What's Up Docs? - What do you need to know about your nose?
Download What do you need to know about your nose?
Welcome to What's Up Docs?, the podcast where doctors and identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken explore the ideas shaping our health and wellbeing.
In this episode, they turn their attention to the nose, an organ we use with every breath but rarely stop to think about.
Joined by Miss Katherine Whitcroft, ear, nose, and throat surgeon at Sheffield Children's Hospital and co-director of the Sheffield Chemosensory Research Lab, Chris and Xand explore how the nose is built and what it does for us, why we produce so much mucus and where it goes, and why our noses run when we cry or eat spicy food. The conversation also covers how our sense of smell changes across our lives, the most common things that go wrong with the nose, and what the evidence says about treatments such as nasal sprays.
If you want to get in touch, you can email us at whatsupdocs@bbc.co.uk.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken
Guest: Miss Katherine Whitcroft
Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis
Researcher: Grace Revill
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar
Visual Producer: Leon Gower
Technical Lead: Reuben Huxtable
Digital Lead: Richard Berry
Composer: Phoebe McFarlane
Sound Design: Ruth Rainey
At the BBC:
Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith
Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
Published on Tuesday, 10th November 2026.
Available Podcasts from What's Up Docs?
We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the What's Up Docs? webpage.