Some of them are really difficult.

They really, they don't get along, they're dominating.

You have to highlight them and take care of them.

Just think of a dinner party of them all at it.

Mandy Aftel has been working with all sorts of personalities,

as she calls them, for the past three decades,

mixing them together to get the right combination.

And these personalities aren't high-powered clients, kids, or even dogs. What she's

talking about are scents. Mandy is a perfumer. Rose is really friendly to everything. Rose can

get along with anyone and it kind of smooths it. It makes it prettier. Jasmine is somewhat the same, not as strong as rose in that department, but pretty strong.

And so they're like easy ones to add and make things work.

As a person, I'm really attracted to difficult

personalities. So most of my perfumes have something really difficult that I've

sort of wrestled with to make it work because it makes it so challenging and so interesting and when you can get that to work

It just makes everything so beautiful

I'm Alexa Lim and this is Atlas Obscera, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today we'll visit the Aftel Archive of Curious Sense.

Mandy's Museum where anyone can stop by and get a whiff of some lesser known smells.

And I get really curious and stumble down the rabbit hole of the hidden world of scents. So there's this neighborhood in North Berkeley that's pretty famous for its

artisanal products. Coffee, chocolate, there's something called the

Cheese Board Collective, and Chef Alice Waters kicked off the farm-to-table movement right here back in the 70s at Shepene.

So if you want to find something that might surprise your senses, you come here.

This is also where you'll find the Aftel Archive of Curius Cents.

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