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Caro Verbeek: What Can The Scents Of The Past Tell Us About Our History?

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Breathe

Each day, we breathe about 22,000 times--and all that time we smell. Scent historian Caro Verbeek recreates scents of the past. She says, just like music and art, smell is a part of our heritage.

About Caro Verbeek

Caro Verbeek is an embedded researcher of olfactory heritage at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum and International Flavours & Fragrances. She creates olfactory tours and interventions for museums.

Verbeek teaches the course 'The Other Senses' at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague and is the curator in chief of the olfactory culture program 'Odorama' at Mediamatic Amsterdam. She is also an advisor for immaterial heritage projects at Mondriaan Fonds.

She received her M.A. in curatorial studies at VU Amsterdam University and her M.A. in art history at the University of Amsterdam.

This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Maria Paz Gutiérrez and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadioHour@npr.org.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Manoush Zomorodi
Manoush Zomorodi is the host of TED Radio Hour.
Sanaz Meshkinpour