Author: BBC World Service

While there is a myriad of deodorants, shower gels and perfumes helping us stay fresh and fragrant today, that hasn’t always been the case. How did humans stay clean in the past, or did they not care so much? And is there an evolutionary reason for human body odour in the first place?

These are questions that CrowdScience listener Sarah has pondered on trips in her camper van, when she wants to keep clean, but washing isn’t always convenient.

In search of answers, presenter Anand Jagatia delves into the sweaty details: where body odour comes from, why some people's armpits don't smell, and whether this heady stink serves any purpose. Could our natural odour really help to attract a partner, or is it just a smelly bacterial by-product?

Anand explores the intriguing mystery of human pheromones, and hears how for hundreds of years, Europeans were terrified of washing.

Contributors: Dr Madalyn Nguyen, Dermatologist Dr Kara Hoover, Biological Anthropologist, University of Alaska Fairbanks Katherine Ashenburg, author, The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History Dr Tristram Wyatt, Department of Biology, University of Oxford

Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Sophie Eastaugh Production co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Editor: Cathy Edwards Sound engineer: Emma Harth

(Photo: Girl sweating smelly armpit, Taiwan Credit: PonyWang via Getty Images)

Spoiler alert! At the end of the fourth season of Emily in Paris, the protagonist sets off to go to Rome. In response, the French President Emmanuel Macron has promised that “we will fight hard” to keep Emily in Paris in France. Why does he care so much? A recent study suggests that 38 per cent of all visitors to Paris name the show as one of the reasons for visiting. Inspired by this factoid, we started thinking about the ways in which TV can influence us.

We examine how Star Trek inspired mobile phones – and the outfit of one of our panelists. Plus, we find out more about the impact Dana Scully from The X Files had on a generation of girls. And what does psychology say about fandom?

But how can science influence the films? We speak to Dr Adam Rutherford, a geneticist, broadcaster, and, importantly, scientific advisor for movies. What does that last role involve? Which films get the science right? And is scientific accuracy important for a Hollywood blockbuster?

Also in the programme, we hear about the mysterious recent earthquakes in Ethiopia, and Unexpected Elements listeners with visual impairments get in touch to share the secrets of what they can see inside their heads. And finally, we take a look at the surprising connection between cricket and statistics.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton with Andrada Fiscutean and Christine Yohannes Producer: Florian Bohr with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell and Anna Charalambou Sound engineer: Cath McGhee

The “dewilding” effects of fish farming and mariculture are in the spotlight this week. Farmed fish can impact marine ecosystems in several ways, and surprisingly one of those is the effect it has on consumer perceptions of the impact of eating farmed fish, as researchers Becca Franks of NYU and Laurie Sellars at Yale suggest.

Meanwhile, Manu Prakesh and colleagues at Stanford University in the US have found a remarkable plankton that can traverse the depths of the oceans by ballooning to five times its size, giving clues as to how an important carbon sink actually works. And Monika Bright at the University of Vienna has found animals and tubeworms living in the very rock below volcanic hydrothermal vents. Life finds a way…

…But not always. 445 million years ago the second worst mass extinction event wiped out countless species of life on earth. But why? This week astronomer Chrysa Avdellidou of Leicester University and colleagues say they have found the origin for a famous meteor event that also happened around that time.

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Andrew Rhys Lewis

(Image: Aerial view of seagulls following a fishing trawler. Credit: Felix Cesare via Getty Images)