October 13, 2006
Kurt Andersen and the writer Chandler Burr explore the allure and mystery that smell has for us. Burr explains how physicist Luca Turin solved the scientific mystery of how smell works. Burr believes that we should build museums for the nose.
Perfumers generally design complicated scents to stimulate a fantasy or a mood, not to match any one particular thing. Christopher Brosius is a perfumer with a different approach: he bottles the smell of celery, a gin and tonic, thunderstorms, even snow. Sarah Lilley went to find out what isolating smells like these does for us.
Keith Miller is a painter in Brooklyn and he says it's quite easy for artists to get wrapped up in the romance of how their materials smell-- from the buttery scent of oil paint to the sting of turpentine. Produced by Michele Siegel.
Smells can be hard to describe, but a good writer can transport readers by pulling them in by the nose. Adam Haslett, author of the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here admires Thomas Mann's Death in Venice for its stench. Everything in the story, he says, is "overripe." Produced Jonathan Mitchell.
Special Guest
Chandler Burr is the author of The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses. He is also the author of A Separate Creation, on how biology creates human sexual orientation. He was recently appointed the first full-time perfume critic for the New York Times.
Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing the writer Truman Capote in the 2005 film Capote. Robert Blake first made his name portraying the object of Capote’s obsession, convicted killer Perry Smith, in the 1967 film In Cold Blood. But filmmaker Doug McGrath explains to Kurt Andersen why the only Truman Capotes or Perry Smiths he’s concerned with are the two men who met in real life – and the actors who portray them in McGraths’ new film Infamous.
This Alabama native is celebrating her 20th year performing on subway platforms. Playing in the subway lets her work on her songwriting: she can sing the same verse over and over for a constantly changing audience. And it pays better than playing the clubs. Produced by Todd Cerveris
Studio 360 is a co-production of
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National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
