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Unboiling an egg and tasting a trombone

September 16, 2025 · 38 min

Show notes

Making a hardboiled egg is easy. Unboiling a hardboiled egg is hard, if not impossible, right?

What do musical instruments taste like? Are violins sour? Are pianos sweet?

In this episode, Lu and Tirth use philosophical razors to debate whether Tirth’s fiancé is real, discuss how to turn back time to uncook eggs, and uncover what sounds taste like and what tastes sound like.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 Intro
  • 1:12 Philosophical razors
  • 17:23 Egg unboiling study
  • 24:36 Sound taste study
  • 36:04 What did you learn today, outro

Article link:

  • Yuan et al., 2015. Shear-Stress-Mediated Refolding of Proteins from Aggregates and Inclusion Bodies. ChemBioChem. https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cbic.201402427
  • Crisinel et al., 2010. As bitter as a trombone: synesthetic correspondences in nonsynesthetes between tastes/flavors and musical notes. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/APP.72.7.1994

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Theme music by Dasein: https://open.spotify.com/artist/77H3GPgYigeKNlZKGx11KZ

Recreational Science is produced by Scientafic (https://www.scientafic.com/recscipod)

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