You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

The name Dallas Taylor is pink, yellow, and blue to me.

And Taylor, for me, is purple and orange and pink.

The sound of Dallas Taylor's voice is a blue to black and very, it's very sparks.

Sparks across my chest.

But it has a softness to it.

It's not like a sharp, it's like a soft spark that kind of pops as he speaks.

The name Dallas Taylor tastes like a chip with some meat on it and dinner rolls.

The people you just heard have a neurological condition called synesthesia. People with synesthesia

called synesthetes experience sounds, tastes, and even numbers and letters in combination with

their other senses. So, for example, taste might have a color, or hearing a song might produce a

physical sensation on their skin. Or a name like Dallas Taylor might taste like a chip with

some meat on it, and dinner rolls.

Synesthesia may sound unusual, but it's actually more common than you might think.

Studies suggest that as many as one in 25 people have some form of it.

We know a fair amount about it now, but for a long time, scientists weren't even sure that it existed.

Back in the 70s, when I started with this, you know, the dogma at the time is that we had

five senses that traveled along single tubes, as it were, and there was no mixing between

the two. I mean, that was the dogma.

That's neurologist Richard Citoic.

Before the word synesthesia was widely known, he stumbled across the term, by chance, in the med school library.

...