{"podcast":{"title":"Fork U with Dr. Terry Simpson","slug":"fork-u-with-dr-terry-simpson-940256","podcast_index_feed_id":940256,"rss_url":"https://feeds.captivate.fm/forku/","website_url":"https://www.forku.com","image_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/788b2349-48f2-498b-af8c-3fc9e102deaa/FU-2026-1.png","author":"Terry Simpson","episode_count":135,"summary":"Fork U(niversity) Not everything you put in your mouth is good for you. There’s a lot of medical information thrown around out there. How are you to know what information you can trust, and what’s just plain old quackery? You can’t rely on your own “google fu”. You can’t count on quality medical advice from Facebook. You need a doctor in your corner. On each episode of Your Doctor’s Orders, Dr. Terry Simpson will cut through the clutter and noise that always seems to follow the latest medical news. He has the unique perspective of a surgeon who has spent years doing molecular virology research and as a skeptic with academic credentials. He’ll help you develop the critical thinking skills so you can recognize evidence-based medicine, busting myths along the way. The most common medical myths are often disguised as seemingly harmless “food as medicine”. By offering their own brand of medicine via foods, These hucksters are trying to practice medicine without a license. And though they’ll claim “nutrition is not taught in medical schools”, it turns out that’s a myth too. In fact, there’s an entire medical subspecialty called Culinary Medicine, and Dr. Simpson is certified as a Culina…","last_synced_at":"2026-06-19T16:19:44.473681+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/fork-u-with-dr-terry-simpson-940256"},"episode":{"title":"Taste Buds Everywhere: Your Body's Hidden Food Sensors","slug":"taste-buds-everywhere-your-body-s-hidden-food-sensors","published_at":"2026-06-04T07:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/fork-u-with-dr-terry-simpson-940256/taste-buds-everywhere-your-body-s-hidden-food-sensors","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/fork-u-with-dr-terry-simpson-940256","url":"https://forku.com/episode/taste-buds-everywhere-your-bodys-hidden-food-sensors","audio_url":"https://op3.dev/e/episodes.captivate.fm/episode/277badbb-6e41-432b-a91f-d4a830c98863.mp3","summary":"Taste Isn't What You Think It Is Most people believe taste happens on the tongue. That idea seems obvious because food enters the mouth, the tongue recognizes flavors, and the brain decides whether something tastes good or bad. However, modern science has revealed a much more fascinating story. Taste receptors are scattered throughout the body, including the stomach, intestines, airways, pancreas, and even tissues associated with the nervous system. Consequently, what we call taste is actually part of a much larger surveillance system that helps us detect nutrients, toxins, microbes, and potential threats before they become serious problems. Before we explore those hidden taste receptors, though, we need to separate taste from smell. Most people use the words interchangeably, yet they are remarkably different systems. In fact, if you've ever had a bad cold, you've already experienced the difference firsthand. Why Expensive Wine Tastes Like Grape Juice With a Stuffy Nose Imagine spending a fortune on a bottle of Screaming Eagle wine. A sommelier describes notes of blackberry, cedar, tobacco, leather, and dark cherry while swirling the glass dramatically. Now pinch your nose shut and take a sip. Suddenly, those elegant descriptions become much harder to appreciate, and the wine starts tasting suspiciously like grape juice. The reason is simple. Your tongue detects only a handful of basic categories: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Meanwhile, your nose identifies the thousands of aromatic compounds that make strawberries taste different from cherries or Cabernet different from Merlot. Therefore, much of what we casually call taste is actually smell working behind the scenes. Without smell, a wine tasting becomes a costly visit to a Welch's grape juice stand. This d…","meta_description":"Taste Isn't What You Think It Is Most people believe taste happens on the tongue. That idea seems obvious because food enters the mouth, the tongue recogn…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":739,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/fork-u-with-dr-terry-simpson-940256/episodes/taste-buds-everywhere-your-body-s-hidden-food-sensors/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/fork-u-with-dr-terry-simpson-940256/taste-buds-everywhere-your-body-s-hidden-food-sensors.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}