That Old-Book Smell (Rebroadcast) - 29 December 2014
A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over
A Way with Words
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2014
⏱️ 53 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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| 0:00.0 | This is Samsung S23 FE's greatest hits, with hits such as Super Fast Processing Speed, |
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| 0:30.6 | here listening to away with words the show about language and how we use it. |
| 0:33.4 | I'm Grant Barrett. |
| 0:34.4 | And I'm Martha Barnett. |
| 0:35.9 | The smell of old books. |
| 0:38.1 | You walk into a used bookstore, you pull down a volume at the library, you know this smell |
| 0:42.4 | right? Grant, it hits you you you know exactly what I'm |
| 0:44.6 | one smell yeah how would you describe it? Oh childhood libraries memory |
| 0:50.6 | right pleasure all those things. |
| 0:53.2 | It all comes from that smell. |
| 0:54.5 | Did you know that researchers in London have analyzed that smell and they've come up with a description |
| 0:59.7 | of it. |
| 1:00.5 | They describe it as a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla |
| 1:06.7 | over an underlying mustiness. Oh really? Yeah. I thought maybe it was insect poo. I didn't want to find out more really. This sort of sounds like a fine wine, right? |
| 1:16.0 | Yeah. Well, and they explained that the smell is actually the result of volatile organic compounds that are released into the air from the paper when you open up a book. |
| 1:25.0 | And the reason that you get that vanilla in part is because of the compound Lingen, |
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