Podcasts · Huberman Lab

Essentials: How Smells Influence Our Hormones, Health & Behavior | Dr. Noam Sobel

29 Oct 2026 · 35 min

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Noam Sobel, PhD, a Professor of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an expert on the human sense of smell. We discuss how the brain processes odors and how smell shapes our lives more than we realize, influencing everything from who we become friends with to how we experience emotions, hormones and aggression. Dr. Sobel also shares his lab’s groundbreaking work on digitizing smell and future technologies that could enable noninvasive disease detection through body odors.

Read the full episode show notes at hubermanlab.com.

Thank you to our sponsors

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) Noam Sobel

(00:00:20) Biology of Smell (Olfaction)

(00:04:32) Human Smell, Social Interaction, Handshaking

(00:08:31) Sponsor: LMNT

(00:10:03) Friendship, Body Odor

(00:14:04) Human Chemosignals, Smell of Fear & Contagion

(00:15:48) Aggression, Chemosignals, Men vs Women, Babies

(00:20:38) Sponsor: AG1

(00:21:51) Tears, “Chemical Blanket”, Testosterone

(00:25:37) Digitizing Smells

(00:28:25) Sponsor: Eight Sleep

(00:29:48) Creating Digital Odors; Future Medical Diagnostics

(00:33:43) Acknowledgments

Disclaimer & Disclosures

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Links in the notes 7

• https://www.hubermanlab.com/essentials
• https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/essentials-how-smells-influence-our-hormones-health-and-behavior-noam-sobel
• https://drinkag1.com/huberman
• https://eightsleep.com/huberman
• https://drinklmnt.com/huberman
• https://www.hubermanlab.com/disclaimer
• https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

The episode on the publisher’s site ↗ (opens in a new tab)