It's hard to imagine a medium less suited to perfume than a podcast. Yet, BBC's The Conversation pulls off the trick with Perfume Makers, an episode that proves words can evoke scents almost as vividly as the real thing.

Host Kim Chakanetsa brings together two accomplished perfumers: Shyamala Maisondieu, Malaysian-born creator of fragrances for luxury brands in Paris, and Caroline Gaillardot, who develops scents for everyday beauty products in France. Their stories reveal that perfumery is as much about memory and culture as it is about chemistry.

Maisondieu recalls growing up amid frangipani, jasmine and ginger, while Gaillardot, who was raised in Grasse in the hills of the French Riviera, describes training her nose to identify more than a thousand raw ingredients. Together, they describe the smells they cherish - and those they simply cannot bear - with such precision that you can almost smell them yourself.

The podcast will also leave many listeners wishing for a similar one on India's rich tradition of attar. An ancient fragrance craft with roots in West and Central Asia, attar flourished here under Mughal patronage, and continues to thrive today. Stories of its perfumiers, ingredients and memories bottled into every vial deserve a wider audience.