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Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
Browse Films
The Truth About Taste (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Taste is our most indulgent sense but it is only in recent years that we have started to understand why we really love the foods we do--and it is a lot more surprising than you might think.
Disgust (streaming, Academic Video Online)
This interview features a discussion between Mario Batali and Paul Rozin about what food humans find tasty or disgusting, and what triggers these feelings.
Synesthesia (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Can one taste a color or see a sound? This fascinating short documentary explores the brain and the neuro-cognitive phenomenon known as synesthesia, where multiples senses are blended together.
A World of Food: Tastes & Taboos in Different Cultures (streaming, Academic Video Online)
What's delicious? What's disgusting? What's even edible in the first place? These questions may seem simple, but they tap into powerful cultural, religious, and individual differences.
The Flavorists (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Meet the scientists who create flavors that make foods and beverages so tasty that critics say they're addictive. Morley Safer reports.
The Madeleine Syndrome - Ruth Reichl and Paul Rozin (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Proust's evocation of childhood conjured by the tasting of the scalloped madeleine has become the template for remembrance of things past. But why does taste bring forth memories of such emotional power?
Food: Delicious Science (dvd)
Dr. Michael Mosley and botanist James Wong celebrate the physics, chemistry, and biology hidden inside every bite of a next meal. Learn how the hidden chemistry of food keeps bodies fit and healthy; take a global culinary adventure to reveal the science that makes food taste delicious; and discover how the chemistry in food affects the brain and creates the deepest cravings.
Podcasts
Eating Insects and the Yuck Factor (Sapiens)
Why do some people think consuming insects is gross? In this podcast episode, anthropologist Julie Lesnik explains the history and culture behind the aversion to including insects for dinner.
Why Don't You Eat Bugs? (This Anthro Life)
Edible Insects part 1. Will crickets ever catch on as an alternative source of protein in the United States? How about cockroach “milk”? Why do people in so many parts of the world NOT eat insects? Where does that disgust for or against eating certain things come from? Adam is joined once again by guest host and biological anthropologist Andrea Eller to dig into edible insects, what just might be a new marketing idea for McDonald's, and how insects reveal underlying cultural trends of disgust, environmental resource use, gender and economic trends.
A Bugless Life w/ Julie Lesnik (Edible Insects, pt 2) (This Anthro Life)
Think you could eat a cricket? What about a spider? In this episode of TAL Adam Gamwell and guest host Andrea Eller are chatting with Julie Lesnik about her new book, Edible Insects and Human Evolution. Listen in as they discuss why Americans tend to be so grossed out by bugs, and if it’s always been that way. Edible Insects, part 2
Hacking Taste (Gastropod)
In this episode, we get into the science of how taste works, why we taste what we do, and what makes supertasters unique. And finally, we hack our taste buds—for fun, but, in the future, maybe for health, too.
The Bitter Truth (Gastropod)
In this episode, we get to know bitter a little better, finding good reasons and new ways to appreciate its complex charms.
Crunch, Crackle, and Pop (Gastropod)
"Sound is the forgotten flavor sense," says experimental psychologist Charles Spence. In this episode, we discover how manipulating sound can transform our experience of food and drink, making stale potato chips taste fresh, adding the sensation of cream to black coffee, or boosting the savory, peaty notes in whiskey.
Savor Flavor (Gastropod)
Join us as we taste the rainbow on this episode of Gastropod, from artificial flavoring's public debut at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition, to the vanilla-burping yeasts of the future.
The Hierarchy of the Senses | Philosophy of Taste | Carolyn Korsmeyer
This conversation is part of the series 'The Philosophy, Science, & Aesthetics of Food' ('Dare to know!' Philosophy Podcast). Carolyn Korsmeyer is the Research Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, and her areas in philosophy include aesthetics and emotion theory. She has a special interest in the senses that have been traditionally neglected by philosophy: taste and touch.
95: Post-COVID Taste Loss with Rebecca Ma (AnthroDish)
One of the symptoms of long COVID is a loss of taste, smell, and appetite. I’ve heard accounts of this in little snips across Instagram, but wasn’t really sure what that meant, or just how long long COVID really was. My guest this week, Rebecca Ma, is a Masters student of food anthropology in Idaho. She is also a COVID survivor who is experiencing long COVID.