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smell

Videos

  • A Coat of Many Odors

    Ever leave a bar or restaurant and find your clothes still carrying that telltale scent? Well, it may hang on longer than you think—along with all sorts of other smells. In a...

  • A Culture of Human Cheese

    Smell is one of those senses where context can play a huge role. A fine cheese and a dirty foot share the same molecular smells, yet one is a delicacy and other is repulsive. In...

  • The Smell of Fear

    People always claim that animals can smell fear. Is there anything to it or in this case does “smell” just represent a wide range of perceptions? Artist and scent researcher...

  • Strip Club Science

    Hormonal changes in the body can often give off scent cues, whether we’re aware of them or not. For example, factors such as sexual maturation, pregnancy, and ovulation all cause...

  • The Smell of Clean

    Do you smell that? If not, don’t worry. Like many things, smell has a genetic component, and not all smells are detectable by everybody. At Scents and Sensibilities, the audience...

  • Are Flowers Smelling You Back?

    Animals utilize their sense of smell to explore their surroundings. But what about plants? When you smell a flower, is it smelling you back? Is it trying to figure out if your...

  • Smell: Fact or Fiction?

    Blind people gain an enhanced sense of smell to compensate for the lost sense, right? Right? Wrong. It turns out that it’s a total myth. Avery Gilbert, a scent psychologist, takes...

  • The Great Pheromone Debate

    Pheromones are chemicals secreted by an organism that trigger a social response in members of the same species. Hive insects such as bees and ants rely on these chemical signals...

  • The Power of Smell

    Despite being one of the oldest senses, our sense of smell is easily one of the least understood. It’s also the only one with a direct connection to our brain. With each breath we...

  • How Do We Smell?

    Take a deep breath. What do you smell? At that moment, millions of molecules are rushing into your nose and caressing the nerve endings of your brain’s olfactory bulb. But how...

Blog Posts

  • Full Program: Scents and Sensibiities

    What does fear smell like? Love? Can we use scent to control behavior? Do humans really sense pheromones? What if you could diagnose diseases just by smelling them? And exactly how does our brain convert floating organic molecules into chemical signals that our brain processes...

  • The Smell of Fear

    Yesterday we looked at the power of scent to signal biological changes and influence attraction. But what about other emotions? Can one really smell fear?

  • Love Is in the Air

    Hormonal changes in the body can often give off scent cues, whether we’re aware of them or not.

  • The Emerging Science of Smell

    What does fear smell like? Love? Can we use scent to control behavior? Do humans really sense pheromones? What if you could diagnose diseases just by smelling them? And exactly how does our brain convert floating organic molecules into chemical signals that our brain processes...

  • Are Flowers Smelling You Back?

    Animals utilize their sense of smell to explore their surroundings. But what about plants? When you smell a flower, is it smelling you back? Is it trying to figure out if your nose would make a good pollinator? Chemical ecologist Consuelo De Moraes shows us a parasitic vine that...

  • The Smell of Sexy: Leslie Vosshall Featured in NY Times

    World Science Festival alum, Leslie Vosshall, is featured in today's New York Times. She discusses the neuroscientific relationship between scent and arousal, and the perfume industry's never-ending quest to bottle sex appeal.

  • Can You Smell That?

    BOOM. The smell hit me like a punch in the teeth. Staggering, I tried to make sense of the pungent, salty, almost sweet odor. It was certainly offensive, but also curiously intriguing. What was this?

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