"History" can seem big and imposing. But it's always intensely personal – it's all of our individual experiences that add up to historical events. Over the next few episodes, we're exploring the personal and how it's changed history: from the story of romantic love, to the man who tried to cure aging, to the contents of our dreams...First up, memory and our sense of smell. What if we told you that the key to time travel has been right in front of our eyes this whole time? Well, it has: it's in our noses. Today on the show, the science — and politics — of smell, and how it links our past and our present. (Originally ran as The Scent of History)To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics with The Room Next Door, the new film by Pedro Almodovar starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. After years go by, two friends meet again in an extreme but sweet situation, now playing in select theaters.
Before we get started, a note to listeners that this episode includes exploration of racist material.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Ever since I was a little girl, I've been enveloped by the smell of lemon, rosemary, and spices. It's the smell of this Spanish perfume called Álvarez Gómez Agua de Colonia, the classic fragrance that's been made in Spain since 1912, that my grandmother, mi yaya, and my mother have always worn.
Yo era un poco traviesa. Me gustaba mucho salir y tal igual.
It's the smell of my yaya sitting on the couch in Madrid, with her legs crossed, wearing her kitten heel house slippers, reminiscing about being a little bit wild, un poco traviesa, as she reaches over with her soft hand to give mine a squeeze.
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