What happened to my sense of smell?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It took a while before it was officially recognised as a major symptom of Covid-19, but loss of smell has affected up to 60 percent of people who have had the virus. And for a significant portion, smell continues to be an issue for weeks or months after their recovery. So what’s going on and how can you get your sense of smell back?
We tend to think of our sense of smell as something universal – if it smells bad to me, it probably does to you but that is not the case for CrowdScience listener Annabel, who wonders why things other people love to sniff, she finds disgusting. Anand Jagatia investigates the science of smell, gets up close to the world’s smelliest plant and finds out if smell training can help those with long-term issues after Covid.
Contributors Ellie Byondin, supervisor of the Princess of Wales Conservatory at London’s Kew Gardens Thomas Hummel, University of Dresden Carl Philpott, from the UK’s Norwich Medical School Sissel Tolaas, artist and smell historian based in Berlin Noam Sobel, Weizmann institute of science
Presented by Anand Jagatia and Produced by Marijke Peters for the BBC World Service
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | So just what grab the skirt and stick your nose in. |
| 0:38.0 | Hello and welcome to crowd science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm Anand Jagatier. |
| 0:44.0 | Oh, that's so horrible. |
| 0:47.0 | And I'm currently getting a big old whiff of Titan Aram. |
| 0:51.0 | Latin name, I'm more favelas Titanum, which means gigantic misshapen penis, also known as... |
| 0:58.0 | Fat Guy. |
| 1:00.0 | Fat Guy. |
| 1:01.0 | Stinky. |
| 1:04.0 | Exposing me to this rather disgusting odor is Ellie Bionden, |
| 1:08.0 | supervisor of the Princess of Wales Conservatory at London's Q Gardens. |
| 1:12.8 | To me it smells a little bit like a dead rock, but also like, you know, like bean juice. |
| 1:20.4 | Now El Stinko, or Aram is a plant, but not just any plant. If you haven't seen one I'd really recommend that you look it up. |
| 1:29.3 | It's an impressive beast of a thing two meters high with a long yellow spear-like stem protruding |
| 1:36.1 | upwards from its base surrounded by what looks like a frilly red and green skirt. |
... |
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