WEBVTT - the smell doctor who was 'too woke': dr. ally louks 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:08.600 Cool Media. Hello sixteenth minute listeners. It's Jamie just saying 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:11.479 really quick at the top that a show that is 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:14.680 my honor to produce on the iHeartRadio network. We the 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:19.080 Unhoused has been nominated for a webby and we need 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:22.360 your help. If you haven't listened to the show before, 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:24.760 first of all, I highly recommend you do. But it 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:29.000 is a show that began in twenty nineteen. It's created, hosted, 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:32.720 and reported by the wonderful Theo Henderson. He began the 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.920 podcast while living on the streets of LA and it's 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.960 grown significantly during that time, but remains the only podcast 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.800 that tells stories that affect the unhoused and tells the 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.000 stories of the unhoused while continuing to center their own 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:54.680 perspectives and experiences. We've been nominated in a web category 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:56.960 and we need your help. If you click the link 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.240 in the description, it goes directly to our category. It's 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.200 literally two clicks. It's a tight race, so I would 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.040 really appreciate it if you both gave us a vote 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.280 and also checked out the show. You can do both 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:13.480 at the link and the description and Inhale deeply Baby. 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:20.080 Here is our doctor Ali Luke's episode if you were 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.399 to give up any of your five senses, which would 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:28.920 it be, statistically one in two of you just decided 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.399 probably my sense of smell. And I am honestly with 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.240 you there. I think I had a roommate once who 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.160 truly did not have a sense of smell, or a 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:40.840 very dull sense of smell. Maybe he was lying now 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.240 that I'm saying it out loud. Either way, the place 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.680 smelled terrible and it made my life a living nightmare. 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.760 And it turns out that a lot of the reason 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.560 why you might have been so quick to forfeit your 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.560 sense of smell might have something to do with an 0:01:55.600 --> 0:02:00.680 extremely powerful myth that humans have a very sense of 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.720 smell compared to other mammals. And to be clear, what 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.000 may be clear, this is a myth that I believed 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:12.040 until like six days ago, but that is not actually true. 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:15.399 According to a twenty seven research paper from Rutgers University 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:19.200 professor John McGann, as, it turns out, humans have a 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.919 sense of smell that is arguably as acute as mammals 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:24.840 that we think have a keener sense of smell than 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:27.920 we do. And while his numbers are generally thought to 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:32.200 be overstated, McGann published in twenty seventeen that we can 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.560 identify close to one trillion separate sense as opposed to 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:40.800 the ten thousand that's commonly cited, and to introduce a 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.480 returning villain from our last series. Part of the reason 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.120 that this misconception around smell has become ingrained in our 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:54.240 consciousness is because of one Sigmund Freud. Professor McGann said 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.239 back in twenty seventeen. 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.240 It has been a long cultural belief that in order 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.639 to be a reasonable or rational person, you could not 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.799 be dominated by a sense of smell. Smell was linked 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.440 to earthly animalistic tendencies, and. 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.240 Since twenty seventeen it has been debunked that we can 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:17.440 discern a trillion smells. But this is just another piece 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:22.560 of evidence that this area of humankind is wildly under explored. 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.160 There have since been numerous attempts to identify with more 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:31.880 specificity where exactly humans stand in the mammal smelling hierarchy. 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.840 But as more time and funding has been put into 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:38.160 this line of study, it's become clear that our species 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:43.080 reputation as bad smellers is definitely false and possibly a 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.080 misguided way to make us feel better than the other 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:51.680 mammalian girls. Basically, a de emphasis on smell seems to 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.400 be part of how humans have been propped up to 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.680 be better than other species. In reality, that's not just 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:01.119 far from the truth, but we rely on our sense 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:05.120 of smell far more than we seem to realize. For 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:06.960 the last week or so, I've been reading a book 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.960 called Smells, A Cultural History of odors in Early modern 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:16.200 Times by French writer Robert Mushambled. Definitely got that wrong, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.680 and with all due respect to the author, most of 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.800 this book PARPs on the history of people being obsessed 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.680 with the smell of their own parts and whether they 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:29.840 or their spouse's pussy is stinky or not. And if 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.120 this is something you think about a lot, I guess 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:36.000 I recommend the book. But within this book I genuinely 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:38.560 learned a lot about the fundamentals of smell that I 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:43.359 had completely misunderstood or have been miseducated on. Heard the 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.159 author smell is just as much, if not more, connected 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.040 to learned experience as it is to natural instinct, and 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.839 he argues it's the only one of our senses to 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.520 be truly learned. It's also been speculated that our sense 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.640 of taste heavily relies on our sense of smell that 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.000 influences the smells that we're drawn to or gain pleasure by, 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.080 and has a hand in explaining why the smells we 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.400 find pleasant can be so different, and whether you believe 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.200 in horny pheromone sense or not, it influences the smells 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.479 that we're repulsed by as well. That is to say, 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:23.560 with enough convincing, your nose can and is trained to 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:27.599 distrust someone else by their smell. And while some of 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.520 you are shaking your heads until they fall off your neck, 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:33.880 there is an argument that there is really no such 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.800 thing as a bad smell. There are instead smells we 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:42.680 learn through experience to interpret as bad, whether this is 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:47.600 for social or survival purposes, and this can lead to 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:53.160 encouraging or helping to form any number of societally induced discriminations. 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.120 Linked to our sense of smell is a strong tradition 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.400 of classism, as well as racism and xenophobia. But for 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:03.920 the purposes of our guest today, I'm going to zone 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:08.040 in on one particular aspect of the socialized learning of smell, 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.840 how your nose can tell you to hate women, and 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.839 to be clear, the way that most texts about how 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.240 misogyny and the sense of smell are intertwined, and there's 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:24.720 not many define what a woman is is extremely myopic, 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.320 and by that I mean these texts generally define women 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.479 as people with wombs. I hope you don't need me 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:33.960 to tell you that a person with a womb does 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:36.400 not a woman make And if I do have to 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.280 explain that to you, how did you find my podcast 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:43.880 JK Rowling? Please turn it off? But in Mutchambled's work 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:47.640 in particular, we are trained to see women or as 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.599 the case may be, people with wombs, historically subjugated in 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:56.839 a few distinct ways by encouraging disgust or even inventing 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:01.800 smells around menstruation and a specifically. 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:05.680 I read somewhere that their periods attract bears. The bears 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:07.040 can smell the menstruation. 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:09.480 Hear the head bears. 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:11.240 Now you put in the whole station in. 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.960 Jeopardy basically in a heteronormative structure. Give me a horn 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:19.840 for the term heteronormative women that men were trained to 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.000 view as disgusting when it came to fucking or making 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.440 them wives. You know the deal. But interestingly, even the 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.680 quality is that men are conditioned to find desirable were 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:34.640 also sometimes dismissed based on their smell. Throughout time, there 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:39.040 have been associations with excess perfume in the West, categorized 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:43.280 as smelling slutty, and there's also been writings of rich 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:47.160 women's farts smelling better question mark and please don't get 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:49.480 me started, because I do not want to get into it. 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:54.160 But yes, there is a huge amount of weird poetry 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:57.760 going back five hundred years or more about how pussy 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:02.640 is stinky, but I like it. Shut up, I'm kidding. 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:04.720 If you listen to the end of the episode, I 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:06.400 will share one of these disgusting poems. 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:07.320 Now. 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:09.480 Part of the reason we know so little about smell 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:13.800 at the Earth's advanced age, the author argues, is because 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.960 there is very little encouragement under capitalism to learn more 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.160 about smell. That is, there's not much money in this 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.120 line of study unless you're trying to identify what is 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:29.280 going to sell deodorant and candles, and so to this day, 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:33.520 getting funding for anything outside of what smells can sell 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:38.120 can be a real challenge in the modern age. Muchumbled 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.640 argues that our pushing smell aside as a powerful sense 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:43.240 is very intentional. 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:47.680 He writes, our deodorized world now offers a kind of 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:53.120 antidote to existential anguish as olfactory silence has developed in 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:57.520 parallel with the silence surrounding disease and death dating from 0:08:57.559 --> 0:08:58.800 around the same time. 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:03.280 But there's no such thing as a deodorized society, whether 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.040 we're afraid of death or not. So much of the 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.760 way people have interpreted smell over time has been subjective, 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.520 depending on the way that they were encouraged to see, interpret, 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:18.600 and experience shitting and death mainly, among other things. And 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:21.360 the further back you go from modern medicine and plumbing, 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:26.520 the more crucial these lived connections become. Because while social 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.040 norms dictate the way that one interprets the scent of 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.160 a woman out a cheating. 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:35.120 Scent of a woman. 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.920 Should make you feel one way or another, it's had 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:43.480 varying results while remaining an intense fixation and subject of discussion. 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.880 Bliny the Elder, Yes, we're going back that far. Bliney 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.360 the Elder said that the scent of menstruating people just 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:59.880 their existence caused horses to have abortions. Really think about that, then. Paradoxically, 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.720 sixteenth century writer Marguerite de Navarre implied that infertile women's 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:08.640 butts smell better than fertile women. This type of speculation 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:13.200 spread misogyny and xenophobia at once, with a different author 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.480 from this same era saying, quote, the arsful of an 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:21.080 Italian woman could only be a sewer unquote, and I 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:24.240 took that personally. Menstruation has long been encouraged to be 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:28.520 seen as a site of terror and evil, Its connection 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.800 to implied life or deathmongered as a way to scare 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:37.480 dumbasses for centuries and counting, particularly in centuries where Western 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:43.120 religion reigned. This is from sixteenth century writer Lavinous Laminius. 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:49.000 Since women abound with excrement and emit ill smells because 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:53.440 of their periods, they make all things worse and spoil 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:57.160 than natural forces and innate qualities. 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.559 But don't worry, if you go through menopause, you still 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:06.000 smell fucking gross, and also you're old. From Erasmus is 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.640 fifteen eleven work in praise of folly. 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:12.760 Better sports tale is to see those decrepit old women. 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:16.200 That old age seems long since to have cut off 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:21.120 from the number of the living, those strolling corpses, those 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:27.760 stinking carcasses, which everywhere exhale a sepulchral odor, and yet 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.880 who cry at every moment. Nothing is sweeter than life. 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.440 So, if you're keeping score, if you menstruated, you stank 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:40.360 of the devil, but once you didn't menstruate, you stank 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.280 of a corpse. And this smell was directly connected in 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:49.880 both cases with Satan himself, whose period is gnarly, I'm sure. 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.280 And while there are countless examples that draw smell as 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.640 an indicator of character of where one should stand in 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:01.200 an enforced hierarchy, there's been shockingly little recognition that that's 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:05.960 what we're either doing, being subjected to, or both. But 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:08.400 if the last week of my life has been any indication, 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.760 it's the kind of thing you can't unsmell once you've 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.200 noticed it. We're subtly signaled on how to feel about 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:19.120 a character in media, written or otherwise all the time 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:23.680 based on how they smell. And I'm typing this while 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:27.160 I frantically apply perfume to my wrists out of self consciousness. 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:31.560 I'm not saying let's stop showering. I'm saying that we 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:34.880 lead by our noses more than we think, and it's 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.000 something that it's going to take years to fully understand, 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.960 because not only is the present history of smell important 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.240 to our daily lives, there's a few crucial people in 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:49.640 this field arguing that it's just as crucial to the future. 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.520 And that brings us to today, a day where there is, 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.640 from what I can tell, more being written about the 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.199 cultural history of smell than ever, and they're there is 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:05.280 less public encouragement, particularly online, to engage with the humanities 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:09.000 in this way than in years prior. So keep your 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.560 nose down if you know this one already. But what 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:15.960 happens when a young woman celebrates her PhD on how 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:20.880 smell has been portrayed in literature to distinguish racial class 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.880 and gender prejudice a young queer woman at that on 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:30.080 the absolute cesspool once known as Twitter dot com. It 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:34.199 went really well, Doctor Allie Luke's aka the student who 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.640 went viral for her thesis paper on smell being too woke. 0:13:38.320 --> 0:14:33.200 Your sixteenth minute starts now join Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.000 the podcast where we talk to the Internet's main characters 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.280 see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:43.200 what that says about us and the Internet. And this 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.960 week we are visiting a pretty recent story. One you 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:50.240 might have heard of the tale of doctor Ali Lukes, 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:52.600 who ended up on the wrong side of the Twitter 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.960 algorithm after committing the heinous crime of completing over a 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:02.000 decade's worth of higher education studying an underappreciated but critically 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:07.040 necessary intersection of science and the humanities. How dare she? 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:07.240 What? 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.680 An asshole? In all seriousness, I was very lucky to 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.200 get to speak with doctor Ali Lukes. She is wonderful 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.040 and this story in particular, I think has a lot 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.080 to say about where our relationship with the internet is 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.720 right now. So let's get into it. Come with me 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:33.560 if you dare to. November twenty twenty four. Very recent story, 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.880 to be sure, but in a world this completely dystopian, 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.280 it is worth putting ourselves in a moment online down 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:45.000 to the finest detail, because if you haven't noticed, it's 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:49.160 an exceptionally difficult time to be a student. The example 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.480 we're talking about today is Allie's one that is centered 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:57.520 on cyber attacks fueled by anti intellectualism, misogyny, and very 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:01.520 likely bots. But it's far from the only uphill battle 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:05.800 that students are facing right now. And while anti intellectualism 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.120 has taken many forms, on college campuses in the last 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.360 ten years, it makes the most sense to focus on 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:17.120 student advocacy for a free Palestine and student groups pushing 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:22.920 for university divestment from Israel. This mission expanded beyond Palestine 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.360 for many groups in the last year and a half, 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:29.800 and lists of demands put forward by students establishing encampments 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:34.080 to both protest and push back on their university. Empowering 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:38.200 other settler states has been critical. These groups also have 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.080 sought to protect the student and staff's rights of any 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.920 university to protest instead of This is. 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:49.200 The moment Tuff's University graduate student Rumesa Oster was arrested 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:53.720 and taken into federal custody. Doorbell camera footage obtained by 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:57.440 NBC News shows two plain clothes officers approaching the thirty 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.640 year old in Somerville outside of Boston. Os Turk at 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.880 first appears to back away before more agents approach. 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:08.600 This also comes with, to no one's surprise, a tremendous 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.920 amount of xenophobia and racism by the students who are 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:17.520 working within these spaces. There are countless examples of student 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:23.120 protesters being profiled by race, particularly Palestinian, other Middle Eastern 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:28.040 or black students. These students were and are characterized not 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:32.359 as anti genocide but as anti Semitic, even with the 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:36.320 large portion of student organizers being composed of young anti 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:39.679 Zionist Jewish students and groups. And you don't need me 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:43.040 to tell you that this profiling, censorship, and state violence 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:47.159 has only escalated since Trump re entered the White House. 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.760 But I digress. November twenty seventh, twenty twenty four, It's 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.040 been less than a month since Donald Trump was re 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.119 elected by America, this time without having to cheat his 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:03.760 way into it and promising any number of horrifying policies 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:08.000 before re entering office. As Joe Biden does his last 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.400 few laps in the Olympic sized pool of lukewarm ice 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.240 cream that he floated around in instead of doing anything. 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.600 It's one day before Hailey Welch aka the Hawk Tua 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:22.080 Girl will release what she does not yet know is 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.400 the final episode of Talk To for over six months 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.400 before the crypto scam she's become the face of is busted. 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:34.160 And it's a week before internet boyfriend Luigi Mangioni will 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.320 assassinate a healthcare executive after being the poat producer of 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.840 this very show. Robert Evans radicalized by pain. 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:44.880 This past week, legacy media and Lonely Cat owning true 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:48.040 crime podcast fans were obsessed with the mysterious man Dan 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:50.800 Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, even though there 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:53.200 was only just fuzzy surveillance footage, thirsty men and women 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:55.560 calling him things like socialist Daddy, putting him on a 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.879 pedalstal for literally a stranger in the back and then 0:18:57.920 --> 0:18:59.200 running away from the authorities. 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.840 You tell, Ben. And even though it sounds counterintuitive that 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.359 with all this going on, with the rights of immigrants, 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.160 of trans people, of anyone who could need an abortion 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.520 on the chopping block again or still, the Internet found 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:17.440 some time and energy to bully a doctoral student for 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:24.240 finishing her thesis because woke while Ali Lukes, and that's 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.880 doctor Ali Lukes to you, was about twenty seven when 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:30.680 all of this happened, and could barely remember a time 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.920 before the Internet. She was not particularly logged in and 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.640 didn't really want to be like a lot of PhD students. 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.800 She's a book forward person, but she lives in a 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.480 society and did have social media accounts that she used 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.520 sparingly in order to keep in touch with friends and family, 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.600 as well as to make professional connections in a field 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:58.119 of study that was and is extremely specific and so. 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.040 On November twenty seventh, she posted to her Twitter slash 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:05.480 x account with the selfie of Ali and her now 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:10.840 professionally bound thesis. She wears a simple red sweater and smiles, 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:12.600 captioning the photo. 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:15.679 Thrilled to say, I passed my VIVA with no corrections 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:17.880 and an officially pH done. 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:20.680 Grad student LINGO don't worry about it, but what gets 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:25.600 people stirred up and through some opaque, algorithmically driven nightmare 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.080 pushed into the feeds of hundreds of thousands of blue 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:34.320 check AI Cryptonihilist Freaks is the title of the paper 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.000 she's written, an embossed gold text on the red leather cover. 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:42.200 Doctor Ali Lukes wrote her Cambridge University thesis on. 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.040 O factory ethics, the politics of smell and modern and 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:46.320 contemporary prose. 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:54.280 Smell and not just smell, but how smell has been 0:20:54.400 --> 0:21:00.040 characterized in literature an obscure topic. Sure, social function not 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:05.560 immediately obvious. Fair Even Ali gets why the function of 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.200 her thesis paper might not be immediately obvious to those 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:12.240 out of the know, as she will explain in our interview. 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.760 But keep in mind she's not trying to get this 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:18.600 out to a general public. She only has a couple 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.679 hundred X followers at this time. Her last posts on 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:26.919 the platform before this were months apart. One was a 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.040 photo of the Cambridge campus that. 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:32.240 Read extremely fortunate that I get to teach in a 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:33.720 place as beautiful as this. 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:36.280 And the other was a photo of her on campus 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.320 from June of twenty twenty four, reading. 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:42.000 I submitted my PhD thesis today. 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:46.000 This was an account for her peers, professional and personal 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.160 people who would most likely understand the function of her 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:54.320 thesis paper because they were academics too. I'm reminded quite 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.000 a bit of the Coffee in the Garden with my 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.760 husband Saga when it comes to this story. It was 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:03.359 actually one of the first episode topics that we covered 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:06.800 on sixteenth Minute all the way last spring, in that 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:11.240 doctor Alli was definitely not trying to get this pieceis 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.080 announcement out to a larger audience. The only thing that 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.919 made it possible for it to go viral anyways, was 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:22.120 the fact that her account was a public one. Think 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:25.000 of the conventional ways that we would try to court 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:28.959 attention on social media if we wanted a post to 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:33.040 get outside of our followers. It's generally a game of 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.520 tagging right, add a hashtag tag the account of a 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:40.120 larger institution or another account in the hopes that they 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:44.679 will either engage with or repost it, And nothing like 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:49.439 that is happening here. What's happening is the twenty twenty 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:53.960 four Twitter slash x algorithm, one that, as we discussed 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:57.639 in our Hailey Welch Talk TUA series, is conditioned to 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:03.159 boost emotionally driven content and most importantly, elevate the replies 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:07.480 of paying subscribers. So the blue check freaks I was 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:11.879 referring to, and through this pay to play increasingly fascistic 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:16.159 platform that longtime users had been departing in the millions 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:22.160 and continue to now. Doctor Allie's inoffensive, celebratory post got 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:25.359 sucked into this algorithm and pulled in some of the 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:30.520 gnarliest Blue check comments ever generated by either a dumb 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.560 man or AI trained on a dumb man. It's hard 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:35.880 to tell. Sometimes. Buckle in. 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:42.520 For those wondering her PhD thesis per abstract is basically 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:46.040 on why it's racist and or classicist to not like 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:50.159 it when people exhibit body odors consistent with poor hygiene. 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:54.680 You would have spent your years better by getting married 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:59.400 and having children. Oh look, another woman getting a useless 0:23:59.440 --> 0:24:02.879 degree that does nothing for the furtherance of society. Women 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:07.080 would rather spend years pursuing stupid degrees that won't fulfill 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:11.160 them over a family that actually will enjoy the debt, 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:13.960 since nothing you learned or produced will ever be of 0:24:14.000 --> 0:24:18.399 any benefit to society. Adorable, but what can you do 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:19.960 with this? pH dick? 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:26.560 Okay, well done, boys. While the algorithm is the original 0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:30.560 offender for driving harassment towards doctor Allie, her post was 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:35.280 further boosted in the algorithm when influential blue check accounts 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:40.120 began to quote tweet the post with random misogynist criticisms 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:43.560 of her. And while it took a few days, the 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:46.840 story does go viral in a way that crosses into 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:51.000 the mainstream press, which, as we've discussed, is pretty rare 0:24:51.080 --> 0:24:54.159 these days, and doctor Allie is, for the most part 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:58.199 game to engage with the story going viral, and the 0:24:58.240 --> 0:25:01.560 benefit here, it seems, for her, is that she knows 0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:04.960 that what she does is niche, and she rightfully isn't 0:25:05.000 --> 0:25:09.800 taking the horrific bad faith criticism around it very seriously. 0:25:10.600 --> 0:25:12.040 Some headlines from the days that. 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:16.399 Followed why this Cambridge Grads PhD thesis on smelly people 0:25:16.480 --> 0:25:19.720 is dividing the internet olfactory oppression. 0:25:20.160 --> 0:25:23.920 They attacked her PhD. Now this smell expert is making 0:25:24.119 --> 0:25:25.600 x her classroom. 0:25:25.520 --> 0:25:28.719 In defense of writing a quirky thesis on the politics 0:25:28.720 --> 0:25:30.359 of smell in modern literature. 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:34.399 The tone of most of this coverage is nothing really surprising, 0:25:34.840 --> 0:25:38.159 and by that I mean so tremendously half cooked that 0:25:38.200 --> 0:25:40.480 it makes you want to rip your head off. Here 0:25:40.560 --> 0:25:41.840 is something from the New York Post. 0:25:42.760 --> 0:25:46.879 The thesis states that olfactory discussed can result in a 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:51.800 person's rejection. Online critics needed smelling salts after reading what 0:25:51.840 --> 0:25:55.320 they deemed to be woke sounding, academic gobbledygook. 0:25:55.720 --> 0:25:59.520 And while very little of this coverage is outright hostile, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:03.520 who doctor Ali Luke's very few I was able to 0:26:03.560 --> 0:26:06.960 find seem to take the time to understand what her 0:26:07.000 --> 0:26:11.239 thesis was actually about, which we will get into the 0:26:11.240 --> 0:26:13.840 tone of So much of this criticism framed the topic 0:26:14.040 --> 0:26:18.359