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 1: I don't know that I've ever smelled mug. What's wrong
Speaker 1: with me? So nothing? Everyone smells different stuff. It turns
Speaker 1: out our sense of smell is so complex that there's
Speaker 1: about a thirty percent difference between what I smell, which
Speaker 1: is mug, and what you smell, which is nothing right now.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, new sensor being introduced into
Speaker 1: our 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 Mangesh Shot Ticketer and sitting behind that great
Speaker 2: big booth. Oh wow, I was wondering what he was
Speaker 2: going to do there.
Speaker 1: So for all of our listeners, we have this gigantic
Speaker 1: whiteboard that rotates. You know, I can flip to the
Speaker 1: other side. And usually Dylan is pretty humble and sort
Speaker 1: of subtle about what he does, but I could tell
Speaker 1: he was very excited, and right as I went into this,
Speaker 1: he flipped the board and there is the most accurate,
Speaker 1: anatomically drawn picture of a note.
Speaker 2: I mean, we were.
Speaker 1: Talking brazen artist or medical student.
Speaker 2: No, and that big of a show off.
Speaker 1: He was really in this for the big reveal. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's dive in mango. What can you tell me about
Speaker 1: disappearing smells? Let's get right into it. To understand why
Speaker 1: certain smells have disappeared, we need a little primer on
Speaker 1: the science of smell because it is super complex. So
Speaker 1: let's compare smell to the way we see light. Scientists
Speaker 1: figured out in the nineteenth century that all the varied
Speaker 1: hues from red to violet are produced by just three
Speaker 1: types of receptors in human retinas. But the nose, or
Speaker 1: rather the clump of sensory neurons that are high inside
Speaker 1: your nostrils, boasts about four hundred receptors, which is obviously
Speaker 1: way more complex. In two thousand and four, Richard Axel
Speaker 1: and Linda Buck were award the Nobel Prize in Physiology
Speaker 1: or Medicine for discovering that on these receptors there are
Speaker 1: genes that encode them, and these genes sit on top
Speaker 1: of specialized neurons which shoot information down leggy axons into
Speaker 1: the brain, eventually landing on one of two olfactory bulbs.
Speaker 1: And this is where the smells are processed. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing, we don't actually know which smells those receptors recognize.
Speaker 2: All right, So I'm scribbling down some notes here. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty good note taker. So I've got hundreds
Speaker 2: of receptors responding to some smells, driven by genetic encoding
Speaker 2: that sends those smells down into the old factory bulbs
Speaker 2: in your brain. All so you can go, mmmm, saffron,
Speaker 2: Did I get that?
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, especially the saffron part.
Speaker 2: But nailed it.
Speaker 1: On top of how your brain receives this information, you know,
Speaker 1: the input of smells is much more complex than light.
Speaker 1: Light is electromagnetic radiation, and the same three colored receptors
Speaker 1: can combine to process a range of wavelengths covering the
Speaker 1: entire rainbow of visible light. But smells aren't wavelengths, and
Speaker 1: they aren't coasting along a smooth spectrum. They evolve a
Speaker 1: complex mix of chemical particles, all kind of bobbing around
Speaker 1: in the air. So, in fact, there's this twenty fourteen paper,
Speaker 1: it was in the journal Science where researchers at Rockefeller
Speaker 1: University estimated that humans can distinguish, give or take at
Speaker 1: least a trillion distinct smells on planet Earth. Plus all
Speaker 1: those odor receptors have lots of variants, like some of
Speaker 1: them are less sensitive or fully non functional in large
Speaker 1: chunks of the population.
Speaker 2: Which is wise 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 pseudo gene 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 youre at
Speaker 1: bed in college. But it's for our listeners. A pseudogene
Speaker 1: is a non functional segment of DNA that resembles functional genes,
Speaker 1: and scientists think that there are about six hundred smell
Speaker 1: pseudogenes that 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: gave 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.
Speaker 2: That's not tracking for me because that's actually how I
Speaker 2: chose my wife, But either way, go on, Okay.
Speaker 1: Well, the second is pollution. So basically, pollution particles can
Speaker 1: pass through the olfactory bulb and directly into the brain,
Speaker 1: causing inflammation. In twenty sixteen, a team of British researchers
Speaker 1: found that tiny metal particles in human brain tissue have
Speaker 1: appeared to have passed through the ol factory bulb, which
Speaker 1: 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 PRUSD with his part.
Speaker 2: You know, I was going to say madelines, but but
Speaker 2: sure is passing gas too. But when you were talking
Speaker 2: about sinse that have disappeared, I was thinking about how
Speaker 2: they're scientists actually trying to recreate smells from the past.
Speaker 2: But 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: chromatography is actually.
Speaker 2: I feel like you should explain it, Manga, 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 Egyptian.
Speaker 2: Not just any ancient Egyptian, you could actually smell like
Speaker 2: 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. Amazingly,
Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and documents describe recipes for several perfumes,
Speaker 2: including this one, but the precise ingredients and preparation methods
Speaker 2: those aren't quite as well known. So this Egyptologist named
Speaker 2: Dora Goldsmith, and a historian of Greco Roman philosophy and science,
Speaker 2: named Sean Coughlin. They started experimenting with the ingredients. They
Speaker 2: were looking at things like desert date oil, myrr cinnamon
Speaker 2: pine resin, and they eventually produced the scent that they
Speaker 2: suspect approximates what Cleopatrick wore. Is this very strong, but pleasant,
Speaker 2: long lasting blend of spiciness and sweetness. Apparently, it's pretty
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I mean there are two distinct methods. The
Speaker 2: EU funded project ODOROPA puts it like this, if you're
Speaker 2: working from a historical recipe, as the Cleopatrick perfume people did,
Speaker 2: quote recreating a scent. Now, if you're using chemical analysis
Speaker 2: techniques of actual ancient scent molecules, you are then quote
Speaker 2: reconstructing it. So researchers at ODOROPA have even created this
Speaker 2: heritage smell library that documents historically significant smells.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: They yeah, they've reproduced the smell of the library at
Speaker 2: Saint Paul's Cathedral in London of potpourri from the seventeen
Speaker 2: fifties and even Royal Car P five B.
Speaker 1: 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 because that would be all. But how exactly
Speaker 1: 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 technic 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. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which actually.
Speaker 1: Makes sense, right. So think about how different cities have
Speaker 1: a smell, like these potpourries of everything that contributes to
Speaker 1: that city's culture. Like there's a distinct smell when you
Speaker 1: land in Beijing. I know when I've been to Bangalore,
Speaker 1: like in the monsoons, there's a distinct smell there and
Speaker 1: it immediately evokes certain memories. America has this too. I
Speaker 1: was talking to a friend who was telling me how
Speaker 1: the Denver airport has this distinct smell to her, and
Speaker 1: so does the Path train in New York. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that some cities and countries are actually making
Speaker 1: an effort to recognize the value of their odors. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, Japan's environment minister classified the
Speaker 1: country's top one hundred best smelling spots, which ran the
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, there's this community hell belief that the modern era
Speaker 2: has been one of deodorization, that is, the belief that
Speaker 2: 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 always 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. Well, that is super interesting and I
Speaker 1: want to get into that. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to part time genius.
Speaker 1: We're talking about disappearing sense, all right, Mango, you were
Speaker 1: just about to tell us about scientists recreating scents and
Speaker 1: smells from extinct plants. I mean, the whole idea of
Speaker 1: this is really cool to me. But actually, do you
Speaker 1: remember in college I had an extra science credit I
Speaker 1: needed to take, and I was looking through the options
Speaker 1: and I almost took organic chemistry because you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that said in the pathleot was that
Speaker 1: you could learned to create the scent of pairs and
Speaker 1: a lab. And I really 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.
Speaker 1: Disaster, I know. And actually you're the one who convinced
Speaker 1: me not to do it, because I chemistry, but the
Speaker 1: curiosity about how to make sense and a level almost
Speaker 1: tricked me into hating my senior year. But I hear you,
Speaker 1: let's talk about these extinct flowers. So in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: a team of biologists, researchers, and artists embarked on a
Speaker 1: project called Resurrecting the Sublime, and using tiny amounts of
Speaker 1: DNA extracted from specimen of three flowers, a team of
Speaker 1: scientists used synthetic biology to predict and resynthesize the gene
Speaker 1: sequences that could encode for fragrance producing enzymes and then
Speaker 1: using those findings, this smell researcher and artist named Cecil
Speaker 1: Tolas used her expertise to reconstruc the flowers smells in
Speaker 1: the 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 how kiwaii?
Speaker 2: 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 van 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 O Phone, which was designed to let people send
Speaker 1: smells 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 vision,
Speaker 2: 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 vhis 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 it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bring me back to my days working at biz art.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, 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, Well, 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 rub, 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 1: Have you heard about these?
Speaker 2: 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 are a
Speaker 1: little less appetizing, to things like, uh dirt.
Speaker 2: Apparently all right, Well, here's another one from a fragrance
Speaker 2: manufacturer called Aromaco, who says that in the not so
Speaker 2: distant future, sweat maybe used like a fingerprint. According to
Speaker 2: the site quote, Israeli Kimis say that the food we eat,
Speaker 2: drugs we take, gender, and even state of mind all
Speaker 2: combined 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. Is kind of
Speaker 2: a new id that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's a quick fact from Scientific American. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if you've ever noticed this, but there's a sweet,
Speaker 1: slightly pungent smell that comes before the rain begins, and
Speaker 1: that smell is ozone. That's what ozone smells like. According
Speaker 1: 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 wood, smoke, apples, fish, leatherwork,
Speaker 2: 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: set 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 phantasmia, 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 in raw sewage, chicken is muddy
Speaker 1: and rubbery, Peanut butter and marmite are like trying to eat.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it, but let's just call it
Speaker 1: loose motions. And she says there are a couple of exceptions. Raspberries,
Speaker 1: carrots and parsnips don't taste vile, nor does gin, which
Speaker 1: really helps. But you know, she didn't know what to
Speaker 1: do about this. She goes to a conference with people
Speaker 1: who suffered sort of these three similar traits, and she
Speaker 1: learned some hacks to deal with 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 perosmia 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 a meaning. But
Speaker 2: the experiment went over so well that stadium owners started
Speaker 2: playing and pumping other scents into the stadiums just to
Speaker 2: please fans, including cotton candy and tops bubblegum.
Speaker 1: I love that. You know, you did a nice job
Speaker 1: of covering up my perosbia 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 gonna pick ten more random fans from everyone
Speaker 1: who writes in, and I'm going to send you a
Speaker 1: special gift to show you our appreciation. We're going to
Speaker 1: pony you 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 Mongagetikler and research by our
Speaker 1: good path Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
Speaker 1: produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel
Speaker 1: and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Speaker 1: trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from
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