On this episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, Gem, Ashlyn, and Lauren are joined by Mark Forkheim to talk about the sensory system and do some science along the way! Ashlyn, Lauren, and Gem try sensory isolation, and the episode features live experiments with sensory interference and a miracle fruit taste test.
Life, the Universe & Everything Else is a program promoting secular humanism and scientific skepticism that is produced by the Winnipeg Skeptics.
Note: Because this episode features live taste testing, it also features some unavoidable mouth sounds. These are bothersome to some people (like Ashlyn), so if you need to skip those segments they’re generally confined to 1:00:15 through 1:25:40. (I tried to cut out as many as I could, but there’s only so much I can do when we’re tasting things on air.)
Links: Sense (Wikipedia) | Sensory nervous system (Wikipedia) | TRPV1 (Wikipedia) | Synesthesia (Wikipedia) | Tongue map (Wikipedia) | The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World (Clarkesworld Magazine) | This Picture Has No Red Pixels—So Why Do the Strawberries Still Look Red? (Motherboard) | The Genetics of Taste (Smithsonian) | Phenylthiocarbamide (Wikipedia) | Taste Perception and Eating Behavior: They’re in the Genes (Today’s Dietitian) | Are you a Supertaster? (Precision Laboratories) | How does our sense of taste work? (PubMed Health) | The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts Across the Globe (RealClearScience) | Human sweet taste receptor mediates acid-induced sweetness of miraculin (PNAS) | Isolation tank (Wikipedia)
Ashlyn’s #TryPod Picks: Oh No Ross and Carrie
Gem’s #TryPod Picks: 99% Invisible | On the Media | The Greatest Generation | Radio vs. the Martians! | Waypoint Radio
Lauren’s #TryPod Picks: Undisclosed | Someone Knows Something | My Favorite Murder | NPR Politics | Welcome to Night Vale | Alice Isn’t Dead
Friends of the Show: The Reality Check | Left at the Valley | Brainstorm | PolitiCoast
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LUEE 
Hey, great episode. I just wanted to let you know that there appear to be some audio sync issues with the special effects you used. All the sound effects seemed to be delayed by several seconds, so that the actual audio dialogue would stop, there’d be a period of silence, and then the sound effects would be overlaid with the actual sound of the group talking, for just a few seconds. This appeared to be true both for the embed filed in your post, and for the Stitcher version. I just figured you’d want to know.
Uh oh. I’ll take look. Thanks!