November 24, 2011 • 32 mins
Will smell-o-vision make a comeback? Will our zombie movies smell like rotten flesh and our video games reek of voided bowels and fear? In this episode, Robert and Julie discuss the history of scented media and the emerging technology of printable smells.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. And
we're coming at you once again, basically at the at
at one since right, we're basically coming at your hearing
(00:23):
into your ear holes. Uh. We can't really engage a
number of other Uh. We can't touch you. We can't
touch We shouldn't touch you, probably right, and you should
not touch us, so the sign says and uh. And
and you can also generally cannot see us, unless I
guess if you if you pull up a picture of this,
you can sort of get a little you can engage
your your sense of sight a little bit with a
(00:44):
podcast or if we have visual aids, such as with
the the Art podcast that we did, and we had
a blog post that went along with it, so you
could look up the different artists as we went along.
But still you're not you're not watching us podcast. Uh.
And you and you also cannot smell us. You cannot
smell the podcast chamber. And that's probably a good thing generally. Well,
and I'm not saying anything about your funk or my
(01:04):
fun you're saying that some of the other podcasters kind
of smell. No, I'm not saying that sometimes there is
half eaten food in here. That's usually my half eaten banana.
I may have to take credit for these things, but no, yeah,
we're we're talking about the fact that there are limits
um to technology we think so far in terms of
(01:25):
expressing all five senses. I used to think there were
no limits, but but now I fear that there are
no limits in the future. Well, I mean, let's talk
a little bit about this. And in the past, people
have tried to um to layer these senses in different media,
like smellvision for instance, and and we we had a
whole podcast where we talked about the power of smell
and the importance of smell and and smell is is
(01:47):
one of the more one of our more primal instincts
and one of our more powerful and and as we've
mentioned before, it's the one sent out of the five
that interacts directly with the brain. So it's a powerful
scent to be omitted from any of your media. But
generally the technology hasn't been here, but we have actually
tried in the past. Uh, most notably h is of course,
(02:07):
Smell a Vision in h in nineteen sixty, but before that,
the first recorded use of smell in the theater was
nineteen sixteen at the Family Theater in Forest City, Pennsylvania. Uh.
And this was during a Rose Bowl game. And so
they had the scent of rose oil piped in, which
you know, and it's really low tech, like they had
a cotton ball that's saturated with rose oil. Yeah. Uh.
(02:29):
And then they had a fan that was blowing it
into the audience. Yeah. And that's pretty pretty low tech.
And then some of the technologies today are about that level.
But Smell a Vision, of course, is the one that
everybody remembers. Um. This came around nineteen sixty and it
was the mention of this guy, Mike Todd Jr. Who
was the son of a really accomplished producer by the
name of Michael Todd who produced around the world in
(02:51):
eighty days, you know, made it, made some nice bank
off of that, but then died. And so his son
invests his inheritance in this concept of all a vision thing,
this is gonna be the next big thing. And again
on paper, it kind of sounds cool. It's like, you know,
this is an age where it's like, all right, we
got talking in our movies. Now we're talking, We're we're
looking at it. You know what else can we do?
You know, can we make we can There's the whole
(03:13):
thing with a Tingler about making the seats vibrate. And
as we see today, you know, everybody keeps like up
in the Annie three d um, etcetera. So you can
imagine the guys thinking, all right, smells pretty important. If
I can somehow incorporate smell into the motion picture experience,
that's gonna put even more butts and seats. Right, So
the unleashed smell a vision on an unsuspecting public. H
(03:34):
and it's kind of a disaster. Um. They only use
it for one film under the Smell a Vision Moniker,
and that was a film by the name of Scent
of Miss of a Mystery, which interestingly enough, star Denholm Elliott,
you know, of course from Raiders of the Lost Art
the British guy and Peter Lori, yeah voice, can you
(03:56):
do a Peter Lori re help me please? Rick? Yes,
that that's the one. Yeah, yeah, wow, okay, I nailed it. Yeah,
you did nailed it. Um and uh. And so that
then they had like all sorts of cool catch phrases
for it, like first they moved, then they talked, now
they smell. In nineteen sixty like, finally we we have
(04:17):
we have the trifecta of senses engaged with their motion pictures,
and a new age of cinema is about to begin.
But of course it didn't because it didn't really work
all that well. There was there was some slight delay
with the smells, like the smell was supposed to hit
so it was the smell of a fresh casserole. There
was not a casserole in the movie. But just give
you an example. Imagine if on the screen that they
(04:38):
present a fresh cast role and then like several seconds later,
the scent fresh cast role hits you people during the
sex scene and like whoa, what chicken casserole? And then
you know, I don't know, Sophia Lauren is doing something
that's just weird. Yeah, that level of things happening, and
you know, so that you'd have the smells out of sync.
Um other some of the theater's got the smell like
(05:01):
really loud, like right in the face. Other areas couldn't
get it. So it just wasn't all that well. Implemented. Yeah,
I mean these are we're talking about cartridges on a belt, right,
and they're being pierced by needles during certain scenes. And
we're also talking about this hissing sound that it would
make sometimes too. This is what I've read that would
(05:22):
be really distracting. So people are like, what is going on?
I'm just trying to watch this movie and I'm being
inundated here. Yeah. So it's like you'd be watching a
film and a guy would be like, would you like
a cup of coffee? And it's like, no, I don't
really want any coffee because I really need to finish
this sandwich first, and then you know, every little thing. Yeah,
but I will tell you that if Casablanca had had
(05:43):
smell a Vision, and you know, of course with Peter Laurie,
I would be happy to to experience that with smell
a Vision. Why what do you think Peter Laurie smelled like? Well, no,
I mean they're not Peter Laurie specifically, but you've got
the spice market going on. Um, you know, it's hot human.
I could see where it could have been an interesting bouquet. Um. Now,
(06:04):
I would feel that Bogart would have probably smelled kind
of weird where and like cigars. Yeah, I mean, I
guess that could be a good smell. But also I
think Lorie might have actually smelled good because he seems
like the kind of guy who you know, he would
realize he would need to have the smells all on,
impeccably dressed. Yeah. Yeah um. And then, of course, in
homage to Smell a Vision, American film director John Waters
(06:28):
alice an enhanced Odorama version of his film Polyester in Yeah. Now,
this was more akin to the scent test that we
went through in the last oh right, the one where
you made me smell David Beckham's foot right off of
a card, numbered cards, Because that's the same way it
worked with John waters piece Polyester footles, I should say, yeah.
(06:49):
He Basically, each audience member had ten cards numbered one
through ten, and they had smells such as flowers, pizza, glue, gas, grass,
and of course feces. Oh right, right, Because if you're
gonna if you're gonna implement smellvision, you need to go
for the full, the full bouquet of Now, for anybody
(07:10):
who who is John Waters fan, maybe you'll agree with
me that pink flamingos should have been when where he
had smell Avision where the main character actually eats feces,
Because then, I mean, seriously, I mean, if you're trying
to trump up the dramatic moment and watch someone eat
feces and then smell it, that's that's going to do
it right there, there you go. Yeah, Waters was Waters
(07:31):
is around, Uh such a like a classy sleeves bag.
I love that about it. You know a few people
can pull that off to be both classy and sleazy
and and make both work. Um and I and I
think he would probably agree with that. Then there was
also in n the BBC of course, did that hoax
(07:52):
with the smell a vision where they told the viewers
the April Fool stage and they told them that they
could they could smell through the TV of sliced onions
brewing coffee and invited viewers at home to confirm the
sense uh that we're emanating from their television set by
by writing in about it. And people did I just
(08:13):
you know, testimony to the power suggestion. People were like, oh,
I could totally smell the onions in the coffee, and
it was it was all a gag. Placebo smells right, Yeah,
it's kind of interesting. So for the most part though,
this is you know, it's just received a few token
nods to the possibility of smell uh in our cinema,
the most recent one, uh being the more recent spy
(08:35):
kids movie All the Time in the World that when
I had scratch and sniff cards. So it's like, you know, again,
we're in that age where people are like, what can
we do to up the Annie three D? All right,
let's try smells. See if that works. Now. One area
of entertainment where it seems like you you we've seen
a lot more um smell engagement has been the haunted house,
the professional haunted house. And I'm not talking about like
(08:57):
the one put on like the local arch in the
small or some club yeah, or some club you know,
or just because right, or your neighbors. I mean haunted houses.
I think I may have discussed it before. It's it's
a pretty complex thing when you get it down to it,
Like the actual business of it, it looks easy. So
you have every year you'll have people come along and say, like,
(09:18):
I can do a hunted house. I just see people
lining up and handing out some money. I can do
that too, but there's there's a lot more involved. There's
a there's sort of a science of scaring and uh,
and they generally that the better ones will try and
hit you on various levels. They'll try and so they're
throwing startling sounds at you. There's they're throwing weird textures
at you under underneath your feet, and of course they'll
(09:39):
try and engage your smell, your sense of smell. Yeah,
lay some of these honest, because uh, these are very
interesting and I haven't been to a haunted house in years.
Oh yeah, well, well we actually have a really good one,
uh here in the Atlanta area, the nether World Haunted House. Yeah,
I've heard that one's good. Yeah. One of the guys
who does it, this guy Billy messina Um, who I've
(10:01):
met a time or two, like mutual friends. Uh. He
actually worked special effects on such films as Judge, Dread,
basket Case too, and uh the seminal favorite uff Franken Hooker.
So frank Hooker. That's a fine one. Yeah. But but
but anyway, it's a really cool hunted house and they
will hit you with these smells. So I looked into
this because because we were like, well maybe we can
(10:22):
implement that here at the house. Stuff works, so you
can get a professional sent machine for about seventy sounds
good so far. Yeah, there's some cheaper options, but I figure,
if if we're going to do this, let's do it right,
let's do it big. And then there are just there's
just a plethora of different smells and smell combinations you
can purchase for use in these machines, and they range
(10:43):
from things such as like uh oh, there's like wedding bouquet, peaches, sunshine,
fruity um, grass, ocean and those are great. But if
that sounds scary, it's exactly right. That's I guess, you know,
because if you're only gonna have your hunted house once
a year or for one month out of the year,
you might want to try and at other times, so
you can buy these other smells. But the scary smells,
(11:03):
that's that's where it gets interesting. Stuff Like one manufacturer
makes urine, sulfur, flatulence, body odor, smelly feet, bad breath.
But then there's another um manufacturer who really uh sexes
up the titles, so you get stuff like burning electrical um,
candy cane, dead rat um. Oh, this is the one
(11:26):
I really like prehistoric poop because that has a we
all know what prehistoric poops nostrils. Hell Um, swamp, you're in,
swamp you're in, not that there's not really a swamp
here in one, but you could combine the two your
own like swamp urine and and stinky feet prehistoric poop mill.
(11:47):
Do you know you can just go nuts with it? Um?
So yeah, you can find these online if you were
interested enough to want to, you know, up the game
at your own household or church operated haunted house. This
sounds like a clan of try up version of like
the Barbie perfume maker. Are you familiar with us? This
is something I got my youth, and I actually really
liked it. I hated Barbies and anyway, I won't go
(12:09):
into that, but this I love because your kid create
all these horrible smells and it's like a chemical lab
for the Barbie. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I proposed
that somebody go out there and make this for for
a remake. This is some sort of ghoulish thing for
kids out there, because I think they would love it. Well.
I remember there being like stink toys when I was
a kid. Yeah, I don't know if they assume they
(12:30):
had something like this in the US. But I was
a kid at the time in Canada and Newfoundland, Canada actually,
and I remember visiting some town and they're being like
a little you know, junk shop there, you know, I
mean just in everything shop. They had some junkie toys
variety store, and I ended up obtaining a some sort
of stink toy and I think it was like some
(12:51):
sort of little monster and the big cell on the
package with it it smells like rotten eggs, and so
at a certain age, that's awesome, you know. Yeah, No,
I'm still kind of excited about it. I mean, the
ability to mix all of those would be great fun. Right, Okay,
But here's the question, you know, getting to the technology
of today. Would you want that smell emanating from your
(13:12):
cell phone? Right? Yeah? This is where it really gets
interesting because I remember these technologies we're talking about here.
It basically involves the use of primary odors to create
other odors. Basically, this Barbie kit you're talking about combined
this with that or maybe and they smelled awful by
the way, but but that's the idea of like using
(13:35):
five or six maybe even basic smells out of hundreds
only we're talking hundreds of primary odors in these palates, right,
and we know just from the research we did on
the Other Smell podcasts of fifteen thou smells that have
been identified out there, right, So this would be very
much of a first step and uh and kind of
an approximate attempt to create some of these smells, these
(13:57):
odors out of primary odors. Uh. And so you would
you would be able to input all right, say it's
um the smell of fresh pumpkin pie. Yea. So it
would then input several primary odors such as I'm I'm
guessing like maybe if there's a pumpkin primary odor, some
sort of a cinnamon primary Is it cinnamon it's in
pumpkin pie? No, it's nutmeg, Like nutmeg is a primary odor.
(14:19):
And maybe like some sort of buttery smell as a
primary odor. I don't know. But but then those those
three would get implemented together into pumpkin pie. That's right.
And so in Japan there's ant T communications, so cell
phone owners are able to download a fragrance playlist or
files of recipes for specific smells along with visual and
(14:40):
or audio. So we're talking about you know animation or
mini content from imodes mobile website. The service uses a
handsets infrared port to transfer the fragrance data to a
dedicated device similar to a plug in air freshener that's
loaded with a cartridge of base fragrances what you're talking about.
The device then mixes them to create the chosen smell,
which it then waffs out, accompanying the audio or visual
(15:01):
content that's played on the phone. So you can again
you can share your your playlist with friends who also
subscribe to the service. You can also use it remotely,
so you can say via your your cell phone, Hey,
when I get home, I want the whole house to
wreak of chocolate chip cookies and it will do that
for you. That's be let down when there are no
actual chocolate chip cookies. So I know, right, but but
(15:24):
you know, hey, if you if that's the way you
want to roll ino, you know, you want to stick
up your house with various sense, then you can do it.
Um n T T do como device. This is a
device along with the phone, can also analyze your breath
and tell tell you how much fat you've burned off
and how hungry you maybe so it goes the other way,
right and a emit smells and also analyzes it. So
(15:46):
we're outsourcing our ability to know what size snack we
should have. Yeah. Actually, there's an image analyzer, or you
can take a picture of the food you're about to
eat and it will go through the database of like
foods and tell you what the approximate chloric information is.
Huh yeah, so okay that you can have some smells
(16:07):
through your phone, but you can also have stinky tweets.
Oh yeah. This is the OLLI by Mint Digital and Foundry,
And the idea here is this is a device. You
can think of it as a smell printer that hooks
up to your your computer and you would have it
set off to where not only would you maybe get
like a little um audio sound when you received a tweet,
you would get a smell like what does a tweet
(16:28):
smell like? I don't know, maybe a bird nest? Well,
it depends on who's tweeting. You can you can actually
customize it, customize it so that Oh, so let's say
Rain Wilson does a tweet, like, what would Rain Wilson's
tweets smell like? I don't know, I just don't know
him that well at all. I mean, I don't know
him at all. No, but he's on Twitter. You don't
(16:49):
know these people at all. But that's the thing, you
because I don't know what sort of personal scent. But
let's say that you're you know, sister or your uncle
tweeted you could make some sort of aroma. And in fact,
they were making fun of this on NPRS game show
Wait Wait, don't tell me, and they said, Okay, um,
you know, got a Facebook message from grandma, mix genete
(17:09):
with Virginia Slims or your college roommates. Tweets could smell
like fresca and regret sex. The smells aren't gonna be
that nuanced. Yeah, well, well what would what would what
would our tweets smell like? What would stuff? With all
your minds? Tweets can force a smell I don't know,
like patuli entire treads. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. That's like
(17:32):
the last thing we would smell like. I hope I
would hope. So I don't know. Maybe I would just
go with pumpkin pie. I keep coming back to pumpkin pie.
Maybe because it's November. Yeah, yeah, you're anticipating there. It's
all suggestion. UM. So all right, we're gonna take a
quick break and when we get back, we're going to
talk about online dating and smells. This podcast is brought
(17:53):
to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery channel at Intel. We've leave Curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at Curiosity dot com and
explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. Let's
talk about some more about these smellable tweets. Yeah, so
(18:15):
the smellable tweets again. You can customize this. You've got
a little device that's going to admit the smell, right,
and it can be a Facebook update, can be a tweet,
it can be pretty much anything. Um. And how it
works is actually this device has indexed thousands of smells
based on their chemical structures and their place on the
scent spectrum. Each sent is then coded and digitized into
(18:35):
a small file, and then digital file is embedded in
web content or email. A user request or triggers the
file by clicking a mass or opening email, and then
a small amount of the aroma is admitted by the
device and it stores a hundred and twenty cents. So again,
this is pretty base when you are thinking about, you know,
the fifteen thousand sins that are out there at least indexed,
(18:55):
and they're talking about it being open source as well,
so that would give every in the ability to create
new annoying smells to go with it. I mean, just
the sky's the limited's kind of and and if they
were able to implement a mobile version kind of going
into the smell a phone thing, I mean, just think
of every annoying cell phone ringtone that you've heard, not
only the ones that come with the phones, but the
(19:16):
custom ones especially. It can be so horrible. Imagine if
they smell too. Yeah, I know, I know, the potential
for misuse is great on this, and we'll talk about
that in a little bit, but let's talk about this
odor matching. So yeah, a company called basis Note allows
online datas to upload their scent profiles. And uh this
is from the biologist and basis Note founder August Emily.
He says, if everything fits, you have the same interest,
(19:39):
lots to talk about, but you can stand there smell,
then a love affair doesn't stand a chance. So you know,
makes sense that you would also be able to check
out someone smell before you meet them, and it gives
another area for people to lie on on the internet.
Not only can you lie about what you're what you're into,
and what you look like, but what you smell like
as well. Well, here's how you would have to lie.
You'd have to have someone else take a a lava
(20:00):
test for you, because this is how they actually get
the coding for this. You take this lava test which
is then carried out some sort of test at home
through a chromatographic process, and it's similar to a pregnancy
test and the result is this a simple digital code
which then can be entered into your online profile. And
the Scientific Compatibility System was launched on Swiss Friends dot
(20:22):
c a just a Swiss dating site, and at press
time it costs about fifty dollars. But the reason why
they're doing this is that evolutionary biologists says, there are
our noses are really involved in choosing our partners and
what you and I have talked about this before. We've
heard about this at least peripherally and some of our
research and we've talked about it. But this is basically
(20:43):
saying that our nose probes whether or not the other
person has similar genes to us. Okay, because the more
varied the gene pools are, the higher the chance for healthy,
strong offspring. Your nose is detecting this and this is
just totally fascinating. It works like this, um the more
major histocompatibility complex molecules you have, the better chance you
(21:05):
have at bolstering your own immune system, since these molecules
helped to create a defense reaction in your body, and
these are called the MHC genes and humans there are
more than a hundred variations of each of the nine
of the nine most important MHC genes, and the more
vary the MHC, the better the immune system of the
offspring will be armed. Okay, So, according to Hammerley the biologist,
(21:29):
your specific body odor is actually marked by the MHC
combinations that you have and then is transmitted in your
bodily fluids and transformed into your your smell. So in theory, right,
because I don't know, you know, to what extent this
is really buttoned up that you could sniff out from
another person and say, you know what, you're way too
similar to me with your MHC content. It's not gonna
(21:52):
work for us. You know, this also brings to mind
one possibility with the smell a vision, and that is
in the same way that a stay successful actor will
have a body double so that during a nude scene
it will ensure that their body looks amazing. So in
the future, perhaps they will also have odor doubles just
to ensure that they also smell amazing. Yeah, but I mean,
(22:14):
are you saying like an online dating thing in an
online dating sort of sense, Like some of that technology
and some of that data make it see like what
is the optimal smell that that men want to smell
uh when contemplating an attractive woman and vice versa of
course for okay, so this is another sexual inaction. I
totally get your saying, But again, like this is this
sort of feeds my fear of how we are continuing
(22:36):
to isolate ourselves and have virtual relationships with one another,
which to some extent is fine, right, this is just
sort of the world we live in. But what happens
when you get down to just living in front of
your computer and trying to state all five senses and
then creating these dummy sense to upload. I mean, it's
sort of like your virtual self dating another virtual person,
(22:57):
you know, ASSU mean that you don't really have a
relationship a face to face, right, And so that's what
I think is interesting about this technology is that you know,
obviously it can be used with video games. It can
be used video games. Part really interested me. There's a
one version of this so that's in the works supposedly,
uh called Odor re Vision, and it's got from a
(23:18):
French company called Old Faction UM and they have a
verying on it called smell It. It's aimed at video games.
And I was looking through the list of some of
the proposed smells because they have you know, like a
couple of dozen of them, and they include things like
precious would smell, um atmosphere, big machines, atmosphere, hospitals, smell
of cakes, uh, smell naked body, scent of a woman, um,
(23:42):
odor fabrics, the things of this nature. But but it
had me wondering in both video games, I'm just laughing
about scent about naked woman. Scent of a naked woman. Well,
you know, I don't I don't know how video game
programmers figured out what that smells like. Oh yeah, um
no no, But well, what this really makes me think
about is some we we have we encounter violence and
(24:03):
and sex in our films, and uh, and especially the
violence in video games. It to some degree the sex
or sexual sexuality, and uh, we end up having this
sterilized version of it, especially violence. So if we even
even partaking of violence in a video game or witnessing
violence in a movie, if we smelled the violence, if
(24:24):
we smell blood, if we smelled decaying bodies, if we
smelled someone dying and their bowels loosening with death, these
kinds of things so specific and graphic, well, it's just
a reality, you know. I mean, if if we through,
if we use this to make death more real when
it occurs in our fiction and in our in our
(24:44):
video games, I wonder if that would be a positive thing,
because as it is, it's like when you know, blood
is beautiful and red and it splashes everywhere, and these
films and in these video games, what if you had
to actually smell it? I think it would kill the
industry really because then because we know that emotion is
evoked right from smells and empathy, I mean, all of
these sort of things would be engaged. And one of
(25:05):
the reasons why we like video games so much or
even movies, is because we can remove ourselves, we can
distance ourselves, and we can watch the action unfold without
any sort of horrible results. Well, I mean it's like
zombie movies. Who would watch a zombie movie if you
had to smell the reek of rotting corpses whenever the
zombie showed up? Try it once? Yeah, well, it would
(25:27):
definitely make it more horrific. It would be like the
stink odors that they're shooting at you in the horror movie.
And for that matter, um, when it comes to things
like like pornography, if people had to if people watching
pornography had to smell the smells of of what's going on,
would they be that into it? I don't know, well,
especially if this biologist is correct in terms of a
scent prile profile for each person. Um, you know, would
(25:51):
you be someone's scent during sex sort of turn one
person off or another? Of course, I think that what
he's talking about in volution um or within within the
context of evolution is really uh, it's pretty simplistic, right,
because there's so many more things that are going on.
And maybe this is why you know, Match dot Com
(26:12):
isn't using this technology right now because not necessarily everybody
is looking for a lifelong partner right when they're using this,
and you know it also, we don't really know the
results of this born out at large um, but I
was thinking of us, particularly with the video games too,
that the smell of fear, and this is something we
talked about with this little told us right that you
know that the wall that she created with these nine
(26:33):
different sets of men's fears, you know, if you are
piping that in with video game, I mean, that's that
would be sort of horrific to to smell someone else's fear,
right because you're not going to reject that it's just
something that you smell. Yeah, if you're like smell, you're
in a multiplayer setting and you're smelling the fear of
your fellow players or your opponents, the kind of thing,
especially with something like bomber Man, which is so cartoony.
But then if you were smelling fear during bomber Man,
(26:54):
that would be kind of crazy. Here's my greatest fear though,
is that it's going to be used by marketers, like
to the point where it's just you know, ad infinitum,
where like you know, you've got a pop up screen
of coca cola coming on and you can smell coca
cola or something else, or baked goods, which could get
really annoying, even if those are things that you like,
(27:14):
you know, if you're just happy to be like surfing
and you're like that smell again, yeah, or or scent hacking,
Like what if we reached the point where the house
stuff works homepage smells like nint because I don't know,
it seems like it's like, seems delightful, Yeah, but then
some hackers come along and they make it smell like
put the entire tread exactly exactly. That would be that
(27:35):
would be kind of horrific, and that would be the
kind of abuse you can expect that, my friend, are
the that that's that's the future smell right there? Yeah,
But if I can come back to the whole digital world,
like the other side of this too, is that so
much is we leave more and more of our lives digitally,
and we're we're taking it things in through through the
(27:55):
Internet and through games and through movies. We're, like I said,
we're getting that sterile version of it all where we're
getting a version of it where an entire Uh, one
of our primary senses is cut off. Like, then what
happens when we actually engage in uh, basically any activity
in life and we were suddenly hit with the with
the olfactory dimension of that experience as well? Like, what
(28:17):
what does that do to us? You know? I don't know.
It's interesting because there is this idea about the synthetic
version versus the true version, and then again the repository
of all of our experiences, our memories being evoked again,
our emotions by smells. So if you're manipulating them on
a certain level that you know, this this this virtual level,
and you're isolated, Yeah, what does that do to you
(28:40):
you specifically specifically? Yeah, I don't know. We'll find out. Yeah,
it's it's gonna be an interesting future, I think, because
it seems like they'll probably not implement all of these
things to the degree to which we're talking about, because
it's kind of like the smell vision factor. It's like
it reaches the point, yes, we can make movies smell,
but to what is they're actually an economic payoff? Yeah? Yeah,
(29:02):
there's some fails they are, for sure, But we already
know and we've talked about this before that in that
retailers us this um quite a bit. You go into
the Gap or any other major retailer, and most likely
there's a very specific scent that has been made for
them to help you feel great about your purchase. Right
to whatever extent it can be, it can be implemented
and used to make money, it will be used. We
(29:24):
can be sure of that your computer is gonna smell
in the future. That's what we're saying. Yeah, no way
around it, no way around it, and it won't just
smell like all the snack macks that you've dropped into,
which is nothing an unpleasant odor from no. No, there
we go, the future of smell, the future of stink um.
We have a few quick listener mails that I'd like
to read um and we're gonna so you'll stip in
(29:46):
here and grab one. Okay, Drew's one from Timothy dear
stb y M crew U, which is us. I've always
thought of zombies as an expression of the other, as
in the unthinking masses, sheapish crowds of people, etcetera. Uh.
I believe this is why zombies are so fond of
urban settings like these shopping mall or the state far
where crowds are so common. I also agree with the
(30:07):
assessment that modern zombies have a parallel with modern work um,
which often consists of repetition, requiring very little in the
way of complex problem solving. In this way, they represent
our horror of the mainstream drudgery of simple repetitive work
in the absorption of our individually into the sheepish consumer culture.
Zombie hunting, therefore, is a radical expression of individuality. How
(30:28):
ironic then, that zombies are such a wildly popular trend.
Thanks for all, Thanks for all the great cast, Tim,
And of course he was talking responding to our episode
about apocalypse and our attraction to apocalypse and specifically our
love with fare with zombie apocalypse. That so some some
interesting thoughts there from Tim. We heard from listener Lindsay
on Facebook and she says, you guys are rad exclamation
(30:50):
point um, which is good. I just listened to the
Martyr podcast. It made me think of a few people
I know who don't use any meds while getting their
teeth worked on because they are in recovery from addiction
their goal of sobriety. But it made me wonder about
a connection with the history of self abuse equals higher
through a pain threshold piece of your podcast, since addiction
could could definitely be considered self abuse anyway, keep up
(31:14):
the great work. And that's that's interesting because I hadn't
really I thought as much about that to Menion of
when we were talking about individuals who say, um, you know,
going to the dental office and don't want drugs use
stones that there would be some individuals who would be
opposed to it because they have a history with substance abuse. Likewise,
you also have people who are straight edge right who
(31:34):
were refused to take alcohol or drugs, and then how
does that impact their choices in there? Would they experience
more pain? That's the question because if you have well,
I don't know, I'm just sort of thinking out a
lot of here. But if you've got the joke commune
receptors and abuse them and they've you've released a lot
of dopamine as a result, might your body best of
train to be able to do that at well? I
(31:56):
don't know. There things to think about. And if anybody
out there is straight edge, I'd be in honest to hear,
what what's your relationship with pain? Just don't feel like
you need to drop like, you know, a saw on
your foot or anything. Don't don't, don't test your or
a lead weight. Let's say that because the song on
the phone is just a little bit too graphic. All right, Well, hey,
if you want to share anything with this um, specifically,
(32:16):
if you want to share anything about smells and the
future of smells, you can find us on our Facebook
and on our Twitter. We'll Blow the Mind on both
of those and badly we we don't have the custom
smell implemented just yet unless you're listening to this podcast
at some distant point in the future, and then perhaps yes, yeah,
if that's the case, then you can email us your
sent profile at Blow the Mind at House to works
(32:37):
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join the House to Work staff
as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. And
we're coming at you once again, basically at the at
at one since right, we're basically coming at your hearing
(00:23):
into your ear holes. Uh. We can't really engage a
number of other Uh. We can't touch you. We can't
touch We shouldn't touch you, probably right, and you should
not touch us, so the sign says and uh. And
and you can also generally cannot see us, unless I
guess if you if you pull up a picture of this,
you can sort of get a little you can engage
your your sense of sight a little bit with a
(00:44):
podcast or if we have visual aids, such as with
the the Art podcast that we did, and we had
a blog post that went along with it, so you
could look up the different artists as we went along.
But still you're not you're not watching us podcast. Uh.
And you and you also cannot smell us. You cannot
smell the podcast chamber. And that's probably a good thing generally. Well,
and I'm not saying anything about your funk or my
(01:04):
fun you're saying that some of the other podcasters kind
of smell. No, I'm not saying that sometimes there is
half eaten food in here. That's usually my half eaten banana.
I may have to take credit for these things, but no, yeah,
we're we're talking about the fact that there are limits
um to technology we think so far in terms of
(01:25):
expressing all five senses. I used to think there were
no limits, but but now I fear that there are
no limits in the future. Well, I mean, let's talk
a little bit about this. And in the past, people
have tried to um to layer these senses in different media,
like smellvision for instance, and and we we had a
whole podcast where we talked about the power of smell
and the importance of smell and and smell is is
(01:47):
one of the more one of our more primal instincts
and one of our more powerful and and as we've
mentioned before, it's the one sent out of the five
that interacts directly with the brain. So it's a powerful
scent to be omitted from any of your media. But
generally the technology hasn't been here, but we have actually
tried in the past. Uh, most notably h is of course,
(02:07):
Smell a Vision in h in nineteen sixty, but before that,
the first recorded use of smell in the theater was
nineteen sixteen at the Family Theater in Forest City, Pennsylvania. Uh.
And this was during a Rose Bowl game. And so
they had the scent of rose oil piped in, which
you know, and it's really low tech, like they had
a cotton ball that's saturated with rose oil. Yeah. Uh.
(02:29):
And then they had a fan that was blowing it
into the audience. Yeah. And that's pretty pretty low tech.
And then some of the technologies today are about that level.
But Smell a Vision, of course, is the one that
everybody remembers. Um. This came around nineteen sixty and it
was the mention of this guy, Mike Todd Jr. Who
was the son of a really accomplished producer by the
name of Michael Todd who produced around the world in
(02:51):
eighty days, you know, made it, made some nice bank
off of that, but then died. And so his son
invests his inheritance in this concept of all a vision thing,
this is gonna be the next big thing. And again
on paper, it kind of sounds cool. It's like, you know,
this is an age where it's like, all right, we
got talking in our movies. Now we're talking, We're we're
looking at it. You know what else can we do?
You know, can we make we can There's the whole
(03:13):
thing with a Tingler about making the seats vibrate. And
as we see today, you know, everybody keeps like up
in the Annie three d um, etcetera. So you can
imagine the guys thinking, all right, smells pretty important. If
I can somehow incorporate smell into the motion picture experience,
that's gonna put even more butts and seats. Right, So
the unleashed smell a vision on an unsuspecting public. H
(03:34):
and it's kind of a disaster. Um. They only use
it for one film under the Smell a Vision Moniker,
and that was a film by the name of Scent
of Miss of a Mystery, which interestingly enough, star Denholm Elliott,
you know, of course from Raiders of the Lost Art
the British guy and Peter Lori, yeah voice, can you
(03:56):
do a Peter Lori re help me please? Rick? Yes,
that that's the one. Yeah, yeah, wow, okay, I nailed it. Yeah,
you did nailed it. Um and uh. And so that
then they had like all sorts of cool catch phrases
for it, like first they moved, then they talked, now
they smell. In nineteen sixty like, finally we we have
(04:17):
we have the trifecta of senses engaged with their motion pictures,
and a new age of cinema is about to begin.
But of course it didn't because it didn't really work
all that well. There was there was some slight delay
with the smells, like the smell was supposed to hit
so it was the smell of a fresh casserole. There
was not a casserole in the movie. But just give
you an example. Imagine if on the screen that they
(04:38):
present a fresh cast role and then like several seconds later,
the scent fresh cast role hits you people during the
sex scene and like whoa, what chicken casserole? And then
you know, I don't know, Sophia Lauren is doing something
that's just weird. Yeah, that level of things happening, and
you know, so that you'd have the smells out of sync.
Um other some of the theater's got the smell like
(05:01):
really loud, like right in the face. Other areas couldn't
get it. So it just wasn't all that well. Implemented. Yeah,
I mean these are we're talking about cartridges on a belt, right,
and they're being pierced by needles during certain scenes. And
we're also talking about this hissing sound that it would
make sometimes too. This is what I've read that would
(05:22):
be really distracting. So people are like, what is going on?
I'm just trying to watch this movie and I'm being
inundated here. Yeah. So it's like you'd be watching a
film and a guy would be like, would you like
a cup of coffee? And it's like, no, I don't
really want any coffee because I really need to finish
this sandwich first, and then you know, every little thing. Yeah,
but I will tell you that if Casablanca had had
(05:43):
smell a Vision, and you know, of course with Peter Laurie,
I would be happy to to experience that with smell
a Vision. Why what do you think Peter Laurie smelled like? Well, no,
I mean they're not Peter Laurie specifically, but you've got
the spice market going on. Um, you know, it's hot human.
I could see where it could have been an interesting bouquet. Um. Now,
(06:04):
I would feel that Bogart would have probably smelled kind
of weird where and like cigars. Yeah, I mean, I
guess that could be a good smell. But also I
think Lorie might have actually smelled good because he seems
like the kind of guy who you know, he would
realize he would need to have the smells all on,
impeccably dressed. Yeah. Yeah um. And then, of course, in
homage to Smell a Vision, American film director John Waters
(06:28):
alice an enhanced Odorama version of his film Polyester in Yeah. Now,
this was more akin to the scent test that we
went through in the last oh right, the one where
you made me smell David Beckham's foot right off of
a card, numbered cards, Because that's the same way it
worked with John waters piece Polyester footles, I should say, yeah.
(06:49):
He Basically, each audience member had ten cards numbered one
through ten, and they had smells such as flowers, pizza, glue, gas, grass,
and of course feces. Oh right, right, Because if you're
gonna if you're gonna implement smellvision, you need to go
for the full, the full bouquet of Now, for anybody
(07:10):
who who is John Waters fan, maybe you'll agree with
me that pink flamingos should have been when where he
had smell Avision where the main character actually eats feces,
Because then, I mean, seriously, I mean, if you're trying
to trump up the dramatic moment and watch someone eat
feces and then smell it, that's that's going to do
it right there, there you go. Yeah, Waters was Waters
(07:31):
is around, Uh such a like a classy sleeves bag.
I love that about it. You know a few people
can pull that off to be both classy and sleazy
and and make both work. Um and I and I
think he would probably agree with that. Then there was
also in n the BBC of course, did that hoax
(07:52):
with the smell a vision where they told the viewers
the April Fool stage and they told them that they
could they could smell through the TV of sliced onions
brewing coffee and invited viewers at home to confirm the
sense uh that we're emanating from their television set by
by writing in about it. And people did I just
(08:13):
you know, testimony to the power suggestion. People were like, oh,
I could totally smell the onions in the coffee, and
it was it was all a gag. Placebo smells right, Yeah,
it's kind of interesting. So for the most part though,
this is you know, it's just received a few token
nods to the possibility of smell uh in our cinema,
the most recent one, uh being the more recent spy
(08:35):
kids movie All the Time in the World that when
I had scratch and sniff cards. So it's like, you know, again,
we're in that age where people are like, what can
we do to up the Annie three D? All right,
let's try smells. See if that works. Now. One area
of entertainment where it seems like you you we've seen
a lot more um smell engagement has been the haunted house,
the professional haunted house. And I'm not talking about like
(08:57):
the one put on like the local arch in the
small or some club yeah, or some club you know,
or just because right, or your neighbors. I mean haunted houses.
I think I may have discussed it before. It's it's
a pretty complex thing when you get it down to it,
Like the actual business of it, it looks easy. So
you have every year you'll have people come along and say, like,
(09:18):
I can do a hunted house. I just see people
lining up and handing out some money. I can do
that too, but there's there's a lot more involved. There's
a there's sort of a science of scaring and uh,
and they generally that the better ones will try and
hit you on various levels. They'll try and so they're
throwing startling sounds at you. There's they're throwing weird textures
at you under underneath your feet, and of course they'll
(09:39):
try and engage your smell, your sense of smell. Yeah,
lay some of these honest, because uh, these are very
interesting and I haven't been to a haunted house in years.
Oh yeah, well, well we actually have a really good one,
uh here in the Atlanta area, the nether World Haunted House. Yeah,
I've heard that one's good. Yeah. One of the guys
who does it, this guy Billy messina Um, who I've
(10:01):
met a time or two, like mutual friends. Uh. He
actually worked special effects on such films as Judge, Dread,
basket Case too, and uh the seminal favorite uff Franken Hooker.
So frank Hooker. That's a fine one. Yeah. But but
but anyway, it's a really cool hunted house and they
will hit you with these smells. So I looked into
this because because we were like, well maybe we can
(10:22):
implement that here at the house. Stuff works, so you
can get a professional sent machine for about seventy sounds
good so far. Yeah, there's some cheaper options, but I figure,
if if we're going to do this, let's do it right,
let's do it big. And then there are just there's
just a plethora of different smells and smell combinations you
can purchase for use in these machines, and they range
(10:43):
from things such as like uh oh, there's like wedding bouquet, peaches, sunshine,
fruity um, grass, ocean and those are great. But if
that sounds scary, it's exactly right. That's I guess, you know,
because if you're only gonna have your hunted house once
a year or for one month out of the year,
you might want to try and at other times, so
you can buy these other smells. But the scary smells,
(11:03):
that's that's where it gets interesting. Stuff Like one manufacturer
makes urine, sulfur, flatulence, body odor, smelly feet, bad breath.
But then there's another um manufacturer who really uh sexes
up the titles, so you get stuff like burning electrical um,
candy cane, dead rat um. Oh, this is the one
(11:26):
I really like prehistoric poop because that has a we
all know what prehistoric poops nostrils. Hell Um, swamp, you're in,
swamp you're in, not that there's not really a swamp
here in one, but you could combine the two your
own like swamp urine and and stinky feet prehistoric poop mill.
(11:47):
Do you know you can just go nuts with it? Um?
So yeah, you can find these online if you were
interested enough to want to, you know, up the game
at your own household or church operated haunted house. This
sounds like a clan of try up version of like
the Barbie perfume maker. Are you familiar with us? This
is something I got my youth, and I actually really
liked it. I hated Barbies and anyway, I won't go
(12:09):
into that, but this I love because your kid create
all these horrible smells and it's like a chemical lab
for the Barbie. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I proposed
that somebody go out there and make this for for
a remake. This is some sort of ghoulish thing for
kids out there, because I think they would love it. Well.
I remember there being like stink toys when I was
a kid. Yeah, I don't know if they assume they
(12:30):
had something like this in the US. But I was
a kid at the time in Canada and Newfoundland, Canada actually,
and I remember visiting some town and they're being like
a little you know, junk shop there, you know, I
mean just in everything shop. They had some junkie toys
variety store, and I ended up obtaining a some sort
of stink toy and I think it was like some
(12:51):
sort of little monster and the big cell on the
package with it it smells like rotten eggs, and so
at a certain age, that's awesome, you know. Yeah, No,
I'm still kind of excited about it. I mean, the
ability to mix all of those would be great fun. Right, Okay,
But here's the question, you know, getting to the technology
of today. Would you want that smell emanating from your
(13:12):
cell phone? Right? Yeah? This is where it really gets
interesting because I remember these technologies we're talking about here.
It basically involves the use of primary odors to create
other odors. Basically, this Barbie kit you're talking about combined
this with that or maybe and they smelled awful by
the way, but but that's the idea of like using
(13:35):
five or six maybe even basic smells out of hundreds
only we're talking hundreds of primary odors in these palates, right,
and we know just from the research we did on
the Other Smell podcasts of fifteen thou smells that have
been identified out there, right, So this would be very
much of a first step and uh and kind of
an approximate attempt to create some of these smells, these
(13:57):
odors out of primary odors. Uh. And so you would
you would be able to input all right, say it's
um the smell of fresh pumpkin pie. Yea. So it
would then input several primary odors such as I'm I'm
guessing like maybe if there's a pumpkin primary odor, some
sort of a cinnamon primary Is it cinnamon it's in
pumpkin pie? No, it's nutmeg, Like nutmeg is a primary odor.
(14:19):
And maybe like some sort of buttery smell as a
primary odor. I don't know. But but then those those
three would get implemented together into pumpkin pie. That's right.
And so in Japan there's ant T communications, so cell
phone owners are able to download a fragrance playlist or
files of recipes for specific smells along with visual and
(14:40):
or audio. So we're talking about you know animation or
mini content from imodes mobile website. The service uses a
handsets infrared port to transfer the fragrance data to a
dedicated device similar to a plug in air freshener that's
loaded with a cartridge of base fragrances what you're talking about.
The device then mixes them to create the chosen smell,
which it then waffs out, accompanying the audio or visual
(15:01):
content that's played on the phone. So you can again
you can share your your playlist with friends who also
subscribe to the service. You can also use it remotely,
so you can say via your your cell phone, Hey,
when I get home, I want the whole house to
wreak of chocolate chip cookies and it will do that
for you. That's be let down when there are no
actual chocolate chip cookies. So I know, right, but but
(15:24):
you know, hey, if you if that's the way you
want to roll ino, you know, you want to stick
up your house with various sense, then you can do it.
Um n T T do como device. This is a
device along with the phone, can also analyze your breath
and tell tell you how much fat you've burned off
and how hungry you maybe so it goes the other way,
right and a emit smells and also analyzes it. So
(15:46):
we're outsourcing our ability to know what size snack we
should have. Yeah. Actually, there's an image analyzer, or you
can take a picture of the food you're about to
eat and it will go through the database of like
foods and tell you what the approximate chloric information is.
Huh yeah, so okay that you can have some smells
(16:07):
through your phone, but you can also have stinky tweets.
Oh yeah. This is the OLLI by Mint Digital and Foundry,
And the idea here is this is a device. You
can think of it as a smell printer that hooks
up to your your computer and you would have it
set off to where not only would you maybe get
like a little um audio sound when you received a tweet,
you would get a smell like what does a tweet
(16:28):
smell like? I don't know, maybe a bird nest? Well,
it depends on who's tweeting. You can you can actually
customize it, customize it so that Oh, so let's say
Rain Wilson does a tweet, like, what would Rain Wilson's
tweets smell like? I don't know, I just don't know
him that well at all. I mean, I don't know
him at all. No, but he's on Twitter. You don't
(16:49):
know these people at all. But that's the thing, you
because I don't know what sort of personal scent. But
let's say that you're you know, sister or your uncle
tweeted you could make some sort of aroma. And in fact,
they were making fun of this on NPRS game show
Wait Wait, don't tell me, and they said, Okay, um,
you know, got a Facebook message from grandma, mix genete
(17:09):
with Virginia Slims or your college roommates. Tweets could smell
like fresca and regret sex. The smells aren't gonna be
that nuanced. Yeah, well, well what would what would what
would our tweets smell like? What would stuff? With all
your minds? Tweets can force a smell I don't know,
like patuli entire treads. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. That's like
(17:32):
the last thing we would smell like. I hope I
would hope. So I don't know. Maybe I would just
go with pumpkin pie. I keep coming back to pumpkin pie.
Maybe because it's November. Yeah, yeah, you're anticipating there. It's
all suggestion. UM. So all right, we're gonna take a
quick break and when we get back, we're going to
talk about online dating and smells. This podcast is brought
(17:53):
to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery channel at Intel. We've leave Curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at Curiosity dot com and
explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. Let's
talk about some more about these smellable tweets. Yeah, so
(18:15):
the smellable tweets again. You can customize this. You've got
a little device that's going to admit the smell, right,
and it can be a Facebook update, can be a tweet,
it can be pretty much anything. Um. And how it
works is actually this device has indexed thousands of smells
based on their chemical structures and their place on the
scent spectrum. Each sent is then coded and digitized into
(18:35):
a small file, and then digital file is embedded in
web content or email. A user request or triggers the
file by clicking a mass or opening email, and then
a small amount of the aroma is admitted by the
device and it stores a hundred and twenty cents. So again,
this is pretty base when you are thinking about, you know,
the fifteen thousand sins that are out there at least indexed,
(18:55):
and they're talking about it being open source as well,
so that would give every in the ability to create
new annoying smells to go with it. I mean, just
the sky's the limited's kind of and and if they
were able to implement a mobile version kind of going
into the smell a phone thing, I mean, just think
of every annoying cell phone ringtone that you've heard, not
only the ones that come with the phones, but the
(19:16):
custom ones especially. It can be so horrible. Imagine if
they smell too. Yeah, I know, I know, the potential
for misuse is great on this, and we'll talk about
that in a little bit, but let's talk about this
odor matching. So yeah, a company called basis Note allows
online datas to upload their scent profiles. And uh this
is from the biologist and basis Note founder August Emily.
He says, if everything fits, you have the same interest,
(19:39):
lots to talk about, but you can stand there smell,
then a love affair doesn't stand a chance. So you know,
makes sense that you would also be able to check
out someone smell before you meet them, and it gives
another area for people to lie on on the internet.
Not only can you lie about what you're what you're into,
and what you look like, but what you smell like
as well. Well, here's how you would have to lie.
You'd have to have someone else take a a lava
(20:00):
test for you, because this is how they actually get
the coding for this. You take this lava test which
is then carried out some sort of test at home
through a chromatographic process, and it's similar to a pregnancy
test and the result is this a simple digital code
which then can be entered into your online profile. And
the Scientific Compatibility System was launched on Swiss Friends dot
(20:22):
c a just a Swiss dating site, and at press
time it costs about fifty dollars. But the reason why
they're doing this is that evolutionary biologists says, there are
our noses are really involved in choosing our partners and
what you and I have talked about this before. We've
heard about this at least peripherally and some of our
research and we've talked about it. But this is basically
(20:43):
saying that our nose probes whether or not the other
person has similar genes to us. Okay, because the more
varied the gene pools are, the higher the chance for healthy,
strong offspring. Your nose is detecting this and this is
just totally fascinating. It works like this, um the more
major histocompatibility complex molecules you have, the better chance you
(21:05):
have at bolstering your own immune system, since these molecules
helped to create a defense reaction in your body, and
these are called the MHC genes and humans there are
more than a hundred variations of each of the nine
of the nine most important MHC genes, and the more
vary the MHC, the better the immune system of the
offspring will be armed. Okay, So, according to Hammerley the biologist,
(21:29):
your specific body odor is actually marked by the MHC
combinations that you have and then is transmitted in your
bodily fluids and transformed into your your smell. So in theory, right,
because I don't know, you know, to what extent this
is really buttoned up that you could sniff out from
another person and say, you know what, you're way too
similar to me with your MHC content. It's not gonna
(21:52):
work for us. You know, this also brings to mind
one possibility with the smell a vision, and that is
in the same way that a stay successful actor will
have a body double so that during a nude scene
it will ensure that their body looks amazing. So in
the future, perhaps they will also have odor doubles just
to ensure that they also smell amazing. Yeah, but I mean,
(22:14):
are you saying like an online dating thing in an
online dating sort of sense, Like some of that technology
and some of that data make it see like what
is the optimal smell that that men want to smell
uh when contemplating an attractive woman and vice versa of
course for okay, so this is another sexual inaction. I
totally get your saying, But again, like this is this
sort of feeds my fear of how we are continuing
(22:36):
to isolate ourselves and have virtual relationships with one another,
which to some extent is fine, right, this is just
sort of the world we live in. But what happens
when you get down to just living in front of
your computer and trying to state all five senses and
then creating these dummy sense to upload. I mean, it's
sort of like your virtual self dating another virtual person,
(22:57):
you know, ASSU mean that you don't really have a
relationship a face to face, right, And so that's what
I think is interesting about this technology is that you know,
obviously it can be used with video games. It can
be used video games. Part really interested me. There's a
one version of this so that's in the works supposedly,
uh called Odor re Vision, and it's got from a
(23:18):
French company called Old Faction UM and they have a
verying on it called smell It. It's aimed at video games.
And I was looking through the list of some of
the proposed smells because they have you know, like a
couple of dozen of them, and they include things like
precious would smell, um atmosphere, big machines, atmosphere, hospitals, smell
of cakes, uh, smell naked body, scent of a woman, um,
(23:42):
odor fabrics, the things of this nature. But but it
had me wondering in both video games, I'm just laughing
about scent about naked woman. Scent of a naked woman. Well,
you know, I don't I don't know how video game
programmers figured out what that smells like. Oh yeah, um
no no, But well, what this really makes me think
about is some we we have we encounter violence and
(24:03):
and sex in our films, and uh, and especially the
violence in video games. It to some degree the sex
or sexual sexuality, and uh, we end up having this
sterilized version of it, especially violence. So if we even
even partaking of violence in a video game or witnessing
violence in a movie, if we smelled the violence, if
(24:24):
we smell blood, if we smelled decaying bodies, if we
smelled someone dying and their bowels loosening with death, these
kinds of things so specific and graphic, well, it's just
a reality, you know. I mean, if if we through,
if we use this to make death more real when
it occurs in our fiction and in our in our
(24:44):
video games, I wonder if that would be a positive thing,
because as it is, it's like when you know, blood
is beautiful and red and it splashes everywhere, and these
films and in these video games, what if you had
to actually smell it? I think it would kill the
industry really because then because we know that emotion is
evoked right from smells and empathy, I mean, all of
these sort of things would be engaged. And one of
(25:05):
the reasons why we like video games so much or
even movies, is because we can remove ourselves, we can
distance ourselves, and we can watch the action unfold without
any sort of horrible results. Well, I mean it's like
zombie movies. Who would watch a zombie movie if you
had to smell the reek of rotting corpses whenever the
zombie showed up? Try it once? Yeah, well, it would
(25:27):
definitely make it more horrific. It would be like the
stink odors that they're shooting at you in the horror movie.
And for that matter, um, when it comes to things
like like pornography, if people had to if people watching
pornography had to smell the smells of of what's going on,
would they be that into it? I don't know, well,
especially if this biologist is correct in terms of a
scent prile profile for each person. Um, you know, would
(25:51):
you be someone's scent during sex sort of turn one
person off or another? Of course, I think that what
he's talking about in volution um or within within the
context of evolution is really uh, it's pretty simplistic, right,
because there's so many more things that are going on.
And maybe this is why you know, Match dot Com
(26:12):
isn't using this technology right now because not necessarily everybody
is looking for a lifelong partner right when they're using this,
and you know it also, we don't really know the
results of this born out at large um, but I
was thinking of us, particularly with the video games too,
that the smell of fear, and this is something we
talked about with this little told us right that you
know that the wall that she created with these nine
(26:33):
different sets of men's fears, you know, if you are
piping that in with video game, I mean, that's that
would be sort of horrific to to smell someone else's fear,
right because you're not going to reject that it's just
something that you smell. Yeah, if you're like smell, you're
in a multiplayer setting and you're smelling the fear of
your fellow players or your opponents, the kind of thing,
especially with something like bomber Man, which is so cartoony.
But then if you were smelling fear during bomber Man,
(26:54):
that would be kind of crazy. Here's my greatest fear though,
is that it's going to be used by marketers, like
to the point where it's just you know, ad infinitum,
where like you know, you've got a pop up screen
of coca cola coming on and you can smell coca
cola or something else, or baked goods, which could get
really annoying, even if those are things that you like,
(27:14):
you know, if you're just happy to be like surfing
and you're like that smell again, yeah, or or scent hacking,
Like what if we reached the point where the house
stuff works homepage smells like nint because I don't know,
it seems like it's like, seems delightful, Yeah, but then
some hackers come along and they make it smell like
put the entire tread exactly exactly. That would be that
(27:35):
would be kind of horrific, and that would be the
kind of abuse you can expect that, my friend, are
the that that's that's the future smell right there? Yeah,
But if I can come back to the whole digital world,
like the other side of this too, is that so
much is we leave more and more of our lives digitally,
and we're we're taking it things in through through the
(27:55):
Internet and through games and through movies. We're, like I said,
we're getting that sterile version of it all where we're
getting a version of it where an entire Uh, one
of our primary senses is cut off. Like, then what
happens when we actually engage in uh, basically any activity
in life and we were suddenly hit with the with
the olfactory dimension of that experience as well? Like, what
(28:17):
what does that do to us? You know? I don't know.
It's interesting because there is this idea about the synthetic
version versus the true version, and then again the repository
of all of our experiences, our memories being evoked again,
our emotions by smells. So if you're manipulating them on
a certain level that you know, this this this virtual level,
and you're isolated, Yeah, what does that do to you
(28:40):
you specifically specifically? Yeah, I don't know. We'll find out. Yeah,
it's it's gonna be an interesting future, I think, because
it seems like they'll probably not implement all of these
things to the degree to which we're talking about, because
it's kind of like the smell vision factor. It's like
it reaches the point, yes, we can make movies smell,
but to what is they're actually an economic payoff? Yeah? Yeah,
(29:02):
there's some fails they are, for sure, But we already
know and we've talked about this before that in that
retailers us this um quite a bit. You go into
the Gap or any other major retailer, and most likely
there's a very specific scent that has been made for
them to help you feel great about your purchase. Right
to whatever extent it can be, it can be implemented
and used to make money, it will be used. We
(29:24):
can be sure of that your computer is gonna smell
in the future. That's what we're saying. Yeah, no way
around it, no way around it, and it won't just
smell like all the snack macks that you've dropped into,
which is nothing an unpleasant odor from no. No, there
we go, the future of smell, the future of stink um.
We have a few quick listener mails that I'd like
to read um and we're gonna so you'll stip in
(29:46):
here and grab one. Okay, Drew's one from Timothy dear
stb y M crew U, which is us. I've always
thought of zombies as an expression of the other, as
in the unthinking masses, sheapish crowds of people, etcetera. Uh.
I believe this is why zombies are so fond of
urban settings like these shopping mall or the state far
where crowds are so common. I also agree with the
(30:07):
assessment that modern zombies have a parallel with modern work um,
which often consists of repetition, requiring very little in the
way of complex problem solving. In this way, they represent
our horror of the mainstream drudgery of simple repetitive work
in the absorption of our individually into the sheepish consumer culture.
Zombie hunting, therefore, is a radical expression of individuality. How
(30:28):
ironic then, that zombies are such a wildly popular trend.
Thanks for all, Thanks for all the great cast, Tim,
And of course he was talking responding to our episode
about apocalypse and our attraction to apocalypse and specifically our
love with fare with zombie apocalypse. That so some some
interesting thoughts there from Tim. We heard from listener Lindsay
on Facebook and she says, you guys are rad exclamation
(30:50):
point um, which is good. I just listened to the
Martyr podcast. It made me think of a few people
I know who don't use any meds while getting their
teeth worked on because they are in recovery from addiction
their goal of sobriety. But it made me wonder about
a connection with the history of self abuse equals higher
through a pain threshold piece of your podcast, since addiction
could could definitely be considered self abuse anyway, keep up
(31:14):
the great work. And that's that's interesting because I hadn't
really I thought as much about that to Menion of
when we were talking about individuals who say, um, you know,
going to the dental office and don't want drugs use
stones that there would be some individuals who would be
opposed to it because they have a history with substance abuse. Likewise,
you also have people who are straight edge right who
(31:34):
were refused to take alcohol or drugs, and then how
does that impact their choices in there? Would they experience
more pain? That's the question because if you have well,
I don't know, I'm just sort of thinking out a
lot of here. But if you've got the joke commune
receptors and abuse them and they've you've released a lot
of dopamine as a result, might your body best of
train to be able to do that at well? I
(31:56):
don't know. There things to think about. And if anybody
out there is straight edge, I'd be in honest to hear,
what what's your relationship with pain? Just don't feel like
you need to drop like, you know, a saw on
your foot or anything. Don't don't, don't test your or
a lead weight. Let's say that because the song on
the phone is just a little bit too graphic. All right, Well, hey,
if you want to share anything with this um, specifically,
(32:16):
if you want to share anything about smells and the
future of smells, you can find us on our Facebook
and on our Twitter. We'll Blow the Mind on both
of those and badly we we don't have the custom
smell implemented just yet unless you're listening to this podcast
at some distant point in the future, and then perhaps yes, yeah,
if that's the case, then you can email us your
sent profile at Blow the Mind at House to works
(32:37):
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join the House to Work staff
as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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