Can we smell memories? – Let’s talk about that. (upbeat music) Good mythical morning. – You’re probably familiar with the concept or have experienced it firsthand how a scent can trigger a memory, even very specific ones that are long forgotten. Well today, we’re gonna unpack some (beeping) research and conduct an experiment on ourselves. – And this is pretty cool because given all our history of overlapping experiences, I think that we are uniquely gifted to do this. – Oh, did you just call me uniquely gifted? Thank you. – Oh, I said we, and I’ll change it to me if I have to. It’s time for “What Could Happen Just By Smelling This Old Hat? Oh My Gosh, I Just Remembered When We Tangoed With a Bearcat!” – We didn’t actually tango with a bearcat. I don’t even know what a bearcat is. – (beeping) You need to do some research. – Uh-huh, uh-huh. – Okay, Dr. Pamela Dalton, we love you. – Hey, Pam. – While achieving her PhD at NYU, she conducted a study that had subjects study the faces of strangers while smelling different odors. – That’s how I love to look at strangers. – Yes, and then the study found that they were much better, the people were much better at remembering the faces when the corresponding odors were presented as well. – It does make sense, because I tend not to forget someone if the first time I met them, they smelled like barf. – That’s true. And that’s not just because barf is so strong but smells in general have a stronger link to memory and emotion than any of our other senses. And that’s because, unlike all our other senses, smells are sent straight to the olfactory bulb, it’s somewhere in there, which is directly connected to the parts of our brains responsible for memory and emotional processing. So in other words, smells get a direct flight to where your brain stores all the feels. – A direct flight. So why do smells get the direct flight to our brain? Well, one theory is evolutionary. Smell is one of the most rudimentary senses used in interactions between single-celled organisms. Even though they don’t have noses. – It’s a chemical… – They do use it when- – Reaction. – Yeah. When they’re interacting with the chemicals around them. So it has the longest evolutionary history. And this also might explain why we have at least 1000 different types of smell receptors, but only four types of light receptors and about four types of receptors for touch. – I think I got more than four touch receptors. I mean, I think I got at least, I got at least six. – Yeah, but no, you only have four types. – Ah, okay. – But 1000 for scent. – Okay, and that brings us to today. We have shared so many experiences that we think that our little olfactory bulbs must be storing similar scent memories just waiting to be released like some kind of nostalgic kraken. So how well can we access them together? – And is this gonna make us cry? – Well, I hope so. – Okay, in videos recorded earlier, we each smelled our own set of separate scents and we described the specific memory that the scent evoked. Now we’re gonna smell the other guy’s scents and see if we can guess what memory it brought up for the other person. (exotic music) As you can see, I can’t. – Yes. And we are starting with my memories, okay? So this is something you’re gonna smell. And you’re gonna try to guess what I thought of, what I remember when I smell this, okay? So the cloche is coming off. – Okay. – [Rhett] Get in there. – Oh. Oh, what is the, is it stink? – Mm-hm. – [Link] Oh, is it just soil or is it poop? – Go with the latter. – Okay. You’ve given me, you’ve given me poop. – You’ve given me, you’ve given me poop. – It’s not bad poop though. It’s kind of a good poop. It’s like, I’m getting lots of good memories, I think. Is this a patty? Is this a cow patty? – [Rhett] Yes. – Now we have- – What does that make you think of? – You got a lot of cow patty memories, man. This is evoking a memory for me of, it could be camping in a cow pasture like we did a lot, but I think this is, I mean, even the blood oath that we made was in a cow pasture, but I think it’s just chasing cows in the cow pasture across from the Keith Hills golf course. That’s my memory. – Okay, take off your blindfold and let’s see what I thought. – Is it just soil? I mean, Lucas, you ground up the cow patty? – It’s tough to get straight manure but it is cow manure, yes. Dirt? Oh, that’s not dirt. That my friends, that’s some cow manure. I smell a lot of this and I gotta say, it’s a sweet smell. And it makes me think. – Smells kinda good. – About all the time that we spent in that cow pasture across the creek, chasing those cows. Maybe in particular, the time that I picked up a cow patty ’cause what would happen is the cow patties would essentially dry, and if you got it at the right time you could pick one up and you could toss it at your best friend. – Like a Frisbee. – And one time it hit him on the chest and disintegrated and deposited a little bit of wet manure on his self. – Well, you did go specific, but. I don’t remember that. – Here’s the deal. The reason, I went into specific for entertainment, but yeah, when I smell that, I think about that place, the place that we would go. – Oh yeah. – Which is exactly where you were thinking about, so that you got that one. – Very special. – 100%. – Okay, Rhett. – I’m ready to smell. – Smell it out. – Is it gone? – Yeah. Don’t touch. No touching. – Oh. Oh wow. That smells like dirty laundry. – Yeah, it’s a more specific smell. – Okay. – Yeah. – Well it, I mean, it smells like a locker room. I mean, is it a jock strap? Why is it sticking up so high? Is that your, is that you? – No, it’s not me. – So are you trying to keep me from touching it? Is that why you’re putting your hand under there? – No, I’m not putting my hand under there. – I’m not an idiot. – That’s it. The thing that you’re smelling is moving. – It’s moving? – Yeah. – What do you mean it’s moving? – It’s moving on its own volition. All right, so you thought a locker room smell, yeah? – Dirty socks or something like that. – Yeah. – Yeah, that’s right? – Yeah. Go to memory town. It’s specifically, I would say what’s in the sock. – A foot. – Yeah. That’s all, that’s part of it. – Oh, it’s your foot. – It’s not my foot, man. My feet don’t stink. I mean, honestly? – Maybe whatever memory comes to mind for you first. I don’t think of the Buies Creek Elementary locker room because we didn’t really like, you didn’t play sports that required changing clothes. In like a locker room. It smells like PE, at, and I’m gonna say Buies Creek Elementary, ’cause I’m just gonna go back to the first time I played PE. – I don’t know about playing PE. – I play PE. – All right, so what’s my memory? – Playing dodgeball at Buies Creek Elementary School during PE. – All right. Remove the blindfold. See, I wouldn’t make you smell my feet. – Ah. Yeah. Did you, were you instructed to- – Funkify? – I tried really hard to funkify these socks. – Yeah, all right. Let’s see the answer. – Yeah, you did. – Thank you. – I don’t know. Maybe there’s a foot under here, I don’t know. I definitely see a leg coming under this cloche, so. Not as much of a surprise. Seems to be a foot. Oh, a stinky foot. This is a more recent memory. When we were on tour, we’d get back on our tour bus after a show and something would stink. And I figured out that it was Britain, my cousin’s, feet. – I was about to say, it’s not mine. – He would take his shoes off. He had a little sock on, and it. Yeah. I had to ask him to wear shoes on the bus. Do you remember the stink? – Yeah. It was a little higher up smell than this. – It was was a different person’s foot. – Yeah, it was a different foot. – Yeah. But you do remember it now. – I do remember it, but. – How could you forget it? Sorry, Britain, for throwing you under the bus, buddy. (exotic music) – Hang tight for a second, link. I’m gonna talk about Trevor’s podcast. – Oh, do it. “Trevor Talks Too Much.” I’m a fan. – Yes, one of our Mythical Kitcheneers, Trevor, has his very own podcast, “Trevor Talks Too Much”. He’s been blabbering on and on to some of the top creators, streamers, musicians, and more to see how many people he can add to his contacts. To see where the conversation goes and how it flows, listen in every week anywhere you get your podcasts “Trevor Talks Too Much”. TT2M? – TT2M, yeah. All right, un-cloche me. – Okay. You’re gonna have to dig pretty deep. I think you have to dig pretty deep just to smell this too. You know what, you can reach down and grab the little glass that it’s in and bring that up to your. – It’s like a shot glass? – To your nose, yeah. – Oh, okay. Okay. It’s burnt. Burnt wood. – More specific, be more specific. – It’s like matches. – Yeah. Okay. Now dig deep. I think you can get this. – I remember when we had the bright idea to capture smoke in a bottle. And so that’s what we did. We captured the smoke, we put the foil over the top of the glass bottle, and then like sometime later we were like, “Let’s let the smoke out,” and we removed the foil and nothing happened. That’s my memory. – It’s odd that you remember that. – That’s your memory? – Let’s let’s see what I said. Burnt matches. It’s the time when we were kids we tried to trap smoke inside a bottle on his deck. – Yes, on the deck. – By taking matches, putting them out, letting the smoke gather in a bottle. And then it was stuck in the bottle. We put the top on, we left it out all night. And then we woke up really early in the morning. We were like, “Let’s go check out our smoke bottle.” We went out there and we opened it and it was empty except the smoke had basically coated the sides. And we were like, “This is how smoke works?” One of the most mind-blowing things of my childhood. – Yeah. We learned a lot that day. – Smoke works like that. – We thought that like a genie was gonna come out. All right, hey, that’s that’s quite a shared memory. – That’s very specific. – Yeah. – I thought you’d get that as soon as you knew it was matches. (exotic music) – Okay, Rhett. – Okay, I’m ready to smell. – [Link] Smell it out. – Oh gosh. Why do you do so many stinky things? Like, well, I mean, I know I gave you manure, but then I gave you burnt matches. – Yeah? You want me to, here, I’ll hold it up to you. You want me to? What is that? – Oh gosh. It, well, it’s kind of awful, but like maybe it wasn’t awful at one point? – Eh. – Like, I smell some corn in there. – You probably do. – It’s not vomit, is it? – (laughing) No. – Is it another kind of poop? – Yeah. We both independently presented each other with poop. We’ve had a lot of poop experiences, haven’t we? – But this is, it doesn’t smell like cow poop. – [Link] Nope. – [Rhett] It smells like an agricultural animal. – [Link] Yep. – It’s not chicken. – Nope. – [Rhett] It’s sheep poop. – All right, access the memory. – No, no. Is it sheep and goat? – Mm-mm. – What animal is it? – I say just go with the goat. Do you have a memory for goat? – Well, the, okay. The thing that I immediately thought of was the demonstration farm at Campbell University, which was over there next to the Pearson House. – Yeah. – We would just go over there and we would jump the fence and get into the like, little field with the goats and the sheep and let the ram ram us. We thought it was so cool that he was, he would get so mad and he would ram us. – Yeah. – That’s what I think about when I smell it. – All right, remove your blindfold. That, my friend, is pig poop. Let’s see my memory. – That’s pig? – Oh, turds? What kind of turd? (coughing) God. – It wasn’t that bad. – It was fresher when I smelled it. Pig crap makes me remember, let’s see. We were sophomores in high school. We left the football game and went to a pigsty. There was an abandoned, single wide trailer on the backside of the pigsty. We were wrong. It wasn’t abandoned. Somebody comes out the front door and all we heard was, ’cause it was very dark. “I’m gonna give you to the count of 10 to get off my land. One, two, 10.” And then he fires a shotgun. – Yeah. – I don’t know where he fired it because we were running off of his land, his pigsty, as fast as we could. Okay. That’s the memory. Let’s get this outta here. See, if you would’ve known it was pig, you would’ve, it probably would’ve accessed that memory. – Pig smells, in my recollection, maybe just because we like would smell it like all like a, like more of it. It smells much stronger than that. That almost smells good. Like that’s like a pet pig. – But he did say “One, two, 10,” didn’t he? – Yeah, it was like a movie. “One, two, 10,” and then he shot a gun. – It was scary. His front yard was a pigsty. That’s his choice. – Yeah. (exotic music) Okay, Link. – Better not be more animal turds, man. – No, this is good. – Okay. – Nothing bad about this at all. – All right, hit me. – Take. – What? Take. Take. – All right. – Okay. Is it food? Can I pick this up? – [Rhett] Yep. – Mmm. Oh, oh my gosh. I was, this is popcorn. I’m immediately hit with a memory. – Okay, I’m interested in this ’cause this one’s really strong for me, ’cause it’s, okay, I’m not gonna say anything else. – Wow. Okay. You know what it, I don’t know if it’s because you mentioned PE, but the first thing I remembered was there was a, they had a popcorn machine at the concession stand at Buies Creek Elementary School for like the basketball games or whatever. Like I was immediately taken back there to that. Were you? Yes, you were. – All right. Let’s see. – Okay, yeah. – I think I know what this is because there’s a popcorn machine right there. But yes, it’s popcorn. Now there’s a distinct smell to this type of popcorn that was made in a popcorn machine. It doesn’t smell like microwave popcorn. – Exactly what I said. – When I have smelled this type of popcorn that was made in a machine and with a metal kettle like this with the real oil, I’ve thought about Buies Creek Elementary School basketball games. – Yes! – Because they used to set up the machine. It was bigger than this. In fact, they let me run it one time. But I’ve always just had this distinct memory. I see it there set up. You knew that was when it was game day. This is gonna be a reach for Link, but he was there. He was keeping score for the girls’ basketball team. Buies Creek Elementary game day. – Nailed it. I mean. – It’s so specific. – And I’ve never, and when I smell popcorn that we make at home it doesn’t trigger this memory. This is a memory that hasn’t been triggered. Yeah, there’s something about on this particular scent. – So you’ve gotten all three of mine. Does that mean that you have a better memory or I have a better memory? – It means we need to keep going. – Okay. One more. (exotic music) – Okay, Rhett. Smell it out. And you know what, I’m gonna pick it up. You just stay where you are. – This smell is very subtle. – Now I will say the memory is pretty specific, so. – Is it a cleaner? – Let me give you another side to this thing. – I don’t smell anything on this side that’s distinct. – You smelled cleaner. – Is it painted wood? – I think you’re close enough to just start accessing memory. ‘Cause if I tell you. – Well, there’s one thing that comes to mind and it was. – You may need to be accessing your olfactory bulb, not your conceptual memory. – Well, when I smell wood like that, because I’m smelling like a paint or like a chemical, I’m actually thinking about those little cars that we used to have when we were Royal Ambassadors, the RAs, like the Pinewood Derby, and we had ’em and we would race ’em down the. (whistling) – All right. – The ramps. – Remove your blindfold. You’re right about it being a treated piece of wood. Let’s see what the memory is. All right. Okay. Would you like to smell? Oh, there’s something on this wood, like stain. Yeah, I had benefit of knowing it was wood. Eighth grade Buies Creek Elementary School gym, Pandora Harris absolutely dominating the girls’ basketball games. It’s tough to keep up with. And I had to, because I kept score for the girls’ basketball team. Logging Pandora Harris’s layups. It’s crazy that we kept, like with the popcorn. And you had already talked about, you had already mentioned that I kept score for the basketball team. – Well, because that’s why- – And we have so many memories for this like, that basketball court shellac. – Here’s the thing. That doesn’t smell like it. That doesn’t smell like- – To you. – When Mr., like, Mr. Royal would be like “You can’t go in there for a couple of days. We just got it.” – Right. – Yeah. And it’s like, that’s a overwhelming smell. This is just not the same exact type of. – Well I think, that was the thing. That was the hard thing with our experiment is to like totally nail, and we certainly did it with the popcorn. That’s the one that totally did it where it was like, it bypassed all thinking and we both immediately were taken back to the same place. And I guarantee you- – Well, the case of my memories, yes. Again, I don’t know what the conclusion here is, is that all three of the things that I, the memories that they created for me were the same memories they created for you. But all three of your memories did not create the same memory for me. But I also, my beef with your memories is that I don’t think I actually smelled the exact same thing. – That’s what I’m saying. – That triggered the original memories. – We kind of gotta, we have to steal a plank from the floor. – Every time I walk into a gym that’s just been- – You think of that. I think, in fact recently when they were redoing the “Ear Biscuits” studio and doing the back and it had some sort of new stain, it was like, “Buies Creek Elementary. They just finished the floors.” See? Same thing. It just comes back every time. – So it does work. All right, well, if we got the direct flight. Thanks for subscribing and clicking that bell. – You know what time it is. – I’m Elise. – I’m Matt. – We’re from Detroit, Michigan and we’re trying durian for the first time. – [Both] It’s time to spend the Wheel of Mythicality. Dink it. – And sink it. – Sink it. – Did they live? We don’t know. – Yeah, what happened? What happened? – Click the top link to watch us match the crew members to their most vivid scented memory in “Good Mythical More”. – And to find out where the Wheel of Mythicality’s gonna land. – [Rhett] Hey, we wanna let you know about a brand new podcast hosted by our very own Mythical Kitcheneer Trevor called “Trevor Talks Too Much”. Check it out on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.