HTDE: Crushes and Smells

Hey, guys, it's Peter once again in your Wait, Wait feed. I am so pleased to present to you another episode of How to Do Everything by Wait, Wait producers Ian and Mike. Now, remember, you can only get these episodes of How to Do Everything in our feed for a short while. So if you love the kind of mysteries that Mike and Ian are revealing, make sure you subscribe to How to Do Everything at their own feed. Thanks. Hey, Liesl, what can we help you with? Well, let me get Darcy. Hang on a second. She's the one with the question. Okay. Make sure we can get into a spot where you can hear us all right. Is she getting Darcy out of the back of a cupboard? Okay. She just ran in here. All right, Darcy, do you want to introduce yourself and tell Mike and Ian what your question is? I'm Darcy, and my question is, how do you tell a boy that you like him? Oh, my gosh. That's a tough question. How old are you, Darcy? Ten. Okay. Okay. Is this a generic question, or is there a boy we're talking about? There's a boy we're talking about. And is this a question on your behalf, or are you asking for a friend? On my behalf. Okay. All right. I appreciate the boldness here, Darcy. Let's get into it. Who's the boy? His name is Aiden. Okay. Aiden. And he likes the color blue and sharks, and he likes to play video games and stuff. I love it. Okay. He sounds lovable. So, have you tried to tell Aiden that you like him? Not really, mainly because I'm afraid that he's going to say he doesn't like me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's always the risk, isn't it? Okay. So, when you guys are on the playground and you're talking, what do you guys talk about? It's sort of personal stuff. Sure. Yeah. Come on, Mike. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Has there been anything that has happened that maybe Aiden has said or done where you thought, oh, I think he does like me? Not really. You've got some information from your friends, though, and his friends, right? His friends say that. That he likes me, and my friends tell his friends that I like him. I mean, that feels pretty. I feel like that's pretty solid information. Do you feel confident in all of that? Kind of. I also think it's one of those things where it is an act of bravery, no matter how it goes. Yeah. Like, if you get the news you want and he likes you back, that's wonderful, and you are brave. If it turns out he doesn't like you back. You are still brave. That's right. And that is, like, a thing to sort of go into it with, because bravery is, like, everything. Okay. Did you want us to call Aiden right now? Yeah. Do you want us to just call him? We'll do it. Do you have his phone number? No. Good. Wait. Was that no, you don't have his phone number, or no, you don't want Mike and Ian to call him? Both of them would be fine. Both of those things. Yeah, okay. Good. Darcy, I see really good judgment here. You're making all the right calls. All right, we are going to see if we can find somebody who can help Darcy find love, but in the meantime, I have a question that I have been wondering about. Can a smell get stuck in your nose? Yeah. I know what you're talking about. I've been there. You smell a smell, and then you get away from the smell. Mm-hmm. And it's still, you're still kind of smelling it. Claire Dumarc is online with us now. She's a researcher at Université Paris-Saclay. Is the smell staying in my nose, or is this psychological? That's interesting. That's interesting. So, yeah, it's like the smell stays in your nose, right? Yeah. It stays in your nose and comes back when it wants. So, there is no scientific proof of this, of a smell that could, like, you know, hide in a corner. In a corner of your nose, and then come back later. So, you might first know that smells, they are molecules. So, they are particles, real particles that your nose detects, and those particles are supposedly eliminated once you smell them. Your system is done in a way that there is enzymes that are able to basically break those molecules. Okay. So, it breaks the particles, and the particles are eliminated. Okay. So, the molecule that makes the smell. The molecule that makes the smell is destroyed. Exactly. Exactly. So, you're not supposed to be able to smell it hours later. Wait, what destroys it? But when I smell it, then it immediately, its purpose is served, and it disappears? Exactly. It's disintegrated. Yeah, it is broken, basically, in small parts. Okay. And eliminated in your mucus. And so, by breaking it and the flow, the molecule is eliminated. Once you smelled it, once you kept it. Okay. Okay. So, when this thing happens, it's all in my head. It's all psychological. So, I want you to go there after. So, it can be in your head, yes. Like, when you see something, and you know, a bit later, you think again about it, and you see it in your mind. It can happen, right? Like, you see something, then you do your life, and later you take a coffee, and it's like, oh, I saw that. And you see the image in your brain, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It seems to be more something like this. Can I ask, Ian, can I ask you a question? What is the smell, when you think about this? Because I feel like I'm going to guess what it is, but why don't you tell us what it is? I can't actually remember what made me start thinking about this, but I think what Mike is referring to is, I have a child who is still in diapers. Exactly. Yeah. Occasionally, you will change a diaper. And, you know, half an hour later, you will think, did I do the job as well as I thought I did? And you find that you did. And so, this made me wonder, is it hanging out in my nose? And now I know, it was just the trauma of changing the diapers. So, it does happen most of the time for unpleasant odor, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Earlier, Claire, you said, I don't know, I don't know. You said that, I think you were joking, that a small molecule of smell would be hiding in your nose, and then you would find it. Is it possible for a molecule of smell to somehow be hidden under something, or, you know, just be, you know, laying in wait? No, it is not possible that a molecule hide in your nose and wait to arrive. Is there a reason that, you know, like an evolutionary advantage, a reason that, you know, that a smell is destroyed when we smell it? It indeed has to be because, indeed, like if you had a permanent smell and something else happened, and you cannot smell this other smell that is very, maybe very important for your survival, then you have to have the first smell disappearing so you can be sensitive to the second one. And if the smell is not leaving and your system cannot process it, your brain will take over because the brain can basically also break. The connections that make you smell something. This is also why you don't smell your own odor. You have no idea what you're smelling. Other people do. I'm not speaking about like intense sweat that you have like sometimes. This one, you can smell it because you don't always smell like this, but your permanent odor, you don't smell it. Yeah. Can I ask, Claire, as someone who's like, I guess, an expert in smell, there are any number of bad smells. Is there? Is there a smell that people in your field regularly think of as one of the best smells? One of the best smells? Yeah. Like, oh, that's a good smell. Vanilla. Vanilla is always working as something that everyone likes. Vanilla, really? Yes. Oh, that's good. It seems that there is study that shows also the maternal milk is also containing this molecule. So maybe this is even something we learn to like very early on. It's linked to like a nutritive food. So, yeah. Wait, so breast milk has molecules that are the same as vanilla? There is some studies that shows that, yeah. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Okay. So it's deep in us that we like vanilla from way back. Exactly. Well, Claire, thank you so much. Yes, of course. Thank you. You're welcome. I, you know, reason why our promos are calls for questions need to be hurtful but whatever gets you sending those emails so that we can help you as soon as possible i'm sorry i did that that's not fair your nose is terrific and i'm sure it smells good i'm sure your nose smells good i will also say how to at npr.org our email has been flooded with many many of you trying to help out kevin and rebecca the the people we helped out last week who had a mysterious blanket and sheet mystery most of you or a lot of you are suggesting they get two separate sheets separate comforters or separate blankets this is a good solution i just want to say some names i'm just going to go through the email box people that wrote in either with kind words for kevin and rebecca or a solution we heard from mara we heard from nina christina katie kitsy got it i was about to say chris but that's another email chris offered no help uh monica did you say monica yet so many people we the list is endless andrea there's someone saying yep what's wrong what's wrong with you guys anyway i i will say it truly warms the heart to see everyone chipping in to help kevin and rebecca kevin and rebecca i hope you hear from all these people who almost unanimously have decided you you need to get separate blanks get separate blankets of course if you don't want to send an email you can also comment on our episodes on spotify okay this hasn't really happened to us before on the show but liesl and darcy who we spoke to at the beginning of the show about darcy and aiden uh they have reached back out to us and they say they need to give us an update before we go any further solving their problem uh hello liesl darcy hi hi what's happening how's it going stuff's happening okay wait so stuff's happening what's going on um aiden told me he liked me oh really yeah wow um can you take us through it what happened um we both needed to use the bathroom and he waited for me and then we walked up from band and he and he said you know when connor told me that you liked me and i said no i was lying and what did you say um yay yay you said yay tell us how you really feel i can't explain how i feel in words oh yes yes that's beautiful yep so what happens now um i don't know yeah um let me ask you this question because i know what are you you're in fourth grade right yeah so do you guys go out and do stuff they go to the movies do you go out to dinner what what what happens we don't do that stuff yeah we pass notes to each other in class so really do you get in trouble with that yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know really do you get in trouble for that because you should no we don't get in trouble for that okay we sit like right next to each other so it's easy so is this like uh so would you say are you is are you boyfriend and girlfriend is that now is that how it works no not really i don't really know okay okay don't have to put a label on it his mom uh said that they were special friends great that's wow if only it were always that simple huh so i wish oh sorry go ahead i said i wish it was yeah you wouldn't be wasting your time with these two jokers that's for sure okay so when we talked to you before um you wanted some advice on how to tell him um it sounds like he has now been told everybody got the kind of answer they wanted is there anything we can do do for you now moving forward i think darcy will have some advice for other girls who want to know how to tell a boy they like him yeah just let the other person do the work yes yes so well that does it for this week's show what'd you learn ian well i learned that um the certified best smell in the world is uh vanilla yeah what do you think of that i i personally love i prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate ice cream is that right i'm often the only one yeah um and i do think that what claire said about how maybe the reason we love vanilla is because the compounds in vanilla also exist in breast milk i feel like that makes me feel keep going what a weird about my preference for vanilla over chocolate ice cream i don't want to there's certain bags you don't want unpacked yeah i think that's right that's one of them that's the kind of information now that i now that i have it and i know what you're going to order the next time we go to the ice cream store i'll just make sure when we're done eating done drinking i'll just bring you over close to just gently burp you i also found interesting what claire told us that when you smell a smell when you inhale a smell your body destroys that smell yeah it tears it apart so it cannot be smelled again wait okay so if that if that's what's happening and you're in a place where there is a terrible smell is that the right approach then to just go after it like like use your nose like a vacuum cleaner and just like i this smells terrible the only way out is through i gotta suck it all in and destroy destroy those bad odors i like the idea of just um taking one for the team just i will inhale all of these molecules i will destroy them yeah do you have a match i just need to get rid of the smell don't worry i got it give me a few minutes yeah i am the match how to do everything is produced by skylar swenson with technical direction from lorna white we also want to tell you to check out the npr app that's an application for your telephone the npr app brings you the best of public radio personalized for you the best of public radio and us the npr app has your favorite podcasts your even your local public radio station and the world's biggest stories size wise these are the biggest stories it's going to be hard to get from one side of one side of the story to the other in a single day so you're going to want to pack snacks and something to sleep in a change of clothes get it bring a charger attempt to traverse these almost insurmountably large stories yep this is going to be huge you're going to love it download the npr app in your app store today exhaustingly large stories from npr i'm ian and i'm mike thanks Thank you.