Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about smells smell and and don't turn
Speaker 1: up the podcast. You made it this far into a
Speaker 1: podcast about smells. Yeah, because that's the thing. The sense
Speaker 1: of smell is amazing, and it is mind blowing. We
Speaker 1: we end up taking it for granted. But but it's
Speaker 1: one of the strongest senses that we have. Out of
Speaker 1: all the five. It's the only one that interacts directly
Speaker 1: with the brain. And and just imagine how boring the
Speaker 1: world would be without it, and and and also take
Speaker 1: into account that we really haven't studied it seriously scientifically
Speaker 1: until the last couple of decades, Like there was a
Speaker 1: but before that, if you were like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: scientifically study smell, I'm really interested in how things smell
Speaker 1: and what makes something stink, and what makes something smell good,
Speaker 1: and how something that could the same odor could sort
Speaker 1: of smell good. If we thought of one thing and stink,
Speaker 1: if we thought it was the other people would laugh
Speaker 1: at you. They would say a ha, ha, why don't
Speaker 1: you go study ghosts or something? Right? Right? Right? Did
Speaker 1: they ever think that there would be a whole industry
Speaker 1: that is uh built on smell, Like, for instance, if
Speaker 1: you go into the gap, if you go into that retailer,
Speaker 1: there is a specific smell that was created just for
Speaker 1: that store, keeping you the customer in mind, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of fresh light smell to try to manipulate your Yeah.
Speaker 1: It goes far beyond just the perfume industry or anything
Speaker 1: of that nature. It gets into into what kind of
Speaker 1: smells do people react to, how to how to smells
Speaker 1: interact with our memories? Um, wine and then wine is
Speaker 1: a one smell appealed to say, one group of people
Speaker 1: and not to another. It just gets it gets crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so today we're gonna talk about smells, but we're
Speaker 1: don't trying to talk about it in a little bit
Speaker 1: of an unorthodox way. And uh, I'm not lying here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about David Beckham's foot at one point.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, yeah, So so let's get into it
Speaker 1: all right. Well, a lot of this came from a
Speaker 1: panel that I attended at the at the World Science
Speaker 1: Festival in New York in June of two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: We're both up there hitting various panels and this one
Speaker 1: was called Sense and Sensibilities, right, yes, take on, Jane Austen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was a really cool one. Like all of
Speaker 1: them barely got there in time, because it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, taking the train and then trying to figure
Speaker 1: out where I was supposed to go, and then using
Speaker 1: the phone to try and triangulate exactly where I was
Speaker 1: and where it was. It was very and as you
Speaker 1: were looking at the phone bumping into the building and
Speaker 1: realizing that was a building that you needed to hoof
Speaker 1: it into. Yeah, and uh, it was a great panel.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they did they did a
Speaker 1: really interesting smell test where everybody had these different cards
Speaker 1: under their well, they weren't under the chair, but they
Speaker 1: were handed out to It was lightly It was just
Speaker 1: that if they were under the chair and each one
Speaker 1: has a number, and then you smell it and then
Speaker 1: they would vote to see what people thought the smell was.
Speaker 1: So um, I thought we might just run through these
Speaker 1: real quick. Okay, let's do it all right. So this
Speaker 1: is we're going to count down from the top. This
Speaker 1: is number four, number four, and this is a little card.
Speaker 1: It has you gotta peel the plastic back. I can
Speaker 1: smell something kind of smells kind of good, but it's
Speaker 1: very faint langline. I don't know what that is. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a like a lily smell. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: can kind of a like a sweet plant kind of smell.
Speaker 1: From what is number four? Then I will have up
Speaker 1: to my nose. It is a Tahitian flower by the
Speaker 1: name of t R So there you go. You were
Speaker 1: pretty close that I was gonna say Tahitian flower. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's it's frequently used in you know, kind of
Speaker 1: perfumey smells. Now number three mm hm, okay, this smells
Speaker 1: like it sounds good, but because it also smells like
Speaker 1: under arm plus like maybe a drier sheet. Oh that's
Speaker 1: that's very spot on because it's musk, which is of
Speaker 1: course musk, you know, musky odors, but musk is also
Speaker 1: an important ingredient, very in soap products. That's funny. I
Speaker 1: felt like I should I say I like that, us
Speaker 1: I feel a little dirty and saying that I like this.
Speaker 1: That was my initial squeeze directed directly from a muskrat,
Speaker 1: and then the final one. This is number one, and
Speaker 1: this one is actually double wrapped, so you'll have to
Speaker 1: take it out of the plastic. Hey, if it's double wrap,
Speaker 1: it's probably pretty pungent, right, Well, that would seem to imply,
Speaker 1: oh goodness, yeah it is. It's still strong after so
Speaker 1: many months. I mean, it's clearly smells like cheese, and
Speaker 1: it's like a very pungent cheese. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say it's cheddar, but it's it's strong. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: one was the most fun at this festival because people
Speaker 1: were throwing out various ideas from the audience, things of
Speaker 1: such as, it's under arm, it's its feet, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's body odor, it's it's locker funk, it's and then
Speaker 1: other people are saying it's Lindburger, it's Swiss, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's some sort of weird pots, Robert,
Speaker 1: what have I just put up to my nose? David
Speaker 1: Beckham's feet Apparently this was taking This smell was taken
Speaker 1: directly from David Beckham's foot funk and then made into
Speaker 1: a chemical form and then brushed under the all these
Speaker 1: little cards and then handed out to people attending this
Speaker 1: particular panel. Alright, So I mean I read about not
Speaker 1: necessarily this that you just put in my nose, but
Speaker 1: that his foot has been studied before. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that was quite a specimen. I mean, his molecules are
Speaker 1: they're they're just rumbling around my nose right now and
Speaker 1: touching your brain. I should really say. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to say it's a little bit disturbing, especially since I
Speaker 1: like cheese. Um, I really do. And that is that
Speaker 1: is the weird thing, Like the same smell in a
Speaker 1: different context. Um, at least cheese fans would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that smells delightful. There was a an art opening I
Speaker 1: was helping at here in town that my wife was organizing,
Speaker 1: and there was some cheese on hand, and so Bonnie
Speaker 1: was unwrapping it and getting ready on the table, and
Speaker 1: I was doing something else, like getting lighting or sound
Speaker 1: ready for the event, and I smelled this odor and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, my goodness, we're about to have this
Speaker 1: art event and a mouse has died in the wall.
Speaker 1: What are we gonna do? It's like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know how to get back there and get it,
Speaker 1: Like clearly something has died. And then I found it
Speaker 1: out that knows this cheese and uh. And and then
Speaker 1: later we had some friends that were attending it who
Speaker 1: are big freendshophiles and really in cheese. They were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this smells great. Can we take it home and devour it?
Speaker 1: And we're like, yes, please, yes, please, please take the
Speaker 1: dead mouse home because it is is stinking up the space.
Speaker 1: So different different circumstances, different ideas about where the smell
Speaker 1: is coming from, has a huge impact on whether it
Speaker 1: is a good smell or a bad smell. Different cultures, right, um,
Speaker 1: and there was a woman on this panel. Cecil told us,
Speaker 1: the Norwegian odor artist. Oh, yes, she was awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you know, by the way, this is all online,
Speaker 1: so you can go to World Science Festival put in
Speaker 1: sense s c e n T s s c n
Speaker 1: s e uh sense and sensibilities and you can see
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. It's great. She is uh. They
Speaker 1: call her an udor provocateur, and she's really like a
Speaker 1: warrior for smell. In the same way that you hear
Speaker 1: a lot of parents arguing that okay, you should not
Speaker 1: let a child say that a food is yucky, or
Speaker 1: you should not say, oh, this taste bad in front
Speaker 1: of a child, Like she takes it even farther than
Speaker 1: we should not talk about things stinking or smelling bad.
Speaker 1: And I kind of on the same boat when it
Speaker 1: comes to cheese, Like when I hear people talk about,
Speaker 1: who I'm gonna try a stinky cheese, I'm like, don't
Speaker 1: use that word. Use a different word for the thing
Speaker 1: that you like. Don't say stinky. Say it's a pungent, pungent,
Speaker 1: pungent I like, or fragrant, expressive cheese, but don't say stinky.
Speaker 1: And that was one of the things she was talking about.
Speaker 1: It's like, we have to, you know, we have to
Speaker 1: bring up a new generation that has a more nuanced
Speaker 1: way of talking about smell, because for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh, that's a good smell, and that's
Speaker 1: a bad smell. And it's a lot more complicated than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what put her on her whole journey.
Speaker 1: She said to herself, can I think beyond the dichotomies
Speaker 1: of good and bad sense? And she certainly has plumbed
Speaker 1: the subject to like he has broken the other side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she makes me think of the guy um who who
Speaker 1: the Kloica machine who who is very interested in feces
Speaker 1: and his exploration of this in our relationship to this,
Speaker 1: this smell, this, this this material, and she does it
Speaker 1: the same way with smell um and really forces you
Speaker 1: to think about the topic. Yeah. Yeah, but it's so,
Speaker 1: it's very it's very very interesting that she dived into this,
Speaker 1: And I wanted to mention a couple of things that
Speaker 1: that make that even more intriguing. Um, And that's considering
Speaker 1: what's actually happening to your inside your nose when you
Speaker 1: are sensing a smell um. Like you said, it's the
Speaker 1: only sense with a direct connection to the brain. So
Speaker 1: when you breathe chemicals into your nose, you have proteins
Speaker 1: that bind to millions of molecules, and these molecules rush
Speaker 1: into your nose and they get really cozy with the
Speaker 1: nerve endings of your brains. With factory bulb and you
Speaker 1: have four hundred receptors trying to suss out the different
Speaker 1: smells um. So say you're walking down the street in
Speaker 1: New York early on the sunny morning in July, You're
Speaker 1: gonna be bombarded with a bunch of different smells. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is a city of amazing stinks. For sure. It
Speaker 1: is it is um or. You know, the day before
Speaker 1: garbage pickup, right, it's it's um or. You go past
Speaker 1: a pizza parlor and your your brain is trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of all this old factory input. So um,
Speaker 1: it's it's very interesting when you think about it that way. UM.
Speaker 1: And we think about vision is being really complex, but
Speaker 1: when we're talking about vision or something like color blindness,
Speaker 1: really you're talking about three primary colors that you're perceiving.
Speaker 1: But when you're talking about smells, you're talking about fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand identifiable smells that are out there so far. Right,
Speaker 1: Like you said, this is a pretty young field, the
Speaker 1: field of smells. And as we walk around, we're all
Speaker 1: carrying around this database of of smells with us. Um Like,
Speaker 1: not only the smells that we recognize in our in
Speaker 1: our mind, because I think we've all had that situation
Speaker 1: where we're walking down the street and with a different
Speaker 1: smell will hit us out of nowhere, and suddenly we're
Speaker 1: transported back to our childhood or something, right, and and
Speaker 1: sometimes we're not even sure what that odor was. It's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, the smell of fresh peaches that it
Speaker 1: takes me back. I don't know why. I know you had.
Speaker 1: All Italians are talking about peaches, but but I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about New York streets. I guess I don't know, but
Speaker 1: but more like you like, for me, it's like a
Speaker 1: smell will hit me and I it will be an
Speaker 1: unclassifiable smell, like I'm not sure what that odor is,
Speaker 1: but it takes me back. But but so not only
Speaker 1: those the odors of memory, but also just the odors
Speaker 1: on our person in our coat. Well. I was actually
Speaker 1: thinking about that a lot today because I'm wearing this
Speaker 1: vintage velvet jacket and it's one of my mom's curnies.
Speaker 1: Actually gave it to me, and it's really sweet, love it,
Speaker 1: but it has this Yeah, it's very shiny, and it
Speaker 1: has the scent of her perfume on it. It's clean,
Speaker 1: but obviously this is something that survived it and so
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm wearing the autobiography of someone else
Speaker 1: right now, and it's a little disconcerting. Um just to
Speaker 1: every once in a while smell this scent. But this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that se sell To Lost
Speaker 1: the the odor artists really wanted to check out, and
Speaker 1: she did the us by analyzing a bunch of coats
Speaker 1: from the citizens and uh, I think it was the Montpelier, France. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she took their coats and analyzed it. Um. Basically, she
Speaker 1: used her her nose to try to figure out the
Speaker 1: different profiles of smell. And before anybody scoffed at that,
Speaker 1: this is actually, um, this is something that perfumers do
Speaker 1: all the time. You can really train your nose to
Speaker 1: detect the most minute smell or so this is something
Speaker 1: that's real, by the way, and um ce cel Tolass
Speaker 1: is like she's a giant in her field, so she's
Speaker 1: pretty well respected. And she actually has created sense for
Speaker 1: product Um, Calvin Klein and all sorts of other people,
Speaker 1: so she knows what she's talking about here. Um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: she has also just another little interesting fact about her.
Speaker 1: She has a smell archive preserved in seven thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty air tight jars which feature dirty fabric,
Speaker 1: chunks of fried fish or dried fish, rotten bananas, a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty variations on dog poo, and her favorite
Speaker 1: aroma that of her thirteen year old daughter, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really cool. So anyway, this this expert on
Speaker 1: odor takes these coats and analyzes them and what does
Speaker 1: she find, Well that there's a complex bouquet going on there.
Speaker 1: Right in the term that bouquet, there's some top notes
Speaker 1: and there are some bottom notes for sure. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: there's a certain amount of like fecal odor. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. There was one product coat that was analyzed
Speaker 1: and had two percent dog feces, five percent soy sauce,
Speaker 1: six percent gasoline smell, nine percent Jill Sander after shave.
Speaker 1: By the way, this aftershave was not the after shave
Speaker 1: of her husband. It was of someone else. Um ten
Speaker 1: percent codfish, twelve percent channel number five, which is the
Speaker 1: scent she wore, and twenty six percent tobacco sweat. Wow,
Speaker 1: where is the cod fish coming from? I mean, she
Speaker 1: must have just had a little codfish for for lunch
Speaker 1: before she gave her codo her or they had one
Speaker 1: of those freak days where like rained cod. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was probably one of those days. Ye frogs the
Speaker 1: day before than cod. But yeah, all this stuff is
Speaker 1: in our clothes and we're walking around and we think
Speaker 1: that we're so clean, especially here, you know, in the
Speaker 1: United States, where we're obsessed with sanitizing ourselves and covering up. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I'm clean is an interesting topic just in and
Speaker 1: of itself, because we over time have taken idea of
Speaker 1: hygiene and the idea of spiritual purity and and intertwined
Speaker 1: the two to the point where in many cultures there's
Speaker 1: just no pulling them apart again, right right, So, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just and she will say, uh, this artist
Speaker 1: that the West is way too obsessed with sanitizing and
Speaker 1: we should get a little bit more comfortable with the
Speaker 1: different smells that we have, like the smell of fear,
Speaker 1: which we will talk about right after this. This podcast
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow
Speaker 1: and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is
Speaker 1: the spark which drives innovation. Join us a curiosity dot
Speaker 1: com and explore the answers to life's questions. So the
Speaker 1: smell of fear and this this really this boils down
Speaker 1: to to some of the you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: what we can discuss about the evolution of our sense
Speaker 1: of smell in where a place. Because if you can
Speaker 1: smell fear, and you hear that a lot, it's like,
Speaker 1: don't mess with that guy. He can smell fear. Don't
Speaker 1: be weird around this dog. It can smell fear. The
Speaker 1: idea that that we're emitting some sort of odor, be
Speaker 1: that just a some be it just sort of a
Speaker 1: body funk or an actual pheromone that says, I am afraid, right,
Speaker 1: I am on edge and a little terrified. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating concept because you would not want to
Speaker 1: emit that odor. You would want to admit the I'm
Speaker 1: pretty awesome and could beat up a dog kind of right,
Speaker 1: right right, Because again here we have with these molecules
Speaker 1: being sucked up by our noses, and we are detecting
Speaker 1: all of this on a very subtle level, which which
Speaker 1: again this the odor artist is um using this to
Speaker 1: try to explore, you know, all these different happenstances of
Speaker 1: our humanity, like fear. So cecil to lost the artists
Speaker 1: we were talking about, she also went after this whole
Speaker 1: fear smell thing, and she ended up this is two
Speaker 1: thousand six. Shed analyzed all these different examples of men
Speaker 1: in a state of fear. These these were men, by
Speaker 1: the way, who had chronic states of fear. Right, It
Speaker 1: wasn't just like every once a while they were scared,
Speaker 1: but for various reasons. They were under dress. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they were a veteran or something, and they were
Speaker 1: able to, you know, summon this sphere for the experiment,
Speaker 1: and they took samples from their their under arms. And
Speaker 1: in this in two thousand six, Cecil covered the walls
Speaker 1: of an M. I. T. Gallery with and I mean
Speaker 1: officially not you know, she didn't go in there, just
Speaker 1: do it after the lights were out. She had she
Speaker 1: had an exhibit. Yeah, imagine like basically imagine walking into
Speaker 1: an exhibit hall and it looks like all the paintings
Speaker 1: are gone and you're like, oh, I'm kind of bummed out.
Speaker 1: I came here for an art show. And then you
Speaker 1: is no, instead of going up and looking at a painting,
Speaker 1: you're going up to that blank canvas and you're sniffing.
Speaker 1: That's right, because this wall is a metaphor for the skin, right,
Speaker 1: And she's basically she's chemically reproduced the molecules from the
Speaker 1: sweat of these men that she studied who were suffering fear.
Speaker 1: And and you're going up and you're getting to smell
Speaker 1: different variations on that odor. And she she mentioned that
Speaker 1: there was one individual who had who had been in
Speaker 1: the war and uh, and he was smelling like an
Speaker 1: Asian um fear odor and the dye was like brought
Speaker 1: to tears because he was like, this really takes me
Speaker 1: back to this guy who during the war. Is that amazing?
Speaker 1: It is amazing? Yeah, yeah, um. And and how she
Speaker 1: did this as pretty interesting too. She used micro encapsulation
Speaker 1: technology to produce a gloss paint that releases its scent
Speaker 1: when gently touched. Scratch and sniff, yeah, scratch and stiff
Speaker 1: wall of fear basically, so you have these nine different
Speaker 1: smells of fear, you know, from these nine different men
Speaker 1: and uh, and all of these guys, like you said
Speaker 1: that they collected their sweat during um when they were
Speaker 1: under duress. And one of them actually was a guy
Speaker 1: who engaged in s and M and so he collected
Speaker 1: his perspiration when he visited sex clubs. So he's he's
Speaker 1: he has a fearful odor emitting from this upright, because
Speaker 1: I mean that's part of his um. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: he was aroused, but it's he has to experience fear
Speaker 1: in order to be aroused. So they were collecting that.
Speaker 1: So again that's what we're talking about, like very different situations,
Speaker 1: but all of them fear based. Yeah, and so can
Speaker 1: you imagine you're just kind of scratching and sniffing around
Speaker 1: this wall and you're getting these different profiles of smell,
Speaker 1: and like you said, the guy that that perceived his
Speaker 1: friend in this one smell who wasn't obviously his friend
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing. Yeah, it kind of boils down to
Speaker 1: two to some of the stuff we've talked about about
Speaker 1: how their stuff going on in our brain, we're not
Speaker 1: conscious off like a lot of stuff under the surface
Speaker 1: of the waves of human cognition, and and certainly the
Speaker 1: processing of smells is just another one of those things. Always.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about that too, like how we
Speaker 1: arrive at an idea and we keep thinking we have
Speaker 1: these aha moments, when in fact we talked about this before,
Speaker 1: like do we actually have free will? But it's all
Speaker 1: being Our perception is being colored all the time, and
Speaker 1: these ah ha moments rise to the surface after they've
Speaker 1: been vetted um in so many different subconscious ways, like
Speaker 1: you said, like smells. So again, like we discussed the
Speaker 1: towards the top of the podcast, funky Smell, if we
Speaker 1: pair that with a picture of a foot, were repulsed
Speaker 1: pair it with a picture of you know, a fancy
Speaker 1: um hard or soft cheese, and we're more likely to salivate,
Speaker 1: right right, scratch us. If a wall, we're scared. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it is all in the way
Speaker 1: that it's uh, it's packaged. And again you have the
Speaker 1: odor artists responsible for making something called human bacteria cheese,
Speaker 1: which brings the two together into one product. The fear
Speaker 1: in the fear and then the attraction to cheese, and
Speaker 1: here it is in one product. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. She wanted to know what happens when I
Speaker 1: grow an edible substance from my own body, uh bacteria
Speaker 1: and then eat it. Yeah yeah, So again she this
Speaker 1: fascination with smell that she in bacteria. Um. She decided
Speaker 1: that this body bacteria would be the ideal organism uh
Speaker 1: to carry a smelly bacterium closely related to human armpits
Speaker 1: and feet. She took working samples, She collected them from
Speaker 1: friends and family, and then she simulated and coagulated them
Speaker 1: into a range of ripe taste sensations like Daisy's armpit,
Speaker 1: Philosopher's toe, Chris Christina's hand, and Sile's foot. Well, if
Speaker 1: I had to go for one hour ago for Philosopher's toe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that sounds like it could be uh nutty,
Speaker 1: mild with a surprising end. Yeah, and there's a great
Speaker 1: foot in mouth kind of metaphor going oh yeah, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: nice nice um. But and you know you had we
Speaker 1: talked about David Beckham's foot before, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that I don't think she actually grew any cheese from
Speaker 1: his samples, but she could, that's the the amusing thing.
Speaker 1: She could, she absolutely could. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: his particular odor has the chemical construction most similar to
Speaker 1: a Belgian Limburger cheese. So there, So if you want
Speaker 1: to partake in in our reaction to David Beckham's foot,
Speaker 1: just go find a nice lumburger and give it a whiff.
Speaker 1: There you go, There you go. That's that's what we
Speaker 1: were smelling. But it really is an interesting idea that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you get very hard up for a
Speaker 1: food source, you could actually sort of grow your own
Speaker 1: cheese from your body. Right. Well, I met a hippie
Speaker 1: girl once who had made mead like the alcoholic beverage
Speaker 1: that the old ale like the old Ale a medieval
Speaker 1: stuff and she had used like under her own under
Speaker 1: armed funk too to like kick started. So well that
Speaker 1: is artists and crafted mead right there. I mean I
Speaker 1: can't argue against that. I did not try it, but um,
Speaker 1: it existed, so I'm sure it probably was delicious. Who knows, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean it just comes down to the
Speaker 1: whole How do we semantically categorized something. How do we
Speaker 1: distance something from its source. It's like I did a
Speaker 1: blog postal wall back titled U all water has been
Speaker 1: pooped in or something of that effect what I titled it.
Speaker 1: But basically the argument is, at some point in the
Speaker 1: fact pass any water that we drink has been foul
Speaker 1: like it is, it is probably fallen out of a
Speaker 1: dinosaur's cloak at some point in the path. Well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and but we don't really think about that because
Speaker 1: it's it's transferred through nature, it's gone down a stream,
Speaker 1: and then here it is. It's so it's fresh water. Well,
Speaker 1: companies and government will say to Okay, yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna call it sewer treated water, but they're gonna say, ah,
Speaker 1: it was um, you know, it was filtered through this
Speaker 1: underground compartment in which you know, and then charcoal blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. So again there's the semantic distancing and this
Speaker 1: idea of well, it may have had urine in at
Speaker 1: one point, but by the time it reached you know,
Speaker 1: a mile out this way, it's fresh and pure, like
Speaker 1: you know, Rocky Mountain spring. Yeah. I mean you don't
Speaker 1: want to think about the fact when you go to
Speaker 1: a restaurant there maybe human skin cell flakes on your food.
Speaker 1: There are for sure, Yeah, I mean just it's just
Speaker 1: gonna happen. But but yeah, it's like we we it's like,
Speaker 1: how do we interpret this smell? How do we interpret
Speaker 1: the source of something that is entering our lives or
Speaker 1: our bodies? Yeah, and I would be interested to know, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: given all this information about smell, has has this changed
Speaker 1: your perception at all about smell the things that that
Speaker 1: you detect? Um? You know it? Do you think it's
Speaker 1: as mood altering? Is it as some people say it is? Well?
Speaker 1: I think we all have our favorite since you know
Speaker 1: that really kick starts like you were talking about, like
Speaker 1: coffee is an interesting one. Like there's a local coffee
Speaker 1: shop that I go to a lot to write, um
Speaker 1: called Joe's in case anyone wants to seek it out
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, I just don't bother me while I'm there,
Speaker 1: because I'm working. He's the guy with a blue shirt
Speaker 1: that says boards of Canada on it. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wear this every day. But I'll leave there smelling
Speaker 1: like coffee. And while i'm they're like the small coffee
Speaker 1: is comforting. Occasionally they'll also be like a bomb that
Speaker 1: walks in it, like reeks of right guard for some reason.
Speaker 1: But but like sanitizing. Yeah, it's better than what lays beneath, right,
Speaker 1: but but any right, like, the smell of coffee for
Speaker 1: me is very comforting. It's like a very like oh
Speaker 1: it's it's coffee time. It's it's like a thought like
Speaker 1: personal creativity kind of a scent for me. But for
Speaker 1: you it's it's not a pleasant one, right, No, Because
Speaker 1: I used to smoke, and so I've spent all our
Speaker 1: time um in coffee houses. Uh, not smoking clothes cigarettes,
Speaker 1: don't worry that wasn't doing that, but writing and smoking
Speaker 1: h And so every time I come home from a
Speaker 1: coffee shop and I smell that that coffee smell, I
Speaker 1: I immediately think of like headache, like past Um, I
Speaker 1: mean nothing like terribly nefarious, just just something that I
Speaker 1: don't enjoy doing anymore, and I don't enjoy smelling. There
Speaker 1: you go. I mean it's tied to memories, It's tied
Speaker 1: to past experiences and expectations. So yeah, it's the proost effect, right.
Speaker 1: I can't help but but have some sort of memory,
Speaker 1: especially since that's what it stimulates. I mean, smells stimula,
Speaker 1: it's communication memory. Um, I'll part to your bringing that
Speaker 1: are connected to all right, Well, well there you go,
Speaker 1: sort of an intro to how mind blowing smell can be.
Speaker 1: And in a future podcast episode, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the future of smell and how technology can and
Speaker 1: will enable us to manipulate this amazing Can we call
Speaker 1: it the fifth sense? I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: where it ranks in the numbers. I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on how they execute it. I'm calling it the fifth cent.
Speaker 1: How we can manipulate the fifth cent and uh and
Speaker 1: and use it to enhance products, which I think is
Speaker 1: gonna be an exciting episode. But in the meantime, let
Speaker 1: us know what you think about the smells in your life,
Speaker 1: in this realm of scent that surrounds you like, like what,
Speaker 1: how does a favorite smell factor into your life? How
Speaker 1: does a least favorite smell? And where do you stand
Speaker 1: on the whole cheese foot situation. You can let us
Speaker 1: know by dropping by Facebook or Twitter. We are blow
Speaker 1: the mind on both of those, and certainly especially on
Speaker 1: the Facebook is it's just a great place to interact
Speaker 1: with us, ask us questions, share things with other listeners. Uh,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed. Yeah, we've had some great post front
Speaker 1: people out there. Um. So, Also, you can take a
Speaker 1: stab at creating a profile from your own jacket scent
Speaker 1: profile and you can send us what you think that
Speaker 1: is composed of uh, and you can email us at
Speaker 1: below the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
Speaker 1: the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.