Alex Wiltschko

Like you go to the very edge of human knowledge, at least in academic science, and there's no answer forthcoming for something that seems very basic.

It drove me absolutely bananas.

And that's basically been my life's work since then is trying to figure this out.

Walk us through it if you would.

One of the wildest, most excellent days in my professional life was that first breakthrough.

And it was really just a first step.

Like it's not the top of Everest.

It's like getting to base camp, but it's still so, so powerful and so vivid in my memory.

So the team had been working for a while on the technology and the processes to do this.

And one day they said, Hey, look, I think we're ready.

And they sat me down in the morning in front of 30 amber vials.

And inside of these vials, blind to the entire team, been set up by somebody else, blind to the entire scent teleportation team, inside of it were fruits and vegetables and some flowers.

And so they didn't know what I was going to choose.

But these were real things from the grocery store.

And I think what I picked was a banana.

And it was a tropical fruit.

I think it was a papaya.

And this is just by smell.

And then I verified it later.

And then a plum.