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. Now, the pandemic is giving that research new urgency. Pamela Dalton, PhD, of the ... Show More
Today
Multisensory perception: How sight, sound and touch shape what we taste, with Charles Spence, PhD
Why does seafood taste better at the beach? Why are so many snacks crunchy? Can the color of a room or the music in the background change the way we experience what we eat and drink? Charles Spence, PhD, head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford, disc ... Show More
41m 17s
Jun 10
Why midlife may be your prime time, with Margie Lachman, PhD
For many adults, midlife is a time of competing responsibilities: raising children, helping parents and managing careers, all while confronting their own aging. Yet psychologists increasingly see these years not as a period of crisis or decline but one of growth and opportunity. ... Show More
31m 10s
Jun 3
How children learn culture — and create it, with Dorsa Amir, PhD
Which aspects of human cognition are universal and which are shaped by the culture we grow up in? Dorsa Amir, PhD, director of the Mind & Culture Lab at Duke University, talks about how children learn cultural norms around things like sharing, risk-taking and cooperation; what sh ... Show More
42m 47s
Jun 2021
How Smell, Taste & Pheromone-Like Chemicals Control You
This episode explains how we sense chemicals through smell, taste, and pheromones. How things smell and taste and chemicals in the tears, breath, and on the skin of others have a profound effect on how we feel, what we do, and our hormones. I explain the 3 types of responses to s ... Show More
1h 55m
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
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
Sep 2022
Sniffing Out the Cause of Smell Loss
Imagine if your morning cup of coffee one day smelled like rotting garbage. Or, if your favorite comfort food had no taste at all. For some COVID long haulers, this is their new reality. What causes these distortions in smell and taste in the first place? And, what treatment opti ... Show More
34m 7s