from
Speaker 2: extinct plants.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole idea of this is really cool
Speaker 1: to me. But actually, do you remember in college I
Speaker 1: had an extra science credit I needed to take, and
Speaker 1: I was looking through the options and I almost took
Speaker 1: organic chemistry because you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: said in the pathlet was that you could learned to
Speaker 1: create the scent of pairs and a lab. I really
Speaker 1: love that.
Speaker 2: I love that that was like the reason you were
Speaker 2: going to take what was probably known as like the
Speaker 2: hardest weed out class in all of college. It would
Speaker 2: have been a disaster, I know.
Speaker 1: And actually you're the one who convinced me not to
Speaker 1: do it because I hate chemistry, but the curiosity about
Speaker 1: how to make sense and a level almost tricked me
Speaker 1: into hating my senior year. But I hear you, let's
Speaker 1: talk about these extinct flowers. So in twenty sixteen, a
Speaker 1: team of biologists, researchers, and artists embarked on a project
Speaker 1: called Resurrecting the Sublime, and using tiny amounts of DNA
Speaker 1: extracted from specimen of three flowers. A team of scientists
Speaker 1: used synthetic biology to predict and resynthesize the gene sequences
Speaker 1: that could encode for fragrance producing enzymes and then using
Speaker 1: those findings, this smell researcher and artist named Cisel Tolas
Speaker 1: used her expertise to reconstruct the flowers smells in the
Speaker 1: lab and she used identical or comparative smell molecules.
Speaker 2: Some guys, since she's like one of these super smellers
Speaker 2: that helped create perfumes. But what were the extinct flowers?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a nose like that's what they're called. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna murder the pronunciation of these flowers, but bear
Speaker 1: with me. The Hibiscadelphus wilderaneus or maui howk haiwaii?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you murdered it.
Speaker 1: It's the plant's habitat was decimated by colonial cattle ranching
Speaker 1: and the final tree was found dying in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: And then the second flower was the falls of the
Speaker 1: Ohio scurf pee, which was last seen in eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: one on Rock Island on the Ohio River. And then
Speaker 1: there's Windberg cone bush, which sounds like a person but
Speaker 1: it's actually a flower and it was last described in
Speaker 1: London in a collector's garden in eighteen oh five, and
Speaker 1: its habitat in Cape Town, South Africa was already lost
Speaker 1: to colonial vine, so you know it had disappeared there
Speaker 1: and then was preserved in London for a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I do think it'd be so amazing
Speaker 2: to smell extinct flowers, but I guess you'd have to
Speaker 2: go to a lab where they recreated them. It's not
Speaker 2: like you can, you know, send off these smells or anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's something amazing about like the idea
Speaker 1: of smelling a new scent, right, Like it's like seeing
Speaker 1: a new color or something. It just feels unimaginable. But
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of sending smells is pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, a Harvard professor named David Edwards and
Speaker 1: one of his students, Rachel Field, invented a prototype called
Speaker 1: the OPhone, which was designed to let people send smells
Speaker 1: like text messages.
Speaker 2: WHOA, so, how does that even work?
Speaker 1: Well? The phone had a lot of moving parts. There
Speaker 1: was the O snap app where you create an O note,
Speaker 1: which was a photograph and a smell created out of
Speaker 1: a palette of thirty two cents available in the app
Speaker 1: that could be combined into three hundred thousand possible combinations,
Speaker 1: so like the sender would forward the OH note to
Speaker 1: an OPhone the hardware portion of the enterprise which recreated
Speaker 1: the aroma from the O snap app, and the key
Speaker 1: component of the OPhone is the O chip, which you
Speaker 1: know created the actual smell.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I guess you're not really sending a smell.
Speaker 2: You're more like describing it to a computer, and the
Speaker 2: computer squirts out its best guess as to what you described.
Speaker 2: It kind of makes me feel like it's smell a
Speaker 2: vision but for a phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: But it is approximating a mood through smell, And it's
Speaker 2: sort of like those fancy candle stores that now you know,
Speaker 2: make these really specific smells to evoke a certain mood,
Speaker 2: like pasta water or video store or things like that.
Speaker 1: I love that video stores a smell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The company that makes it describes it as quote
Speaker 2: aromas of buttery, popcorn, plastic VHS tapes, dusty carpet, and
Speaker 2: hints of candy to evoke the atmosphere of a classic
Speaker 2: video store. And you have to admit, when you hear
Speaker 2: those words, you can start to like smell at your.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bring me back to my days working at biz art.
Speaker 1: It's like, ye, the closest thing we have to time travel.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, and I guess until we get our OPhones working,
Speaker 1: we'll just have to rely on these candles. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: really am amazed that you can recreate all these ancient scents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty stunning. All right, but before we
Speaker 2: sign off, how about we make time for a little
Speaker 2: fact off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm into it.
Speaker 2: Okay, mango, here's a quick one. Did you know that
Speaker 2: Yale University found that Crayola crayons are one of the
Speaker 2: twenty most recognizable scents among American adults, and another survey
Speaker 2: eighty five percent of people remembered their childhood when they
Speaker 2: caught the scent of Crayola crayons.
Speaker 1: Which I guess makes sense. But uh, what were some
Speaker 1: of the other scents on Yale's list?
Speaker 2: Well, some of them aren't that surprisingly. There are things
Speaker 2: like coffee, lemons, bleach mothballs, which is such a strong
Speaker 2: and terrible smell, baby powder, but also other name brand
Speaker 2: things like Ivory, soap, Vix, vapor ub. But weirdly, the
Speaker 2: Krayola scent comes because it's a derivative beef tallow or
Speaker 2: beef fat, which gives the crayons their sort of waxy feel.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of Crayola, here's one I didn't realize from
Speaker 1: mental fluss. Did you know that? In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: Crayola released a line of food scented crayons called Magic Scent.
Speaker 2: Have you heard about these? No? I had not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it sounds like such a bad idea because
Speaker 1: the crayons basically came in flavors like coconut, cherry, and chocolate,
Speaker 1: which obviously makes kids want to stuff them in their faces.
Speaker 2: I mean, how would they not see this coming? Between
Speaker 2: beef flavor and those dessert flavors? How could you not eat?
Speaker 2: I think I would try them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But by nineteen ninety five, the next year, apparently
Speaker 1: at least ten kids had eaten a lot of crayons.
Speaker 1: So Crayola changed the flavors to things that were a
Speaker 1: little less appetizing, to things like dirt. Apparently.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, here's another one from a fragrance manufacturer
Speaker 2: called Aromaco, who says that in the not so distant future,
Speaker 2: sweat maybe used like a fingerprint. According to the site,
Speaker 2: quote Israeli Chimis say that the food we eat, drugs
Speaker 2: we take, gender, and even state of mind all combined
Speaker 2: to make each person sweat unique, which is super interesting.
Speaker 2: It makes sense. But I had not thought about that before.
Speaker 2: And the manufacturer points to how Tel Aviv University's School
Speaker 2: of Chemistry has this lab where a team has been
Speaker 2: breaking down the components of human sweat as kind of
Speaker 2: a new id.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah, So here's a quick fact from Scientific American.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you've ever noticed this, but there's
Speaker 1: a sweet, slightly pungent smell that comes before the rain begins,
Speaker 1: and that smell is ozone. That's what ozone smells like.
Speaker 1: According to tropospheric chemists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
Speaker 1: the downdrafts that happen as a thunderstorm is brewing carry
Speaker 1: the ozone from the atmosphere down to nostril level where
Speaker 1: we can smell them.
Speaker 2: Wow. I mean, there definitely is a distinct smell there.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that that's what that was though.
Speaker 2: All right, well, speaking of recreating sense, the Jorvik Viking
Speaker 2: Center in York, England, decided they wanted to give visitors
Speaker 2: a better sense of what it felt like to be
Speaker 2: in a Viking village. So, as Freddale, a scent consultant,
Speaker 2: put it, previously, museums were a series of glass cases
Speaker 2: which had their own musty smell, but not the one
Speaker 2: that encouraged you to think about the past. So among
Speaker 2: smells that are pumped through the exhibits are things like
Speaker 2: wood smoke, apples, fish, leatherwork, and goat pooh.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of goat pooh.
Speaker 2: I think I accidentally set you up here. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I like where this is going.
Speaker 1: So this is a terrible fact, and you did accidentally
Speaker 1: sell me up. But have you ever heard of perosmia?
Speaker 2: I don't think I have.
Speaker 1: Apparently it is a scent disorder. So there's anosmia, where
Speaker 1: you can't smell anything, and then there's phantosmia, which or phantosmia,
Speaker 1: which is it's kind of like a phantom limb, you know,
Speaker 1: so you're smelling things that don't actually exist, the same
Speaker 1: way people with phantom limbs feel like they have a
Speaker 1: leg even though it's been amputated. And then there's parosmia,
Speaker 1: which is just awful. Apparently it affects a very very
Speaker 1: small part of the population. But everything smells like sewage
Speaker 1: and mud. It's just miserable. I read this account from
Speaker 1: this person in the Guardian who talked about getting this
Speaker 1: awful cold and illness and it took away her sense
Speaker 1: of scent. And then she got phantasmia first, where she
Speaker 1: thought she was smelling a burning meat, so she kept
Speaker 1: having her husband check the oven and look around the
Speaker 1: house and it was just this made up scent in
Speaker 1: her head. But then the worst thing happened, and she
Speaker 1: got parosmia, and suddenly everything smelled terrible. She lost her appetite,
Speaker 1: everything felt disgusting, and she thought she was losing her mind.
Speaker 1: So actually, this is her quote from the article. To me,
Speaker 1: chocolate tastes like biting into a raw sewage, chicken is
Speaker 1: muddy and rubbery. Peanut butter and marmite are like trying
Speaker 1: to eat I'm not gonna say it, but let's just
Speaker 1: call it loose motions. And she says there are a
Speaker 1: couple of exceptions. Raspberries, carrots and parsnips don't taste vile,
Speaker 1: nor does gin, which really helps. But you know, she
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do about this. She goes to
Speaker 1: a conference with people who suffered sort of these three
Speaker 1: similar traits, and she learned some hacks to deal with
Speaker 1: the situation.
Speaker 2: I mean, this just sounds brutal, but like, what kind
Speaker 2: of hacks did she learn?
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically masking the scent. So her friend, who was
Speaker 1: a perfumer, made a strong scent out of violets and lilies,
Speaker 1: and that was something she could actually smell. So she
Speaker 1: puts that on herself to sort of, you know, cover
Speaker 1: up everything around her, and she carries around what she
Speaker 1: calls a porosmia first aid kit. This includes things like
Speaker 1: cinnamon drops to make drinks palatable and hot sauce to
Speaker 1: mask the taste of food. And you know, all of
Speaker 1: it just sounds so miserable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does. I feel like we need a
Speaker 2: palate cleanser for that last fact. So here's one that
Speaker 2: I think is fascinating. Did you know that during the
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight World Series, the Tampa Bay Rays
Speaker 2: Stadium commissioned a scent called Citrus Burst, so that when
Speaker 2: fans entered the rotunda, instead of smelling hot dogs and
Speaker 2: stale beer, they would smell the pleasant scent of oranges.
Speaker 1: I like that, but uh, don't they play at traffic
Speaker 1: out of field.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, so it has extra meaning. But the
Speaker 2: experiment went over so well that stadium owners started playing
Speaker 2: and pumping other scents into the stadiums just to please fans,
Speaker 2: including cotton candy and tops bubblegum.
Speaker 1: I love that. You know, you did a nice job
Speaker 1: of covering up my porosmia fact. So why don't I
Speaker 1: give this one to you?
Speaker 2: I was going to say, even if I had not
Speaker 2: earned it, just that fact alone, I think by default
Speaker 2: I'm going to get it. But thank you so much.
Speaker 2: That is it for this week's Part Time Genius. Thanks
Speaker 2: so much for listening. If you like Part Time Genius,
Speaker 2: don't forget to raise the show, write his review, tell
Speaker 2: a friend, and if you really want to get to us,
Speaker 2: write our moms a note at PT Genius moms at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. They always pass these notes along to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they passed a few already which are really really wonderful.
Speaker 1: And I actually have a giveaway. I mentioned this last week,
Speaker 1: but we're going to pick ten more random fans from
Speaker 1: everyone who writes in, and I'm going to send you
Speaker 1: a special gift to show you our appreciation. We're going
Speaker 1: to pony express it to you, so let us know
Speaker 1: what you think about the show and what topics you
Speaker 1: want us to cover, especially that, and we'll put something
Speaker 1: in the mail for you from Will, Dylan, Marry and me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
Speaker 1: a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
Speaker 1: by Will Pearson and Me Mongastikler and research by our
Speaker 1: good path he Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered
Speaker 1: and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by
Speaker 1: Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support from
Speaker 1: Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more
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