Charles Spence

Thank you to Jialin Deng, who composed the song that was our sonic seasoning.

Thank you to Laura Rickman and everyone else at Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute for hosting us, and a major thank you to Grant DuBois, to Charles Spence at Oxford University, and to Danielle Reed at the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

They were all extremely helpful in explaining their work and taste in general to us.

Uh, we're very grateful for their help.

And I'm Richard Shotton.

And in today's episode, we're exploring the fascinating book, "Gastrophysics" by Dr. Charles Spence.

Let's get into it.

So Richard, the title Gastrophysics sounds like it could be about advanced cooking, uh, but [chuckles] happily, uh, Dr. Spence, uh, has created this, uh, book and this platform, you know, asking a pretty fundamental question, where does the experience of eating actually happen? And when I was thinking about this preparing for the episode, it was like, well, you taste in your mouth.

Now, some of Spence's most famous work that he covers in the book is the work he did with Heston Blumenthal, one of the most celebrated chefs in the world.

Um, has a three Michelin star restaurant called The Fat Duck.

And back in 2007, after working with Charles Spence, the signature co-course of this restaurant is a fish dish, which is called Sounds of the Sea, and it's a beautifully plated, uh, course of f-fish.

But the unique thing is before the diner starts to eat it, they are given an iPod, and they put the iPod, the earbuds in, and then they-

What kind of trick did they play on the brain?

In 2004, a brilliant scientist at Oxford University named Professor Charles Spence did a famous experiment.

He wanted to see if what we hear can actually change what we taste, so he brought people into a lab and gave them potato chips to eat.

That sounds like the best science experiment ever.

Okay, I am ready.

I hope my brain's DJ can remember [record scratching] all this information.

First question: What percentage of what we think of as flavor actually comes from our sense of smell? [gentle music] Next one: How many different types of olfactory receptors do humans have inside their noses? Question three: What is the scientific name of the hidden sense that tells us where our body parts are without looking? All right, here's number four: Where exactly is your vestibular system, or your sense of balance, located? Last question: What snack food did Professor Charles Spence use in his famous sound experiment in 2004? Great job.

Let's go through the answers.

Another great podcast from when I was in the UK.

And this guest I had no idea was a person that I needed to talk to until Professor Charles Spence said, if you like this beer stuff, lady, you need to talk to this guy.

So Rupert Ponsonby was the original OG of innovating beer lists in the UK.

He had all sorts of experience in wine.

Beer's there with us in all of our important moments in life, I suppose.

Yeah.

Basically what happened was Charles Spence had written already about pain and pleasure.

And obviously the Marquis de Sade in France was very keen on the idea.

[laughs] So, um, but we al- what we also see is kind of the use...

Because we know that, for example, hearing and seeing also influences taste experiences, right? Classical example by Charles Spence, right, that a, a, a chip doesn't taste like stale because it is stale, but it lacks the crunch, and you can, like, put a crunch artificially into, onto your ear and it will s- again taste fresh.

Um, now if we take examples like these, then influencing, uh, auditory or visual, uh, experiences by some kind of an AI, um, uh, augmented, um, machine, you could get, like, very different taste experiences.

Um, so AI has a role in sensory engineering.