Does the left armpit smell like the right armpit? A research study explores that very question, and we explore that study, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams discusses a published armpitty study, with dramatic readings from biologist Christina Agapakis, who has smelled more armpits, mostly for scientific reasons, than most […]
Tag: armpit
Podcast #90: Effect of Eating Garlic on Armpit Odor
If a person eats garlic, does that change the person’s armpit odor? Jean Berko Gleason, a researcher who is disgusted by both garlic and armpit odor, helps us appreciate research on that very question, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams discusses a published garlic/armpit study, with dramatic readings from Boston University […]
Dangerous smells (boxing study)
“Sixteen healthy male participants donated their body odor while engaging in a boxing session […]” An unusual occurrence perhaps, but less so if you were organising an experiment to investigate whether the body odor of a stranger with the intention to harm serves as a chemosignal of aggression. see: ‘You Smell Dangerous: Communicating Fight Responses […]
Making cheese from humans’ foot, nose, armpit bacteria
“Make hay while the sun shines, but make cheese from places where it does not” is the unstated them of a project described in Christina Agapakis‘s Harvard PhD Thesis (and described more colorfully on her web site): “Descriptions of human body odors often overlap with those of cheese; Propionibacterium used to make Swiss cheese is a major […]