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Learn more at plus.npr.org. Before we get started, a note to listeners

that this episode includes exploration of racist material.

So the other day, I was reading this book about the First Crusade.

It's a moment in history that anyone who knows me knows I have long been obsessed with.

And in one passage, there was a detailed description of what the city of Antioch was like then.

There were details about the way the streets looked, the size of

the citadel, how loud the central market was. But there was something noticeably missing,

no description of what it smelled like. It was weird because I register a lot of thoughts and

memories in my head through smells. I'm sure you do too. And I realized I almost never

stopped to think about how or why I smell things. Like why does a rose smell like a rose?

Would the people in medieval Antioch have described the smell of a rose the same way I do?

Well, Christina Kim, a reporter and producer on the through line team, has been

thinking about those kinds of questions a lot over the last few years. The other day, she even

describes smell as a superpower that allows us to time travel. Yeah, she went deep on some of the

...