Why your nose and sense of smell is secretly controlling your life | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Rachel Herz 0:00 25% of college students would rather lose their sense of smell than their cellphone. 50%, actually, would rather lose their sense of smell than their hair. I mean, yes, I like my hair too, but it's not doing anything.

Adam Grant 0:14 [upbeat music] This is my wife, Allison.

Speaker 0:22 Hi, Rachel.

Rachel Herz 0:23 Nice to meet you, Allison.

Adam Grant 0:24 I wanna give you a list of foods that I hate, and I'm hoping you can tell me something about me.

Rachel Herz 0:29 [laughs]

Adam Grant 0:30 Chocolate's disgusting. I 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?

Rachel Herz 0:43 Well, it sounds

Rachel Herz 0:44 like you are actually a super taster, which, uh, means that you are a fantastic-- no, it means that you actually-

Adam Grant 0:50 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 0:51 ... have a lot more taste buds that are sensitive to all tastes, but they particularly show up in terms of their reactivity to bitter foods. So coffee, black coffee, alcohol actually taste extremely bitter to you, and also burning.

Adam Grant 1:05 Rachel, I was, I was just thinking about conveying the intensity factor. I was remembering in high school, there was a class right before lunch, and everyone was always hungry. And a friend of mine would bring candy in, and we would sneak it under the desk. And 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 gonna get detention. And I knew he gave me M&M's instead of Skittles. 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." Completely ruined the, the Skittle flavor. So I wondered, does that put me on the far extreme of super tasting?

Speaker 1:53 [barks]

Rachel Herz 1:54 So-- Sorry. [laughs] That was my dog. She says yes. [laughs]

Adam Grant 1:57 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 1:59 So basically, that is really about smell. It's specifically the aroma of chocolate. So I'm gonna 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 it is perceived differently by you than other people and/or also many, many copies of that mutant allele [laughs] such that-

Adam Grant 2:25 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 2:25 ... it is extremely unpleasant for you. And you're also extremely sensitive to it, so that's my... I just made that up, but... [laughs]

Adam Grant 2:34 Good to know. I'm gonna hold my nose next time I eat Skittles, just in case.

Rachel Herz 2:37 [laughs] 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. That is what people are gravitating towards. But if you don't get the herbaceous part, you just get the soap.

Adam Grant 3:10 We just met, and I feel like you've known me for years.

Rachel Herz 3:12 [laughs] So what is your favorite ice cream, if I could ask you a question?

Adam Grant 3:16 Cotton candy.

Rachel Herz 3:17 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.

Speaker 3:25 It's, like, the syrupiness of it, I think.

Adam Grant 3:28 Oh, yeah. But I, it just tastes sweet.

Speaker 3:30 Like, the additive, right? The flavor.

Adam Grant 3:31 Yeah.

Speaker 3:32 You like the cotton candy flavor.

Adam Grant 3:33 Yeah. Can, can you explain why I am this way? Like, what, what caused me to be a super taster? Why do I have all these extra taste buds?

Rachel Herz 3:40 Okay, so super tasting, that is purely genetics that you have no control over that whatsoever. It doesn't matter how many push-ups you can do or your IQ or anything like that, so it's 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 super taster, 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 super taster. They could both be super tasters, 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, a super taster copy. [laughs]

Adam Grant 4:25 Got it. M-my grandmother hated chocolate, so it seems to go back a couple generations.

Rachel Herz 4:30 Absolutely, it would. I mean, this is genetics that goes through the family tree. You probably can't escape it. [laughs] 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-

Speaker 4:47 No. Uh, 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, um, ended up with Adam's tendencies when it comes to his palate. [laughs]

Rachel Herz 5:02 Well, that would completely make sense because you have-

Speaker 5:04 Yeah

Rachel Herz 5:04 ... at least one copy of the super taster side of things, and Adam has two, so you're gonna have a child that you're gonna have at least 50% chance of being super taster as

Rachel Herz 5:15 well.

Adam Grant 5:15 Whenever people talk about super tasting, um, it, it sounds like a really great thing.

Rachel Herz 5:20 [laughs]

Adam Grant 5:20 Oh, would you be a master sommelier, or, you know, would you be a great chef? I'm like, no, there's too much I don't like. And, um, it actually seems like non-tasters are more able to, you know, to discriminate between tastes. Um, but I don't, I don't know what it's like to be a non-taster. Is that right, wrong?

Speaker 5:38 What is a non-taster?

Rachel Herz 5:39 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 they have, you know, obviously they're predisposed to liking flavors and foods and so forth. So s- there are more chefs that are in the super taster camp. However, I once worked with a chef, Wylie Dufresne. He has a lot of, you know, major restaurants and does a lot of molecular gastronomy. He is a non-taster, and he actually said that he thought that was helpful for him because actually 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 than if you were a super taster. Maybe you'd actually be holding back as a chef on various flavor concoctions and combinations. So he thought that being a non-taster was actually advantageous.

Adam Grant 6:37 So interesting. Does where you fall on this spectrum from super tasting to non-tasting have any implications for your life?

Rachel Herz 6:43 So as a function of what you like to eat or what you l- 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 any time you get into the abuse end of things, you have to be able to tolerate consuming a lot over a long period of time. Or if drinking actual, real alcohol is, you know, gonna have to water it down with fruit juices or other sorts of things, you're not gonna 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's 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, [laughs] 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. So 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 antioxidant. So trying to at least substitute certain things, then you can make healthy choices deliberately.

Adam Grant 8:37 Okay, so there's good news and bad news here.

Rachel Herz 8:39 [laughs]

Adam Grant 8:40 I think the good news is I eat blueberries every day. Check.

Rachel Herz 8:42 Okay. [laughs]

Adam Grant 8:43 Um, the bad news is that my mom used to force-feed me lima beans when I was a kid. Are you saying [laughs] that she should've been going with spinach or kale or broccoli?

Rachel Herz 8:51 No, lima beans are really good for you. I mean-

Adam Grant 8:53 Ah

Rachel Herz 8:53 ... so, so she did a good job. [laughs]

Adam Grant 8:56 D'oh.

Rachel Herz 8:57 I don't think I've had lima beans since I was li-... I don't know what, lima beans must have been a thing.

Adam Grant 9:01 [laughs] I'm really glad they're not anymore.

Adam Grant 9:03 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. Um, Allison, when you cook salmon, sometimes I have to leave the house because it's, it's just overwhelmingly bad.

Rachel Herz 9:21 That doesn't speak well of my cooking.

Adam Grant 9:24 No, it's not your cooking. [laughs]

Rachel Herz 9:26 [laughs]

Adam Grant 9:27 If any, if anyone were cooking any seafood, I would, I would wanna exit the premises.

Rachel Herz 9:32 [laughs]

Adam Grant 9:32 Does fish smell bad to you?

Rachel Herz 9:34 No, it doesn't. I mean, fish is fishy. I can understand why it would smell bad to you. Um-

Adam Grant 9:40 It doesn't smell bad to you?

Rachel Herz 9:41 It doesn't, it doesn't bother me.

Adam Grant 9:43 Like Venice doesn't stink to you?

Rachel Herz 9:45 Well, that's a whole different thing.

Adam Grant 9:46 [laughs] Okay. All right, so Rachel, what, what, what is this? Like what, why, why does fish smell bad to me? Why doesn't it smell bad to Allison?

Rachel Herz 9:54 So intensity is a major factor from the point of view of smell. So the more intense something smells to you, even if it's your favorite whatever it is, the less pleasant it's gonna 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 s- the chemical of fishy smell, then even the merest small amount of fish is gonna be noticeable to you, and anything that's kind of at an average level is gonna be really strong and therefore unpleasant. Now, Allison, I'm guessing, I mean, there's no such thing as the, the right or the wrong or whatever, but let's say she definitely has fewer than you, and 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-

Adam Grant 10:46 Yeah. [laughs]

Rachel Herz 10:46 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 Allison 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 gonna be really aversive even if the scent in another context meant something else entirely. So 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." And I did an experiment a long time ago that, that really demonstrated this, like when I gave somebody a scent, it went from one end of the polar extreme of liking to the other end of disliking, and also people wouldn't even believe me that they were smelling the same thing at two occasions, and it was exactly the same thing.

Adam Grant 12:09 Wow. Okay, this, this is related to something that our producer Jessica pointed out, uh, which is in Beijing she tasted something called stinky tofu, which she said smells like, and I quote, "gym socks in a locker," uh, but it tastes amazing. Ha- I can't e- I cannot even fathom this. How could something smell bad and taste good?

Rachel Herz 12:32 There are a few things that ca- fall in that category. Durian is another one, so that fruit, it's popular in South Asia. The scent is highly pungent, but the flavor is very different from the scent. And actually, you know, 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. Now, it's not very common, but that can definitely happen.

Adam Grant 13:19 Got it.

Rachel Herz 13:19 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.

Adam Grant 13:26 It, it's ... Does fermented cheese also fall in that camp?

Rachel Herz 13:29 So cheese is, by definition, sort of controlled fermentation overall, so is there a particular cheese you're thinking of? Like, there are certain cheeses that are definitely in the stinkier end of things.

Adam Grant 13:40 Is there a stinky cheese you like?

Speaker 13:42 [laughs] I like all cheese.

Adam Grant 13:45 [laughs]

Speaker 13:45 I don't discriminate.

Rachel Herz 13:47 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 ooziness. I 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.

Adam Grant 14:14 Very interesting. So let's

Adam Grant 14:15 talk about smell in more detail. Uh, so Rachel, y- I was, uh, I was reading, uh, 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 cellphone. Um, tell us about that.

Rachel Herz 14:30 So during the second year of COVID, so this was in 2021, and, 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. So the value of your sense of smell is between one 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. If you lost your sense of smell, you'd get between one 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. It ended up being a, 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 [laughs] 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. And then in, 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 cellphone. 50% actually would rather lose their sense of smell than their hair. Okay, so that [laughs] so hair ended up being, like, super important. I'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.

Adam Grant 17:03 You said 85% of people would rather lose their sense of smell than sight.

Rachel Herz 17:08 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 17:09 Who are the other 15%?

Rachel Herz 17:11 Mm.

Adam Grant 17:11 Like, who, who is willing to give up their vision for their smell? [laughs] Okay.

Rachel Herz 17:17 Yeah, I mean-

Adam Grant 17:18 Why?

Rachel Herz 17:19 The way the wording kinda 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. It's also something that I should say that one of the problems with the way this was worded is it wasn't like you will ... And that we made assumptions about ever being able to smell again or ever being able to have a cellphone. 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, you know, 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.

Adam Grant 18:00 That makes sense.

Rachel Herz 18:00 Still, cellphones win by far. [laughs]

Adam Grant 18:02 Yep. So okay, so go back to the, the idea that we undervalue smell. Um, you said, you know, generally speaking, people get, what, 1 to 5% of their net worth, um, if they lose their sense of smell, and that's too little. What percent do you think they should get?

Rachel Herz 18:22 Well, in all honesty, this may sound extreme to you, but I think that they should get, um, you know, between 90 and 100% of their net worth, because

Rachel Herz 18:30 what people don't understand, their entire life was turned upside down in tremendously devastating ways. And, 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, to their friends and colleagues and acquaintances and so forth. And 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, I don't get the pleasures from smell that I used to get, or my social interactions aren't as intimate. 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 c- is continuing to devolve. And 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.

Adam Grant 19:50 Wow.

Rachel Herz 19:50 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, that is to say our, our mental acuity, our ability to think, even our, our spatial abilities, like being able to find the post store, reading a map. I mean, it turns out that actually spatial memory and spatial orientation is highly linked to the processing of smell. The same brain areas are involved and so forth.

Adam Grant 20:35 Wow. Had, had no idea that the sense of smell was so core. Um, but you did. You called yourself a smell enthusiast, not just scientist. How did you fall for your husband?

Rachel Herz 20:47 [laughs] Well, I mean, I should say it's because of how he smells. Um, I mean-

Adam Grant 20:53 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 20:53 ... i- in reality, that was not the, the reason. It wasn't, like, the beacon, the flashing, you know, smell, and I came running across the room. But 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. So I would not say in my personal case that it was, like, I was led by the nose to him. But-

Adam Grant 21:14 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 21:14 ... it is a good thing that I actually really liked how he smelled, because if I didn't, that would be a turn-off. And I actually ... I mean, first of all, this is an interesting segue, because what women say in marital counseling ses- sessions or privately even to the therapist when they wanna dump their husbands is, "I cannot stand how he 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 happen 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, and it was one date and done. And I've also heard of people, when they first smelled their husband, they knew they were gonna marry him. So it can lead in that direction, but the real critical part is that it doesn't stop the relationship.

Adam Grant 22:12 Wow. I've nev- I've never thought about this before. Allison, did you ...

Speaker 22:17 Well, smell's pretty important to me, so I, I mean, I, I never thought about it in relation to, um, like, a romantic relationship, but I can see how that would be a huge turn-off for people if they couldn't, if they couldn't s- stomach the smell of their partner.

Adam Grant 22:32 [laughs]

Speaker 22:32 For sure. [laughs]

Rachel Herz 22:33 Well, I mean, just think of it physically. Like, it's, like, how do you get really physically close to someone if you can't stand how they smell?

Speaker 22:38 Yeah.

Rachel Herz 22:38 That's gonna be, like, literally in your face. [laughs]

Adam Grant 22:41 Like, on our first date, were you like, [sniffs] "I like the smell of this guy."

Speaker 22:45 No, I wasn't-

Rachel Herz 22:46 [laughs]

Speaker 22:46 ... I wasn't sniffing you out.

Adam Grant 22:47 [laughs]

Speaker 22:47 But I didn't notice anything fishy either. [laughs]

Rachel Herz 22:50 Yeah. [laughs] Although, Allison, you said you liked fish, so maybe that wouldn't have told me that.

Speaker 22:54 I do like fish.

Rachel Herz 22:55 [laughs]

Speaker 22:55 That's true. [laughs]

Adam Grant 22:58 Okay. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, Rachel, is, um, people differ in their smelling sensitivity and skill. Allison has the nose of a jungle cat. Uh-

Speaker 23:09 That's true.

Adam Grant 23:09 I, I remember when our son was a baby, she once sniffed out his ear infection. Do you remember this?

Speaker 23:16 Oh, yes. He was, uh, in, in, in his crib and, um, woke from a nap, and I lifted him out of the crib, and his head was right next to my head, and I could just smell it. I [laughs] he, I said, "I, he has an ear infection," and I ... It turned out that he did. That was a special, a special smell.

Adam Grant 23:37 It, it ... [laughs] But I didn't, I didn't even notice it. It ... But what, what made me think of it was, I, I read an article about a woman who could smell Parkinson's.

Rachel Herz 23:46 Yeah.

Adam Grant 23:47 And I wondered if Allison is missing a calling here.

Rachel Herz 23:50 Well, so a couple of things just to unpack this. So first of all, we all actually have a unique nose. So we, and with 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 they, 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, are turned on in our nose, is ever so slightly different for everybody. And 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, Allison 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 were 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, y- Allison, you said something that was really interesting and telling in that it smelled different. And 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 is a whole set of different disorders, and actually it 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, and/or even just locally, acutely, let's say, overproducing something in your ear, let's just say, that is detectable by smell. And people who are tuned into this, like I said, you know, pri- 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 [laughs]

Adam Grant 25:54 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 25:54 That's where there something is wrong, and therefore, you know, very clever, you diagnosed him.

Adam Grant 26:01 You know what I'm just realizing as you describe that is that means you had a bas- Allison, you had a baseline-

Speaker 26:07 Sure

Adam Grant 26:07 ... awareness of what his ear normally smelled like [laughs] to then notice the difference. I never thought about it that way. I, I just imagined it as, oh, you smelled something that wasn't right.

Speaker 26:17 Right.

Rachel Herz 26:18 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"

Adam Grant 26:24 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 26:24 ... you, you are aware of even somewhat unconsciously of this is, this is how my baby smells, and now my baby smells different.

Adam Grant 26:32 So fascinating.

Adam Grant 26:33 Okay, I think it's time for a lightning round. Okay, first question, what is your favorite finding about taste or smell science-wise?

Rachel Herz 26:40 The interpretation of something is so powerful for driving meaning and then response to it, and that can be influenced by what you see. You know, even the color of the plate that a food is served on can change our perspective of the, the taste profile of that food.

Adam Grant 26:59 The color of the plate affects how food tastes? How?

Rachel Herz 27:03 So for instance, if you have something sweet on a, a l- l- let's say something, 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. And 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. Now, another really interesting thing is if a plate in and of itself is red, and let's say I have some pretzels on it, people actually eat fewer pretzels mind, semi-mindlessly than if that plate is white or, or blue and the same number of pretzels are on it, and that is actually because of attention. Like, you are, oh, there's actu- I'm just, I'm actually eating here as opposed to just my, my hand is moving and I'm, you know, doing something else. So a trick is if you have the bowl of something beside you while you're at the computer or doing something else, if the bowl is red, you're going to be paying more attention to what you're eating than if the bowl is white or another color and you're just, like, hand to mouth.

Speaker 28:06 You're gonna wanna redo the whole kitchen.

Adam Grant 28:08 [laughs] I know, seriously. All right, Allison, over to you.

Speaker 28:12 Rachel, who would be your dream dinner party guest?

Rachel Herz 28:17 Julia Child. [laughs] I'd just follow her around in my kitchen rather than the other way around, so that would be fun.

Adam Grant 28:24 Okay. And then [laughs] asking for a friend here, if you know someone who has body odor, what is your best advice for how to navigate that?

Rachel Herz 28:33 Does the person themselves dislike their body odor? Does someone tell them that they have bad body odor? I mean, everybody has a body odor, so this is something that they're worried about for-

Adam Grant 28:42 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?

Rachel Herz 28:51 Okay, well, s- 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. They... Ei- 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, they'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, um, and you don't," or... And then-

Adam Grant 29:32 Maybe we'll just send them a link to this podcast.

Rachel Herz 29:35 [laughs]

Adam Grant 29:36 What's a question you have for us?

Rachel Herz 29:38 So 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?

Adam Grant 29:48 Oh. I usually start with whose work fascinates me, um, and whose both insights and way of sharing them would be thought-provoking or surprising to our listeners.

Speaker 30:02 Things that you're curious about are probably things that other people, that your audience are curious about, so, um, I'm sure there are super tasters out there who are, will be delighted that this is, uh, today's topic of conversation.

Adam Grant 30:13 And, uh, and hopefully other people in their lives will not, like, they won't give them weird looks anymore.

Speaker 30:20 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 30:20 [laughs]

Adam Grant 30:20 Or judge them. I wanna, I wanna get rid of the judgment. That's, that's the mission here. I, I feel stigmatized based on taste buds that I can't control.

Rachel Herz 30:30 Well, so y- Allison's a super smeller. Well, th- that doesn't exist quite in the same way, but you're highly sensitive to smell. And Adam's a super taster, so per- you're a perfect couple. [laughs]

Adam Grant 30:41 [laughs]

Speaker 30:41 [laughs]

Rachel Herz 30:41 Or have pro- or have problems in restaurants, one of the two. [laughs]

Adam Grant 30:45 Well, Rachel, thank you for joining us. This is so fascinating. I, I, I could ask you questions all day about taste and smell.

Speaker 30:51 Absolutely. And we didn't even get to, like, uh, fragrance.

Rachel Herz 30:55 Just so you know, uh, this as an aside, I put on perfume even though we're not smelling each other because it's like, 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 the 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. I smelled up for you instead of dressed up. [laughs]

Adam Grant 31:26 [laughs]

Speaker 31:26 Well, thank you. [laughs]

Adam Grant 31:28 Thanks, Rachel.

Rachel Herz 31:29 Thank you. [outro music]