Crossmodal Perception

Jono Hey:

I don't know if you ever tried drinking nice red wine out of a white mug.

First of all, I don't recommend it, but it's so jarring.

You can't really enjoy this red wine.

It's like if you take a wine camping and you've got a little plastic cup or something.

 

Or imagine you drink it out of a rubber cup.

 

Rob Bell:

This isn't right.

I was going to ask if this was your own research or if it was just student days again.

 

Jono Hey:

I've been testing all sorts of things.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Like the senses are just amazing, aren't they?

 

And I think we think about them as like five different senses.

 

And we're so lucky to have them in this brain that pulls it all together.

 

And we probably don't realize just how insanely incredible that is the whole time.

 

Rob Bell:

Our eyes see, our ears hear, our noses smell, our mouths taste, our skin touches.

 

Or is that just the tip of the iceberg?

 

Hello and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

 

This week, we start with a riddle.

 

As I was going to St.

 

Ives, I met a man with seven wives.

 

Each wife had seven sacks.

 

Each sack had seven cats.

 

Each cat had seven kits.

 

Kits, cats, sacks and wives.

 

How many were there going to St.

 

Ives?

 

The answer of course is three.

 

Because the detail I neglected to include is that I was going to St.

 

Ives to record this podcast.

 

And what would this podcast be without my prodigiously perceptive pals Jono Hey and Tommy Tompster Pellereau?

 

Hello.

 

How are you boys?

 

Tom Pellereau:

That was very good Rob.

 

Rob Bell:

Good evening.

 

I promised Jack, Tom, your son, on the weekend on his birthday that I asked him, no, he asked me, what are you going to call Tom this week?

 

What do you want me to call him?

 

He said, Tomster.

 

So it's Tommy Tom Pellereau today.

 

Tom Pellereau:

He really enjoys listening to them.

 

My daughter, Poppy, not so much.

 

She's like, no, boring, boring.

 

But Jack really, Jack's like, no, I want to listen.

 

I want to listen to daddy.

 

Rob Bell:

My dad said he got through two minutes and then got bored.

 

What I like about that is his honesty.

 

Jono Hey:

Can't please everyone.

 

Tom Pellereau:

My mom was quoting something back to me about the podcast, and my dad was completely unaware.

 

He had no idea what she's talking about.

 

It's like, you've listened.

 

Rob Bell:

Brilliant.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Dad must be a few episodes behind.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, I'm sure you both heard that riddle before, though, the old St.

 

Ives riddle.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes.

 

Jono, what is the answer traditionally?

 

Jono Hey:

As you were going to St.

 

Ives, you met all these people going the other way, I think is the key of it.

 

Rob Bell:

That is what is implied through the answer.

 

I mean, there are many ways to answer it.

 

I mean, it wouldn't hold up in court, I don't think.

 

Well, do you boys know any good riddles?

 

Jono Hey:

The riddles that I always remember from The Hobbit.

 

Rob Bell:

A long time ago.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, when Bilbo meets up with Gollum in the dark and they have a riddle off to see who's going to keep the ring.

 

And he's just like making them up.

 

It's quite impressive.

 

The one I remember is...

 

It's good.

 

It's a good one for kids actually.

 

A box without hinges, key or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.

 

What am I?

 

That's the one.

 

Rob Bell:

An egg.

 

Is that right?

 

Jono Hey:

Rapid.

 

Yeah, very good.

 

Rob Bell:

Is it?

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, that is right.

 

That's right.

 

You get to keep the ring of power.

 

Well done.

 

Rob Bell:

Thank you, Mordor.

 

So I did a little bit of research into riddles.

 

So apparently one of the most ancient forms of entertainment and learning.

 

So from the very and again, from a very, very small amount of research I did, apparently the first discovered written riddles around 4000 years old, written by the ancient Sumerians, one of the oldest civilizations in the world from Mesopotamia, which is now the kind of Middle East, isn't it?

 

Iraq kind of way.

 

So an example of one of their riddles.

 

A house you enter blind, but come out with sight.

 

What kind of house is it?

 

I mean, one where an optician lives, but I don't know.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, the eye hospital.

 

A school.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I was going to say something like a maternity ward, because you enter as a baby.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, that's not bad.

 

Yeah.

 

Remember, this is in ancient Mesopotamia times.

 

So another one from ancient Greece.

 

So that's kind of for 500 BC.

 

This one has a name known as the Riddle of the Sphinx.

 

What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?

 

Oh, Tom's got a face to say it, because he knows it.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I do.

 

Now, this is very similar to what I just said.

 

This is a human, because when you're a baby, you're on four legs.

 

When you're a middle age and when you're a grandpa, you've got a walking stick.

 

Rob Bell:

He's done it.

 

He's done it.

 

Jono Hey:

Very good.

 

Very good.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

I find them a little bit tedious, to be honest.

 

Jono Hey:

Riddle.

 

You know what, when you're on walks with kids, it's nice to have activities.

 

Rob Bell:

That's good.

 

Jono Hey:

And one of the things that we do is like ABC.

 

So you're like, I don't know, things in Harry Potter, beginning with A, and then you do that, and then B, and then whatever.

 

And so you do a theme.

 

Another one we tried a few times was riddles, and you make up your own riddles.

 

And I was really impressed with the ones that people come up with.

 

And if you're just walking casually and you think of a riddle, things like candles and stuff, they're good for riddles.

 

There's all sorts of meanings to them.

 

Rob Bell:

Just try it.

 

Jono Hey:

Try making up your own riddles.

 

Rob Bell:

Now that sounds like more fun, making it up, rather than, you know, because there must be books of these that have been told for decades and decades and decades.

 

Tom Pellereau:

So in preparation for this, I've just been asking ChatGBT to write a riddle about tonight's theme, and it started with quite a long one.

 

So I said, could you make it a bit shorter?

 

And then it was still a bit long.

 

And I was like, can you make it even shorter, please?

 

And for some reason, I always feel I need to be really polite to ChatGBT, I always like to say please and thank you.

 

So I don't know, I don't want to take the thunder away from it, Robby, but I have a two line riddle about tonight's Sketchplanations, if you...

 

Yeah, bung it.

 

Sight may hear, taste may see.

 

I unite senses.

 

What could I be?

 

Jono Hey:

Very good.

 

Tom Pellereau:

It's really pretty impressive, actually.

 

Rob Bell:

That's good.

 

Say no more.

 

Let's leave the listeners kind of pondering there.

 

Jono Hey:

It really reminds me.

 

My mum grew up in Plymouth, and we go there and there's something called the...

 

Plymouth Sound is like the bay.

 

And I remember, dad always used to say, Plymouth is a place where you can see the sound and hear the sea.

 

Oh, which is very similar.

 

Reminds me of the ChatGPT.

 

Rob Bell:

That's good.

 

Maybe I do like riddles.

 

Maybe I do.

 

Thank you to everyone who's listened and who's now subscribed to the podcast every week.

 

It's brilliant to see that listenership growing.

 

Obviously, we want to keep that going.

 

So it'd be lovely if you could tell your friends and family about the podcast.

 

Maybe even retweet, retweet, retweet, maybe even retweet or repost some of the stuff we put out.

 

You can email us about your experiences of the things that we cover.

 

To Tom, what's the email address?

 

Tom Pellereau:

It's a very good question that everyone should know the answer to.

 

And I think it's hello at sketchplanations.com.

 

Rob Bell:

Oh, he's only got to nail it.

 

Nice one, matey.

 

Or you can leave us comments on social media.

 

I think perhaps the most used riddle over time, if you can call it that, is the old classic, why did the chicken cross the road?

 

And we'll never know for sure, but it might have been to get to an internet cafe to download this episode of Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

 

So to prevent that being a wasted and undoubtedly risky journey for our quick-footed feathery friend, let's move this along.

 

This week, we're talking about cross-modal perception, which is about how the brain integrates information from the five human senses to produce a coherent impression of reality.

 

And this mostly happens without us being conscious of it and can have surprising outcomes.

 

The artwork for this episode should be showing you Jono's sketch for this phenomenon.

 

But if you can't see it on your podcast player, just pop along to sketchplanations.com and you'll have a look at it there.

 

Cross-modal perception.

 

It is an odd one, this, I think, Jono, because as I just said there, it does happen around us a fair bit, but while I speak for myself, I'm not always that aware of it.

 

Until something's been pointed out to me and then for a little while in the future after that, I am quite aware of it.

 

And I think it's just quite interesting.

 

And my initial question to you as always, what was it that drew your attention to cross-modal perception to do the sketch about it?

 

Jono Hey:

Cross-modal perception came to me when I read an article.

 

And I linked to it in the sketch actually.

 

It was a New Yorker article.

 

I can't remember where I found it.

 

It was called Counting for Taste by Nicola Twilley.

 

This was back in 2015.

 

And it just gave so many interesting examples of...

 

Actually, the thing that really got me interested in it was, people always complain about plain food.

 

Rob Bell:

It's tasteless.

 

It's kind of bland, doesn't really do much for you.

 

Jono Hey:

Exactly, yeah.

 

And to be honest, I quite like plain food.

 

I love sitting on a plane and people serving me food.

 

I don't have to do anything.

 

Food comes, it's a bottle of wine, yes, please.

 

But people complain all the time.

 

And this article gives some reasons, actually, as to there might be some reality behind it actually tasting worse on a plane.

 

Rob Bell:

Jono, why don't you tell us some of the examples that you put into your sketch?

 

I think then it gives us a really good idea about what we're talking about with cross modal perception.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, so cross modal perception, first off, is interaction between senses.

 

So when, let's say, your smell affects your taste or how something, the environment, the sound, the sound affects what you're eating.

 

So the examples I give was actually from the article, which a coffee tastes better when the machine is quiet.

 

And amazingly, it tastes less sweet if you drink it out of a white mug.

 

It tastes more intense.

 

And the other one, which as get to it, which was the playing food bit, which is actually when you have that sort of background noise of the aircraft, food tastes less sweet or salty.

 

Well, sorry, less sweet and salty when you're flying.

 

Rob Bell:

So hence when people might describe it as being bland, kind of flavorless.

 

Jono Hey:

Exactly.

 

And the other bit of the example was chips tastes, potato chips, crisps tastes less fresh if we can't hear the crunch, which is another thing that also happens on planes.

 

So you're eating a crisp on a plane.

 

There's a lot of background noise.

 

You can't hear the crunch quite so well.

 

And therefore your mind goes, this is a little bit stale.

 

Rob Bell:

To associate your hearing with how things taste, I found this absolutely fascinating.

 

It's massively opened my eyes to this kind of thing.

 

The coffee machine, it tastes better, was it?

 

It tastes better.

 

Jono Hey:

It tastes less sweet.

 

Rob Bell:

Less sweet.

 

Jono Hey:

If you drink it out of a white mug.

 

So it tastes, I think it was more intense, is how they describe it.

 

Which I mean, I can sort of imagine, I mean, these were the results that they found, but I feel there, if you drink something out of a white mug, a dark liquid out of a white mug, you see the contrast.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes, contrast, black, white, bosh.

 

Jono Hey:

Right, yeah, so imagine if you, actually, we have one here, which is we have a black mug, and it's quite strange to have a black drink in a black mug.

 

You don't actually have it very often.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

But I should, maybe I should test the two.

 

I should line them up.

 

But I think there is something like you see the contrast of the color of the coffee with the color of the mug, and that tells your brain that this thing is stronger than maybe it is.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

If you didn't have that contrast.

 

Rob Bell:

I totally get that.

 

It intensifies that color with the white background, whereas the dark, let's call it black coffee, are against the black background.

 

It's all kind of blurring in.

 

I get it, but I'd love the next time to have a coffee out of a dark mug.

 

You just want both, right?

 

What's going on here?

 

Jono Hey:

You just want to try it, don't you?

 

I should say the article references this guy called Charles Spence, a professor in the UK, and he won what's called the Ig Nobel Prize, which is for research, which is a little bit crazy, let's say, and made people laugh, but also maybe made him think.

 

And basically what he did was he had people eat, I think it was 200 Pringles.

 

Yeah, I think that's it.

 

And the reason he picked Pringles was they're identical.

 

And so he had people eat Pringles and he had people with headphones on and then he would change the noise of the crunch as they ate it.

 

And people, if they didn't hear the crunch, people said that the chip was stale, even though they were all the same, which is basically what it was.

 

It's just like a fascinating and a kind of crazy experiment to do.

 

Rob Bell:

And as I understand it, Charles Spencer's has been, and maybe even continues to be quite heavily sought after by brands who are developing products and want to improve the customer experience of their products with the packaging, with whatever else you might be involved in.

 

Colors of packaging affecting how we might experience the product.

 

And a lot of the things that this chap, Charles Spencer, has spent time on is around food and food products, right?

 

Consumable products.

 

Jono Hey:

I mean, it's not exactly the same, but I remember for cars, like people spending quite a lot of time on the sound that the door makes as you close a car door.

 

The sort of soft sort of rum.

 

And people have a lot of associations with that sound.

 

Like if it goes ting, you like don't feel like this is safe.

 

You don't feel safe, right?

 

So you need this like.

 

And so, yeah, it's probably worth quite a lot.

 

Maybe plays quite a lot of part in our experience of all these products.

 

Rob Bell:

Tommy, what are your experiences of cross modal perception that you know of?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Well, so I've brought my Costa coffee cup tonight, which I must admit, I do really quite enjoy drinking out of it.

 

It always makes me feel, oh, this is a really proper cup of coffee.

 

I must admit, I don't quite know how I ended up in my house with her.

 

But I really enjoy drinking it.

 

Rob Bell:

As are any employees of Costa who are listening.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Well, I do think the redness for some reason, for my brain, certainly, really makes a coffee sort of taste more premium, potentially.

 

But you asked me about my work, and we certainly found with our teeth whitening range, the style small, we did a lot of work on the packaging and discovered that really kind of premium packaging and weight of the toothbrush was very important to make people feel that this was gonna be more whitening.

 

And we found that in the research groups that when the toothbrush was heavier, they felt that their teeth were actually whiter as a result.

 

They genuinely scored higher on the whiteness on the effects of the product.

 

So we actually ended up-

 

Rob Bell:

Not just on their perception of kind of general quality, but on how they felt that the outcome of what that was trying to do, whiten their teeth, cause it was heavier.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Cause it felt more quality, it felt therefore more expensive.

 

So therefore it felt like it must be doing more.

 

And the mental perception was that the teeth were whiter at the end and that kind of thing.

 

So that's one example.

 

We quite often use what's called a soft touch spray.

 

And many people will have first experienced this on the, you remember when Apple iPod first came out and the headphones had that kind of softy texture about them.

 

Rob Bell:

Oh yeah, I know what you mean.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Which at the time, which now everything has.

 

But at the time, and it was slightly a bit of a pain cause it really caught on things, but it just made them feel softer on you.

 

And that's a spray that you can put on certain products.

 

So a lot of mice, computer mice have it, and it just feels a little bit softer in the hand.

 

And it's actually just a spray.

 

So we use that on a few different products.

 

It just makes them feel softer and more kind of gentle.

 

So on the makeup brush cleaner, we use that on the device.

 

And when we were doing the testing, people just found that in their minds that this was therefore probably more delicate on the brush, which was really important for us.

 

Whereas if the device was just hard plastic, it felt like, oh, this feels quite hard, quite heavy.

 

Maybe it's gonna be damaging versus the soft touch.

 

Rob Bell:

So it's interesting.

 

You mentioned, so a number of things you mentioned there correlate to some of the things that Charles Spence discovered in some of his research.

 

So you're talking about the color red.

 

So Coca-Cola can, red.

 

And there's a story and anecdote about, they did a limited edition where Coca-Cola were supporting polar bears in the Arctic, and they changed their cans to white.

 

And customers reported that they must have changed the formula here because this doesn't taste as sweet.

 

You've done something different here.

 

So red supposedly can make us perceive things as being sweeter.

 

You mentioned about the weight.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Is that why Jono has red glasses?

 

Rob Bell:

Because he's a sweetheart.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, look at that.

 

Does it work on people?

 

I'll try.

 

Rob Bell:

Tommy, you mentioned weight.

 

So again, Charles Spencer's research showed that yogurt was perceived to be more filling when eaten from a slightly heavier container, a slightly heavier plastic container.

 

They felt like, oh, I really like that.

 

I've had a bit more of that.

 

Jono Hey:

It reminds me of those, you know, the Le Creuset pans, cooking pans.

 

So heavy.

 

Just like surprisingly heavy, but maybe, you know, you serve a soup out of a Le Creuset pan.

 

Carry this to the table with you, and everybody's like, full up after a few.

 

Yeah.

 

Genius.

 

Do that in a restaurant, when you just serve heavy bowls and people eat less.

 

Tom Pellereau:

So you know, the sort of protein shake containers, should they make those like really heavy?

 

Cause then you're even, you know, like if it probably should.

 

Rob Bell:

I mean, do you know, I'm actually thinking about this.

 

I'm hungry all the time.

 

Jono Hey:

Getting hungry now.

 

Rob Bell:

I'm gonna start heavy using heavier containers.

 

Yeah, heavy bowls.

 

I'm gonna eat out of a cement mixer.

 

No, the third and the third one that's again from Charles Spencer's research, that cookies seemed harder and crunchier when served from a rougher surface rather than a smooth surface.

 

And you were talking about that kind of perception of quality.

 

Spencer's research showed that the cookies seemed harder and crunchier.

 

It's crazier stuff.

 

And the thing that gets me is that I don't think it is just trickery because it is actually what we're experiencing.

 

It is what consumers are experiencing.

 

So it's not trickery.

 

It's more enhancery.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I was thinking there's, those wine glasses, I think, make a huge difference to the experience, but I believe also to the taste.

 

And some of them, the glasses sort of say that because you've got like a, you know, a big basket essentially for the smell to oscillate in, you're getting more out of the wine.

 

But also like the thinness of the glass.

 

There's something, you know, if you go to a fancy restaurant, they will have super thin glasses.

 

And it's just so, I don't know if you ever tried drinking red wine, a nice red wine out of a white mug.

 

First of all, I don't recommend it, but like it's so, it's so like jarring.

 

You can't really enjoy this red wine.

 

It's like if you take a wine camping and you've got like a little plastic cup or something.

 

Rob Bell:

Like, this isn't right.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah.

 

And it doesn't matter how good the wine is when you drink it.

 

Or imagine you drink it out of a rubber cup or something like that.

 

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

I was going to ask if this was your own research or if it was just, you know, student days again.

 

Jono Hey:

I've been testing all sorts.

 

There's red solo cups, you know, the sort of ones you play beer pong with.

 

You know, those are great for sangria.

 

Rob Bell:

Basically, you've drunk red wine out of every possible type of vessel, Jono, I think is what we're discovering.

 

Jono Hey:

If you give me a bottle of red wine, I'll try it out.

 

I do remember somebody drinking it out of a shoe once.

 

It wasn't somebody we knew, but I don't know.

 

Rob Bell:

But also people always say that tea tastes better out of a teapot or out of a china mug or out of a china cup.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

And I, yeah, maybe because I've been told that, that is whenever it is served to me in a china cup, I do always enjoy it more.

 

But is that the flavor?

 

Is that just the overall enjoyment of it?

 

Are you enhancing the experience of drinking tea, not necessarily the flavor?

 

Jono Hey:

When at the Coronation recently, we got out the tea set.

 

Oh, lovely.

 

We don't use it very often, but sort of up in the cupboard, we were given a historic tea set from the family.

 

So we're like, right, if you're gonna drink tea, Coronation's a good time to do it.

 

You know, you have a little saucer and a teeny little handle and you put your little finger out.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Lovely.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, okay, get the full experience.

 

I mean, I do think the thing with it, honestly, like the best innovation a coffee shop could do would be to make it quiet.

 

Like coffee machines just...

 

Tom Pellereau:

Oh, and that bang, bang, bang to empty the thing out.

 

It's almost like having a fight in the corner, isn't it?

 

When they're smacking it.

 

Rob Bell:

It is intrusive.

 

If you go in to have a chat with someone in a coffee shop, nah, you're right.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, so maybe the best thing you could do to improve the taste of the coffee would be to insulate your coffee machines until you grind in the cupboard or something like that.

 

It's so different from, that's probably one of the nicest coffee experiences that I remember having was in Italy, but just a homemade espresso sitting on a little deck looking out over the hills.

 

It was super quiet and lovely.

 

Obviously, it's a nice day.

 

And I feel like it tasted, I feel like it tasted better there as well.

 

In that peace and quiet.

 

Tom Pellereau:

There's a lot of examples well beyond food as well.

 

And I think TV and films are brilliant at creating this kind of perception and this feeling.

 

And have you ever watched Master and Commander, the Russell Crowe film, where he's on the boat.

 

It's this amazing film where he's the captain.

 

And apparently on the first day, he was like, right, okay, to get all the actors to make us all feel like this crew, we're all gonna wear different outfits.

 

So the captain had it, and his kind of commanders as it were, they were all given a certain uniform.

 

And then everyone was given a different uniform, like it was just a T-shirt, right?

 

To make them suddenly, because although they were all like actors and they all kind of sort of knew each other, it then gave an instant hierarchy to the people, to everyone while they were kind of practicing.

 

And apparently it sort of created this thing of them and us, and it gave that kind of perception, which then fed across really nicely into the film.

 

God, it's really powerful, isn't it?

 

Yeah, how our environment, how our dress, how what we wear, how, you know, prefects badges, and they kind of tie when you're in sick form that you get to wear, or that sort of stuff, how that creates that perception as well.

 

And Robbie, I'm sure you have that in your filming, where you're kind of trying to get people to feel in a certain way.

 

And when the music starts coming into the episodes before they air, how that suddenly makes it feel like it's underground or at the sea or.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, you do.

 

Yes, yes, so use of music with what kind of work I do, factual documentaries.

 

Yeah, you do.

 

But this is the same across all types of film and tell you, I think, where you use music to build an emotion.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

Whether that's tension or whether that's joy or whether it's whatever it might be.

 

Yeah, that's a good point.

 

Which again, it's the way we are perceiving what is coming up.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes.

 

Rob Bell:

And using as many senses as we can.

 

Jono Hey:

I thought you were gonna say, when you said TV, I thought you were gonna say smell-o-vision, do you remember?

 

Rob Bell:

Oh.

 

Jono Hey:

Do you remember that?

 

Because that doesn't really come up, even in those 4D things, do they?

 

I remember, yeah, like they'll blow wind at you or bubbles or something.

 

We're not very good at like controlling smell and getting rid of it and changing it to the next one.

 

You know, like you can, well, you can change a picture, right?

 

Just like that.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes.

 

Jono Hey:

And you can swap something out, but it's actually quite hard to like sweep a rim of one smell and change it to another smell.

 

Rob Bell:

Don't we know it?

 

No, you're right there.

 

Go on.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You feel like currently it's the sort of next frontier, isn't it?

 

We just like digitalize, we just haven't managed to really digitalize smell in a way that we can sound and the other senses.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

One day you have a ChatGPT for smell.

 

Can you give us a smell for a family reunion, please?

 

Could be the future.

 

Rob Bell:

I did, went round in front of mine's house and we did like a pub quiz and everyone bringing their own round and you do it around the table.

 

And one of them did a round of smells.

 

So little jars, little ramekins with tinfoil over the top and a few holes pierced in the top.

 

So you couldn't see what was in there.

 

You just had to smell it and say what it was.

 

And these were very common.

 

These were very common items that we should all know that we all smell and eat.

 

It's so tough though when you can't see it.

 

And then another round, they did the second round, they did shots of different types of booze, like rum, whiskey, tequila, gin, vodka, but put food coloring in them.

 

And so that's taken away from you, that sight was taken away from you, now you've got the flavor.

 

Oh, I don't, is that whiskey or is it vodka?

 

I mean, you should know the difference between whiskey and vodka.

 

They're such different things.

 

Oh yeah, neither of them are that nice to take a shot of.

 

But yeah, we're so dependent, I think.

 

Probably most people most of the time are really dependent on cross modal perception.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I mean, even if you just did a bunch of fruit or even a yoghurt, you said like, what flavor yoghurt is this?

 

But they didn't tell people what yoghurt it was.

 

I would easily get it wrong when I don't know.

 

So I was thinking, I've never been there.

 

I don't know if you guys have been there.

 

This is like one of those restaurants where you go in completely in the dark and they take away all the other senses.

 

Rob Bell:

I've not been.

 

I've not been.

 

Jono Hey:

No, I just think it would be a fascinating experience.

 

But I have done a float tank, getting rid of all your senses there.

 

You just lie and you're in super salty water in a little pod.

 

And so you basically float and it's perfectly at room temperature.

 

So you don't have any sense of weight and you can't feel any temperature.

 

And it's completely dark after some time, basically pitch black.

 

And you can't hear anything because it's all insulated as well.

 

So basically all of your senses have gone.

 

It's it's a weird experience.

 

Rob Bell:

All you can do is lick yourself to taste something.

 

Jono Hey:

I guess you could.

 

You don't get a little bit less.

 

Rob Bell:

How long do you stay in there?

 

Jono Hey:

No idea.

 

No, it could have been three weeks.

 

The lights go on and you're like, yeah, feel a little bit hungry, lost some weight.

 

Rob Bell:

Doing a bit more reading around cross modal perception.

 

I don't and Jono, Tommy, I don't know if you know any more than this, but why it physiologically or psychologically happens.

 

I don't think there's a widely accepted scientific answer for a lot of them.

 

Is that right from what you know?

 

Jono Hey:

I'm afraid I've not gone into the science of it.

 

I just found the experiment so fascinating.

 

But no, I mean, there's a lot of, I don't know, yeah.

 

Brains and our senses are just amazingly complicated.

 

And there's probably so much we still need to find out.

 

Maybe somebody has found out, but I haven't, unfortunately.

 

Rob Bell:

I mean, I did read somewhere that something like the colour red having an association with sweetness could be just from regular association or many associations in nature.

 

So things like strawberries and apples or whatever else, red and I mean, it tastes sweet.

 

I don't know.

 

Tom Pellereau:

And that's the whole thing about this field.

 

Like, some of it is to do with the mechanics of our senses.

 

And some of it is to do with just how we've been brought up, how we associate things.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, conditioning.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

My kids, Jack, is currently obsessed with Prime because of the influencers, because of YouTube.

 

And I've tasted it and it's disgusting, but he just thinks it's utterly amazing.

 

We had to drive to miles away, Asda recently, to go and get a can for him.

 

And that's just a perception that's just been built up for him.

 

And they're very plain looking cans.

 

Jono Hey:

Well, the thing going around the school here at the moment, something called Air Up, where you basically drink water.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes.

 

Jono Hey:

There's a little sachet of smell.

 

So you just basically have a different smell as you're drinking the water and it gives you the flavor of the water.

 

What?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Well done, Jono.

 

I've got it downstairs.

 

He loves that as well.

 

Jono Hey:

Have you really?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

And like everyone in his class.

 

And it's exactly this.

 

It's a bottle of water with a smelly pod that goes at the top of the straw.

 

So when you suck up through the straw, you get the smell of orange or black.

 

Rob Bell:

Can you change what you put in that little pod on the straw?

 

Tom Pellereau:

And you can pull it out a little bit more to get more smell or less smell.

 

Jono Hey:

A boss who said that he felt we had probably like an evolutionary preference for cold water.

 

And the thing, because I think that's true.

 

Like if you drink lukewarm water is just not nearly as satisfying as cold water.

 

And he said, well, you know, what is cold water?

 

It's cold water.

 

Normally cold water is running water, fresh and fresh water.

 

And even if it's just as clean and just as fresh, if it's not cold, it doesn't seem that way.

 

And so it doesn't have the same effect.

 

And this wasn't science.

 

It was just an opinion, but it's quite a good one.

 

I think there's probably something in it.

 

Rob Bell:

I think most, if not all people, at least most people will experience cross modal perception in some way or another, whether they know it or not, but what not everybody experiences is something called synesthesia, which is where people see colors and and or shapes with certain letters or words or numbers.

 

That kind of thing.

 

Does that make sense to you?

 

When I first heard about this, it didn't make sense to me at all.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I mean, I don't know the details, but I think I think it's where you sort of naturally associate one sense with another.

 

I remember I always remember this, the beginning of Fantasia, the first one, the Disney one, where they put in classical music, but to an animation.

 

And it's such an interesting exercise to just like go, well, what?

 

We've just had this Blair of trumpets.

 

What does that look like?

 

Yes, now we've got some violins and they're sort of going up, up at the set, like they're going up and down.

 

It's like a wave or something.

 

So we're going to draw a wave.

 

I think it's so interesting when you go, okay, that that music like feels spiky to me, let's say, versus that music feels soft.

 

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

And some people generally experience, I think they experience colours or shapes when hearing music or seeing a letter or writing a number, but they have those kind of associations that is very real for them.

 

I don't have it.

 

And it's very difficult, I think, for somebody who doesn't have it or ever experienced it to try and explain it.

 

And if none of us do experience synesthesia, then we'll probably not do a great job of it.

 

If there are any synesthetes, synesthesia experiencing listeners, do let us know what it's like listening to this podcast.

 

That would be really interesting to know.

 

Yeah.

 

Hello at sketchplanations.com.

 

Send us an email.

 

I'd love to know.

 

I'd be fascinated.

 

I don't think I've ever met anybody.

 

Well, at least I might have met them, but I haven't ever spoken to them about it, who has the synesthesia.

 

Jono Hey:

Yes.

 

Fascinating.

 

Rob Bell:

It is.

 

It's amazing.

 

Another one I came across was the McGurk effect, which is...

 

I love it.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You know exactly what it is, don't you, Jono?

 

You're just going to see if Robbie can do it.

 

Rob Bell:

It's when what you hear is influenced by what you see.

 

So we've talked a lot about tastes in the first part of the podcast here.

 

So this is very much the McGurk effect is very much about what you hear being influenced by what you see.

 

And the great example that I've seen, you can look it up on YouTube listeners.

 

It's brilliant.

 

There's a guy going basically going bar, bar, bar at the camera.

 

So you hear bar as in B, double A, let's say.

 

Then they dub that bar, bar, bar the sound over him going far, far, which is a very different shape that you make with your mouth to produce the F, far, far.

 

But what you what you hear and it's very difficult to you have to look away if you want to try and hear bar when he's making the mouth shape of bar.

 

Jono Hey:

That's amazing.

 

Rob Bell:

It's almost impossible.

 

It's all my yeah, I can't do it.

 

It doesn't matter how much you concentrate on trying to hear the other thing because he's making a different shape with his mouth, you hear what his mouth is doing.

 

Jono Hey:

It's like the power of like lip reading generally, isn't it?

 

Make such a difference into your interpretation of what somebody's saying like, yeah, you can sort of miss stuff and you just you figure it out by what you see.

 

But I guess you can play with it as well.

 

Rob Bell:

Which helps in noisy coffee shops.

 

Genuinely, it really does.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, it would.

 

Rob Bell:

And I think maybe a third phenomenon within this realm is ASMR, which I've written down, autonomous sensory meridian response, which again, I don't experience.

 

But what I understand, it's certain sounds or maybe even feel that gives you a kind of tingly sensation through your head and spine.

 

Jono Hey:

I mean, I don't know a lot about I remember reading an article in Wired magazine about various like YouTube channels, which would suddenly massive because it just had videos of people just doing interesting things like, one of them was like running their hand through a bowl of M&Ms, just like that, and you've got the colours and the shapes and then but you've got that sort of sound of them all moving about.

 

Curious things like that, which evidently make, you know, really affect people in certain ways because it seems to be really popular at the moment.

 

Rob Bell:

And some of it, sometimes it was whispering.

 

So there were, it would be people being really close to the mic and just whispering it, like whispering words like this.

 

Jono Hey:

Amazing.

 

Tom Pellereau:

That's really cool.

 

Rob Bell:

I mean, that's a thing.

 

As you say, there's loads of videos of this kind of stuff.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Does that make everyone want a beer or a coffee?

 

Jono Hey:

It's like we're in a coffee shop.

 

Rob Bell:

Now we're just doing sound effects.

 

If you want to download any sound effects used in this podcast, please feel free.

 

And God help you.

 

Any conclusions or anything else you want to talk about on cross-modal perception around McGurk or synesthesia?

 

Jono Hey:

I had one more related Sketchplanation I have around senses.

 

Rob Bell:

Oh yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

It took me a long time to find it because it was just one word.

 

But the word is proprioception, which no doubt won't mean anything to anybody.

 

But it's basically our ability to know the position and movement of our joints and limbs without looking at them.

 

Rob Bell:

I remember seeing this.

 

Yes.

 

What's it called again?

 

Proprioception.

 

Jono Hey:

Proprioception.

 

So the fact right now you can tell that you're sat on a chair and maybe that your legs are crossed, or your legs are down, or your arm is up in the air.

 

And actually, it's quite disorienting.

 

Like imagine if you wake up and your arm is like above your head or something, maybe it's a bit disorienting for a moment while your brain figures out where your limbs are.

 

Yeah.

 

But apparently, apparently, I quite like it because I think that's why I heard about it.

 

Because apparently, it's easily impaired by alcohol, it messes with our ability to sense our position of our joints and limbs, which is, of course, exactly what happens.

 

People get clumsy, right?

 

You start, people knock stuff over.

 

And so at one point, it was used as a sobriety test by police.

 

So if you, I mean, I won't try it right now.

 

But if you if you stand on one leg, and you put one arm out to the left, and then you shut your eyes, and then you try with your other hand to touch your nose with your eyes shut, you can do it just about if you're if you're if you're sober.

 

But apparently, if you've had a few drinks, it's actually really hard to do.

 

So next time you have a few drinks, it might be a fun thing to try.

 

Rob Bell:

But you say it used to be tried, but not long ago, because that's that's like the classic bit in American cinema, right?

 

The guy gets pulled over by the cops, and he's made to do the drunk test where you walk down the dotted line, and then you do the stand on the leg arm out, touch your nose thing today.

 

Yeah, I've seen it loads of times in American films and stuff.

 

Jono Hey:

Oh, have you?

 

I don't know about walking down the line, but I've never seen this.

 

The stand on one leg, touch your nose.

 

Rob Bell:

I've definitely seen that in Americana culture in films as I've also seen it in a brilliant YouTube video, which is on a police dashcam.

 

And it's late at night, and this police officer has pulled over a driver who she suspects to be drunk.

 

They're chatting out the back of the car, and you can hear it all.

 

And the chat and he's doing it all.

 

He's walking down the straight line.

 

He's walking down the line.

 

He's doing the finger on the nose thing, standing on one leg.

 

It's absolutely fine.

 

And then he catches her because they're just chatting and she knows what she's doing.

 

And she catches him out to the point where he's so relaxed, just talking to her.

 

And he goes, yeah, down at the bar just now, me and my buddies, we were having about four or five pints.

 

And then he goes, oh, you got me.

 

I'll take you around.

 

Tom Pellereau:

And the senses are just amazing, are they?

 

And I think we think about them as like five different senses.

 

And we're so lucky to have them in this brain that pulls it all together.

 

And we probably don't realize just how insanely incredible that is the whole time.

 

Rob Bell:

I totally agree.

 

And for me, at least for the next week or so, having done this podcast, I think I'll be more conscious of cross modal perception, the ones that just happen automatically around us all the time.

 

I'm going to be, at least I'm going to try and be more conscious of them and maybe do a few little tests on myself.

 

Jono Hey:

We should try eating a packet of crisps with headphones on so you can't hear the crunch and see if it tastes a hell.

 

I think that would be a fun one to do.

 

Rob Bell:

Whilst listening to sounds of a coffee barista coffee maker.

 

Jono Hey:

Out of a red bag.

 

Rob Bell:

This tastes like banana.

 

It's that magic combo and you get it right.

 

You can make anything taste like anything.

 

Another area, we talk so much about food.

 

Another area that's very multi-sensory is, of course, sex.

 

But I'm not prepared to go into that in this podcast and I'm pretty sure none of our listeners want to hear us talking about it either.

 

Jono Hey:

I think you're probably right there, Rob.

 

Rob Bell:

But one to think about.

 

Genuinely though, we'd love to get more examples from you, our listeners of Cross Modal Perception, that any others that you're aware of that we haven't talked about, you can send your emails to hello at sketchplanations.com or you can leave us a comment on any of our social media channels.

 

We're taking a week off from going through your correspondence this week because, well, quite simply, I'm not around to record it.

 

But we'll be back with a Vengeance next week.

 

And we do read everything you send in.

 

So thank you.

 

And then we'll have a good old read along at the end of the episode next time.

 

And next week, we'll be talking about the cost of being late, which may very well end up being a bit more of a finger pointing exercise, just like the episode on fubbing was.

 

Controversy left, right and center.

 

Jono's sketch on the cost of being late is up on sketchplanations.com, of course.

 

If you want to start working on your excuses now, or you can tune in next week to find out who amongst us is the biggest culprit.

 

Well, that's it for this week's episode.

 

Thank you all very much for listening.

 

And finally, before we leave you, I've just had news in that The Chicken made it safe and sound.

 

They downloaded the episode and they left us a five star rating.

 

Nice one, Chickaroo.

 

Stay well, guys.

 

Go well.

 

Cheers.

 

Goodbye.

 

All music on this podcast series is sourced from the very talented Franc Cinelli.

 

And you can find loads more tracks at franccinelli.com.