Discovery - Smelly People

DISCOVERY - SMELLY PEOPLE (320kbs-m4a/61mb/26mins)
BBC World Service broadcast: 3rd July 2023

We've been building computers to think like us for years, but our ability to replicate human senses has been impossible. Until now. This technological revolution is starting to profoundly change not only how we interact with the world around us, but is allowing us to see, hear, smell, taste and even touch things we never imagined possible before.

An artificial intelligence revolution is super-charging sensing technology, promising us eyes with laser precision, ears that can distinguish every sound in a mile's radius and noses than can sniff out the early signs of forest fires before the first flame forms.

Evolutionary biologist and broadcaster Professor Ben Garrod, is off to meet some of these sensory innovators and technological pioneers. The archaeologists, ecologists and medics, who are turning our world upside down and inside out.

Could these new technologies and natural evolutions be redefining what it is to smell? Ben takes us through the amazing adaptations, and technological developments that could help broaden how we think of our noses.

Presenter: Professor Ben Garrod
Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski
Production co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris

(Photo: Close up of human nose smelling an animated smell. Credit | Getty Images)