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
Speaker 1: we're coming at you once again, basically at the at
Speaker 1: at one since right, we're basically coming at your hearing
Speaker 1: into your ear holes. Uh. We can't really engage a
Speaker 1: number of other Uh. We can't touch you. We can't
Speaker 1: touch We shouldn't touch you, probably right, and you should
Speaker 1: not touch us, so the sign says and uh. And
Speaker 1: and you can also generally cannot see us, unless I
Speaker 1: guess if you if you pull up a picture of this,
Speaker 1: you can sort of get a little you can engage
Speaker 1: your your sense of sight a little bit with a
Speaker 1: podcast or if we have visual aids, such as with
Speaker 1: the the Art podcast that we did, and we had
Speaker 1: a blog post that went along with it, so you
Speaker 1: could look up the different artists as we went along.
Speaker 1: But still you're not you're not watching us podcast. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you and you also cannot smell us. You cannot
Speaker 1: smell the podcast chamber. And that's probably a good thing generally. Well,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying anything about your funk or my
Speaker 1: fun you're saying that some of the other podcasters kind
Speaker 1: of smell. No, I'm not saying that sometimes there is
Speaker 1: half eaten food in here. That's usually my half eaten banana.
Speaker 1: I may have to take credit for these things, but no, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're talking about the fact that there are limits
Speaker 1: um to technology we think so far in terms of
Speaker 1: expressing all five senses. I used to think there were
Speaker 1: no limits, but but now I fear that there are
Speaker 1: no limits in the future. Well, I mean, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about this. And in the past, people
Speaker 1: have tried to um to layer these senses in different media,
Speaker 1: like smellvision for instance, and and we we had a
Speaker 1: whole podcast where we talked about the power of smell
Speaker 1: and the importance of smell and and smell is is
Speaker 1: one of the more one of our more primal instincts
Speaker 1: and one of our more powerful and and as we've
Speaker 1: mentioned before, it's the one sent out of the five
Speaker 1: that interacts directly with the brain. So it's a powerful
Speaker 1: scent to be omitted from any of your media. But
Speaker 1: generally the technology hasn't been here, but we have actually
Speaker 1: tried in the past. Uh, most notably h is of course,
Speaker 1: Smell a Vision in h in nineteen sixty, but before that,
Speaker 1: the first recorded use of smell in the theater was
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen at the Family Theater in Forest City, Pennsylvania. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was during a Rose Bowl game. And so
Speaker 1: they had the scent of rose oil piped in, which
Speaker 1: you know, and it's really low tech, like they had
Speaker 1: a cotton ball that's saturated with rose oil. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they had a fan that was blowing it
Speaker 1: into the audience. Yeah. And that's pretty pretty low tech.
Speaker 1: And then some of the technologies today are about that level.
Speaker 1: But Smell a Vision, of course, is the one that
Speaker 1: everybody remembers. Um. This came around nineteen sixty and it
Speaker 1: was the mention of this guy, Mike Todd Jr. Who
Speaker 1: was the son of a really accomplished producer by the
Speaker 1: name of Michael Todd who produced around the world in
Speaker 1: eighty days, you know, made it, made some nice bank
Speaker 1: off of that, but then died. And so his son
Speaker 1: invests his inheritance in this concept of all a vision thing,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the next big thing. And again
Speaker 1: on paper, it kind of sounds cool. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is an age where it's like, all right, we
Speaker 1: got talking in our movies. Now we're talking, We're we're
Speaker 1: looking at it. You know what else can we do?
Speaker 1: You know, can we make we can There's the whole
Speaker 1: thing with a Tingler about making the seats vibrate. And
Speaker 1: as we see today, you know, everybody keeps like up
Speaker 1: in the Annie three d um, etcetera. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine the guys thinking, all right, smells pretty important. If
Speaker 1: I can somehow incorporate smell into the motion picture experience,
Speaker 1: that's gonna put even more butts and seats. Right, So
Speaker 1: the unleashed smell a vision on an unsuspecting public. H
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a disaster. Um. They only use
Speaker 1: it for one film under the Smell a Vision Moniker,
Speaker 1: and that was a film by the name of Scent
Speaker 1: of Miss of a Mystery, which interestingly enough, star Denholm Elliott,
Speaker 1: you know, of course from Raiders of the Lost Art
Speaker 1: the British guy and Peter Lori, yeah voice, can you
Speaker 1: do a Peter Lori re help me please? Rick? Yes,
Speaker 1: that that's the one. Yeah, yeah, wow, okay, I nailed it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you did nailed it. Um and uh. And so that
Speaker 1: then they had like all sorts of cool catch phrases
Speaker 1: for it, like first they moved, then they talked, now
Speaker 1: they smell. In nineteen sixty like, finally we we have
Speaker 1: we have the trifecta of senses engaged with their motion pictures,
Speaker 1: and a new age of cinema is about to begin.
Speaker 1: But of course it didn't because it didn't really work
Speaker 1: all that well. There was there was some slight delay
Speaker 1: with the smells, like the smell was supposed to hit
Speaker 1: so it was the smell of a fresh casserole. There
Speaker 1: was not a casserole in the movie. But just give
Speaker 1: you an example. Imagine if on the screen that they
Speaker 1: present a fresh cast role and then like several seconds later,
Speaker 1: the scent fresh cast role hits you people during the
Speaker 1: sex scene and like whoa, what chicken casserole? And then
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, Sophia Lauren is doing something
Speaker 1: that's just weird. Yeah, that level of things happening, and
Speaker 1: you know, so that you'd have the smells out of sync.
Speaker 1: Um other some of the theater's got the smell like
Speaker 1: really loud, like right in the face. Other areas couldn't
Speaker 1: get it. So it just wasn't all that well. Implemented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean these are we're talking about cartridges on a belt, right,
Speaker 1: and they're being pierced by needles during certain scenes. And
Speaker 1: we're also talking about this hissing sound that it would
Speaker 1: make sometimes too. This is what I've read that would
Speaker 1: be really distracting. So people are like, what is going on?
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to watch this movie and I'm being
Speaker 1: inundated here. Yeah. So it's like you'd be watching a
Speaker 1: film and a guy would be like, would you like
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee? And it's like, no, I don't
Speaker 1: really want any coffee because I really need to finish
Speaker 1: this sandwich first, and then you know, every little thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I will tell you that if Casablanca had had
Speaker 1: smell a Vision, and you know, of course with Peter Laurie,
Speaker 1: I would be happy to to experience that with smell
Speaker 1: a Vision. Why what do you think Peter Laurie smelled like? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean they're not Peter Laurie specifically, but you've got
Speaker 1: the spice market going on. Um, you know, it's hot human.
Speaker 1: I could see where it could have been an interesting bouquet. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I would feel that Bogart would have probably smelled kind
Speaker 1: of weird where and like cigars. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that could be a good smell. But also I
Speaker 1: think Lorie might have actually smelled good because he seems
Speaker 1: like the kind of guy who you know, he would
Speaker 1: realize he would need to have the smells all on,
Speaker 1: impeccably dressed. Yeah. Yeah um. And then, of course, in
Speaker 1: homage to Smell a Vision, American film director John Waters
Speaker 1: alice an enhanced Odorama version of his film Polyester in Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this was more akin to the scent test that we
Speaker 1: went through in the last oh right, the one where
Speaker 1: you made me smell David Beckham's foot right off of
Speaker 1: a card, numbered cards, Because that's the same way it
Speaker 1: worked with John waters piece Polyester footles, I should say, yeah.
Speaker 1: He Basically, each audience member had ten cards numbered one
Speaker 1: through ten, and they had smells such as flowers, pizza, glue, gas, grass,
Speaker 1: and of course feces. Oh right, right, Because if you're
Speaker 1: gonna if you're gonna implement smellvision, you need to go
Speaker 1: for the full, the full bouquet of Now, for anybody
Speaker 1: who who is John Waters fan, maybe you'll agree with
Speaker 1: me that pink flamingos should have been when where he
Speaker 1: had smell Avision where the main character actually eats feces,
Speaker 1: Because then, I mean, seriously, I mean, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to trump up the dramatic moment and watch someone eat
Speaker 1: feces and then smell it, that's that's going to do
Speaker 1: it right there, there you go. Yeah, Waters was Waters
Speaker 1: is around, Uh such a like a classy sleeves bag.
Speaker 1: I love that about it. You know a few people
Speaker 1: can pull that off to be both classy and sleazy
Speaker 1: and and make both work. Um and I and I
Speaker 1: think he would probably agree with that. Then there was
Speaker 1: also in n the BBC of course, did that hoax
Speaker 1: with the smell a vision where they told the viewers
Speaker 1: the April Fool stage and they told them that they
Speaker 1: could they could smell through the TV of sliced onions
Speaker 1: brewing coffee and invited viewers at home to confirm the
Speaker 1: sense uh that we're emanating from their television set by
Speaker 1: by writing in about it. And people did I just
Speaker 1: you know, testimony to the power suggestion. People were like, oh,
Speaker 1: I could totally smell the onions in the coffee, and
Speaker 1: it was it was all a gag. Placebo smells right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. So for the most part though,
Speaker 1: this is you know, it's just received a few token
Speaker 1: nods to the possibility of smell uh in our cinema,
Speaker 1: the most recent one, uh being the more recent spy
Speaker 1: kids movie All the Time in the World that when
Speaker 1: I had scratch and sniff cards. So it's like, you know, again,
Speaker 1: we're in that age where people are like, what can
Speaker 1: we do to up the Annie three D? All right,
Speaker 1: let's try smells. See if that works. Now. One area
Speaker 1: of entertainment where it seems like you you we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot more um smell engagement has been the haunted house,
Speaker 1: the professional haunted house. And I'm not talking about like
Speaker 1: the one put on like the local arch in the
Speaker 1: small or some club yeah, or some club you know,
Speaker 1: or just because right, or your neighbors. I mean haunted houses.
Speaker 1: I think I may have discussed it before. It's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty complex thing when you get it down to it,
Speaker 1: Like the actual business of it, it looks easy. So
Speaker 1: you have every year you'll have people come along and say, like,
Speaker 1: I can do a hunted house. I just see people
Speaker 1: lining up and handing out some money. I can do
Speaker 1: that too, but there's there's a lot more involved. There's
Speaker 1: a there's sort of a science of scaring and uh,
Speaker 1: and they generally that the better ones will try and
Speaker 1: hit you on various levels. They'll try and so they're
Speaker 1: throwing startling sounds at you. There's they're throwing weird textures
Speaker 1: at you under underneath your feet, and of course they'll
Speaker 1: try and engage your smell, your sense of smell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lay some of these honest, because uh, these are very
Speaker 1: interesting and I haven't been to a haunted house in years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, well we actually have a really good one,
Speaker 1: uh here in the Atlanta area, the nether World Haunted House. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard that one's good. Yeah. One of the guys
Speaker 1: who does it, this guy Billy messina Um, who I've
Speaker 1: met a time or two, like mutual friends. Uh. He
Speaker 1: actually worked special effects on such films as Judge, Dread,
Speaker 1: basket Case too, and uh the seminal favorite uff Franken Hooker.
Speaker 1: So frank Hooker. That's a fine one. Yeah. But but
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's a really cool hunted house and they
Speaker 1: will hit you with these smells. So I looked into
Speaker 1: this because because we were like, well maybe we can
Speaker 1: implement that here at the house. Stuff works, so you
Speaker 1: can get a professional sent machine for about seventy sounds
Speaker 1: good so far. Yeah, there's some cheaper options, but I figure,
Speaker 1: if if we're going to do this, let's do it right,
Speaker 1: let's do it big. And then there are just there's
Speaker 1: just a plethora of different smells and smell combinations you
Speaker 1: can purchase for use in these machines, and they range
Speaker 1: from things such as like uh oh, there's like wedding bouquet, peaches, sunshine,
Speaker 1: fruity um, grass, ocean and those are great. But if
Speaker 1: that sounds scary, it's exactly right. That's I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: because if you're only gonna have your hunted house once
Speaker 1: a year or for one month out of the year,
Speaker 1: you might want to try and at other times, so
Speaker 1: you can buy these other smells. But the scary smells,
Speaker 1: that's that's where it gets interesting. Stuff Like one manufacturer
Speaker 1: makes urine, sulfur, flatulence, body odor, smelly feet, bad breath.
Speaker 1: But then there's another um manufacturer who really uh sexes
Speaker 1: up the titles, so you get stuff like burning electrical um,
Speaker 1: candy cane, dead rat um. Oh, this is the one
Speaker 1: I really like prehistoric poop because that has a we
Speaker 1: all know what prehistoric poops nostrils. Hell Um, swamp, you're in,
Speaker 1: swamp you're in, not that there's not really a swamp
Speaker 1: here in one, but you could combine the two your
Speaker 1: own like swamp urine and and stinky feet prehistoric poop mill.
Speaker 1: Do you know you can just go nuts with it? Um?
Speaker 1: So yeah, you can find these online if you were
Speaker 1: interested enough to want to, you know, up the game
Speaker 1: at your own household or church operated haunted house. This
Speaker 1: sounds like a clan of try up version of like
Speaker 1: the Barbie perfume maker. Are you familiar with us? This
Speaker 1: is something I got my youth, and I actually really
Speaker 1: liked it. I hated Barbies and anyway, I won't go
Speaker 1: into that, but this I love because your kid create
Speaker 1: all these horrible smells and it's like a chemical lab
Speaker 1: for the Barbie. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I proposed
Speaker 1: that somebody go out there and make this for for
Speaker 1: a remake. This is some sort of ghoulish thing for
Speaker 1: kids out there, because I think they would love it. Well.
Speaker 1: I remember there being like stink toys when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. Yeah, I don't know if they assume they
Speaker 1: had something like this in the US. But I was
Speaker 1: a kid at the time in Canada and Newfoundland, Canada actually,
Speaker 1: and I remember visiting some town and they're being like
Speaker 1: a little you know, junk shop there, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean just in everything shop. They had some junkie toys
Speaker 1: variety store, and I ended up obtaining a some sort
Speaker 1: of stink toy and I think it was like some
Speaker 1: sort of little monster and the big cell on the
Speaker 1: package with it it smells like rotten eggs, and so
Speaker 1: at a certain age, that's awesome, you know. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of excited about it. I mean, the
Speaker 1: ability to mix all of those would be great fun. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: But here's the question, you know, getting to the technology
Speaker 1: of today. Would you want that smell emanating from your
Speaker 1: cell phone? Right? Yeah? This is where it really gets
Speaker 1: interesting because I remember these technologies we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: It basically involves the use of primary odors to create
Speaker 1: other odors. Basically, this Barbie kit you're talking about combined
Speaker 1: this with that or maybe and they smelled awful by
Speaker 1: the way, but but that's the idea of like using
Speaker 1: five or six maybe even basic smells out of hundreds
Speaker 1: only we're talking hundreds of primary odors in these palates, right,
Speaker 1: and we know just from the research we did on
Speaker 1: the Other Smell podcasts of fifteen thou smells that have
Speaker 1: been identified out there, right, So this would be very
Speaker 1: much of a first step and uh and kind of
Speaker 1: an approximate attempt to create some of these smells, these
Speaker 1: odors out of primary odors. Uh. And so you would
Speaker 1: you would be able to input all right, say it's
Speaker 1: um the smell of fresh pumpkin pie. Yea. So it
Speaker 1: would then input several primary odors such as I'm I'm
Speaker 1: guessing like maybe if there's a pumpkin primary odor, some
Speaker 1: sort of a cinnamon primary Is it cinnamon it's in
Speaker 1: pumpkin pie? No, it's nutmeg, Like nutmeg is a primary odor.
Speaker 1: And maybe like some sort of buttery smell as a
Speaker 1: primary odor. I don't know. But but then those those
Speaker 1: three would get implemented together into pumpkin pie. That's right.
Speaker 1: And so in Japan there's ant T communications, so cell
Speaker 1: phone owners are able to download a fragrance playlist or
Speaker 1: files of recipes for specific smells along with visual and
Speaker 1: or audio. So we're talking about you know animation or
Speaker 1: mini content from imodes mobile website. The service uses a
Speaker 1: handsets infrared port to transfer the fragrance data to a
Speaker 1: dedicated device similar to a plug in air freshener that's
Speaker 1: loaded with a cartridge of base fragrances what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: The device then mixes them to create the chosen smell,
Speaker 1: which it then waffs out, accompanying the audio or visual
Speaker 1: content that's played on the phone. So you can again
Speaker 1: you can share your your playlist with friends who also
Speaker 1: subscribe to the service. You can also use it remotely,
Speaker 1: so you can say via your your cell phone, Hey,
Speaker 1: when I get home, I want the whole house to
Speaker 1: wreak of chocolate chip cookies and it will do that
Speaker 1: for you. That's be let down when there are no
Speaker 1: actual chocolate chip cookies. So I know, right, but but
Speaker 1: you know, hey, if you if that's the way you
Speaker 1: want to roll ino, you know, you want to stick
Speaker 1: up your house with various sense, then you can do it.
Speaker 1: Um n T T do como device. This is a
Speaker 1: device along with the phone, can also analyze your breath
Speaker 1: and tell tell you how much fat you've burned off
Speaker 1: and how hungry you maybe so it goes the other way,
Speaker 1: right and a emit smells and also analyzes it. So
Speaker 1: we're outsourcing our ability to know what size snack we
Speaker 1: should have. Yeah. Actually, there's an image analyzer, or you
Speaker 1: can take a picture of the food you're about to
Speaker 1: eat and it will go through the database of like
Speaker 1: foods and tell you what the approximate chloric information is.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, so okay that you can have some smells
Speaker 1: through your phone, but you can also have stinky tweets.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. This is the OLLI by Mint Digital and Foundry,
Speaker 1: And the idea here is this is a device. You
Speaker 1: can think of it as a smell printer that hooks
Speaker 1: up to your your computer and you would have it
Speaker 1: set off to where not only would you maybe get
Speaker 1: like a little um audio sound when you received a tweet,
Speaker 1: you would get a smell like what does a tweet
Speaker 1: smell like? I don't know, maybe a bird nest? Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on who's tweeting. You can you can actually
Speaker 1: customize it, customize it so that Oh, so let's say
Speaker 1: Rain Wilson does a tweet, like, what would Rain Wilson's
Speaker 1: tweets smell like? I don't know, I just don't know
Speaker 1: him that well at all. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: him at all. No, but he's on Twitter. You don't
Speaker 1: know these people at all. But that's the thing, you
Speaker 1: because I don't know what sort of personal scent. But
Speaker 1: let's say that you're you know, sister or your uncle
Speaker 1: tweeted you could make some sort of aroma. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they were making fun of this on NPRS game show
Speaker 1: Wait Wait, don't tell me, and they said, Okay, um,
Speaker 1: you know, got a Facebook message from grandma, mix genete
Speaker 1: with Virginia Slims or your college roommates. Tweets could smell
Speaker 1: like fresca and regret sex. The smells aren't gonna be
Speaker 1: that nuanced. Yeah, well, well what would what would what
Speaker 1: would our tweets smell like? What would stuff? With all
Speaker 1: your minds? Tweets can force a smell I don't know,
Speaker 1: like patuli entire treads. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. That's like
Speaker 1: the last thing we would smell like. I hope I
Speaker 1: would hope. So I don't know. Maybe I would just
Speaker 1: go with pumpkin pie. I keep coming back to pumpkin pie.
Speaker 1: Maybe because it's November. Yeah, yeah, you're anticipating there. It's
Speaker 1: all suggestion. UM. So all right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we get back, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about online dating and smells. This podcast is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Speaker 1: Discovery channel at Intel. We've leave Curiosity is the spark
Speaker 1: which drives innovation. Join us at Curiosity dot com and
Speaker 1: explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about some more about these smellable tweets. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the smellable tweets again. You can customize this. You've got
Speaker 1: a little device that's going to admit the smell, right,
Speaker 1: and it can be a Facebook update, can be a tweet,
Speaker 1: it can be pretty much anything. Um. And how it
Speaker 1: works is actually this device has indexed thousands of smells
Speaker 1: based on their chemical structures and their place on the
Speaker 1: scent spectrum. Each sent is then coded and digitized into
Speaker 1: a small file, and then digital file is embedded in
Speaker 1: web content or email. A user request or triggers the
Speaker 1: file by clicking a mass or opening email, and then
Speaker 1: a small amount of the aroma is admitted by the
Speaker 1: device and it stores a hundred and twenty cents. So again,
Speaker 1: this is pretty base when you are thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the fifteen thousand sins that are out there at least indexed,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about it being open source as well,
Speaker 1: so that would give every in the ability to create
Speaker 1: new annoying smells to go with it. I mean, just
Speaker 1: the sky's the limited's kind of and and if they
Speaker 1: were able to implement a mobile version kind of going
Speaker 1: into the smell a phone thing, I mean, just think
Speaker 1: of every annoying cell phone ringtone that you've heard, not
Speaker 1: only the ones that come with the phones, but the
Speaker 1: custom ones especially. It can be so horrible. Imagine if
Speaker 1: they smell too. Yeah, I know, I know, the potential
Speaker 1: for misuse is great on this, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in a little bit, but let's talk about this
Speaker 1: odor matching. So yeah, a company called basis Note allows
Speaker 1: online datas to upload their scent profiles. And uh this
Speaker 1: is from the biologist and basis Note founder August Emily.
Speaker 1: He says, if everything fits, you have the same interest,
Speaker 1: lots to talk about, but you can stand there smell,
Speaker 1: then a love affair doesn't stand a chance. So you know,
Speaker 1: makes sense that you would also be able to check
Speaker 1: out someone smell before you meet them, and it gives
Speaker 1: another area for people to lie on on the internet.
Speaker 1: Not only can you lie about what you're what you're into,
Speaker 1: and what you look like, but what you smell like
Speaker 1: as well. Well, here's how you would have to lie.
Speaker 1: You'd have to have someone else take a a lava
Speaker 1: test for you, because this is how they actually get
Speaker 1: the coding for this. You take this lava test which
Speaker 1: is then carried out some sort of test at home
Speaker 1: through a chromatographic process, and it's similar to a pregnancy
Speaker 1: test and the result is this a simple digital code
Speaker 1: which then can be entered into your online profile. And
Speaker 1: the Scientific Compatibility System was launched on Swiss Friends dot
Speaker 1: c a just a Swiss dating site, and at press
Speaker 1: time it costs about fifty dollars. But the reason why
Speaker 1: they're doing this is that evolutionary biologists says, there are
Speaker 1: our noses are really involved in choosing our partners and
Speaker 1: what you and I have talked about this before. We've
Speaker 1: heard about this at least peripherally and some of our
Speaker 1: research and we've talked about it. But this is basically
Speaker 1: saying that our nose probes whether or not the other
Speaker 1: person has similar genes to us. Okay, because the more
Speaker 1: varied the gene pools are, the higher the chance for healthy,
Speaker 1: strong offspring. Your nose is detecting this and this is
Speaker 1: just totally fascinating. It works like this, um the more
Speaker 1: major histocompatibility complex molecules you have, the better chance you
Speaker 1: have at bolstering your own immune system, since these molecules
Speaker 1: helped to create a defense reaction in your body, and
Speaker 1: these are called the MHC genes and humans there are
Speaker 1: more than a hundred variations of each of the nine
Speaker 1: of the nine most important MHC genes, and the more
Speaker 1: vary the MHC, the better the immune system of the
Speaker 1: offspring will be armed. Okay, So, according to Hammerley the biologist,
Speaker 1: your specific body odor is actually marked by the MHC
Speaker 1: combinations that you have and then is transmitted in your
Speaker 1: bodily fluids and transformed into your your smell. So in theory, right,
Speaker 1: because I don't know, you know, to what extent this
Speaker 1: is really buttoned up that you could sniff out from
Speaker 1: another person and say, you know what, you're way too
Speaker 1: similar to me with your MHC content. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: work for us. You know, this also brings to mind
Speaker 1: one possibility with the smell a vision, and that is
Speaker 1: in the same way that a stay successful actor will
Speaker 1: have a body double so that during a nude scene
Speaker 1: it will ensure that their body looks amazing. So in
Speaker 1: the future, perhaps they will also have odor doubles just
Speaker 1: to ensure that they also smell amazing. Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: are you saying like an online dating thing in an
Speaker 1: online dating sort of sense, Like some of that technology
Speaker 1: and some of that data make it see like what
Speaker 1: is the optimal smell that that men want to smell
Speaker 1: uh when contemplating an attractive woman and vice versa of
Speaker 1: course for okay, so this is another sexual inaction. I
Speaker 1: totally get your saying, But again, like this is this
Speaker 1: sort of feeds my fear of how we are continuing
Speaker 1: to isolate ourselves and have virtual relationships with one another,
Speaker 1: which to some extent is fine, right, this is just
Speaker 1: sort of the world we live in. But what happens
Speaker 1: when you get down to just living in front of
Speaker 1: your computer and trying to state all five senses and
Speaker 1: then creating these dummy sense to upload. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like your virtual self dating another virtual person,
Speaker 1: you know, ASSU mean that you don't really have a
Speaker 1: relationship a face to face, right, And so that's what
Speaker 1: I think is interesting about this technology is that you know,
Speaker 1: obviously it can be used with video games. It can
Speaker 1: be used video games. Part really interested me. There's a
Speaker 1: one version of this so that's in the works supposedly,
Speaker 1: uh called Odor re Vision, and it's got from a
Speaker 1: French company called Old Faction UM and they have a
Speaker 1: verying on it called smell It. It's aimed at video games.
Speaker 1: And I was looking through the list of some of
Speaker 1: the proposed smells because they have you know, like a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen of them, and they include things like
Speaker 1: precious would smell, um atmosphere, big machines, atmosphere, hospitals, smell
Speaker 1: of cakes, uh, smell naked body, scent of a woman, um,
Speaker 1: odor fabrics, the things of this nature. But but it
Speaker 1: had me wondering in both video games, I'm just laughing
Speaker 1: about scent about naked woman. Scent of a naked woman. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I don't know how video game
Speaker 1: programmers figured out what that smells like. Oh yeah, um
Speaker 1: no no, But well, what this really makes me think
Speaker 1: about is some we we have we encounter violence and
Speaker 1: and sex in our films, and uh, and especially the
Speaker 1: violence in video games. It to some degree the sex
Speaker 1: or sexual sexuality, and uh, we end up having this
Speaker 1: sterilized version of it, especially violence. So if we even
Speaker 1: even partaking of violence in a video game or witnessing
Speaker 1: violence in a movie, if we smelled the violence, if
Speaker 1: we smell blood, if we smelled decaying bodies, if we
Speaker 1: smelled someone dying and their bowels loosening with death, these
Speaker 1: kinds of things so specific and graphic, well, it's just
Speaker 1: a reality, you know. I mean, if if we through,
Speaker 1: if we use this to make death more real when
Speaker 1: it occurs in our fiction and in our in our
Speaker 1: video games, I wonder if that would be a positive thing,
Speaker 1: because as it is, it's like when you know, blood
Speaker 1: is beautiful and red and it splashes everywhere, and these
Speaker 1: films and in these video games, what if you had
Speaker 1: to actually smell it? I think it would kill the
Speaker 1: industry really because then because we know that emotion is
Speaker 1: evoked right from smells and empathy, I mean, all of
Speaker 1: these sort of things would be engaged. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we like video games so much or
Speaker 1: even movies, is because we can remove ourselves, we can
Speaker 1: distance ourselves, and we can watch the action unfold without
Speaker 1: any sort of horrible results. Well, I mean it's like
Speaker 1: zombie movies. Who would watch a zombie movie if you
Speaker 1: had to smell the reek of rotting corpses whenever the
Speaker 1: zombie showed up? Try it once? Yeah, well, it would
Speaker 1: definitely make it more horrific. It would be like the
Speaker 1: stink odors that they're shooting at you in the horror movie.
Speaker 1: And for that matter, um, when it comes to things
Speaker 1: like like pornography, if people had to if people watching
Speaker 1: pornography had to smell the smells of of what's going on,
Speaker 1: would they be that into it? I don't know, well,
Speaker 1: especially if this biologist is correct in terms of a
Speaker 1: scent prile profile for each person. Um, you know, would
Speaker 1: you be someone's scent during sex sort of turn one
Speaker 1: person off or another? Of course, I think that what
Speaker 1: he's talking about in volution um or within within the
Speaker 1: context of evolution is really uh, it's pretty simplistic, right,
Speaker 1: because there's so many more things that are going on.
Speaker 1: And maybe this is why you know, Match dot Com
Speaker 1: isn't using this technology right now because not necessarily everybody
Speaker 1: is looking for a lifelong partner right when they're using this,
Speaker 1: and you know it also, we don't really know the
Speaker 1: results of this born out at large um, but I
Speaker 1: was thinking of us, particularly with the video games too,
Speaker 1: that the smell of fear, and this is something we
Speaker 1: talked about with this little told us right that you
Speaker 1: know that the wall that she created with these nine
Speaker 1: different sets of men's fears, you know, if you are
Speaker 1: piping that in with video game, I mean, that's that
Speaker 1: would be sort of horrific to to smell someone else's fear,
Speaker 1: right because you're not going to reject that it's just
Speaker 1: something that you smell. Yeah, if you're like smell, you're
Speaker 1: in a multiplayer setting and you're smelling the fear of
Speaker 1: your fellow players or your opponents, the kind of thing,
Speaker 1: especially with something like bomber Man, which is so cartoony.
Speaker 1: But then if you were smelling fear during bomber Man,
Speaker 1: that would be kind of crazy. Here's my greatest fear though,
Speaker 1: is that it's going to be used by marketers, like
Speaker 1: to the point where it's just you know, ad infinitum,
Speaker 1: where like you know, you've got a pop up screen
Speaker 1: of coca cola coming on and you can smell coca
Speaker 1: cola or something else, or baked goods, which could get
Speaker 1: really annoying, even if those are things that you like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're just happy to be like surfing
Speaker 1: and you're like that smell again, yeah, or or scent hacking,
Speaker 1: Like what if we reached the point where the house
Speaker 1: stuff works homepage smells like nint because I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's like, seems delightful, Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: some hackers come along and they make it smell like
Speaker 1: put the entire tread exactly exactly. That would be that
Speaker 1: would be kind of horrific, and that would be the
Speaker 1: kind of abuse you can expect that, my friend, are
Speaker 1: the that that's that's the future smell right there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But if I can come back to the whole digital world,
Speaker 1: like the other side of this too, is that so
Speaker 1: much is we leave more and more of our lives digitally,
Speaker 1: and we're we're taking it things in through through the
Speaker 1: Internet and through games and through movies. We're, like I said,
Speaker 1: we're getting that sterile version of it all where we're
Speaker 1: getting a version of it where an entire Uh, one
Speaker 1: of our primary senses is cut off. Like, then what
Speaker 1: happens when we actually engage in uh, basically any activity
Speaker 1: in life and we were suddenly hit with the with
Speaker 1: the olfactory dimension of that experience as well? Like, what
Speaker 1: what does that do to us? You know? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because there is this idea about the synthetic
Speaker 1: version versus the true version, and then again the repository
Speaker 1: of all of our experiences, our memories being evoked again,
Speaker 1: our emotions by smells. So if you're manipulating them on
Speaker 1: a certain level that you know, this this this virtual level,
Speaker 1: and you're isolated, Yeah, what does that do to you
Speaker 1: you specifically specifically? Yeah, I don't know. We'll find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be an interesting future, I think, because
Speaker 1: it seems like they'll probably not implement all of these
Speaker 1: things to the degree to which we're talking about, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the smell vision factor. It's like
Speaker 1: it reaches the point, yes, we can make movies smell,
Speaker 1: but to what is they're actually an economic payoff? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some fails they are, for sure, But we already
Speaker 1: know and we've talked about this before that in that
Speaker 1: retailers us this um quite a bit. You go into
Speaker 1: the Gap or any other major retailer, and most likely
Speaker 1: there's a very specific scent that has been made for
Speaker 1: them to help you feel great about your purchase. Right
Speaker 1: to whatever extent it can be, it can be implemented
Speaker 1: and used to make money, it will be used. We
Speaker 1: can be sure of that your computer is gonna smell
Speaker 1: in the future. That's what we're saying. Yeah, no way
Speaker 1: around it, no way around it, and it won't just
Speaker 1: smell like all the snack macks that you've dropped into,
Speaker 1: which is nothing an unpleasant odor from no. No, there
Speaker 1: we go, the future of smell, the future of stink um.
Speaker 1: We have a few quick listener mails that I'd like
Speaker 1: to read um and we're gonna so you'll stip in
Speaker 1: here and grab one. Okay, Drew's one from Timothy dear
Speaker 1: stb y M crew U, which is us. I've always
Speaker 1: thought of zombies as an expression of the other, as
Speaker 1: in the unthinking masses, sheapish crowds of people, etcetera. Uh.
Speaker 1: I believe this is why zombies are so fond of
Speaker 1: urban settings like these shopping mall or the state far
Speaker 1: where crowds are so common. I also agree with the
Speaker 1: assessment that modern zombies have a parallel with modern work um,
Speaker 1: which often consists of repetition, requiring very little in the
Speaker 1: way of complex problem solving. In this way, they represent
Speaker 1: our horror of the mainstream drudgery of simple repetitive work
Speaker 1: in the absorption of our individually into the sheepish consumer culture.
Speaker 1: Zombie hunting, therefore, is a radical expression of individuality. How
Speaker 1: ironic then, that zombies are such a wildly popular trend.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all, Thanks for all the great cast, Tim,
Speaker 1: And of course he was talking responding to our episode
Speaker 1: about apocalypse and our attraction to apocalypse and specifically our
Speaker 1: love with fare with zombie apocalypse. That so some some
Speaker 1: interesting thoughts there from Tim. We heard from listener Lindsay
Speaker 1: on Facebook and she says, you guys are rad exclamation
Speaker 1: point um, which is good. I just listened to the
Speaker 1: Martyr podcast. It made me think of a few people
Speaker 1: I know who don't use any meds while getting their
Speaker 1: teeth worked on because they are in recovery from addiction
Speaker 1: their goal of sobriety. But it made me wonder about
Speaker 1: a connection with the history of self abuse equals higher
Speaker 1: through a pain threshold piece of your podcast, since addiction
Speaker 1: could could definitely be considered self abuse anyway, keep up
Speaker 1: the great work. And that's that's interesting because I hadn't
Speaker 1: really I thought as much about that to Menion of
Speaker 1: when we were talking about individuals who say, um, you know,
Speaker 1: going to the dental office and don't want drugs use
Speaker 1: stones that there would be some individuals who would be
Speaker 1: opposed to it because they have a history with substance abuse. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you also have people who are straight edge right who
Speaker 1: were refused to take alcohol or drugs, and then how
Speaker 1: does that impact their choices in there? Would they experience
Speaker 1: more pain? That's the question because if you have well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm just sort of thinking out a
Speaker 1: lot of here. But if you've got the joke commune
Speaker 1: receptors and abuse them and they've you've released a lot
Speaker 1: of dopamine as a result, might your body best of
Speaker 1: train to be able to do that at well? I
Speaker 1: don't know. There things to think about. And if anybody
Speaker 1: out there is straight edge, I'd be in honest to hear,
Speaker 1: what what's your relationship with pain? Just don't feel like
Speaker 1: you need to drop like, you know, a saw on
Speaker 1: your foot or anything. Don't don't, don't test your or
Speaker 1: a lead weight. Let's say that because the song on
Speaker 1: the phone is just a little bit too graphic. All right, Well, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to share anything with this um, specifically,
Speaker 1: if you want to share anything about smells and the
Speaker 1: future of smells, you can find us on our Facebook
Speaker 1: and on our Twitter. We'll Blow the Mind on both
Speaker 1: of those and badly we we don't have the custom
Speaker 1: smell implemented just yet unless you're listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: at some distant point in the future, and then perhaps yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: if that's the case, then you can email us your
Speaker 1: sent profile at Blow the Mind at House to works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join the House to Work staff
Speaker 1: as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.