Alex Wiltschko

And the TED talk said two things.

One is, you know, we really don't actually know why things smell the way that they do.

And then number two is he had a solution for it.

Turns out, I think that it's mostly wrong, the solution, but oh my gosh, is there value in asking the right question?

And this idea that like, you can tell me RGB and I can figure out what color that is.

It seems trivial.

We can't do that for smell.

Like we can't talk about why something smells the way that it does.

It's just random.

And then I ended up going completely down that rabbit hole.

And I ended up, you know, I did my undergraduate in neuroscience.

I got my PhD in olfactory neuroscience.

And I learned that actually nobody knows the answer.

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.