Smell Science, Reader Come Home, Sonar Smackdown. Nov 16, 2018, Part 2

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, Wnyc, Friday, Science

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you had to give up one of your senses, which would you pick? If you think that “smell” might be the obvious answer, consider that your nose plays a crucial role in how you perceive the taste of your food or that it’s a sophisticated sensor capable of synthesizing the hundreds of different molecules into the floral fragrance we know as “roses.” University of Florida professor Steven Munger explains the nuances of smell. Plus: The digital world is changing how we read. What does that mean for the next generation of readers? As Maryanne Wolf describes in her newest book, Reader, Come Home, we may be at risk of raising a generation of people who don't have those skills simply because of our changing reading habits. She joins Ira to discuss how our reading brain has changed since moving into the digital world and what we can do to fall in love with reading again. Are you team bat? Or team dolphin? Earlier this month at the Acoustical Society of America Conference two groups of scientists argued the finer points of each animal’s echolocation excellence. Things got heated, words were exchanged. But in this battle between the sonar specialists, which creature comes out the winner? To settle the debate, two researchers join Ira for a good, old-fashioned “rumble on the radio.” Laura Kloepper, assistant professor at St. Mary’s College backs up the agile, winged masters of the sky, while Brian Branstetter, research scientist at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, vouches for the swift swimmers of the sea. Both are ready for Science Friday’s first ever “Sonar Smackdown.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato, broadcasting today from the studios of WUSF at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
0:09.4	A bit later in the hour how digital reading is changing the way our brains work.
0:15.3	But first, autumn leaves, burning wood smoke, onions sauteed in butter, or mom's rice and beans, hamburgers, sizzling
0:24.2	on the grill.
0:25.0	You hungry yet?
0:25.8	Well, we asked our listeners on Twitter for their favorite smells, and these were just a few,
0:32.0	along with rose geranium, new car smell, or a new baby.
0:37.5	Think about life without those smells, without any smells at all.
0:42.1	It's a lot dimmer, right?
0:43.3	Even isolating.
0:44.6	My next guest says that there's a good reason.
0:48.5	The smells are perhaps one of our more underrated senses, but it's one that rules the social lives and behaviors of many
0:56.5	animals.
0:57.8	Rodents learn what's safe to eat from sniffing each other's saliva.
1:01.6	Dogs follow scent trails, and even we humans, we can detect odors better than we think we can.
1:08.6	Dr. Stephen Munger is Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Director of the Center for Smell and Taste at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Welcome to Science Friday.
1:19.1	Hi, I, Your Honor. Thanks for having me, and welcome to Florida. Oh, thank you. You know, I think people think that the sense of smell is very mysterious, how it works.
1:28.4	So give us a little bit of an ABCs of what's happening in the nose when these smell and odor.
1:33.5	Yeah, I think with smell, it's a little more abstract for people.
1:38.3	But really, it's smell along with taste and also what we call chemisthesis,
1:43.4	which is the ability to detect some of the
1:45.6	chemicals and things like spices, these are collectively called the chemical senses. And
	...

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