Ramteen Arablui
Appearances
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So the other day I was reading this book about the first crusade. It's a moment in history that anyone who knows me knows I have long been obsessed with. And in one passage, there was a detailed description of what the city of Antioch was like then. There were details about the way the streets looked, the size of the citadel, how loud the central market was.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
I'm Ramteen Arablui, and you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Thank you to the American Academy of Achievement for their permission to use excerpts from their interview with Dr. Linda Buck. And special thanks to Hiro Matsunami, Dwayne Jethro, Melanie Bohi, Elise Perlstein, Connie Chang, Natalia Fiedelholz, and Yolanda Sanguini for sharing their time and expertise. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. Audio was mixed by Maggie Luthar.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Thanks to Johannes Dergi, Kiara West, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on this show, please write us at doolineatnpr.org.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
But there was something noticeably missing. No description of what it smelled like. It was weird because I register a lot of thoughts and memories in my head through smells. I'm sure you do too. And I realized I almost never stopped to think about how or why I smell things. Like why does a rose smell like a rose?
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Would the people in medieval Antioch have described the smell of a rose the same way I do? Well, Christina Kim, a reporter and producer on the ThruLine team, has been thinking about those kinds of questions a lot over the last few years. The other day, she even described smell as a superpower that allows us to time travel.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Yeah, she went deep on some of the big questions about our sense of smell and ended up on this winding historical journey. And now you get to go on it too. Christina is going to take it from here.