What Life Used to Smell Like & How the Telephone Changed Us

You know that uneasy feeling when someone or something gives you the creeps? Is your brain picking up on a hidden danger, or is something else going on? There's some fascinating science behind what makes things creepy and why certain people and situations trigger that feeling. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-creepiness-180957093/ The world doesn't smell the way it used to. Some odors that were once part of everyday life have disappeared, while others have taken their place. But did people in the past actually smell worse than we do today? What did cities and homes smell like centuries ago? And why haven't we figured out how to eliminate unpleasant smells? Will Tullett, a historian and senior lecturer at the University of York, has spent years studying the history of smell. He joins me to reveal how smells have changed over time, how they shape our lives, and why the history of odors is surprisingly fascinating. He is the author of Sniff: A History of Smells (https://link.amazon/B07NVJ7hm). The telephone used to be attached to a wall, and when it rang, you had no idea who was calling. Now we carry phones everywhere, know who's calling, and often prefer texting to talking. How did we get from there to here? The story is filled with remarkable inventions, colorful characters, and unexpected twists. And along the way, the telephone changed far more than how we communicate. James Gleick, science and technology writer and former writer and editor for The New York Times, joins me to explore how the telephone evolved and transformed our lives. He is the author of The Telephone: A New History (https://link.amazon/B0c7ncuE9). Why does a paper clip look the way it does? It's such a simple object, yet its familiar design has barely changed in more than a century. Behind that little piece of bent wire is a surprisingly interesting story of clever engineering and competing designs. So why did this particular shape win out? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-paper-clip/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS NATIVEPATH: NativePath Bone Health Collagen is a simple addition to other important bone-supporting nutrients like calcium and vitamin D. Go to ⁠⁠⁠https://GetBetterBones.com/SYSK⁠⁠⁠ to save up to 48% and get a frother, shaker, free shipping and a 365 day money back guarantee! AQUATRU: Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://AquaTru.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ now and get 20% off your purifier using promo code SYSK AquaTru even comes with a 30-day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back! BEAM DREAM: Beam’s Dream Powder is made with clean, natural ingredients formulated to fall asleep and wake up refreshed! Go to ⁠⁠⁠https://ShopBeam.com/SYSK⁠⁠⁠ and get 50% off during Beam's Cyber Sale! VINTED: Ready to clean out your closet and make some extra money? Download the Vinted app for free and start listing! With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. QUINCE: Give the gift of quality this holiday season at Quince! Download the Quince App for exclusive offers or go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: Shop at ⁠⁠⁠https://Dell.com/deals⁠⁠⁠ for Black Friday and find great PCs like the Dell XPS 13 laptop with a long battery life, beautiful design and powerful performance with Intel® Core™ processors. Upgrade your whole setup for less! PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts! INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future? I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechek and Anna Rattman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why do certain people and things give you the creeps? Then, the fascinating history of smells. And do other animals really have a better sense of smell than humans?

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Actually, that's not necessarily true. We are capable of picking up thousands and thousands of different smells with our noses. It's just that we often don't think about them, or indeed, we wouldn't think to sort of get down on all fours and track a smell in the way that we might expect a dog to.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why paperclips have that peculiar shape. And the remarkable story of the telephone and all the ways it has changed the world.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  Within the first five years of telephone history, every telephone company in the world had somehow agreed, without anybody announcing it, that women needed to be telephone operators and men were not suitable for the job.

• 1:26Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. I imagine most of us shop for clothes online, at least some of the time, and there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures, but when they arrived, eh, not so beautiful. Cheap-looking, disappointing, and that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good, and the prices are surprisingly reasonable.

• 2:11Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:56Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 3:27Mike Carruthers?

  You ever get the creeps? You know, something or someone just sort of creeps you out, and you're not sure why? Well, we're going to explore that as we begin this episode. I'm Mike Carruthers, and this is Something You Should Know. So you meet someone, and they seem pleasant enough, but somehow, they give you the creeps. Or you walk into an empty building and immediately, you feel uneasy, even though there's nothing obviously wrong. Psychologists have actually studied that uncomfortable feeling, and their explanation is fascinating. It seems that feeling creeped out often comes from uncertainty.

• 4:08Mike Carruthers?

  Your brain detects something unusual, a person's behavior, an unfamiliar sound, a strange-looking doll, but your brain can't decide whether it's harmless or potentially threatening. So instead of sounding a full alarm, it keeps you on edge and paying attention. That may explain why things that are almost normal can sometimes be creepier than things that are obviously frightening. A doll that looks almost human, someone who stares just a little too long, or a perfectly ordinary hallway that seems strangely deserted can all trigger that uneasy feeling. The interesting takeaway is that feeling creeped out doesn't necessarily mean something is dangerous.

• 4:53Mike Carruthers?

  It may simply mean your brain hasn't figured out what to make of it yet. Sometimes, the creepiest thing isn't knowing something is wrong, it's not knowing whether anything is wrong at all. And that is something you should know.

• 5:11Mike Carruthers?

  The world smells. Some smells are wonderful, some are disgusting, and most, we hardly notice. But think about how certain places have their own distinct smell. A hospital smells like a hospital. A library smells like a library. And what's interesting is that the world hasn't always smelled the way it smells today. A city street that once smelled of horses and animal waste now smells of car exhaust. So why do we find some smells pleasant and others revolting? How much of that is instinct, and how much of that have we learned? It turns out, there's a fascinating story here, and to explore it is Will Tullett.

• 5:54Mike Carruthers?

  He is a historian and senior lecturer at the University of York, and he has spent years studying the history of smell. He's author of the book, Sniff: A History of Smells. Hey, Will, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 6:10Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So we smell things all the time. All day long, we're smelling things, and most of the time, we barely notice unless it's a very strong smell, good or bad. But it just kind of goes on in the background. We're always smelling things. And I'm wondering, why do you study it? Why do you look at the history of it? Why is this important?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Well, I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head with your question, right? So smells are around us every day. They're a central part of our daily experience, and yet, we often take them for granted. We often only notice smells either when we lose our sense of smell, as many people did during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they had forms of temporary anosmia, for example, or we only notice smells when they're unusual, right? So if there's a kind of particularly smelly form of pollution nearby, or when smells disappear, right? So if our favorite perfume gets discontinued, or suddenly, the world doesn't smell the way it should do. So my kind of call is for us to pay attention to this sense that is so central to our everyday experience, but also, I think, to life's pleasures.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  It gives us the pleasure of wine and food and engagement with nature and flowers and plants. It warns us of things, so kind of gas escapes and rot and things that perhaps we shouldn't eat or drink. And it also binds us together with our communities as well, right? Smells are things we share with other people. And the number of talks I've given about the history of smell, where I've kind of given people something to smell, and it's often very difficult to get them to shut up, because when you give somebody something to smell they haven't smelled before, they instantly want to talk to the person next to them about it. So smell has this great kind of social quality to it that I think is really important.

• 7:52Mike Carruthers?

  So when we smell something, what's going on? What is it that smell is?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  I mean, essentially, smell is lots of volatile organic compounds, these sort of molecules that are given off by all of the things around us. They float around in the air. We breathe them in, or sniff them up through our nose, and they pass on smelly information to us. Really, when we talk about smell, what we're talking about are all of these, all of these compounds around us in the air, and all of the things around us. So if you think about something like pine, for example, pine itself is made up of loads and loads and loads of these different volatile organic compounds, and some of those are more significant than others. So there is a compound in pine that's called pinene, which is kind of one of the central things that give pine its particular smell.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  But pinene can also be found in rosemary, it can also be found in camphor. So one of the reasons that when we smell something, we often feel that it has an echo or a rhyme with another smell, right? We smell something, it reminds us of something else. It's because often, those two things, the thing that you're smelling and the thing it reminds you of, often share some of those volatile organic compounds. So when you smell something, a smell is made up of hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands of much smaller smells, basically, and that's what we're sniffing.

• 9:08Mike Carruthers?

  Are there an infinite number of smells, or can the human nose, like the human eye, can only see certain colors? I don't know how we would even know the answer to this, but are there only certain things we can smell? And are there things that have odors that we cannot detect?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  So the human nose can detect a very large number of smells. But there are also many odors that the human nose is kind of very bad at detecting or cannot detect as well. And similarly, dogs, right? Dogs can smell lots and lots and lots of different smells, millions of smells. But some of those smells that dogs cannot detect, but humans can. So we live in a world where different animals, including humans, are able to detect some smells that other animals can't and vice versa. And one of the kind of assumptions that we have is that humans are perhaps less able to smell well than other animals around us. But actually, that's not necessarily true. We are capable of picking up thousands and thousands of different smells with our noses.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  It's just that we often don't think about them. Or indeed, we wouldn't think to sort of get down on all fours and track a smell in the way that we might expect a dog to.

• 10:19Mike Carruthers?

  But when I think of it, and I want to understand the distinction here. When I hear that like dogs have a much better sense of smell than humans, I've always assumed that that just meant they could smell things better, not that they could smell different things.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yes, and I think to a certain extent, that idea that dogs can smell things better, i.e. that their noses are more sensitive, for example, they're more capable of picking up a scent and tracking it, for example, is partly due to the fact that we wouldn't take on the same position as dogs. We wouldn't get down on all fours and try and track smell like a dog does because we would think it beneath us, right? So that's why we enlist the help of tracker dogs or sniffer dogs, police dogs, to sniff out things for us. But the reality is, if we actually got on all fours and tried to do that, we would be quite good and quite sensitive to following a smell.

• 11:12Mike Carruthers?

  So you write about and talk about the history of smell. And my sense is that the past didn't smell very good.

• 11:21Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know why I think that, but I just sense that today with modern sanitation and better sewer systems and people very concerned about cleanliness more than in the past, that today things smell better than they used to. Is that a fair statement?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  There's a sort of kernel of truth to it, right? In the sense that clearly the past did smell different and some of the smells that were around people in the past would probably be offensive to modern noses. But when we think about that question, really, we're thinking about two different things. One is who's doing the smelling, right? So the past, you know, if we transplanted you, Mike, to a 16th century European city, there would probably be plenty of things in the street that would offend your nose. But similarly, I think if we took a 16th century nose and transplanted them to kind of modern America, they would probably be offended by, I think they would be perplexed by, you know, the smell of a McDonald's fast food restaurant or the smell of kind of petrol and diesel pollution coming out the back end of a car.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  So one thing is the nose is doing the smelling. But the other is, there is this idea, again, that the past was smellier, materially speaking, there were just simply more smells, and that we've deodorized our world, particularly since the 18th century onwards. So from the Enlightenment onwards, and then you've got sanitarians and sanitary reformers in the 19th century. And also this idea that we've cleansed our bodies more, right? That we, you know, now we wear deodorants and we wash regularly. But the reality is that people in the past washed very regularly. They used soap. They cleaned their clothes regularly, as regularly as they could. They bathed regularly. So I think the sense that the past smelled worse, I think, is probably

• 13:08Speaker 02

  a little bit of a self-congratulatory myth. The reality is that what's really happened is we've moved smells around and intensified them in particular locations. So my classic example of this is pigs, right? So like, in cities, all the way into the early 20th century, in fact, you would often find families that might have a pig kept in a sty near their home, and pigs were useful. You could, you know, get bacon and pork products from them, but you could use their hair for bristles, for brushes. You could melt down their trotters and use them for glue and things like that. So people liked having a pig around. But sanitarians in the 19th century and early 20th century did not like it. They thought that pigs were smelly and they should be ejected out of cities. And by and large, that did happen.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  So that by the second half of the 20th century, there are no longer any pigs in cities. But there are plenty of pigs in these intensive livestock farms, you know, hundreds or thousands of pigs in quite cramped conditions. And if you happen to be unlucky enough to have one of these big hog farms built near where you live, the stench is like nothing you would have ever experienced in kind of the 17th or 18th or 19th centuries, right? It's like different in quality, it's different in degree. And so it's not necessarily that our world has become less smelly in total, but rather that we've moved some smells to some locations. And of course, the people that are forced to experience those smells, who are forced to live next to hog farms, for example, are often the people without the power or money

• 14:35Speaker 02

  to either move or to stop the hog farms being built in the first place. So this is also kind of a story about who gets exposed to smells in the present, which is often linked to questions of inequality as well.

• 14:46Mike Carruthers?

  So one pig may not be so bad, but you put a couple thousand pigs together and now you've got a smell problem.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Precisely, precisely. And, you know, even, it's funny, because when you read people writing about this in the 80s or 90s, you know, you have these farmers in like, in the United States, and they'll say things like, "God, you know, we've been able to send somebody to the moon, but we still can't deal with the smell from a pig farm." You know, like, modern society should be able to deal with this. But unfortunately, the problem had just become, you know, of such a different degree. The sheer amount of porcine waste, you know, that was kind of located in lagoons outside these farms and stuff was just so great that it became really difficult to actually deal with it in a way that would get rid of the smell. So we're still, like, the idea that we've become less smelly,

• 15:37Speaker 02

  this idea that we've become more deodorized, is actually a kind of, it's a bit like a mirage, right? That kind of goes into the distance. And all we end up doing is just moving the smells around and they reappear eventually.

• 15:49Mike Carruthers?

  I want to talk about how we adapt to smells, how a very strong smell, either pleasant or unpleasant, we get used to it fairly quickly. And we'll do that when we come back after this. This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years. And yet there they hang, taking up space.

• 16:31Mike Carruthers?

  But here's the thing, you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money. Listing on Vinted is so quick and simple. And when something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And here's what I really like. Vinted charges no seller fees. So whatever you earn from selling your clothes, you keep. Think about that. Clothes that you aren't wearing, taking up space, could be putting money back in your pocket. So here's my suggestion. Take five minutes, go look at the far ends of your closet and see what's hanging there.

• 17:15Mike Carruthers?

  You might be surprised. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D. If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream. It's a delicious nighttime drink formulated to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.

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• 18:39Mike Carruthers?

  Only available while flavors are in stock. With this incredible discount, that means you'll pay just 83 cents per night for the best sleep of your life. So seriously, think about it. I mean, how much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. We're talking about smells, and how the world smells, and how the world's smells have changed. My guest is Will Tullit, author of the book, Sniff: A History of Smells. And so, Will, one of the things about smell,

• 19:21Mike Carruthers?

  and my example, and I've used this before, is, you know, when I was a kid, I used to go to a farm, a dairy farm in New Hampshire, and they had lots of cows, and it smelled like you would think it would smell because there were so many cows. But it's amazing how quickly you get used to it, and you don't really smell it anymore. I mean, you smell it, but somehow you don't smell it.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and the nose has this amazing kind of capacity to either be kind of like exhausted and fatigued, or to become habituated to smells. I mean, the example that some listeners may be familiar with as well is kind of when you go on holiday, you go away for several weeks, you come back and you realise that your house maybe has a sort of distinctive smell that you didn't quite realise was there before, right? And it's because you've been unexposed to that smell for long enough, that you've become sensitised to it again. So, that question of kind of which smells we become habituated to, and which smells we become more sensitised to, also kind of has a role in thinking about historical change as well. So like in the 19th

• 20:28Speaker 02

  century in London, people might be familiar with the Great Stink in the 1850s, when one summer, the Thames stink so, so badly, that MPs have to come up with a plan for a whole new sewage system. And that's partly because people had, to a certain extent, become used to the smell of the Thames, and how smelly it was, because of all of the waste from new flushing toilets, and from the industries that lined the banks of the river. But during that summer, the smell became, you know, a completely different thing. It was so bad, it was so intense, it was so foul, that it became unlike anything that they'd experienced or become used to before. So that kind of interaction between habituation and sensitisation

• 21:11Speaker 02

  is often the one of the things that kind of causes changes in attitudes to smell across time as well.

• 21:17Mike Carruthers?

  I would imagine, and knowing very little about this, so I'm glad you're here to set the record straight, that one of the big changes was when transportation shifted from animal-drawn vehicles to engine-powered vehicles. Because the smell of animals, when you have lots of horses in a city street, the smell of the animals and the waste they leave behind has to be very overpowering. And when you eliminate that, doesn't that create a much less stinky environment?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, it's a really interesting point, because when people are first devising the motorcar, right, and people are arguing for more people taking up automobiles in the early 20th century, one of the arguments that they're making is that motorcars will be less smelly than horses, right? Because what had happened over the course of the 19th century is that the sheer number of horses required in cities for transporting people about in cabs and buses, or for, you know, transporting carts around laden with goods, was of such a high degree, just because of the amount of business and the amount of people, that they were starting to experience a bit of crisis when it came to horse dung. And

• 22:36Speaker 02

  so, the motorcar was kind of advocated for as a way of getting rid of some of those smells. But of course, the problem is, is that once the horses disappeared, and cars became more popular, particularly once you go into sort of the 1950s and 1960s, when more and more people are buying second-hand cars as well, what's happening is that the cars themselves are becoming a smell problem, you know, the kind of exhaust smells from diesel and petrol cars, which, for those who are kind of only aware of how they smell now, you know, many of these cars smelled a lot stronger, the exhausts in the 50s and 60s, because the filters were not the same. And that becomes a real problem in many cities. I mean, in Amsterdam, there are huge protests in the Netherlands, in the 1960s and 70s, over both

• 23:20Speaker 02

  the danger from cars, but also the smell of the pollution from cars in the city centre. So it's a bit like, I always like to say, it's a bit like pubs in Britain, where, you know, we had a smoking ban that was introduced in the early 2000s. And one of the things that that smoking ban did was it got rid of the smell of smoke. But, what of course that meant is that the smoke was no longer blanketing out all of these other smells, like stale urine and stale beer and people's body odor. And it just meant that you could smell those instead. So it tends to be that we get rid of the horse smell, and instead we get the smell of cars. So it's a kind of, it's a no-win situation. I mean, electric cars, maybe they won't smell so bad? We'll wait and see.

• 24:02Mike Carruthers?

  So talk about the good smells. I mean, do people generally agree on, I mean, I know there are differences, that some people like the smell of this, or not like the smell of that. But generally, pleasant smells are pleasant smells?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's a degree to which that is true. I think there are, you know, lots of people like the smells of flowers and kind of floral smells in general, for example. But I think there's also a degree to which attitudes to what has smelled good have changed over time, right? Like, so for example, in the 16th and 17th century civet, which is a kind of excrement that's taken from the civet cat, it's scraped from its perineal gland, and used in perfume. If you smell civet, like raw civet, it smells very, very faecal. But in the 16th and 17th century, it was described as smelling sweet, which

• 25:02Speaker 02

  I'm not sure is a description that many people would use on first encountering it today. So like, our kind of, our language and our descriptions for smells have changed. And I think our appreciations of which smells are pleasant, and which smells are perhaps less pleasant, has changed over time. And that's partly also to do with things like shifts in perfume fashions, for example. So, you know, at the end of the 90s, we had the beginnings of like Gourmand perfumes, and there was a real fashion for perfumes that smelled like vanilla and other edible things. And that was quite new in that period. So I think our perception of what the nicest smells are, has changed over time. But there's probably, to some degree, some underlying agreement. Of course, you always get the people

• 25:45Speaker 02

  who are like, really, really love really smelly smells, right? I mean, people who love like the smell of a particularly pungent cheese, right? Or, to give one final example, wintergreen, which is a compound that's in, well, in the US, it's, in the 1960s and 70s, wintergreen was held to be one of the most loved smells. And in Britain, in the same period, surveys showed that it was one of the most hated smells. And the reason for that was that in the US, wintergreen is a compound that's in root beer, and it's in sweets and candies. Whereas in Britain, it's a compound that was often found in ointments and stuff for skin and for injuries. So people had just developed these completely different associations with the same smell, that had then led them to judge it as either kind

• 26:26Speaker 02

  of pleasant or negative. So I think there is a degree of cultural changeability sometimes, even with smells, that we might think, within our own culture, are quite pleasant.

• 26:36Mike Carruthers?

  So something that, the answer may seem obvious, and you'll tell me if it's obvious, but I've always been interested in the fact that you can go into certain places, and they have a smell. Libraries have a smell, churches often have a smell, doctors' offices, hospitals have a smell. Is it just because of the stuff that's in there sends off, you know, all libraries have books and books smell, or is there something else going on?

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Oh, I think it's absolutely the smell of these different spaces. And I think libraries and churches and hospitals are all really good examples. You know, they all have distinctive smells, just simply because of the different materials that people use within them, right? So as you say, libraries are full of books, and so the smell of libraries is partly the smell of aging paper. It's partly the smell of the kind of glue and the bindings that are used in books as well. It's also sadly, in kind of, some libraries also just the smell of like, the carpets off-gassing, for example, and the kind of smells of the furnishings and things as well. And likewise with hospitals, right? I mean, when we think about hospitals, what we're often smelling is the smell of various disinfectants and cleaning products

• 27:48Speaker 02

  and things that are used. And what that smell is doing is partly signifying to us that this is a space that is being kept clean, that is being kind of kept in a state that is fit for people to practise medicine in, and for people to be cared for in. So I think it's definitely just bound up with the materials that are used within them. And churches, again, are an example where partly the smell is also the smell, particularly in Catholic churches, like kind of older European and American Catholic churches, you will find that part of the smell is just the kind of, you know, a century or more of incense being used in masses. And the way in which that smell has kind of gradually seeped into the stonework and into the furnishings over time. And so, what you're getting is, in some ways,

• 28:30Speaker 02

  the lingering scent of sometimes a century or more of worship.

• 28:34Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this has been a whole different way of looking at our sense of smell, how the way the world smells has changed over time, and how we adapt to smells, and what smells we find pleasant and unpleasant. I've been talking with Will Tullett, he is a historian and senior lecturer at the University of York, and he's author of a book called Sniff: A History of Smells. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Will, this was fun, great, thanks for being here.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Thanks so much, Mike. And it's been a great conversation.

• 29:05Mike Carruthers?

  Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence, and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 laptop. With a beautiful design and cutting-edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet, with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, and long-lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminium chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds, and Intel

• 29:46Mike Carruthers?

  Core processors, it's fast, reliable, and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities with XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 30:31Mike Carruthers?

  So here's the problem with drinking water. You can't tell if it's clean just by looking at it. A glass of water can look perfectly clear and still contain things you definitely don't want to drink. In fact, three out of four US homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water. An ordinary refrigerator and pitcher filters, they do little to remove many of these contaminants, which is why Aqua True is different. Aqua True is a countertop water purifier with a patented four-stage reverse osmosis system. It's tested and certified to remove 84 contaminants, including chlorine, lead, forever chemicals,

• 31:15Mike Carruthers?

  and those microplastics. And there's no plumbing, no installation. You just put it on the counter and you get pure, great tasting water you can actually feel good about drinking. Aqua True was even named best countertop water filter by Good Housekeeping. Look, if you're going to drink water every single day, and you probably should, well, why guess what's in it? Go to aquatru.com now for 20% off your purifier using promo code S Y S K. Aqua True even comes with a 30-day best tasting water guarantee.

• 31:49Mike Carruthers?

  That's aquatru.com, A Q U A T R U dot com, promo code S Y S K. It's hard to imagine life without the telephone, but think about how much our relationship with it has changed. I mean, there was a time when the phone was attached to the kitchen wall, and when it rang, everybody wanted to know who was calling. Today, your phone goes everywhere with you, and when it rings, there's a good chance you won't even answer it, because it's probably spam. We used to pay by the minute to talk on the phone, and now calls are practically free, and people would rather text anyway.

• 32:34Mike Carruthers?

  In just a few generations, the telephone has gone from an amazing invention that connected people in ways never before possible, to something we can barely put down. And the story of how that happened is filled with fascinating twists, unexpected consequences, and some remarkable characters. Here to tell the story is James Gleick. He's an acclaimed science and technology writer, a former reporter and editor for The New York Times, and author of several books, including The Telephone: A New History. Hi, James, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Hi, Mike, I'm happy to be here.

• 33:13Mike Carruthers?

  So for reasons I can't really explain, but I have long been a fan of the telephone. I have enjoyed reading about and seeing the innovations and the evolution of it over time, and it's such an important part of people's lives.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  The telephone is fundamental to everybody's recollection of their entire life from beginning to end. And I should say, right at the outset, when we talk about the telephone, we're talking about very different things depending on how old you are. I don't know how old you are, but I'm pretty sure that your sense of the telephone is like mine, and that is, it's an object that started as a big, clunky, plastic thing. I mean, in my case, my parents had it on their side table in their bedroom, or it might have been hanging in the kitchen.

• 34:07Mike Carruthers?

  So, most of us have heard that the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, and, you know, there's kind of a folklore story to how it happened and all that. Is that essentially true?

• 34:19Speaker 03

  No. I mean, yes and no. It is essentially true in that Alexander Graham Bell patented the thing that later became the foundation of a global empire, AT&T, the Bell system, named after, not the thing that rang, but named after him. But it's not true in that the telephone had a lot of inventors. I tell the story of a German named Philip Rees, who invented a telephone long before Alexander Graham, well, long before, 10 or 15 years before, and nobody's ever heard of him. And there was another guy, Elisha Gray, who was sort of in competition with Bell,

• 35:02Speaker 03

  and they were both inventing things. And Bell's claim to the telephone, it turns out, rests on a really sleazy episode in patent history, where his lawyers literally bribed a patent clerk to get his patent approved, and Elisha Gray's patent disapproved. Well, the rest is history, but it took a long time. After that, there were 20 years of patent wars in the courts, which the Bell system won. But by then, Alexander Graham Bell himself was long out of it. He didn't stay with the company even after it got started.

• 35:44Mike Carruthers?

  So when you say it was a sleazy, was he a sleazy guy, or was it just...

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Well, no, no. I don't want to overstate the case. He was, I want to say contradictory things about him, because, and I don't want to minimize his contribution, because he was a visionary. The thing is, he didn't really invent the object. He didn't know anything about electricity. He was an expert in sound and speech. That was what he loved. He taught deaf children how to speak. That was his main profession. And kind of as a sideline, he started tinkering with electrical stuff, but he didn't really

• 36:29Speaker 03

  have a good foundation in the science, and was just stumbling along, finding his way. What I want to say his vision was, was not the invention of the object, but an understanding of how it was going to transform the world, and how it would work, which was so not obvious. I mean, it's hard for us now to subtract everything we know about what the telephone is and what it does from what they knew at the time. But imagine, you know, Bell and/or others have invented this object, and you attach it to another thing like it via a wire, and the wire at first stretches from one room to the next room.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  And then, one of you talks into it, and the other one listens, and that is a telephone. And that's what Alexander Graham Bell had, and his assistant, Watson, and, you know, the story everybody knows is that he said, "Watson, come here, I want you." And Watson could hear him from the other room and came running, and so that's a telephone. But then what? Then what do you do? What's it good for? That was the fundamental question.

• 37:40Mike Carruthers?

  It's been 100 years. Can you, and we only have 20 minutes, so can you just run through the 100 years and hit some highlights of the evolution of the telephone?

• 37:52Speaker 03

  The story of the telephone isn't just the story of a technology, an object, that everybody, you know, at one time had in their houses, and that everybody now has in their pockets. I mean, you know, I guess we should acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that 99% of the people listening to us right now have a phone in their pocket, and some percentage of them actually are listening to us on this object. I'm getting away from your question, because what I want to say is that what's interesting about the story of the telephone isn't just that. It's also how it transformed the way we lived.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  So, it started spreading 150 years ago. Little networks arose in individual towns and cities, and then these networks expanded and got linked together until there was a national system and an international system and a global network that's the one we know today. But meanwhile, the telephone did more than any other invention to get women into the workforce. The essential reason is that people who created telephone companies discovered right at the beginning that they needed to invent a new profession that didn't exist in the world, which was a person who would connect a telephone caller to the person they wanted

• 39:18Speaker 03

  to speak to, and this person was the operator. And the person sat in a little room and had a kind of switchboard with plugs and jacks, and would connect, you know, callers and receivers. And at first, the people who started phone companies hired teenage boys to do this job because it was so boring and trivial. And very quickly, meaning within a year or two, they discovered that boys couldn't do the job, because boys were essentially, pardon the expression, goofballs. And so, they switched over to girls. And I know this is hard to believe, but it's really true.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  Within the first five years of telephone history, every telephone company in the world had somehow agreed, without anybody announcing it, that women needed to be telephone operators, and men were not suitable for the job. And so, eventually, there were a million women working as telephone operators who had previously not been allowed to work in offices before.

• 40:27Mike Carruthers?

  Wow. And is it true that the original, or the accepted term for answering the phone used to be ahoy?

• 40:36Speaker 03

  It's true that Alexander Graham Bell and Tom Watson, his assistant, at first started saying ahoy to each other. And other people did that, too. And I find it sort of fun to think about how, you know, those early days of the phone. Again, we have such an embedded mental image of how the phone works. We understand that the phone rings and you pick it up. But it didn't ring at first. It was just two objects connected. And so one of them would pick it up and they would listen to dead air. And another person at the other end of the wire would pick it up and listen to dead air. And so Alex would say to Tom, ahoy, ahoy.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  And of course, it's essentially universal today in many different languages to say hello. But hello was hardly a word that was even in the dictionary. I mean, now it's standard. It's just so many of these things seem to arise spontaneously. And afterwards, you think, well, it had to be that way. Of course, you would say hello. But people didn't even say hello to each other on the street the way they do now. And again, that's because of the telephone.

• 41:49Mike Carruthers?

  I think people forget, or younger people never knew, that the telephone, the old way of doing the telephone, could get really expensive. If you were making anything other than a very local call, you were charged by the minute. You know, the first three minutes were this much money. And then there was a charge for every minute after that. And if you were one of those people, and there were lots of us, who wanted to talk for a long time on the phone, it got really expensive. And I remember, you know, my father coming in and saying, with the phone bill, because you would get a bill in the mail where all the calls were itemized by number and how long and how much.

• 42:33Mike Carruthers?

  And he came in and said, what the hell is this?

• 42:37Speaker 03

  And if you were a kid that went away to college, your experience of the telephone changed so much over the years. Right now, I think kids in college are expected, if not to talk to their families, to text with their families more or less every day. When I was in college, you didn't even, at first, I didn't even have a phone in my dorm room. There was this sort of shared telephone out in the hallway. And as you say, it was expensive. And so my parents couldn't possibly expect to hear from me every day, which was sort of a different world.

• 43:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, one of the reasons it was so expensive was that it essentially was a monopoly or something close to that. And then that all changed. And I don't think I remember exactly how that all changed.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  It was not just a monopoly. It was the world's biggest, most powerful, richest monopoly. The Bell system, AT&T, the collection of all the local Bell telephone companies, and the Long Distance Company, and the Scientific Research Lab. This enterprise was more powerful than many governments. It started to break up in the early 1980s. All along, it had become so powerful that some people hated them. But they kept prices, well, by our standards, they weren't low. It was very expensive, as you were saying, to make long-distance calls, especially, and you had to worry about how much telephone calls cost.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  But a lot of people didn't mind because the telephones worked. And everybody's telephone was essentially exactly the same. You didn't have any choice of what kind of model to get. Eventually, they came in different colors. And then eventually, there was a princess phone. And you could get a model that, you know, was on your wall as opposed to your bedside. But really, all the telephones looked alike. And it was just ordinary. But technology started to advance. And the possibilities arose of having wireless telephones, which everybody had always dreamed of. And rivals to the main phone company started to push their way into the business

• 44:54Speaker 03

  and try to offer long-distance calls for cheaper than AT&T could, which they could do because of new technologies of microwave signals, sending wireless calls from one city to another. So eventually, the government started to investigate. And it broke up finally. It was gigantic political controversy. And then court case, the giant Bell monopoly. And competition arose. And everything broke wide open. And before we had the smartphones that everybody has now, there was the era of competition for mobile phones, which you remember got smaller and smaller. They turned into flip phones. And then at the same time, and this is essentially

• 45:39Speaker 03

  the most important part of the modern story, the internet arose. And that was also, at first, a telephone technology. Because people used telephone wires to connect the internet from place to place, before they used wireless and before they used cable TV wires. And at first, the internet was like a footnote to the telephone story. And now it's the other way around. The telephone is essentially a footnote to the internet story.

• 46:08Mike Carruthers?

  And it is so interesting how it has evolved into this thing that people carry around with them, that, as you pointed out, it's called a phone, but few people use it. Or people use it not as much as a phone, but for a million other things. But not for making phone calls. And there is this kind of anti-phone call thing, where people would rather text. And, you know, who is it, the comedian that does that whole thing about how it used to be? When the phone rang, it was, oh, this is exciting. You know, is that for me? And now, when the phone rings, you think, oh, it's some spam, you know, telemarketing thing. And nobody wants to answer it.

• 46:50Mike Carruthers?

  And our attitudes towards the whole technology have really changed.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's another really key part of the story. You know, first, it would just ring in an empty house. And if nobody answered the phone, you would call back later. That you would call back later. I mean, nobody, there was no reason to think that anybody would know you had called. And if they did answer the phone, of course, they had no idea who was calling. It was just a ring. I remember the time when telephones started to display the number of the caller and how controversial that was. There were people who thought that was wrong, that that shouldn't be allowed, that, you know, I want my call to be secret. And there were other people who felt just as adamantly that if you place a phone call, the person at the other end has the right to know who you are before they answer. All these habits changed.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  I mean, I remember the feeling that when the telephone was ringing, you had to answer it, which I think has vanished. You know, the obligation to answer a phone, at least for me, that's gone. If I don't want to answer it, I'm not going to answer it.

• 47:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as important as the invention of the telephone has been, it does seem to be fading. I mean, it seems very nostalgic. And but the telephones of today, the smartphones of today, seem to bear very little resemblance to the telephones of yesteryear. And it makes you wonder what the, you know, what the future of the telephone is.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Well, this is where the story becomes two separate stories. There's one piece of our history that we can see rapidly vanishing behind us that we're forgetting. You know, we're forgetting about telephone booths. They're obsolete. Superman has no place to change his costume anymore. We're forgetting about the giant telephone books that used to be delivered once a year on your doorstep with a big thump. I mean, telephone books, we don't have them anymore. And yet, when we had them, they were absolutely essential. They were the ruling guide to people and companies. We're forgetting about party lines. We're forgetting about collect calls. But on the other hand, we have this new thing

• 48:59Speaker 03

  that has brought us a kind of connectivity that our ancestors couldn't have dreamed of. And to have the power to be connected to another person. The beginning of the story, it was by voice. Now it's also by text and by video. But just to have that power is something we shouldn't take for granted. And we may have mixed feelings about it. You know, it may make us feel, sometimes we wish we could just shut it all off and be alone. But it prevents the kind of social isolation, the kind of loneliness that used to be everybody's lot.

• 49:38Mike Carruthers?

  Since you've really studied the history of this technology, is there something about the telephone that we haven't talked about that you think is really interesting or important or anything like that?

• 49:50Speaker 03

  You know, one episode in the history of the telephone that I just loved, and in a way, it was my starting point, is what happened when there was a fire in a New York City switching station in 1975 that cut off telephone service for hundreds of thousands of people in a wide geographic area of Greenwich Village in the Lower East Side for a month. Now, you would think, well, you know, we have blackouts. It's not that big a deal. But it was absolutely extraordinary how it changed. It made people, first of all, aware of what they were missing. People said they found themselves reaching for the telephone, even though they knew that this wasn't going to work,

• 50:34Speaker 03

  and picking it up just to listen to the dead line. And they also found themselves leaving the house and knocking on their friends' doors, because that was the only way to get to their friends. When you think about it, what's the last time a friend of yours has just shown up at your doorstep and rang the bell or knocked on the door unannounced? For me, it's been years. That's not polite anymore. But that's how everybody lived. So this telephone fire in 1975 threw everybody willy-nilly back to a kind of existence that they had never experienced before. That was their grandparents' existence before the telephone had arrived.

• 51:17Mike Carruthers?

  You said something at the very beginning of our conversation that I hadn't really thought about before. But depending on how old you are, your view of and experience with the telephone is going to be very different than somebody who's younger or older than you because of how the technology has evolved over a very short period of time. But nevertheless, regardless of your view, for pretty much everybody, the telephone has been a very big part of our lives. I've been speaking with James Gleick. He's a science and technology writer, former reporter for The New York Times, and author of the book, The Telephone: A New History. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Great, James, this was fun. Thank you.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Thank you, Mike. Well, so much fun talking to you.

• 52:08Mike Carruthers?

  Take a look at an ordinary paper clip. It's just a piece of wire bent into a couple of loops. But why that particular shape? Well, it turns out getting the design right was surprisingly difficult. During the 1800s, inventors experimented with all kinds of ways to hold paper together. Some clips damaged the paper, others didn't grip it tightly enough, and some were too complicated or expensive to make. Then, in the 1890s, a design called "The Gem" appeared. It's two overlapping loops that create just enough tension to hold the paper securely without punching holes in them. It was inexpensive, easy to use, and could be manufactured by the millions.

• 52:53Mike Carruthers?

  And here's the interesting part. The familiar design was never actually patented. Although a Norwegian inventor named Johan Waller is often credited with inventing the paper clip, the design was quite different from the one we use today. More than 130 years later, and despite countless attempts to improve it, the same basic shape is still the standard. Sometimes, a simple invention works so well that nobody can figure out a way to do it better. And that is something you should know. Our producers are Jennifer Brennan and Jeff Havison. The executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 53:37Speaker 05

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