Taste and How it Works

Taste seems like a pretty simple sense, but scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how it works. Josh and Chuck explore the complexities of taste, from definitions and physiology to tongue maps and supertasters, in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Put us together, and you've got

(00:23):
the podcast duo. That's huge in Dallas. Yeah, you've got
a lot more than that. Yeah, that about four hundred
pounds of hairy goodness, slippery hairy goodness. Yeah, four hundred pounds,
and I'd say at least a hundred pounds of that
his hair. Yeah right. I wish if I could get
a haircut and would solve that problem in a shade.
You did get a haircut. We have the same haircut.

(00:44):
We're matching hair It's like, um, it's called the five guard. Yeah,
four guard? You go, is there a five? Yeah? I want?
I want, I go five, and I do a four
and then do a three on the sides. Just feather
it up. You know, it's weird this conversations. Yes, uh
Umi says that she can smell a new haircut. You
know how you can smell a freshly cut long? She

(01:06):
says she can smell a new haircut, and I'm like,
no one else on the planet. Can we even looked
it up. There's no reference on the entire internets to
smelling of a new haircut. Right, maybe she's a super
taster smeller. I was going to say, I don't think
that that translates to taste chuck. But is that a segue?
I think that works kind of right? I mean, um,

(01:28):
consider this. You know when you've ever smelled something and
you're like, I know what that would taste like, but
it wouldn't taste like that, But you just you can
tell how something would taste for how you would imagine
it would taste. The reason it's so easy to imagine
that is that smell and taste are as similar as
any two senses are because they're both reactions to chemicals. Right,

(01:52):
olfactories smell gustatory. We'll probably say those words taste very nice.
And the types of there, they're different types of molecules
that react to different types of UM senses. Right, So
you have an odorant that we smell that reacts with
our our odor receptors, and then you have goostants or

(02:12):
taste its. Yes, I prefer tasting um that react with
the taste receptors on our tongue, right, right, But because
they're so close, you know, you really actually can't have
one without the other. Which if you've ever had, um,
you know, any industrial accident associated with chlorine, you'll know
that not only can you not smell any longer, you

(02:35):
can't taste any longer. Yeah, or that's why the tastes
weird when you have a cold. Like Patty and Selma,
they had an accident. I can't remember what happened, but
they everything tastes like cardboard to them. It was like
this offhanded thing they said in the Simpsons, but like
after it sunk in, I'm like, that's the most depressing
thing I've ever heard. They were big smokers too. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(02:56):
I guess that was my Patty and Selma. Uh, since
you mentioned it, we should go ahead and point a
little factoid here that worms and other invertebrates actually there's
no distinction between taste and smell. Yeah. They're like, why
why put any kind of division up. We're just gonna
call all one thing. But my head looks like my butt,
so what's the difference, right? They distinguished between volatile and
non volatile organic compounds, right, which means that if you

(03:18):
paint a room and put a worm in it, it
knows that you just painted that room, right, or if
you got your hair cut right perhaps, Yeah, uh so,
I guess we should talk about these uh g r
c s, gustatory receptor cells, taste buds. That's kind of
where it all happens, it is, and you know, the
taste buds are a little Oh, I guess they're part

(03:40):
of the little bumps on your tongue. But yeah, it's
actually under that. Yeah, well how that works. It's wrapped
up in a package, right. Yeah. It looks like a
little spring onion, like the butt of a spring onion,
or radish looks like a radish it does, or beat
It looks like one of those maybe even a weird
gar like or you know what it looks like here
looks like a hot air balloon. It looks like one

(04:01):
of those boxing Yes, nice, chuck um. Within this little
what's called papilla papilla Yeah, um, I don't think you're
supposed to say it like that. Within that, there's fifty
taste receptors and they're generally specialized taste receptors, right, and
they're gonna be the same kind of taste receptor in

(04:23):
every peppie, right, um. And so you've got fifty of
those some basil cells which are skin cells. They produced
skin cells, right, Yeah, not basil is in the plant.
That would be great. If they had basil that lived
in my tongue at all time, you would be turned one.
Remember that's right. It's as for men, yes, just for
men gel Um. Great if you're actually sponsored by things

(04:48):
and we just worked them in like that. Yeah, it's
called product place, right, what do we do on that? Um?
So you have about fifty receptors in this little peppie
lace and basil cells, and um, you have a little
each each receptor cell has a little hair sticking out
of it. Yeah, gustatory hair. Right. It's not Italian though now,
but all of it does sound in town. That's from

(05:09):
what I gather from this photo rendition, is that that
is what you actually see poking up on your tongue. Right.
The little round thing is actually the little goostatory hairs,
isn't it. That's what it looks like. It's coming out
of the top of the speed bag, and they come
out of taste pores. And it's the goose story hair
where all the actions taking place. Right, Yeah, that's where
flavor and take well this or taste starts. Say you

(05:31):
put a bite of steak in your mouth, right, so
the the um, the saliva is breaking down the meat.
It's the first step in breaking it down, and it's
breaking it into these little molecules called tasteins or gustin, yes,
depending on your preference and um. These molecules bind to

(05:54):
the saliva, are taken across the tongue, and they stick
to the receptors that are generally uh designed to if
you believe in intelligent design, designed to um create the
sensation that we call taste, or they just happened to
match up. If you don't believe in intelligence, right exactly,
good luck. And Chucker's taste is much different from flavor,

(06:17):
isn't it. Let's define taste and flavor because this is
a big This is a big thing. Yeah, flavor. I
think Sarah Dowdy actually have stuff you missed in history class.
Fine podcasts. She wrote this and the way she put it,
which I thought was great, was flavor is it's sort
of like a full body. And we'll get into actually
that stuff later with the gut cells. But flavor is
a whole body experience. It's um, all your senses, including smell,

(06:40):
obviously tactile, and she said that with spicy food, pain
is factored in. Is one of the aspects of flavor. Yeah,
I love that. So taste is this this taste in
molecule wrapped up in your saliva, smacking against augustatory hair. Yeah,
it's it sends a transmission to your brain, right, and
your brain encodes it and says mommy right. Or salty.

(07:06):
There's different voices for each taste, as I'm sure you
know already. Um, don't ask me to do sour, but
that's just the we will later. That's just the taste.
The flavor is that the pressure that the steak puts
on your tongue, um, the the the TecTile sensation of
you know, the kind of ends of the meat. You

(07:29):
know what I'm saying, it's just kind of dancing across
your tongue or if you like your steak rare, medium rare,
like I do that, just that lump of like warmish,
bloody flesh, right, yeah, And then like you said, pain
to all of our vegetarian fans, just turned off. Just
are so disgusted right now. But that whole sensation is flavoring.
All these different sensations are going to the brain, and

(07:51):
the brains like steak. Yeah, you know what I want
to know. And actually just thought of this. What is
the deal when you like, eat a piece of cheese.
Someone will tell me that, I'm sure like you get
a piece of sharp cheddar and it feels like your
jaw locks up. Do you ever have that with certain flavors? No, really,
your jaw lot, I know, with like really dill sour flavor.

(08:12):
I'm like, no, I'm talking about Jerry, have you ever
had that cheese? Jerry's asleep, Like, I'll put a piece
of cheddar in my mouth and my my jaw just
like clinches, like noticeably clinches. I have no idea what
you're talking about. Jerry just said, yes, Jerry doesn't know
what we're talking about at all. Well that maybe you know.

(08:32):
We're gonna talk about super tasters in a minute. There
are different types of tasters. We found out it's not
the same for everyone, So maybe that's one of my
you know, my kinds, right, And here's a little spoiler
about super tasters. The key to supertasters. They have more
taste buds. It's huge boring alright, so chuck, um, there are,

(08:53):
of course, what every school kid knows, our primary tastes, right, yeah, sweet, salty, sour, bitter.
Right back in our day, that was it. That's all
the taste you'd get, right, sunny, yeah, and um what
was it? Salt, sweet, sour, bitter? Yeah, right, and then um,
what's funny? In the Western world, For a good century

(09:14):
after a fifth taste was discovered, we still stuck to
these four and didn't recognize that there was a fifth
one Americans because the researcher was Japanese and his work
was never translated to English. So in about nineteen d
nineteen o one, um a Japanese researcher named kikun Ikeda Yeah,

(09:38):
thank you aka Akita Akeda. Yeah. In the early nineteen
hundreds he discovered um something called umami, which means a
delicious savory taste in Japanese, right right. What he was
doing was he was he was cooking some of that
Japanese seaweed that we both love, and he was like,
you know what, this is neither sweet, salty, bitter or

(09:59):
so or so he started researching it, and he found
out that he isolated the glutamic acid and found out
that it had his own good statory receptor. So he
was like, this is legit, and he said it in
Japanese is the problem, right, yeah, And everybody was like,
what that guy just say, mommy, let's go back to
the World's Fair in St. Louis right, that's my scream. Um.

(10:22):
So one of the reasons also that it was never
really investigated over here is ou mommy is much more
of a flavor that is in Japanese dishes, like you said,
seaweed huge, but also over here we have tomatoes and
new mommy flavor meat meat savory, sure, right um. And
uh Kada's research was backed up in the West in

(10:44):
nineteen five later, yeah, when some researchers started to try
to isolate the taste for monosodium glutamate. And remember oummi
is uh glutamic acid, right, yes, so glutamate glutamic acid.
So they're trying to isolate the flavor of MSG, which
is a pretty distinct savory flavor, and they found that

(11:05):
no combination of the primary taste bitter sweet, salty sour
could replicate MSG. I wonder how they did that. I
don't know. There's a lot going on in flavor science
that it is fascinating huge, yes, but it's yeah, I'm curious,
but they basically yeah, you're right, they came away with nothing.
All the combinations. They can't account for MSG and it's

(11:27):
magical properties a flavor and calories and uh, it's supposed
to like make you feel full or something, you know
what they say. I don't know with MSG. Yeah, I
thought that was the deal with or maybe that was
just an urban legend people like, you know, Chinese food.
MSG makes you feel awful. No, it makes you feel sick.
It's called Chinese restaurant syndrome. That's Chinese restaurant syndrome. I

(11:48):
know with me if I eat MSG, Um, it's uh
it feels like a clause grabbing the top of my
stomach hurt so bad. Um, yeah, it's it's a lot
of people are allergic to MSG. And of course Chinese
restaurants were famous for they I don't think so, and
most most restaurants actually advertised whether or not use it. Well,
they advertise that they don't use that. They don't advertise

(12:09):
like with MSG is a bad thing. Sure, but remember
we got a listener mail in once from somebody whose
family owned a bunch of Chinese restaurants and was like,
you guys talk about Chinese restaurants center and because MSG
is found in like snack chips or you know, and
we get all the blame right, and it's just it's
not just Chinese restaurants, and a lot of Chinese restaurants

(12:29):
have stopped using MSG. So there you go, listener. We
satisfied that two year old listener mail just we finally
get around to it. And did you hear what a
pro I was. I didn't cite the snack chip that
he used as an example. That's how good we're getting. Wow. Yeah,
my mind is blown right now too. So UM, like
you said in two thousand two, actually is when Akita's

(12:51):
study was finally translated into English. So many years even
after oh so from that point New Mommi um was
accepted as an as the official fifth taste and then
but think about it, so that's like a century because
the taste map, which we'll talk about the tongue map,

(13:12):
that was established in nineteen one about the time that
Kata was coming up with the umami. But it was
this that sweet, sour, salty, bitter right. Um, So for
a century the taste map didn't change, and then in
two thousand two, U mom is accepted in the West finally, right,
and then it seems like the floodgates open, right all

(13:32):
of a sudden, like they're like, well, wait a minute,
if there's a fifth taste, maybe we haven't been paying
enough attention. Like fat is apparently now the sixth primary taste, right,
leave it to the French. Um. There are new studies
now Joshure's that says that, well, they they think they've
identified fat as its own thing, like humans have a
taste for fat, and that the funny thing I thought,

(13:54):
if you have a high sensitivity to that taste, you
eat less fatty foods. You know, chuck. That is I think, Um, really,
that's something that's going to become what gets taste research.
It's funding is obesity and diabetes and stuff, because what
they found is people who are when you're talking about
super tasters, supertasters who taste sweet things, tend to eat

(14:15):
less um tasters who a lot of people don't really
detect the fat as much people who do have less
body fat. You said, the lower body mass index. Yeah. Um,
so you don't eat the foods that you taste the most. Yeah,
that's interesting, it's very interesting. Yeah, they did. The lady
did the one study on supertasters, and I think she
found that women in their forties at least, I guess

(14:38):
that was her set was they were uh, they gained
less weight or they were you know, slimmer, right than
non supertasters. But she didn't because they were eating less
of it. Yeah, but she didn't find it in men,
which I thought was odd. I guess men are just
like we just shovel whatever. Bring it on. Yeah, it's like, oh,
you want me to lose some weight, watch, I'll just
drink water for a day and there's fit you pounds

(15:00):
should right, So chuck now it's two and if you
stick out your tongue, please stick out your tongue. Chuck.
You know I bit my tongue almost all the way
off when I was a kid. Oh I see that. Wow,
it's like Frankenstein's tongue. So all right, chuck, stick out
your tongue please. Still. Yeah. Um, so we've got you, mommy.

(15:20):
We've got sweet, sour, bitter, salty, fatty yeah yeah, and uh,
a lot of it looks like the that's a pretty
fat tongue, chuck, it's not thick. This is worse than
the beat poop. I like the beat boop um. And
we also have what they've recently discovered that we actually

(15:43):
have specialized receptor cells that detect carbon dioxide. Yeah, well,
should we finish the tongue map real quick at least?
And why it's bunk? Sure? Uh, because you were pointing,
but people can't see you point, Josh. So the classic
tongue map says that bitters in the back, sour was
on the side, salty is on the front edge, sweet

(16:03):
is on the tip, and umami they're throwing on the
posterior and saying that that's where that is. Yeah, they're
like that that real estates open. That's but they're fine.
They've they've also found that um that there's fat somewhere
has to go in there somewhere, right, Yeah, do they
know where that is yet? I still knew. Yeah, it's
too new from what I understand, right, but I think

(16:26):
it's it's not just it's I think it's going to
take the the the tongue map away. That's going to
be done away with because there are primary tastes, certainly,
but they're finding that, you know, the whole tongue map
when it was invented in nineteen o one, Yeah, a
German researcher. Basically what he did was to say areas

(16:46):
of low sensitivity were depicted like there was no sensitivity,
like there's those lines that like there's actual borders. And yes,
maybe this area of the tongue is higher in recept
yourselves for umami or sweet or bitter, but that doesn't
mean that it's not found elsewhere on the tongue as well,
and so a lot of tastes are a mixture of
all these. Number one, well sure, and all he did

(17:08):
was interview people, which I thought was odd. Yeah, his
research was backed up in nineteen seventy four by Virginia Callings, Right, well,
sort of backed up and sort of not well, it
was kind of like revised. I guess it's like, yes,
his he was right and saying like this area is
highing sweet receptors than this area, So you could conceivably
put a tongue map, but maybe it was just kind

(17:29):
of pushed the wrong way and that um and overlap. Yeah,
Callings was the one who was saying like, this is
a lot there's a lot of interplay going on, including
CEO two. Let's get back. Can we talk about now
is the time? That's pretty cool. I mean you sent
me this over the emails a couple of days ago
and said, dude, you you tapped me on the head

(17:49):
and said, dude, you know that bubbly stuff. You think
that's that's what's making that taste in your mouth? And
it's not. No. Actually, there we have a gene that
UM expresses an zyme that's meant to detect carbon dioxide
in the bloodstream, right, so we can break it down
into useful forms UM, and they've for forever. Basically we

(18:11):
thought that anytime we drank a carbonated drink, it was
a popping in the little bubbles on our tongue that
created that sensation. Not so fast. They put people in
a pressurized chamber, hyperbaric chamber, right, given them soda that yeah,
has no bubbles present, and people could still detect the
carbon dioxide taste. So there's yet another taste. There's no

(18:32):
place on the tongue man for carbon dioxide, and yet
there's specialized receptor cells for detecting it. Right, yeah, Well,
because they like everything else, they said, this is interesting.
Let's get some mice and genetically uh make them different
and weird and test them out. And they did that
and they found it was the same receptor as sour. Right, yes,
what they um the sour receptor basically doubles as uh

(18:56):
CO two detector as well. They removed that in mice. Yeah, um.
And also they put a sensor into one of their nerves,
which is pretty interesting in and of itself that we
can do that. So those those combinations, those series of
studies um led to this discovery that we have uh
c O two detectors. And what an important discovery that

(19:17):
that is? Right, and Chuck, it is is it? I think?
So what does it mean? Well, that's the whole thing.
It leads you to the question, Chuck, why do we
have taste? Anyway? There's one obvious answer is that, um,
we are we learned to eat by deriving pleasure from it,
and we associate some taste with their pleasurable right. Well yeah,
but early man, it was a lot of times like

(19:40):
warning systems. Well this is the less obvious answer, right yeah,
Like if they ate something sweet, they're like appealed to them.
It's you know, it gives them a lot of calories,
and so that's a good thing. If they tasted something
really bitter, it might be poisonous, so you should spit
that out right. Sour could be spoiled something more. It
could be you know, a sweet and sour candy, which
is yummy, right, right. And and with early man we

(20:03):
had yet to figure out a way to encode ideas
and warnings about like not to eat something to you know,
the written word um, So we had to use our
taste senses on our own. And we still That's what's
so cool. That's why I love evolution all these years later.
That's why we're still attracted to sweet things because that
was survival. It gave you calories to live, basically food energy. Right.

(20:26):
But we have also gotten to the point where we are,
you could say, a reasonably fat society here in the US.
And you mix that together with health consciousness or self
consciousness especially, and all of a sudden you have artificial sweeteners,
which you would think is good for your body. But
they found that there's a correlation between U seeing um,

(20:50):
artificial sweeteners and type two diabetes, right, And they figured
out through this investigation, they figured out that there are
tastes cells elsewhere in the body. It's not just the tongue.
And we're getting this idea that not only our tastes, um,
they're more primary tastes than we realized. Tastes are interplace
of of different um receptor cells, and there's taste cells

(21:13):
elsewhere in the body, in the guts specifically, but also
probably in the pancreas, in um, the liver, in other areas.
So these tasting these molecules that are bounds alive and
they enter the gut, they start sending out other signals
rather than meady right, like what we were saying that
the like a bitter taste might be something poisonous. Sometimes

(21:36):
you'll eat something poisonous and it gets past the old
tongue and you swallow it, and that's when the guts
taste cells kick in, and that's why you might like
it might spur vomiting. It triggers your vomiting reaction. Thank god. Yeah. UM,
that's one way with the type two diabetes. Uh. With
the sweet receptors in the gut are signaled by something sweet,

(21:59):
they tell the blood to start absorbing insulin. Right, they start,
they tell the surrounding cells to start absorbing insulin. Glue coast,
I'm sorry, burn for energy, So insulin which actually chuck you.
Remember we've talked about before, and I think whenever we
talked about longevity, insulins like the worst thing for your body.
But we use it to go into cells, to basically

(22:21):
open the cells, so gluecoast can go be burned, um
and you. But if the glue coast doesn't arrive, if
there's no sugar eaten and it's just an artificial sweetener,
that signal is still triggered. The insulince still goes and
jams open your cells, but nothing gets burned, and the
insulin levels go up, and you have type two diabetes.
So that's the tie between drinking like a diet soda,

(22:44):
right and leading potentially leading to diabetes. Right. But isn't
that interesting that we figured out something new about taste
That it's all over, it's in all over sensation is
what they're coming up with, Right, that's crazy. So what
else do we have, Chuckers, Well, I think we finally
need to just um map out the supertaste or thing
just a little bit more, right, because supertasters are pretty
cool and how it all happened is really cool. Shall

(23:07):
I tell the story? I'd like to hear this story.
Way back in the nineteen thirties, a scientist name Arthur
Fox from DuPont was pouring some and this is like
every like, osha, this is the worst nightmare when they
hear stories about this laboratory stories like this. This dude
was pouring some PTC. Do you want to say the

(23:28):
long name? I do, but I have to find it first.
I'm not prepared to say it. It is fennel theo
carbon minde. Yeah, very nice, thank you. So he was
pouring some of this PTC it's an organic uh compound,
into a beaker and the way he described it was
he said it suddenly became a cloud that started shooting

(23:49):
all over the room and this is when Ocean's like,
oh god, and uh. It basically filled up this room.
And he was in there with his partner and his
buddy was like, a ah ah, it's awful, it's so better.
And he was like, what are you talking about? Wow,
that's not bitter. What what do you mean? And then
you know that triggered the conversation. Wait a minute, what's

(24:09):
going on here? You had a really awful reaction. And
apparently I've seen studies on YouTube this they don't use
PTC anymore dangerous, but uh, apparently it's so bitter, it's
like the reactions are hysterical. So he goes home and
he starts putting this stuff on his family's tongues and
his friends tongues to see if they react the same way.

(24:30):
And he found that there's no rhyme or reason who
it happens to, because it's a genetic trait. And they said,
it's what they used to use this for. It's so
specific of a genetic trait. They used to use it
for paternity cases like up through like the nineteen seventies. Yeah,
it's as they said, it's the most like, uh, one

(24:52):
of the most common mentally and traits right up there
with like eye color and blood type. Is whether or
not PTC makes you like freak out with bitter really, Yeah,
that's a terrible test. Yeah. So, and it's it's a
specific gene. There's a dominant allele for the T A
S two R to eight gene. Right, they've they've isolated that. Yes,

(25:12):
seventy percent of people this is what's weird. Se can
gets the bitter taste. Fifty eight percent of Australians and
of Native Americans in both North and South America, almost
all of them have that reaction. Really Yeah, that crazy. Yeah,
I don't even know what it means. I just thought
it was interesting. So the in UM there was a

(25:34):
researcher from Yale who coined the term super tasters. Right, yes,
and it's not just bitter and it's not just people
who react to um PTC or PCP. All right, everyone
reacts to PC. Yeah, but whether or not you get
you beat up ten cops I think is probably that's
a praternity test to let's see how you react to PCP. Right, Uh,

(25:55):
it's not just this bitter taste, right, you can have
a supertaster who really tastes sweet things, really tastes you mommy.
Really it's a primary taste, right, Yeah, that's just heightened
And like we said, the spoiler is you just generally
have more of these pepiles. Yeah, you have more taste
buds of the type than other people. Yeah, and it
can be a good thing, like to have a heightened

(26:17):
sense can be good in certain respects, but it also apparently,
UM like coffee and Brussels sprouts and really sweet and
spicy things. Super tasters can't handle that a lot of times.
So it's a curse as well as a blessing. Yeah,
I would say I can't handle broccoli, but it has
nothing to do with taste, you know, I like all that.
I've been eating beats like crazy lately, ever since I

(26:38):
beat salad. Yeah, I've been making my own beat salad.
I've been grilling beats, a little balsam, a little olive oil,
not hand that I'll have to try it, put it
on the grill, and then the next day you're gonna
think you need to go to the doctor. But it's
just the beats, that's all I'll say. So that's pretty
much it. Like we said, UM, if you're a super taster. Also,

(27:00):
it supports that um that aversion to foods that you
can taste more than other people. Super tasters who um
are are sensitive to sweet ten to eat less sweets, etcetera.
But they also avoid leafy greens, which is not good. No,
you gotta have that. Yeah, you pregnant. Actually, we forgot
to mention they don't use PTC anymore, but they do

(27:21):
use p R O P as the test now, which
is a it's a synthetic compound. They just call it prop, right,
and they use it in um thyroid medicine. Right. Yeah,
but now that's that's the standard supertaster test to see
if you have that better reaction to that. So they
just give you thyroid medicine or they drop some prop
on your tongue. I don't know how it works. Weird. Uh.

(27:43):
And then lastly, chuck the answer to why a lot
of stuff tastes like chicken. I don't know. This surprised me.
They have UM, well, at least that cornell. Using gas chromatography,
they have isolated a thousand UM concentrations chemical concentrations in
n chicken that that contain tastings that the human tongue

(28:03):
can taste or that the human brain can sensus taste.
And they used to think it was hundreds of thousands.
They're like, no, it's just thousands, and chicken is like, well,
I made up the chicken part. That's my theory. And
my theory is that it's because there's only a thousand
instead of a hundred thousand. There's your answer right there.

(28:24):
And then lastly check that also makes me wonder if
there's a thousand chemicals and they used to think it
was hundreds of thousands. So there's hundreds of thousands of
chemicals out there, but we can only taste a thousand.
It's kind of like light, you know, we can only
see within a certain band of light. Makes you wonder
how things that we can't taste taste. You just chew
on that one. And if you want to know more
about taste, go to how stuff works dot com where

(28:48):
you can type the word taste in the handy search bar. Uh.
And also, uh, this is I think requisite listening for
a molecular gastronomy podcasts that will do some time in
the future, don't you think? All right, let's love to
do one on that. Alright chuck. Then you know what
time it is, right listener? Mail? Or are we doing
some sort of uh Facebook or anything? Oh wait, we

(29:09):
got our big, big announcement. Yeah that's right, thank you
for reminding us. Go ahead, all Atlanta event right, Yeah,
we're gonna do an Atlanta thing similar to what we
did in New York. Yes, because we got called out
by all the Atlanta folks like you go to New
York in New York, New York. What about Atlanta. Yeah,
well we're like, yeah, we kind of have to. So yeah,

(29:31):
we're gonna do trivia night, right, all comers can come
take us on. We'll figure out the details. But um,
we're looking for venue still. Yeah, we could use you
people for details. If you were in Atlanta and you
have some connections with what might be a good venue
to host our trivia, please get in touch with us. Yeah,
so yeah, we'll keep you posted. If you have any suggestions, comments,

(29:52):
whatever about the Atlanta thing, email us. And now wait, well,
should be sometime in August we should point out. Okay,
we don't. We don't have a lockdown yet, but look
forward in the next like six weeks. Now listen to me.
All right, all right, Josh, I'm gonna call this rare
shout outs because we don't do these very often. Shouts out,
shouts out, shouts out like the new Williams Sapphire. Hi,

(30:15):
Josh and Chuck. My husband and I are huge fans
of your podcast. We eagerly wait every Tuesday and Thursday
so we can hear what you have to say. I
guess that proves your fans. Yeah, uh, now you can
be my Heroes as well. Next Saturday, July is my
husband's twenty four b day. Chuck, this is very kind
of you, and I don't know. We don't do this
very often. We just bought our first house. He made

(30:37):
me promise not to buy him anything. I guess because
they just spend on their money in the house. I
wonder if you give him a shout. I know you
don't do this often, so let me tell you why
he's cool enough to get a one of a kind
birthday greeting. His name is DJ Vile. Seriously, he's in
your Facebook crew v I l a d J Bile
and I don't think no, I think that's his name.

(30:58):
His name is like Donald James Vial or something. Well,
if he ever becomes a DJ, then he's all set. Yeah,
he's like, just call me me. He listens to every
one of your podcasts. He's a huge Simpsons fan. Well,
I mean those are good, but that's not a reason
to shout out. But these are. He ran a tin
k as green Man. I know I saw that. Was

(31:20):
that a root suit? It was either yeah, I think
green Man in the root suit or one in the
same So you actually ran a full tank screen man.
And uh, lastly, he'll be spending his birthday driving to
present his research entitled this interfraction Variability of long tumor
motion using four D Cone beam CT at a Physicist

(31:42):
medical conference in Philly. And this dude is twenty four
years old and he's doing that. My brains melt. So
with that on the seventeenth, Happy birthday, DJ Vile, Happy birthday,
DJ Vile. Thank you very much for listening. And Julie,
your wife sounds okay a very kind man. Should does.
And good luck presenting your findings, and uh, best wishes

(32:04):
for your new home. All right, Chuck, thank you for
the listener mail. Now it's time for shouts out to
Kiva Kiva dot org slash team slash stuff you should know,
or if you just go to community you can search
stuff you should know. Join our Kiva team. We are
on a mission to raise a quarter of a million

(32:24):
dollars in loans and we're making it and we're doing
it with how many we have hundreds of thousands of
stuff you should know listeners. We have like two thousand
and change members on the Kiva team, so there's like
a hundred and eighty thousand of you out there that
are really disappointment, right and this just this, But on
the same token, we're very very proud of the two
thousand and change who are members of this stuff You

(32:46):
should Know Kiva Team because so far they've raised a
hundred and seventy thousand and then some. So far, we're
on the way to y Yeah, we are included, but
there's people on there who put us to shame, you know,
they're lighting it up on their Yeah, there's some really
great people, and there's somebody who's like, um, uh, that's
somebody got a bonus at work and made alone. Um

(33:07):
somebody I think an auto repair wasn't as much as
they thought, so they used the difference on Kiva. They
made alone on Kiva. People that just make us look
like vile, Like twenty bucks on the ground and like,
if I'm not hungry, I might think about not spinning
it on beer and giving it to keep it. I
have a similar problem. Uh, So, thumbs up to our stuff.

(33:30):
You should Know Kiva Team. If you want kudos from us,
you can join it yourself. Again. That's www. Dot kiva
dot org. Slash Team slash Stuff you should Know is
a very welcoming community. Of people. Right, great people were
on Facebook. We have a Facebook page with twelve thousand
and then some fans, and we are extremely active on it. Yeah,

(33:51):
so it's actually a fun Facebook page. Right. I should
say Chuck is way more active than I am, but
we called. Yeah I do Twitter, um, but we were
both on there. But Chuck is really really good about
responding to people's comments and questions and stuff. So if
you want to interact with us, especially Chuck, uh, you
can go to Facebook, dot com, slash stuff. You should know.

(34:12):
We're also on Twitter, s y sk podcast. You can
follow us in our stupid musings. And we get caught
up in hoaxes and stuff and I have to eat
crow thanks to me, or we get told you gotta
take that down. You can't say that, right, You're gonna
get in trouble. You're gonna get everybody in trouble. Uh.
And then what's the last thing? There was one other thing? Oh,
I don't get to get any T shirts? Yeah, the

(34:34):
T shirt contest is over. We have five winners and
you can buy every single one of these awesome T shirts.
Five different stuff you should know designs at um, the
Discovery Store, go to store dot Discovery dot com and
uh search stuff you should know and it'll bring up
all five T shirts. Yes, and that's it. Man. If
you have anything cool to say to us, we want

(34:54):
to hear it. Put it in an email, send it
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com
home page. M brought to you by the reinvented two

(35:17):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you