Smells repel and attract; they bring emotionally charged memories to mind; they guide behavior and thought nonconsciously; they give food much of its taste; and the loss of sense of smell can help diagnose disease. But what features of the world do smells pick out? What is the olfactory code?
In her new book, Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind (Harvar ... Show More
Yesterday
Catherine Elgin, "Epistemic Ecology" (MIT Press, 2025)
Humans are highly inquisitive, yet fallible and cognitively limited. How can we improve our epistemic lot despite our limitations? In Epistemic Ecology (MIT Press, 2025), Catherine Elgin develops a model in which individuals learn to rely on communal epistemic resources, such as ... Show More
1 h
Feb 18
John Drabinski, "So Unimaginable a Price: Baldwin and the Black Atlantic" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
What happens if we turn to James Baldwin, not just for the amazing quotations and excellent photos, but as a critical theorist? What if we read his nonfiction philosophically? What can Baldwin help us understand and do now? In So Unimaginable a Price: Baldwin and the Black Atlant ... Show More
59m 4s
Feb 10
Ellen Clarke, "The Units of Life: Kinds of Individual in Biology" (Oxford UP, 2025)
While we tend to think of biological individuals in terms of paradigmic cases – a dog, a starfish, a bacterium – our ordinary criteria for distinguishing one individual from another are inadequate for making these distinctions in general. If a starfish can literally split itself ... Show More
1h 8m
Mar 2021
What COVID-19 is teaching us about the importance of smell, with Pamela Dalton, PhD
Many people around the world have lost their sense of smell this past year due to COVID-19. Before the pandemic, scientists had already begun to gain a deeper understanding of how sophisticated our sense of smell is and how it is intertwined with our mental and physical health. N ... Show More
34m 1s
Dec 2021
Encore - Unlocking the mysteries of smell, our most underappreciated sense, with Pamela Dalton, PhD
Many people around the world have lost their sense of smell this past year due to COVID-19. Before the pandemic, scientists had already begun to gain a deeper understanding of how sophisticated our sense of smell is and how it is intertwined with our mental and physical health. N ... Show More
34m 43s
Jul 2020
Losing your taste to coronavirus
Taste and smell loss are thought to be two of the most common symptoms of coronavirus, but some of the least understood, persisting long after the virus has gone. Scientists all over the world are racing to find out why Covid-19 is attacking these senses, and what this might teac ... Show More
29m 15s
May 2023
How Smells Influence Our Hormones, Health & Behavior | Dr. Noam Sobel
In this episode, my guest is Noam Sobel, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the department of brain sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Dr. Sobel explains his lab’s research on the biological mechanisms of smell (“olfaction”) and how sensing odorants and chemicals in ou ... Show More
3h 10m
Jun 2023
Odor Receptors, Whale Vocal Fry, Body Donation
Today you’ll learn about what really happens when we get a whiff of something, about the mechanism that allows dolphins to communicate with vocal fry, and the dark and windy history of body donation.Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/ep ... Show More
13m 8s