The science of taste and smell with Rachel Herz | from ReThinking with Adam Grant

0:00If you have to give up one of your five senses, which would you pick? Given the options, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, many people often resort to smell and taste. Maybe to most of us, they seem like the least important, right? Well, you might be surprised. Today, we're spotlighting an episode from Rethinking with Adam Grant, another podcast from TED. In this episode, Adam is speaking with cognitive neuroscientist Rachel Hertz on the mind-bending science of smell and taste, and how your nose might be your most underrated superpower. I hope you enjoy the episode, and you can follow Rethinking with Adam Grant wherever you get your podcasts.

0:46Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. like Rachel Herz. We are hardwired actually to find bitter bad and sweet good. Now, the problem of today's world is that we have an overabundance and easy access to all kinds of things that are sweet, and overconsumption of those sorts of things is not healthy. For years, people made fun of me for eating like a five-year-old. Then I learned something that changed my understanding of my palate and might change yours too.

1:26Rachel Herz is a neuroscientist at Brown who specializes in taste and smell. She's the author of Why You Eat What You Eat and The Scent of Desire. And also joining us today, by popular demand, is a special guest co-host, my favorite novelist. This is my wife, Allison. Hi, Rachel. Nice to meet you, Allison. Together, we're digging into some big ideas about taste, scent, and memory. But first, I needed to get Rachel's take on my own eating preferences. And it turns out we have something in common. I want to give you a list of foods that I hate. and I'm hoping you can tell me something about me. Chocolate's disgusting.

2:04I would rather eat dirt. I hate feta cheese, cabbage, kale, cilantro, and I've never had a sip of coffee or alcohol because the smell alone disgusts me. So what am I? Sounds like you are actually probably a super taster, which means that you are fantastic. No, it means that you actually have a lot more taste buds that are sensitive to all tastings, but they particularly show up in terms of their reactivity to bitter foods. So coffee, black coffee, alcohol, those substances will taste extremely bitter. Super tasters live in a neon taste world, so everything is more intense. Rachel, I was just thinking about conveying the intensity factor, and I was remembering in high school, there was a class right before lunch, and a friend of mine would bring candy in, and we would sneak it under the desk.

2:58And one day I heard him eating Skittles and I stuck out my hand and he poured a bunch in my hand. I shoved them into my mouth so the teacher wouldn't see. And it was so disgusting that I had to bolt up to the front of the room and spit them out into the garbage can in front of the entire class, knowing I was going to get detention. I knew he gave me M &Ms instead of Skittles. And so I confronted him about it after detention. And he burst out laughing and said, I think I gave you 30 or 35 Skittles and one M &M. I can't believe you could taste that. It completely ruined the Skittle flavor. So I wondered, does that put me on the far extreme of super tasting?

3:37So that was my dog. She says yes. So basically, that is really about smell. It's specifically the aroma of chocolate. So I'm going to say that you have either and or both a variant of the allele that normally, well, that detects chocolate, but it's a different version than most people have, and somehow is perceived differently by you than other people. And or also many, many copies of that mutant allele, such that it is extremely unpleasant for you. And you're also extremely sensitive to it. So that's my, I just made that up, but. Good to know. I'm going to hold my nose next time I eat Skittles, just in case.

4:20I'm actually also a super taster. I mean, one thing I will ask you, though, do you like salt, salty stuff? I don't think I've ever used salt on anything. Ah, interesting. Sweet is much better than salty. Okay, that's interesting to me because actually the one taste that super tasters tend to actually use more of when given free reign is salt because salt actually masks bitter taste. So if you've had to deal with eating the bitter leafy greens and kind of learned inadvertently that adding salt to the broccoli or the Brussels sprouts actually makes it more palatable. It's actually because that salt is blocking the bitterness.

4:54And the more salt you consume, the more salt you like, the more salt you use, etc., etc. So it's like a positive feedback loop. So super tasters tend to use a lot of salt in their eating just because they end up liking it for itself, but also having learned that it's a good barrier to the bitter. Now, hating the scent of cilantro or the flavor of cilantro is actually because from a genetics perspective, you are missing the receptor, the olfactory receptor that detects this lovely herbaceous note that people that love cilantro can detect. And all you can detect is the soapy quality, which everyone can also detect as well, pretty much, but usually it's masked or overlaid by this herbaceous quality.

5:37That is what people are gravitating towards. but if you don't get the herbaceous part, you just get the soap. We just met and I feel like you've known me for years. So what is your favorite ice cream, if I could ask you a question? Cotton candy. Ah, interesting. I mean, it sounds like it's very sweet with maybe some cherry notes connected to it, possibly like I think cotton candy is a little bit cherry-esque. It's like the syrupy-ness of it, I think. Oh, yeah, but it just tastes sweet. It's an additive, right? The flavor. Yeah. Like the cotton candy flavor. Yeah, that's right. Can you explain why I am this way?

6:16What caused me to be a supertaster? Why do I have all these extra taste buds? Okay, so supertasting, that is purely genetics. You have no control over that whatsoever. It doesn't matter how many push-ups you can do or your IQ or anything like this. It's actually just the number of taste buds that you have in your mouth. And that has to do actually with your parents. So in order to be a supertaster, you need two copies of one type of allele for this gene for number of taste buds. So I'm guessing that your parents are probably at least medium tasters, both of them. One might actually be a supertaster.

6:50They could both be supertasters, but they have to at least be medium tasters because you would need to get a copy from each of them. And if one of them was a non-taster, then you wouldn't be able to get a supertaster copy. Got it. My grandmother hated chocolate, so it seems to go back a couple generations. Absolutely it would. I mean, this is genetics that goes through the family tree. You probably can't escape it. Anyway, this is something definitely that's passed on, which you don't have any control over. Allison, what are you? Do you think you like, do you hate kale, dark black coffee? No, you're...

7:26No, I don't like super bitter things like coffee or dark chocolate, but I'm certainly not as sensitive to it as Adam is. But one of our children, I think, has certainly ended up with Adam's tendencies when it comes to his palate. Well, that would completely make sense because you have at least one copy of the supertaster side of things and Adam has two. So you're going to have a child that you're going to have at least 50 % chance of being supertaster as well. Why is it that having extra taste buds makes bitter foods bad, but sweet foods sweeter? We are hardwired actually to find bitter bad and sweet good.

8:06And that is because in nature, bitter, which is a signal from the point of view of chemistry of alkaloids or things that are basic. So things like lye and other types of things are highly basic. That's, you know, what they dissolve the bodies with in the gangster movies and so forth. That's a highly, highly corrosive, extremely basic substance. And those things are bad for you. So things that are in general poisonous, things that have also spoiled, those are things that, except for the bitter leafy greens and maybe a couple of other exceptions, things that we should not swallow. So in fact, we have at least 25 different bitter receptors, things that can detect different forms of bitter, they're not all the same, just to make sure that we don't end up swallowing it if we get it in our mouth, because the chances of surviving something that is highly bitter are questionable.

9:00Now, on the other end of the spectrum, completely the opposite is sweet. Now, sweet, we are also hardwired to like because sweet is a signal, chemically speaking, for carbohydrates. And sugar and carbohydrates is the best, fastest, usable form of energy. So we need carbohydrates to survive. We need carbohydrates to go over a hill and down the dale for finding, for hunting, for gathering, for everything else. So we absolutely need sweet in order to survive. So from an evolutionary perspective, as much as possible, we want to eat sweet and not eat bitter. Whenever people talk about super tasting, it sounds like a really great thing.

9:41Like, oh, would you be a master sommelier? Or, you know, would you be a great chef? No, there's too much I don't like. And it actually seems like non-tasters are more able to discriminate between tastes. But I don't know what it's like to be a non-taster. Is that right, wrong? What is a non-taster? A non-taster just has fewer taste buds. It doesn't mean that you can't taste. It's just that things are less intense. So it is the case, actually, that more chefs tend to be super tasters. And that is, I think, because, you know, obviously they're predisposed to liking flavors and foods and so forth.

10:12So there are more chefs that are in the super taster camp. However, I once worked with a chef, Wiley Dufresne. He has a lot of, you know, major restaurants, does a lot of molecular gastronomy. He is a non-taster, and he actually said that he thought that was helpful for him because there's only about 30 % or so of the population that are super tasters. So if you're a non-taster, you're basically getting a broader perspective of what your customers are experiencing. And he thought also being a non-taster gave him sort of a different access into the flavor world. And if you were a super taser, maybe you'd actually be holding back as a chef on various flavor concoctions and combinations.

10:51So he thought that being a non-taster was actually advantageous. So interesting. Does where you fall on this spectrum from super tasting to non-tasting have any implications for your life? Well, so yes. So as a function of what you like to eat or what you would avoid eating, it can have health and behavioral implications. So for example, people who are more likely to end up being heavy smokers or heavy drinkers are not likely to be super tasters, mainly because the barrier to entry, like the burn from the cigarette smoke would be a problem to really get into smoking a lot of cigarettes. So anytime you get into the abuse end of things, you have to be able to tolerate consuming a lot over a long period of time.

11:36Or if drinking actual real alcohol is going to have to water it down with fruit juices or other sorts of things, you're not going to be getting as much alcohol. and therefore less likely to fall into a category that could be dangerous from the point of view of addiction. Not to say that there aren't non-tasters who are smokers and drinkers, but it's just less likely because there is a higher barrier to entry to get into that level of consumption. Now, because of avoiding the sort of leafy, bitter greens and other kinds of foods, which are actually highly good for you because of the antioxidants quality and having, let's say, the diet of a five-year-old, you are not necessarily protecting yourself from the point of view of the food that you consume and potentially also running into some physiological problems.

12:24So colon cancers are higher in super tasters than in non-tasters, for example, and also potentially even hypertension if you're using too much salt. So the idea is you just have to be aware, like that you may be in a category where you're avoiding certain foods which are good for you and or using, let's say, too much salt, if that's the case. And then as a function of being aware of that, maybe trying to eat other things, like if you like blueberries, you know, also high antioxidants. So trying to at least substitute certain things, then you can make healthy choices deliberately. Okay. So there's good news and bad news here.

12:59The good news is I eat blueberries every day. Check. The bad news is that my mom used to force feed me lima beans when I was a kid. Are you saying that she should have been going with spinach or kale or broccoli? No, lima beans are really good for you. I mean, so she did a good job. I don't think I've had lima beans. I don't know what. Lima beans must have been a thing. I'm really glad they're not anymore. Okay, so the other thing I was really curious about is, for me, taste and smell are just inextricably interconnected. I cannot imagine something that smells bad tasting good. Allison, when you cook salmon, sometimes I have to leave the house because it's just overwhelmingly bad.

13:41That doesn't speak well of my cooking. No, it's not your cooking. If anyone were cooking any seafood, I would want to exit the premises. So does fish smell bad to you? No, it doesn't. I mean, fish is fishy. I can understand why it would smell bad to you. It doesn't smell bad to you? It doesn't bother me. Like Venice doesn't stink to you? Well, that's a whole different thing. Okay. But have you ever smelled fish that just stunk? I don't think so. So, Rachel, what is this? Why does fish smell bad to me? Why doesn't it smell bad to Allison? So intensity is a major factor from the point of view of smell.

14:24So the more intense something smells to you, even if it's your favorite whatever it is, the less pleasant it's going to be. Now, from the point of view of smell, that has to do with the number of copies of certain types of receptors that you have. If you have many copies of a certain type of receptor that's potentially very acutely attuned to what's called trimethylamine, that's actually the chemical of fishy smell, then even the merest small amount of fish is going to be noticeable to you. And anything that's kind of in an average level is going to be really strong and therefore unpleasant. Now, Alison, I'm guessing, I mean, there's no such thing as the right or the wrong or whatever, but let's say she definitely has fewer than you.

15:05And maybe if, depending upon the concentration, I don't know what you were talking about with Venice, is that the city you're referring to? So, okay. So maybe, so standing at the edge of like some dirty embankment with all kinds of dead fish washed up, I'm sure Alison could probably get that as being unpleasant. So seeing the fish dead, you know, that's unpleasant. So whether or not you think something is unpleasant has to do with the meaning of whatever it is to you. And if it's dead fish carcasses, that's going to be really aversive, even if the scent in another context meant something else entirely.

15:41So this actually gets to one of my favorite topics when it comes to smell, taste, food, and whatever, is context effects. in that the context in which you are experiencing something influences your interpretation of the meaning of what it is you're experiencing and therefore changes your perception. And this is particularly the case for smell because smells are invisible. And therefore, as highly visually oriented creatures, that's what we are. We're always looking, what is that? When we get that information from our eyes or our ears, we go, aha, that's what that is. Okay, now that thing, whatever it is, is good or bad.

16:18And I did an experiment a long time ago that really demonstrated this. When I gave somebody a scent, it went from one end of the polar extreme of liking to the other end of disliking. People wouldn't even believe me that they were smelling the same thing at two occasions. And it was exactly the same thing. Wow. This is related to something that our producer Jessica pointed out, which is in Beijing, she tasted something called stinky tofu, which she said smells like, and I quote, gym socks in a locker, but it tastes amazing. I cannot even fathom this. How could something smell bad and taste good?

16:55There are a few things that fall in that category. Durian is another one. That fruit, it's popular in South Asia. The scent is highly pungent, but the flavor is very different from the scent. And actually, another example of this, but in the opposite category is in fact coffee, where often people say that smell is really pleasant, but when I taste it, it's really aversively bitter. So it is not necessarily the case that the smell and the taste go hand in hand. Biting into something releases different volatiles that you would not have smelled if you were just sniffing. And therefore, it can change the profile of the flavor scent so much that they end up not smelling alike.

17:38Now, it's not very common, but that can definitely happen. Got it. The whole is not the same as the sum of the parts when it comes to smell. So you can never be sure exactly what you're getting into. Does fermented cheese also fall in that camp? So cheese is, by definition, sort of controlled fermentation overall. So is there a particular cheese you're thinking of? There are certain cheeses that are definitely in the stinkier end of things. Is there a stinky cheese you like? I like all cheese. I don't discriminate. I'm with Allison there, too. I mean, the thing is that it's also, again, it's like certain aspects of texture, like the creamy, oozy-ness.

18:17I mean, I really like that texture sensation. And so even if the scent is, let's say, from a distance, not particularly appealing, the overall experience when consuming it is really appealing. And again, also the scent changes in my mouth than it is purely from my nostrils. Very interesting.

18:40So let's talk about smell in more detail. So Rachel, I was reading, I think, an interview you did where you mentioned that a surprisingly large number of college students would rather ditch their sense of smell than their cell phone. Can you tell us about that? So during the second year of COVID, so this was in 2021, and actually, interestingly, although there is some sort of tangential data that had been collected over the last 25 years, there really hadn't been anything that explicitly, other than sort of anecdote, people saying, oh, who cares about your sense of smell? And also the American Medical Association actually stating that in terms of value of like you lose something and then you get compensation.

19:22So the value of your sense of smell is between 1 % and 5 % of your life's worth, you know, monetarily speaking. Vision is given 85%. So if you were in an accident, you lost your vision, you'd get 85 % of your compensation trajectory. jury, if you lost your sense of smell, you'd get between 1 % and 5%, depending upon how you could prove its relevance to you. And I had been involved, I have been involved in a number of lawsuits as an expert witness to sort of say, no, no, no, wait a second. This is way more important than that. And I thought, okay, here we are. Now people are losing their sense of smell because of COVID.

19:58It ended up being a real symptom, for the most part, temporary, but then also for a large population, it ended up being long-term. Then people who had had that, even if it was a brief loss of smell, were contacting me saying, oh my God, like I was really sick with COVID, but I had no idea how important my sense of smell was. And then the people that had the long-term loss were really beside themselves. So I thought, okay, let's see what happens if we actually ask people how important their sense of smell is. And then evaluated, first of all, how much they cared about their sense of smell versus hearing and vision?

20:34And then separate from that, what about compared to a set of common commodities? So we had certain things that were physical, other things that were more sort of personal use perspective, but also monetarily related. We had, you know, $10 ,000 was another one. And this is now during COVID where people are, I thought, aware of losing their sense of smell as being a bad thing. Still, 25 % of college students would rather lose their sense of smell than their cell phone. 50 % actually would rather lose their sense of smell than their hair. Okay, so that, so hair ended up being like super important.

21:14I'm like, hair? I mean, yes, I like my hair too, but it's not doing anything. Like you can, you know, maybe it's protecting you from the cold or, you know, and we've actually just done this study, replicating it in a bunch of different countries around the world, different languages, and we get more or less the same effects. Huh. You said 85 % of people would rather lose their sense of smell than sight. Who are the other 15 %? Like who is willing to give up their vision for their smell? Why? The way the wording kind of makes it sound slightly different than a side-by-side comparison, But there are people who recognize, you know, different sensory experiences as being valid as well.

21:55I should say that one of the problems with the way this was worded is we made assumptions about ever being able to smell again or ever being able to have a cell phone. And it is a little bit different if you kind of pitch it as in you've lost this for the rest of your life versus sort of a momentary understanding of what it means not to have it. So there is some nuance there in terms of the interpretation of what it means to completely be without something. That makes sense. Still, cell phones win by far. So, okay. So go back to the idea that we undervalue smell. You said, you know, generally speaking, people get what, one to 5 % of their net worth if they lose their sense of smell.

22:37And that's too little. What percent do you think they should get? Well, in all honesty, this may sound extreme to you, but I think that they should get between 90 and 100 % of their net worth because what people don't understand, their entire life was turned upside down in tremendously devastating ways. And most significantly, actually, and this is what people don't appreciate, is in terms of their emotional life, in their sense of self, and in terms of their interpersonal interactions with the entire world around them, from those with whom they are intimate to their friends and colleagues and acquaintances and so forth.

23:13And severe depression can actually become something that people develop as a function of losing their sense of smell. And this isn't just because, oh, I don't get the pleasures from smell that I used to get. It's actually because the part of the brain that is processing our conscious perception of scent is the same part of the brain that is processing emotion and emotional learning and memory. And so when you have input from one end of that equation absent, the other side of that equation starts to derail. And so serious emotional negative states can evolve. And the fact is that if you have lost it permanently, that side is continuing to devolve.

23:55And so the other side of the equation, the emotional functioning side is also continuing to become more and more debilitated. So these are progressively negative states. And then you have the whole social experience of your world around you, you don't potentially realize it. But even being able to smell yourself, that's kind of like who you are. And if you don't have that, you kind of like lose yourself. I mean, it is maybe seems like strange, but if you don't have it, you become really disconnected from yourself, from other people. And it's even connected quite profoundly to our cognitive capabilities.

24:32That is to say, our mental acuity, our ability to think, even our spatial abilities, like being able to find the post store, like reading a map. I mean, it turns out that actually spatial memory and spatial orientation is highly linked to the processing of smell. Wow. I had no idea that the sense of smell was so core. But you did. You called yourself a smell enthusiast, not just scientist. How did you fall for your husband? Well, I mean, I should say it's because of how he smells. I mean, in reality, that was not the reason. It wasn't like the beacon, the flashing smell, and I came running across the room.

25:13But it certainly is the case that if I had not liked how he smelled, that would have been a barrier for us ever getting together. I mean, this is an interesting segue because what women say in marital counseling sessions or privately even to the therapist when they want to dump their husbands is, I cannot stand how he smells. smells and this is something that's probably evolved over the course of the relationship but now that this is a thing it is the barrier to intimacy if I don't like how you smell you are not getting near me and I actually had this happened to me a long time ago I was dating went out with this guy he was in law school all kinds of other sort of pedigree things all looked good nice guy and so forth and there was something about how he smelled that just turned me off it It was one date and done.

26:02And I've also heard of people when they first smelled their husband, they knew they were going to marry him. So it can lead in that direction. But the real critical part is that it doesn't stop the relationship. Wow. I've never thought about this before. Alison, did you? Well, smell's pretty important to me. So, I mean, I never thought about it in relation to like a romantic relationship. But I can see how that would be a huge turnoff for people if they couldn't stomach the smell of their partner, for sure. It never occurred to me to think, like on our first date, were you like, I like the smell of this guy?

26:39No, I wasn't sniffing you out. But I didn't notice anything fishy either. Although, Allison, you said you like fish. I do like fish. That's true. Okay, one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, Rachel, is people differ in their smelling sensitivity and skill. Allison has the nose of a jungle cat. This is true. I remember when our son was a baby, she once sniffed out his ear infection. Do you remember this? Oh, yes. He was in his crib and woke from an app, and I lifted him out of the crib, and his head was right next to my head. and I could just smell it. He has an ear infection. It turned out that he did.

27:22That was a special smell. But I didn't even notice. But what made me think of it was, I read an article about a woman who could smell Parkinson's and I wondered if Allison is missing a calling. Well, so we all actually have two unique things about smell. We each have a unique body odor. So the way that we each smell is different across every single person, which is how the tracking dog finds you and not somebody else when you leave your sock behind. But also each of our noses as a function of the genetics that are determining what receptors, how many copies of which receptors and so forth are turned on in our nose is ever so slightly different for everybody.

28:01And as I said before, the more copies you have of certain types of receptors, the more you're gonna be able to smell compounds that activate those receptors than if you have fewer versions of those. So number one, allicin may have more copies of, I don't know if it was a yeast infection in your son's ear or some other kind of infection, whatever it might have been, that we're able to detect the compound that was creating the inflammation and infection in your son's ear than Adam has. But it's also the case that, Allison, you said something that was really interesting and telling and that it smelled different.

28:34And doctors actually really used to use their noses for diagnosing a whole variety of illnesses. Now, if it were the case that your son had a yeast infection, that is a particular scent. There's also the scent of someone's breath if they have diabetes. There's a whole set of different disorders and actually turns out apparently Parkinson's disease where your body odor changes or your breath odor changes as a function of the illness because it's affecting your physiology and your metabolism and so forth, or even just locally, acutely, let's say, overproducing something in your ear, let's just say, that is detectable by smell.

29:12And people who are tuned into this, like I said, you know, prior to the 20th century, doctors really did use their noses for diagnostic purposes. And that also noticing when something doesn't smell the way it usually does is a signal that there's something off and something possibly wrong. And if it was, you know, your son's head and his ear, and you see, okay, it's coming from there, that's where something is wrong and therefore, you know, very clever, you diagnosed him. You know what I'm just realizing as you describe that is, Alison, you had a baseline awareness of what his ear normally smelled like to then notice the difference.

29:51I never thought about it that way. I just imagined it as, oh, you smelled something that wasn't right. Well, even if it wasn't conscious, like you're like, oh, I've been smelling my son's head and ear and this is the normal smell and now I smell something different. You are aware of even somewhat unconsciously of this is how my baby smells. And now my baby smells different. Absolutely. So fascinating.

30:15Okay. I think it's time for a lightning round. Okay. First question, what is your favorite finding about taste or smell science-wise? The interpretation of something is so powerful for driving meaning and then response to it. And that can be influenced by what you see. I mean, for instance, even the color of the plate that a food is served on can change our perspective of the taste profile of that food. The color of the plate affects how food tastes? How? So for instance, if you have something sweet, let's say a strawberry dessert or cotton candy ice cream, and you had that in a white bowl, it would taste sweeter than if it were in a black bowl.

30:59And also something that's sweet if it's in red, if it accentuates the sort of rosiness of it, can make it taste sweeter than if it's in something blue, which might actually accentuate the saltiness of it. You're going to want to redo the whole kitchen. All right, Allison, over to you. Rachel, who would be your dream dinner party guest? Julia Child. Wow. I just follow her around in my kitchen rather than the other way around. So that would be fun. Okay. And then asking for a friend here. If you know someone who has body odor, what is your best advice for how to navigate that? Does the person themselves dislike their body odor?

31:39I mean, everybody has a body odor. So let's say multiple people have observed that this person has body odor and no one's willing to tell them. Can you just get them deodorant as a gift? Okay, well, in certain cases, this can be because of a certain physiological condition. So it may be that metabolically there's something going on with this person. Either it's benign or it might not be, in which case you actually have a possibly medical reason to broach this to say, you know, there might be something underlying that's concerning. Another thing is potentially how often do they bathe? And or it's just they maybe sweat a lot more.

32:18they're just whatever the case might be. So I think there's different tactics to take as a function of the reasons you think that might be the case. It is something that's awkward to say, like, I think you should be using deodorant and you don't. Maybe we'll just send them a link to this podcast. What's the question you have for us?

32:39So actually, if you don't mind me asking this question just in general about the podcast, This is, I guess, a question I have for you in terms of how do you pick your guests? Oh, I usually start with whose work fascinates me and whose both insights and way of sharing them would be thought provoking or surprising to our listeners. Things that you're curious about are probably things that other people that your audience are curious about. So I'm sure there are super tasters out there who will be delighted that this is today's topic of conversation. And hopefully other people in their lives will not.

33:18Like they won't give them weird looks anymore. Or judge them. I want to get rid of the judgment. That's the mission here. I feel stigmatized based on taste buds that I can't control. Well, so Allison's a super smeller. Well, that doesn't exist quite in the same way. But you're highly sensitive to smell. And Adam's a super taster. So you're a perfect couple. Or have problems in restaurants, one of the two. Well, Rachel, thank you for joining us. This is so fascinating. I could ask you questions all day about taste and smell. Absolutely. We didn't even get to fragrance. Just so you know, this is a side.

33:53I put on perfume, even though we're not smelling each other, because it puts me in a certain mindset. Like it brings me into a certain mental space, even though you can't smell it. And it's a perfume that I wear most of the time. So I'm actually pretty much desensitized to it, except for when I first put it on. I get that little spritz hit and the mental space that it puts me in is a little bit above and beyond. So I smelled up for you instead of dressed up. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you. Thank you. Future of podcasting will have a smell receptor in the computer. I actually think this is going to be something that is in the near future that you're going to be able to send and receive the sense that the other side of the screen is experiencing.

35:13I don't want it, but you two have fun.