Episode Details

Smell and taste are the body's chemical senses, detecting actual molecules rather than light or sound, and between them they quietly create most of what we experience as flavour. This episode explores how olfactory receptors work as molecular locks, why smell connects so directly to memory and emotion, the five basic tastes, and why chilli heat and mint's coolness are really pain and temperature signals in disguise.

You'll come away understanding how smell and taste receptors actually detect molecules, why a single scent can trigger a vivid memory almost instantly, what the five basic tastes are and how umami earned its place among them, why most of what you call flavour is actually retronasal smell rather than taste, why capsaicin and menthol trick your body's temperature and pain sensors, and what losing your sense of smell reveals about how much quiet work it normally does.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: The Nobel Prize – Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel's 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for olfactory receptor research; Monell Chemical Senses Center – public research summaries on smell and taste; Australian Academy of Science – explainers on the senses; Nature – reviews on olfaction, taste receptors and chemesthesis.