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How Perfume Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know fromhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
0:14
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Jeers. That'd be great if that
0:19
Speaker 1: was her named Jerry Jerry Jeers like Tony, Tony, Tony.
0:24
Speaker 1: My friend needs to call them Tony, Tony, Tony. Why
0:28
Speaker 1: is the spelling? Okay? But I thought the last one
0:31
Speaker 1: was an E with a little accent. Well that was tony,
0:36
Speaker 1: but he didn't say tony accent would say that. Well,
0:42
Speaker 1: but the point is it's E, I Y are the
0:44
Speaker 1: three letters when Jerry Prester Court, did you think we
0:47
Speaker 1: were gonna be talking about Tony Tony Tony? I never
0:50
Speaker 1: know what the heck we're gonna talk about. For the
0:51
Speaker 1: first thirty second, I would not have predicted that one.
0:55
Speaker 1: I was gonna tell the story, but I'm not going to. Now,
0:58
Speaker 1: what's the cent you're wearing? Is? Oh, didn't chuck musk?
1:05
Speaker 1: It's called chusk in French that means water of chuck musk. Gross. Yeah,
1:13
Speaker 1: I'm wearing drekarn No, r Are you really no? You
1:18
Speaker 1: think you'd be able to smell it? Well? Yeah, sure,
1:21
Speaker 1: I never know. I don't want to, Like, I'm very
1:23
Speaker 1: sensitive to making fun of people and what they choose
1:25
Speaker 1: to do. You know, I'm not making fun of anybody. No,
1:29
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to say you're wearing cologne. You
1:32
Speaker 1: were wearing drekar no noir. Gross. I used to love
1:35
Speaker 1: Drecarno war back when I was in like seventh eighth grade.
1:37
Speaker 1: I believe it may and alive. Those are the cologne days.
1:40
Speaker 1: I looked it up and I was like, what does
1:42
Speaker 1: drecarno R mean? No? Are black? Um? What is dr car?
1:47
Speaker 1: Apparently your car or duckr is a name for a
1:51
Speaker 1: Viking ship, So drek car has kind of come into
1:55
Speaker 1: um French colloquially as like a big ship or a yacht.
2:00
Speaker 1: So I think drekarn noir. Here's the factor of the podcast.
2:03
Speaker 1: Sadly uh means black yacht. Nice. That means you are
2:09
Speaker 1: very fine because all you see is white yachts. You
2:12
Speaker 1: ever seen a black yacht? Nope, that would be pretty slick. Yeah,
2:16
Speaker 1: it'd be very hot. That's why they don't paint yachts black.
2:18
Speaker 1: I would imagine, Well, yeah, I guess so, because he
2:20
Speaker 1: sat up in the sun all day. Um, so I
2:25
Speaker 1: wore Benetton colors. I never wore that one, and um,
2:30
Speaker 1: that smell today is still very evocative. Because I have
2:35
Speaker 1: the bottle, I don't know if I still had it.
2:38
Speaker 1: I had it, what, Yeah, I key stired it in nineteen.
2:44
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, when you're feeling nostalgic, you
2:46
Speaker 1: just shed it. Though I can't find it. I just oh,
2:50
Speaker 1: where was I thought you were saying you still had
2:51
Speaker 1: the bottle? I key stired it and I can't find um. Now,
2:57
Speaker 1: I had it for a long the longest time. I
3:00
Speaker 1: don't think I still have it though. Um, And as
3:03
Speaker 1: we'll see, cologne can go bad. But this isn't a
3:06
Speaker 1: dark drawer, and it seemed to smell the same to me. Yeah,
3:09
Speaker 1: that sounded like a perfume industry propaganda. Oh to keep you.
3:13
Speaker 1: No matter what you do to protect it, it's still
3:16
Speaker 1: going to go bad. Into That's like these vict in
3:18
Speaker 1: are no good anymore exactly. Don't believe that for a second. No,
3:22
Speaker 1: but definitely don't just assume that they've downgraded in potency
3:26
Speaker 1: and take like four right. I do think, I do
3:31
Speaker 1: think cologne and perfume could definitely go bad if not
3:33
Speaker 1: cared for correctly, right, but if you care for it correctly, yeah, yeah, yeah,
3:38
Speaker 1: we should probably just go ahead and say, if you
3:40
Speaker 1: keep it out of the sunlight, yeah, keep the artificial
3:43
Speaker 1: light to a minimum, keep it in its original bottle up. Yeah. Um,
3:49
Speaker 1: supposedly it stays good for two years. Yeah. Yeah, that's
3:52
Speaker 1: what happened. I think is bs as long as you
3:54
Speaker 1: don't expose it to the outside air, right, keeping it
3:57
Speaker 1: in a Sergin bottle and the sunlight's not saying they're
4:00
Speaker 1: breaking its molecular chains, it's it's gonna be fine and stable. Yeah.
4:04
Speaker 1: I mean I had literally had proof on cologne and vicodin.
4:09
Speaker 1: I'm happy to come out on the record about that's
4:12
Speaker 1: great man, all right, this is a good article. I thought, Well,
4:16
Speaker 1: a nice choice. Yeah, I I agree. I think perfume
4:19
Speaker 1: is surprisingly interesting. It's one of those things where you
4:23
Speaker 1: just take for granted or you think like, oh, that's
4:25
Speaker 1: just for the fashionista glitterati types, or you know, Madison
4:31
Speaker 1: Avenue folks kind of thing, and then you dig into
4:35
Speaker 1: it and you're like, no, it's pretty cool perfumes for everyone.
4:38
Speaker 1: Even if you don't wear it, it's still interesting to
4:40
Speaker 1: know about, like, for example, the history do you read
4:42
Speaker 1: much of the history. Yeah, it's aw. Um, you sent
4:45
Speaker 1: me some pretty cool stuff that um, and this isn't
4:48
Speaker 1: necessarily perfume, but I guess perfume is really anything that smells. Yes,
4:52
Speaker 1: you know, it didn't have to smell great. Yeah, we're
4:54
Speaker 1: we're generally talking about perfume, meaning like a product that
4:57
Speaker 1: you go by two and to change or enhance your scent. Right. Yeah.
5:02
Speaker 1: That but if you look around, like everything is perfumed
5:05
Speaker 1: unless it's specifically marketed as unscented or non perfumed. Yeah,
5:10
Speaker 1: but just about everything else has some sort of perfuming
5:13
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, but it's got it has to be
5:15
Speaker 1: a substance. That's what is the distinction between like a
5:19
Speaker 1: perfume and an odor. Yeah. Yeah, like I guess the
5:23
Speaker 1: odor actually comes off and say the plant. The perfume
5:26
Speaker 1: is when you go to that plant and squeeze the
5:29
Speaker 1: odor out of it, put in a bottle, put it
5:32
Speaker 1: on your skin. Yeah, well you don't you need to
5:35
Speaker 1: put in a bottle. Yeah, I guess not. You rub
5:37
Speaker 1: those leaves all over you. Um. But like I said,
5:40
Speaker 1: back in the day, ancient priest, you sent me these
5:42
Speaker 1: things that they burned incense initially to cover up stinky
5:46
Speaker 1: dead animal carcasses that they were sacrificing, which makes sense
5:50
Speaker 1: that the Latin uh translation is through the smoke. Perfume
5:55
Speaker 1: means yeah, like you can smell it through the smoke
5:57
Speaker 1: of I guess he's burning dead animals, or through the
6:00
Speaker 1: smoke you feel a lot better about sacrificing animals because
6:05
Speaker 1: you can't smell the death. Yeah. Uh. The ancient Egyptians
6:10
Speaker 1: very quickly, so, like originally these were priests using perfume
6:13
Speaker 1: to cover up animal sacrifices. The ancient Egyptians said, we
6:16
Speaker 1: got a better idea. Let's use the glands from those
6:20
Speaker 1: animals to scent ourselves for loving. Well, yeah, let's put
6:27
Speaker 1: it on our stinky parts. Yeah. Originally it was the
6:30
Speaker 1: animal sacrifice, and it went very quickly into sexuality, and
6:34
Speaker 1: ever since then, the purpose of perfume has remained virtually unchanged.
6:39
Speaker 1: It is to um stimulate sexuality in some former fashion, yeah,
6:46
Speaker 1: especially men wearing cologne. Yeah, and what we'll get to
6:50
Speaker 1: some of those reasons in a bit. But um, that's
6:52
Speaker 1: a good primer. I never really thought about that, but
6:54
Speaker 1: I guess you're right. You're wearing it um to smell
6:57
Speaker 1: more attractive even in a on the friendship tip. Sure
7:02
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be sexual. I don't think. Well,
7:05
Speaker 1: it depends because some of the early ingredients that stuck
7:10
Speaker 1: around until in some cases of the nineties, and are
7:13
Speaker 1: still being used in other cases, are from basically the
7:17
Speaker 1: sex glands the scent glands of animals. Yeah, and this
7:22
Speaker 1: article points out it's like, it's funny to think about
7:24
Speaker 1: the first person who saw a skunk and said, you
7:29
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna I'm gonna get all up in
7:31
Speaker 1: that anal gland and rub some of that on me,
7:35
Speaker 1: or the musk deer. The musk deer you get some
7:37
Speaker 1: of that. The beaver um produces castorium. The civic cat,
7:43
Speaker 1: which is a Himalayan cat. That that's the skunk. There's
7:47
Speaker 1: like a dozen animals they classify as civic cats. And
7:50
Speaker 1: then ambergriss yeah or ambergris. I don't I can't remember
7:55
Speaker 1: which way to pronounce it. Let's just say it's both
7:57
Speaker 1: are acceptable, Okay, well read to disagree amber gree I
8:03
Speaker 1: can't remember anyway. That's the whale stuff. Yes, so supposedly
8:07
Speaker 1: everybody said, well, it's whale vomit when a whale eats
8:10
Speaker 1: a squid and its beak gets kind of in its
8:14
Speaker 1: stomach and it needs to dislodge it. Yeah, squid beak Okay,
8:18
Speaker 1: I thought, I think, Yeah, it's a beak. It's probably
8:22
Speaker 1: the most disturbing part on any animal on the planet.
8:25
Speaker 1: The fact that a squid has a hard beak just
8:28
Speaker 1: like a bird is disturbing. It just keeps me up
8:32
Speaker 1: at night because the squid is like gelatinous and flimsy.
8:36
Speaker 1: It's not supposed to have a hard beak that can
8:39
Speaker 1: break bone. Well, I think it is supposed to. That's
8:43
Speaker 1: wrong to me. Uh So if a whale has that
8:47
Speaker 1: beacon its stomach after eating a squid, it needs to
8:50
Speaker 1: get rid of it. So the common wisdom was that
8:53
Speaker 1: it puked up this stuff and that's what ambergriss is. Yeah,
8:58
Speaker 1: this is the sperm whale specifically, right, Yeah, but but
9:02
Speaker 1: in this ambergriss is like this, Well, it's just like
9:05
Speaker 1: bile and puke and that kind of thing. But it
9:08
Speaker 1: floats on the on the surface of the ocean and
9:12
Speaker 1: photo degrades and hardens and turns into this waxy substance
9:15
Speaker 1: that's actually flammable, that can have its own scent, that
9:18
Speaker 1: has long been and instill in some cases used as
9:22
Speaker 1: a major ingredient in perfume. Right, Yeah, I think it's
9:26
Speaker 1: supposed to, uh make perfume stick to your body more right,
9:29
Speaker 1: It's affixative, is what it's called. Um. The weird thing
9:32
Speaker 1: is is there recently finding out that it's possible that
9:36
Speaker 1: ambergriss it comes out of the bottom end of the
9:40
Speaker 1: whale the mouth they poop it out. It's basically whale
9:44
Speaker 1: diarrhea that you're using in your perfume. So consider this,
9:48
Speaker 1: Depending on the perfume and the fixatives that uses, you
9:51
Speaker 1: could be using anal glands from a beaver and diarrhea
9:55
Speaker 1: from a whale in order to make yourself smell sexy. Yeah.
10:01
Speaker 1: What's insane, chuck, is that it actually works. Uh. Well, sure,
10:07
Speaker 1: that's debatable depending on who you are. I guess. I
10:11
Speaker 1: hate the smell of perfume, all perfumes. There's not a
10:15
Speaker 1: single perfume sense even a component of a perfume that
10:19
Speaker 1: you find. I don't like perfume. Scented perfume for women specifically,
10:25
Speaker 1: is what I'm talking about as far as working sexually. Um,
10:29
Speaker 1: and I and no, it doesn't. I don't even mean
10:32
Speaker 1: like sexually necessarily that like you're worked up, getting a
10:37
Speaker 1: little hot under the collar, even just relaxing. Not pleasing
10:40
Speaker 1: to me at all. Really, Nope, don't like it? Are
10:44
Speaker 1: you do? Do you like sense of anything? I mean,
10:47
Speaker 1: like Emily makes all sorts of soaps and stuff. Do
10:49
Speaker 1: you like any of those? Sense? Those are all natural?
10:52
Speaker 1: That's the difference. Most every perfumed product is synthetic. It's
10:57
Speaker 1: on the market. It depends for sure that cheaper ones
11:00
Speaker 1: definitely are, but not all of them are most of them,
11:03
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still plenty of that use like ambergris
11:06
Speaker 1: what's more natural than whale diarrhea? Well, that's true, you know,
11:10
Speaker 1: uh not here in the US, so we should point
11:11
Speaker 1: out is illegal to use that in perfumes in the
11:14
Speaker 1: US of A. But the Europe yes, but the European
11:17
Speaker 1: perfume houses still du But no, I'm very specifically averse
11:21
Speaker 1: to most sense because we don't use uh chemical products
11:26
Speaker 1: as much as possible, So like I don't use scented sprays,
11:30
Speaker 1: scented deodorants like fabreze, to me, is like the most
11:34
Speaker 1: disgusting thing you can do to your home. Fabric softener, sheets, uh,
11:41
Speaker 1: laundry detergent, like nothing nothing with with sense. I hate it.
11:46
Speaker 1: There's nothing to me worse than like going to a
11:49
Speaker 1: hotel and smelling scented sheets that have clearly been washed
11:55
Speaker 1: with some kind of perfumey detergent. What if it smells
11:58
Speaker 1: like something pleasant though, I mean like there's nothing like
12:03
Speaker 1: I understand what now, They're all supposed to be pleasant,
12:05
Speaker 1: Like this smells like lavender, and none of it does
12:07
Speaker 1: to you. It's just like this is synthetic, so it
12:09
Speaker 1: feels bad to me. I got you. Um, But the
12:13
Speaker 1: the idea you just rattle off a bunch of like
12:16
Speaker 1: um uses for perfume beyond actual perfume, and that that's
12:21
Speaker 1: actually kind of an old concept. Um. The what's long
12:25
Speaker 1: been considered the seat of Europe's perfume industry is a
12:30
Speaker 1: gross I think g r E s s E in
12:33
Speaker 1: the south of France, and it's got this unusual microclimate
12:37
Speaker 1: to where all of these wonderful plants um like jasmine
12:41
Speaker 1: and orange blossoms and lavender and all this stuff can grow.
12:46
Speaker 1: And the locals figured out number one that they needed
12:50
Speaker 1: to grow the stuff but also to extract it in
12:51
Speaker 1: different ways. You can extract the essential oils. You can extract, absolutely,
12:55
Speaker 1: you can extract concrete. But what you're doing is this
12:58
Speaker 1: extracting these odorant moll acules from plants and using it
13:05
Speaker 1: to perfume. What they were originally using it to perfume,
13:08
Speaker 1: and I think, like the fourteenth or thirteenth century were
13:12
Speaker 1: leather gloves. So remember Catherine de Medici, she's been coming
13:16
Speaker 1: up a lot, a lot um. She was given some
13:20
Speaker 1: scented gloves by the tanners of Gross, France, which was
13:25
Speaker 1: originally there. That was their gig, was making leather goods.
13:28
Speaker 1: But they stunk like death. So just like those ancient priests,
13:33
Speaker 1: the people of Gross said, we need to perfume these.
13:35
Speaker 1: They came up and started this whole trend of perfumed
13:38
Speaker 1: leather gloves by sending a complimentary pair to Catherine de Medici,
13:42
Speaker 1: who loved them. And then all of a sudden, bam,
13:44
Speaker 1: Gross is not only making these awesome leather goods, it
13:47
Speaker 1: becomes the perfume capital of the world and stays that
13:51
Speaker 1: way for a very long time. Because she essentially was
13:53
Speaker 1: the first celebrity sponsor of a product. She was in
13:57
Speaker 1: the copies of the local rag saying I love the
13:59
Speaker 1: smell all of my lavender leathers. Uh, that's pretty cool story.
14:05
Speaker 1: And so that was the heart of it all. Then. Yeah,
14:07
Speaker 1: and Gross still makes not nearly as much as they
14:10
Speaker 1: used to, but they still produce tons of essential oils
14:13
Speaker 1: every year of all these wonderful plants. Nice. Yeah, see,
14:17
Speaker 1: I'm done with the essential oils. That's different, right, But
14:20
Speaker 1: that stuff is frequently used in perfumes. I mean, they
14:23
Speaker 1: might not be using it in like you're you know,
14:26
Speaker 1: tied or anything like that. That's probably a synthetic scent.
14:29
Speaker 1: Not probably it's absolutely a synthetics But there are still
14:32
Speaker 1: plenty of perfumes that do use essential oils in there
14:35
Speaker 1: as as smell molecules. Well, the reason people they don't
14:39
Speaker 1: is because it's expensive. Um. All right, So let's talk
14:43
Speaker 1: a little bit about what perfume as the stinky stuff
14:49
Speaker 1: that you use an atomizer if you're fancy to spray
14:52
Speaker 1: on your body to smell sexy um, and a little
14:56
Speaker 1: bit about smell in general. I guess, uh, the liquid
14:59
Speaker 1: perfume that we're talking about, it is basically just a
15:02
Speaker 1: concoction of alcohol and water and these smell molecules. Um.
15:08
Speaker 1: That basically what you're smelling is evaporation into the air.
15:13
Speaker 1: And um, they do point out the article not everything
15:16
Speaker 1: you know, it's light enough to float, but not everything
15:18
Speaker 1: that's light enough to float has that's has a smell. Um,
15:21
Speaker 1: And what do they point out? Carbon monoxide is the
15:24
Speaker 1: common danger, right, you can't smell it, you might be dying.
15:27
Speaker 1: That's why you have the detectors in your home. Yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: if all of a sudden you can't think, right, Yeah,
15:31
Speaker 1: and there's no other reason why, it's probably carbon oxide
15:34
Speaker 1: leak in your house. That's right. There's no old lacating
15:37
Speaker 1: around used to check the battery on your carbon monoxide detector.
15:41
Speaker 1: So the not only do some molecules not have a scent,
15:46
Speaker 1: they're just not odorance. Some odorance aren't smelled by all people,
15:49
Speaker 1: like apparently sandalwood, natural sandal wood is the most commonly
15:55
Speaker 1: uncensed odorant. Yeah, the natural original, the g Yeah. So
16:01
Speaker 1: even even if you are making a perfume or something
16:04
Speaker 1: like that, you may be making something that can't be
16:07
Speaker 1: smelled by a significant portion of the population, which is
16:10
Speaker 1: a challenge of making perfume and the whole cilantro thing.
16:13
Speaker 1: The posted a link to a story about that. I
16:16
Speaker 1: know we've talked about it before. It's like ten percent
16:18
Speaker 1: of the population as a genetic marker that thinks it tastes,
16:23
Speaker 1: taste and smells soapy. Yeah, And this article points out
16:26
Speaker 1: that what's going on is not that there's some alteration
16:30
Speaker 1: of the smell or taste of cilantro, but that there's
16:33
Speaker 1: a note to it missing, so that it's incomplete what
16:37
Speaker 1: people are sensing, and therefore they find it gross. But
16:41
Speaker 1: I saw another study that showed that of odorant receptors
16:46
Speaker 1: are different from person to person. Take any two people,
16:51
Speaker 1: of their odorant receptors are going to be just wildly different. Yeah.
16:55
Speaker 1: So it is a real challenge to make perfume that
16:59
Speaker 1: is pleasing to enough people. And as a result, some
17:02
Speaker 1: people have gone the opposite way and they're just making
17:05
Speaker 1: exactly what they think is super cool and if you
17:07
Speaker 1: like it, awesome, if it smells good, great, if not, whatever.
17:10
Speaker 1: But that's kind of counter to the main mode of
17:14
Speaker 1: thinking in the perfume industry, which is the best exactly
17:18
Speaker 1: because more people are going to buy it and you're
17:20
Speaker 1: gonna make more money, and if it's a really good one,
17:22
Speaker 1: it'll be a classic that people do develop, like a
17:25
Speaker 1: brand loyalty to and buy again and again and again
17:29
Speaker 1: year after year. Number five. Yeah, which classic perfume it is?
17:33
Speaker 1: And it was the first perfume to use synthetic ingredients?
17:38
Speaker 1: Did you know that? And apparently it was not a
17:40
Speaker 1: hit right out of the gate. It was created in
17:42
Speaker 1: the twenties, um Fortunel, But it wasn't until Marilyn Monroe,
17:48
Speaker 1: in an interview in the mid fifties, said that all
17:50
Speaker 1: she wears the better two drops of Channel number five,
17:53
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden it was like, sure, forever,
17:57
Speaker 1: the forever perfume. So every I bought it for his wife,
18:01
Speaker 1: I get yeah, because it would make him think of
18:04
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe. But it's just stayed that way ever since,
18:06
Speaker 1: even even though the Marilyn Monroe story has been kind
18:09
Speaker 1: of lost mostly to popular culture. There's a documentary on
18:13
Speaker 1: Coco Chanelle. I haven't seen you yet, supposed to be good.
18:15
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I have to check it out. Um. So,
18:18
Speaker 1: perfume oil specifically is a super you know, this is
18:24
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, being like steamed or pressed out
18:27
Speaker 1: of like a fruit or a plant or something. It's
18:30
Speaker 1: super concentrated. So it's only it's going to be an
18:35
Speaker 1: alcohol and two percent water. So that's the solvent. Yeah,
18:39
Speaker 1: and then you take the solvent and the amount of
18:41
Speaker 1: solvent that's combined with perfume oil. You have different types
18:44
Speaker 1: of perfume. Yeah, exactly, so parfume and you know, it'll
18:48
Speaker 1: say this on the bottle if you if you go
18:49
Speaker 1: to if you've ever read the back of a perfume bottle, um,
18:53
Speaker 1: which I had, But parfume p A r f U
18:56
Speaker 1: M is at least perfume oil. Uh, depart from oh
19:03
Speaker 1: de toilette or toilet water is ten percent and oh
19:07
Speaker 1: de cologne is um body spray. It's light, it's very light. Yeah,
19:15
Speaker 1: by spray, unless you're talking about like just a straight
19:18
Speaker 1: up cologne can also mean a man scent, which is
19:24
Speaker 1: sometimes way more than five percent. Yeah. I think I've
19:28
Speaker 1: said this before. When I lived in you my Arizona
19:32
Speaker 1: post college, there was a lot of dudes wearing cologne,
19:36
Speaker 1: and I was like, you guys are still wearing cologne? Huh,
19:40
Speaker 1: Like yeah, man, you don't work cologne. I was like, nope,
19:42
Speaker 1: where's your curve? Yeah? And um, yeah it was. It was.
19:46
Speaker 1: It's a very strange thing to me because I'm just
19:49
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't see a lot of guys
19:50
Speaker 1: that work cologne anymore. Oh, it's definitely falling away again.
19:53
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm in the traveling in the wrong circles. Well,
19:57
Speaker 1: in America it was. It was cool at first and
20:00
Speaker 1: then it kind of fell away, and then um, thanks
20:03
Speaker 1: to Marilyn Monroe and Chanelle, it kind of came back
20:05
Speaker 1: big time. UM, and then it kind of peaked I
20:10
Speaker 1: think in the nineties for men especially UM. But it's
20:14
Speaker 1: still going strong, like one uh one Armani Geo d Armandi.
20:21
Speaker 1: I think I can't remember what it's called. Um. It
20:24
Speaker 1: made like several hundred million dollars in you know, two
20:28
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Is that one of the unisex ones?
20:32
Speaker 1: Nobody's for men? Okay, yeah, yeah, if I always thought
20:35
Speaker 1: that whole new, Uh well, it seems new, the unisex cologne.
20:38
Speaker 1: Obvious thought that was interesting, well, design something for both
20:42
Speaker 1: men and women, right, that's a throwback actually, um, Originally
20:46
Speaker 1: there were no gender differences among any perfumes, especially in France. UM,
20:51
Speaker 1: and the French men like to smell like lilac as well.
20:54
Speaker 1: It was right and that you know, nothing wrong with that,
20:57
Speaker 1: The idea that lilac is a feminine scent is new
21:01
Speaker 1: in social construct you know. Um or the idea that
21:05
Speaker 1: cedar is a manly scent. That's a new and social
21:08
Speaker 1: construct too, and very American as well. Sure, so when
21:11
Speaker 1: it comes to categorizing, like we're just talking about, there
21:14
Speaker 1: are terms that are used in the biz. But um,
21:18
Speaker 1: it's not like there's any rule about it. It's just
21:21
Speaker 1: basically how people have grown to talk about perfume there
21:25
Speaker 1: in the business of perfume, but generally there are these categorizations. Uh,
21:30
Speaker 1: floral that's a no brainer, Fruity that's a no brainer.
21:35
Speaker 1: Green that might be grassy or leafy. I like stuff
21:39
Speaker 1: like that. Um, like the olive oils that tastes like grass.
21:44
Speaker 1: You ever had those? Yeah, man, those are good? Or
21:48
Speaker 1: wheat grass shot that is not good? Oh? I love it.
21:52
Speaker 1: You don't like it? O man? I love it. It's
21:54
Speaker 1: like drinking down some grass clippings. I think I would
21:57
Speaker 1: rather drink grass clippings than wheat grass. Well, is clippings
22:01
Speaker 1: actually like fescue or something? Sure, we'll take a fescue shot.
22:04
Speaker 1: Then will herbaceous like herbs woody like? Would amber tree resin?
22:11
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting every time I want to
22:14
Speaker 1: say uh and uh animal, like I want to say
22:17
Speaker 1: animaniac for some reason, bodily smells that's gross. Well, that's
22:22
Speaker 1: like from that's musky. It's a bodily smell. Well, But
22:26
Speaker 1: then there's musc as its own category too, because it's
22:29
Speaker 1: just so singular, right, But I mean, like, um, there's
22:33
Speaker 1: also supposedly also I guess either I don't know if
22:37
Speaker 1: it's a subtype of musk or animalek or whatever. But
22:41
Speaker 1: fecal is another thing too. Calvin Klein's obsession is among
22:46
Speaker 1: the perfume industry well known as a very famous fecally perfume. Yeah, yeah,
22:54
Speaker 1: which one obsession? Obsession? Yeah, like a hugely selling, very popular,
23:00
Speaker 1: a few being worn by people. If you walk past
23:02
Speaker 1: someone in the perfume industry, they're gonna be like, there's
23:05
Speaker 1: some real fecal notes to that one. Well, they said
23:07
Speaker 1: in this the top notes, they say, sometimes can be
23:10
Speaker 1: something really nasty just to attract you. I don't know
23:13
Speaker 1: what attract means, but I guess to get your attention maybe,
23:17
Speaker 1: but that'll wear off the quickest. It's not what lasts
23:19
Speaker 1: on your body, which we'll get in that in a second.
23:22
Speaker 1: Let me just finish this little list. Here you have
23:25
Speaker 1: the oriental UH and it's proper usage here um amber
23:28
Speaker 1: and spice UM, and then a few other ones are
23:33
Speaker 1: categorized by the actual molecules like phenolic might smell like tar,
23:39
Speaker 1: or lactonic creamy lacted lactose obviously, or alda heideck, which
23:46
Speaker 1: is fatty. So those are the main categories UM, and
23:50
Speaker 1: we will get a little bit more into that chemistry
23:52
Speaker 1: that we teach you with right after this. Ye so chuck.
24:14
Speaker 1: We talked about um perfume being diluted, like heavily diluted.
24:19
Speaker 1: What a rip off. It's almost all alcohol, yeah, rip.
24:23
Speaker 1: The reason why though it's not it's not a rip
24:26
Speaker 1: You would not want the perfume oil, which again is
24:29
Speaker 1: just essential oils or synthetic versions of those oils, and
24:35
Speaker 1: fixatives or synthetic versions of the fixative. So it might
24:38
Speaker 1: be essential oil of lavender. It's a muskrat anal gland.
24:43
Speaker 1: And then solvent is most of the other stuff. It's unlaughing,
24:48
Speaker 1: but it's true. And then bam, you've got a perfume
24:49
Speaker 1: right there. But the reason why it's so dissolved and
24:52
Speaker 1: why so much of it is alcohol is because the
24:54
Speaker 1: way that perfumes are designed is so that the different
24:58
Speaker 1: types of molecules, when they interact with the alcohol and
25:01
Speaker 1: the alcohol evaporates, will evaporate in a certain progression of time. Yeah,
25:07
Speaker 1: I thought this is the most interesting part of this
25:09
Speaker 1: whole thing. The alcohol actually makes it possible to separate
25:13
Speaker 1: those notes. Um. And they likened this article to hearing
25:17
Speaker 1: all the parts of a symphony at once, like a
25:20
Speaker 1: lot of pleasing things all at one time. Is not
25:22
Speaker 1: necessarily good thing. No, And that's what you would get
25:24
Speaker 1: if you stuck your face in a one ton barrel
25:26
Speaker 1: of perfume oil. Yeah, you might say, man, this is sweet,
25:29
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't pick up on the subtle subtleties of
25:32
Speaker 1: those odors. Yeah, exactly. But what alcohol does is it
25:35
Speaker 1: takes that concentrated form. It not only dilutes it, but
25:38
Speaker 1: it again spreads it out temporally. So when you first
25:42
Speaker 1: put it on, um, you put on a little perfume. Right.
25:46
Speaker 1: The immediate notes, the top notes are what you smell immediately,
25:50
Speaker 1: and they go from anywhere like immediate to maybe um
25:55
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Usually. Yeah, the first ones you'll smell
25:58
Speaker 1: and the first one to leave your body exactly. That's
26:00
Speaker 1: the top notes, and a perfume is designed so that
26:04
Speaker 1: as each set of notes in their three there's top,
26:07
Speaker 1: heart and bass notes. Um, as each one is leaving,
26:11
Speaker 1: the next one is starting up. So you have this
26:15
Speaker 1: this basically flowing transition. Comparing it to a symphony is
26:19
Speaker 1: so apt, sure, because it's just like this kind of
26:22
Speaker 1: flowing melody of sense that worked together by um, I guess,
26:30
Speaker 1: dissolving evaporating at a certain time, at a certain rate. Yeah.
26:34
Speaker 1: And like we said before the break, there a lot
26:37
Speaker 1: of times they will put something unpleasant in that first
26:39
Speaker 1: top note. Um, and I guess it will just get
26:42
Speaker 1: your attention in the store. Yeah, you just like that's
26:45
Speaker 1: so fecal exactly, or like, um, what was it an anchorman?
26:50
Speaker 1: Oh the musk Yeah, it was like Puma musk. Oh
26:54
Speaker 1: that one the woman urine or something. Yeah, yeah, well
27:00
Speaker 1: I can't remember, like zac line, but like seventy percent
27:03
Speaker 1: of the time it works all the time. Um, what
27:08
Speaker 1: was it Panther? He is Panther or something? Man, that's
27:11
Speaker 1: a funny movie. Um. And then you've got your heart
27:14
Speaker 1: notes next, right, Yeah, they kick in anywhere and last
27:20
Speaker 1: for starting in two minutes to about an hour from
27:23
Speaker 1: what I saw, Um, and those are gonna be It
27:28
Speaker 1: can be entirely different. It depends is we'll see what
27:32
Speaker 1: you're trying to get across. But you could do woody
27:35
Speaker 1: top notes with a vanilla base or heart note, so
27:41
Speaker 1: it'll go from wood to vanilla to lemon citrus bass note. Right, sure,
27:47
Speaker 1: Or you could do it completely opposite. You can just
27:49
Speaker 1: mix and mad. It depends, right, It depends on the
27:55
Speaker 1: the the type of molecule you use. And as you're
27:59
Speaker 1: making syntheta um odorance, yeah, you can make it a
28:03
Speaker 1: synthetic odorant that's gonna stick around as a bass note,
28:06
Speaker 1: even though if you had an essential oil of that lemon,
28:09
Speaker 1: it would be just the top note because it's gonna
28:11
Speaker 1: go away so quick. Yeah, And as we'll see later
28:14
Speaker 1: when you when it's when you're making these perfumes, it's
28:17
Speaker 1: a real science of a balancing act of getting exactly
28:21
Speaker 1: what they want because these smells, as you said, are
28:24
Speaker 1: coming and going and um. It is sort of like
28:27
Speaker 1: composing a symphony again again man um, So the bass
28:32
Speaker 1: note that's the one that's gonna stick around the longest though, right,
28:34
Speaker 1: and come out latest Yeah, it can come out starting
28:38
Speaker 1: usually about thirty minutes after you put it on, and
28:40
Speaker 1: can stick around for a day if you're not careful
28:43
Speaker 1: and didn't you find something where the no perfume is
28:46
Speaker 1: going to smell the same on any two people exactly, right.
28:50
Speaker 1: Not only is it not going to smell the same
28:53
Speaker 1: on any two people, it's going to smell different to
28:57
Speaker 1: any two people, right because again uht of our odor
29:01
Speaker 1: receptors are different in every single person. Plus also an
29:05
Speaker 1: odorant can activate different kinds of receptors depending on the person.
29:09
Speaker 1: And then lastly, that person is going to encode it
29:12
Speaker 1: differently because scent is definitely its own thing as far
29:17
Speaker 1: as our senses go, and it's the only sense that's
29:21
Speaker 1: um directly hardwired to the brain. So the odorant receptors
29:26
Speaker 1: go straight to the brain. It doesn't send it to
29:28
Speaker 1: a nerve cell that's nearby first, exactly, So it's like
29:32
Speaker 1: hard our scent, of our sense of smell is hardwired
29:36
Speaker 1: to our brain. So it evokes some serious reaction brain.
29:41
Speaker 1: And there's also a hypothesis that our brain, the lobes
29:45
Speaker 1: of our brain, evolved from olfactory buds, that that's what
29:49
Speaker 1: they started out as and then it just grew and
29:52
Speaker 1: grew and grew, and then we were all like brain
29:54
Speaker 1: stem and olfactory buds and then we the brain grew
29:57
Speaker 1: from that. Which would be like hats off to the
30:00
Speaker 1: sense of smell, because that's what started at all interesting.
30:03
Speaker 1: But there's there's the point is is that our sense
30:06
Speaker 1: of smell is it's a big deal, um, But it's
30:10
Speaker 1: different in each of us. And when you factor in
30:13
Speaker 1: our body chemistry, our skin, sure, that's when it's it's
30:17
Speaker 1: it genuinely does smell differently on different people. Well, I
30:21
Speaker 1: would think it has to because everyone has a natural
30:24
Speaker 1: um scent. I think, just as a person that's different
30:28
Speaker 1: from one another. So when you combine it, yeah, it's
30:31
Speaker 1: got to make a different thing. You know. It's like
30:33
Speaker 1: if I smell like a cherry pie, which you do,
30:36
Speaker 1: throw some cool whip on me, which I would congress.
30:42
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do anything. I just throw cool with you know,
30:45
Speaker 1: um in the form of a pie to the face.
30:49
Speaker 1: Why not that old gag. Um. But when you're putting
30:53
Speaker 1: on the perfume. This is this is all coming around
30:54
Speaker 1: to this point. Um. There are ways to do it
30:57
Speaker 1: supposedly that well, get the proper um, I get get
31:02
Speaker 1: the most out of your perfume. Like you shouldn't put
31:05
Speaker 1: it and rub it in your skin real hard. You
31:07
Speaker 1: don't want to like heat it up right away or
31:09
Speaker 1: anything like that, No, because then you break the chains
31:11
Speaker 1: of the top notes and you wear them out before
31:14
Speaker 1: your finger even comes away from your skin. Yeah, like
31:18
Speaker 1: dab it on lightly. Yeah, sure you just did, like
31:20
Speaker 1: the old lady moved dab it behind the air maybe
31:23
Speaker 1: or I've seen the other lady move to uh to
31:26
Speaker 1: do it on the wrists and maybe rub that together
31:28
Speaker 1: a little bit and then um my, my big trick
31:31
Speaker 1: was too because I never I liked the Benetton colors,
31:35
Speaker 1: but even back then, I didn't want to be super colone.
31:40
Speaker 1: So you know, I did the deal where I spray
31:41
Speaker 1: it in the air then like walk through it. You know.
31:43
Speaker 1: That's even I think mentioned in this article is as
31:46
Speaker 1: a method. Yeah, that's a method. Okay, Um I was
31:49
Speaker 1: really onto something. I think even rubbing your wrists together though,
31:54
Speaker 1: because you're you're you don't want to generate heat. And
31:57
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why people put it behind their
31:59
Speaker 1: ears or on their wrists stinky behind your ears, for one,
32:04
Speaker 1: that's one you can also smell it yourself right there.
32:07
Speaker 1: But if you put your fingers behind your ears and
32:10
Speaker 1: then put them, like I don't know, on your head
32:12
Speaker 1: or something, you'll see that behind your ears is warm.
32:15
Speaker 1: On your wrists is warm. These are pulse points, right,
32:19
Speaker 1: So you're hot blood is close to the surface of
32:22
Speaker 1: your skin. So then that heat will start to break up.
32:25
Speaker 1: The alcohol will make it evaporate and will hence make
32:29
Speaker 1: those different notes come out. That's all the heat you need.
32:32
Speaker 1: Any friction is too much heat, right, So you say
32:36
Speaker 1: no on the wrist rub. No wrist rub? Okay? I mean,
32:39
Speaker 1: if you want to waste your money and just get
32:41
Speaker 1: heart and base notes and no top notes, go for it,
32:45
Speaker 1: all right, Josh. So let's say I thought this was
32:48
Speaker 1: all pretty interesting too. Actually, let's say you want to
32:50
Speaker 1: lart launch um Josh nous. You work for Polo, and
32:55
Speaker 1: you just you want to do Josh, no this um.
32:57
Speaker 1: You're in their perfume department and you say, guys, is
33:00
Speaker 1: gonna be a trust me on this one be a
33:02
Speaker 1: top seller? Right, So you got a Polo your bosses
33:05
Speaker 1: and they say, all right, Josh, what we need here
33:07
Speaker 1: is a brief um. And the brief is gonna outline, um,
33:12
Speaker 1: because you know, again you can't say this is a
33:15
Speaker 1: perfume everyone's gonna love because they're like, there is no
33:18
Speaker 1: such thing. So write up a brief. Tell me who
33:20
Speaker 1: was gonna love it, who it's gonna appeal to? What
33:23
Speaker 1: do you want it to smell? Like? Yeah, what do
33:24
Speaker 1: you want this to say? Even so, tom Ford launched
33:27
Speaker 1: one it became very successful called black Orchid, and he said,
33:30
Speaker 1: I want this to smell like a man's crotch. That
33:34
Speaker 1: was one. Can I give you another brief, please? Um,
33:38
Speaker 1: for pure poison from de or The brief included what
33:43
Speaker 1: is it like to have something soft and hard at
33:45
Speaker 1: the same time? Oh? I think we all know that,
33:48
Speaker 1: all right? And then um, here's another one. I don't
33:51
Speaker 1: know what this one was for. That's a viagra so, uh, yeah,
33:56
Speaker 1: I don't know which one this is, but um, one brief.
33:59
Speaker 1: This scribed what they were after as give us the
34:02
Speaker 1: scent of a warm cloud floating in a fresh spring
34:05
Speaker 1: sky over sicily raining titanium rain drops on a woman
34:09
Speaker 1: with emerald eyes. That's what somebody wrote down when they
34:12
Speaker 1: were trying to describe what scent they wanted. Yeah, I
34:15
Speaker 1: mean that's those are legit briefs. That's that's how you're
34:18
Speaker 1: supposed to do it. Describe not just um, the specific
34:23
Speaker 1: sense that you want, but what do you want it
34:24
Speaker 1: to say? Uh, Generally it is probably more something like
34:28
Speaker 1: you know classy or you know prosperous or something like that,
34:34
Speaker 1: fecal fecal um. Then you want to write out what
34:39
Speaker 1: how you're gonna sell it, like, um, what form it's
34:41
Speaker 1: gonna take? Um. You also want to have a marketing plan,
34:45
Speaker 1: like I think we could sell this in the in
34:48
Speaker 1: South America for the next like five years. They're going
34:51
Speaker 1: to go crazy for yeah exactly. So then after that
34:54
Speaker 1: it's gonna go um to a chemist and it's gonna
34:57
Speaker 1: get mailed to what are called fragrance houses. Well, this
35:00
Speaker 1: polo doesn't make it themselves. They come up with it themselves,
35:04
Speaker 1: that is, and the chemist is employed by the fragrance houses.
35:06
Speaker 1: And they send this brief out to a bunch of
35:09
Speaker 1: different fragrance houses and and basically started competition who who's
35:13
Speaker 1: going to land this account? But what we want? See
35:16
Speaker 1: what you can do? So this fragrance house they do
35:18
Speaker 1: a couple of things. They have the perfumers, who they
35:21
Speaker 1: actually are the chemists who come up with the formula. Yeah,
35:24
Speaker 1: they've got all these scents in their head and then
35:26
Speaker 1: they know, like, oh, I know exactly what smells like
35:28
Speaker 1: a woman with emerald eyes. Super smellers I would imagine, yeah,
35:32
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you know. Yeah, there's an older tester job
35:35
Speaker 1: out there that's supposed to be great. I don't know
35:38
Speaker 1: if I do so hot on that. Oh yeah, you
35:40
Speaker 1: have to have like just a naturally wonderful nose. Yeah,
35:43
Speaker 1: my nose is not naturally wonderful. It has to make
35:45
Speaker 1: like a curly to Uh. These fragrance houses also have
35:50
Speaker 1: they don't just UM right, the formulas, they also have
35:54
Speaker 1: the stuff in stock, um all these different ingredients in warehouses,
35:58
Speaker 1: or they will work with another company who has it.
36:02
Speaker 1: If they're like, we don't have um, you know, papaya, papaya,
36:07
Speaker 1: we need to work with the company who does, they
36:09
Speaker 1: will sub that out. And they have these chemists that
36:12
Speaker 1: actually work with UM gas chromatography mass spectromty, which we've
36:17
Speaker 1: talked about in something I can't remember what it was.
36:20
Speaker 1: This can be used for other things. It basically analyzes
36:22
Speaker 1: odorant molecules to to say here's here's what it's made of.
36:26
Speaker 1: And here's how you can make a synthetic version of
36:28
Speaker 1: it exactly right, exactly. So then you have those people,
36:32
Speaker 1: those UM chemists analysis analysts, and then you also have
36:37
Speaker 1: synthetic chemists who say who take the readouts from the
36:40
Speaker 1: guests um chro chromatography and say, oh, I can build this,
36:46
Speaker 1: and then they build the synthetic molecules exactly and all
36:49
Speaker 1: just mind blowing. It is mind blow. All of these
36:52
Speaker 1: people are employed by the fragrance houses, that's right. Uh.
36:58
Speaker 1: One thing that they do. We we did talk earlier
37:00
Speaker 1: about UM. You know how they have this stuff in stock.
37:03
Speaker 1: A lot of times it can be the actual oils
37:05
Speaker 1: from pressing it and steaming it. Um. But there's another
37:09
Speaker 1: headlock exactly. Uh. There's another cool thing they have though,
37:13
Speaker 1: called headspace, and that is when if they want an
37:17
Speaker 1: odor um or fragrance, they will they will put like
37:21
Speaker 1: an avocado in a jar and um suck out the
37:24
Speaker 1: air every hour or constantly for hours, right, and then
37:28
Speaker 1: they use gas chromatography to analyze that and analyze that.
37:32
Speaker 1: There you go, and then somebody goes and builds that, right,
37:34
Speaker 1: And that's what's called the headspace. The headspace is basically
37:38
Speaker 1: a synthetic version of an existing natural scent that somebody
37:45
Speaker 1: trademarks and then all of a sudden it becomes part
37:48
Speaker 1: of the perfume industry's repertoire. Yeah. I mean that's the
37:51
Speaker 1: space in the jar, that's the literal headspace, that is
37:57
Speaker 1: is got the odor. There's a dude name um Christopher Brosius,
38:03
Speaker 1: and he started a company called Demeter, and they're known
38:05
Speaker 1: for making like really weird perfumes like birthday cake, baseball
38:10
Speaker 1: mitt baby aspirin, which is weird stuff like that. But
38:14
Speaker 1: what's neat is they nail it. And one of the
38:17
Speaker 1: ways they nail it is by using by making headspaces.
38:21
Speaker 1: One of the first ones they did was called Soaked Earth.
38:24
Speaker 1: He took some um dirt from his parents farm, put
38:27
Speaker 1: it in a bag and took it to New York
38:30
Speaker 1: and threw it on the table and said I want this.
38:32
Speaker 1: And they analyzed it and by god, that came up
38:35
Speaker 1: with dirt the smell of specific to his Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
38:40
Speaker 1: I think Pennsylvania. Interesting. Um, I guess here we can
38:45
Speaker 1: briefly mentioned that um, knockoff cologns and perfumes is a
38:50
Speaker 1: very common thing because uh, your copyright. I mean you
38:55
Speaker 1: can tweak your formula slightly and it's totally legal, you know,
38:59
Speaker 1: to to all that essentially same thing that's just as
39:03
Speaker 1: slightly different under a different name. It's like the same
39:06
Speaker 1: thing as designer drugs, except with perfumes. Yeah, remember that,
39:10
Speaker 1: like the gas station if you love, if you like Georgio,
39:13
Speaker 1: you'll love whatever we're calling what was the knockoff name
39:17
Speaker 1: for Georgio Georgie, But there was like a whole generic
39:21
Speaker 1: rip off line called if you like Blank, You'll love Blank.
39:26
Speaker 1: It's hilarious, So chuck um. You take all this stuff,
39:29
Speaker 1: You take your head space, you take your existing headspace,
39:32
Speaker 1: you take your essential oils, and you put them all
39:35
Speaker 1: together to create that um emerald I woman who has
39:39
Speaker 1: titanium raindrops raining honor in sicily on a spring day. Yeah,
39:43
Speaker 1: well you do anywhere from ten to a hundred of
39:45
Speaker 1: them each fragrance house does. Then they send them to
39:49
Speaker 1: their oder testers, and the oder tester goes, no, no, no,
39:53
Speaker 1: this one's a maybe no no. I like this one
39:56
Speaker 1: no no, maybe again yes, and then no, and then
40:00
Speaker 1: Polo at this point has not smelled any josh this yet.
40:03
Speaker 1: This is all they're trying to weed out the gunk
40:06
Speaker 1: because they don't want to waste Polo's time. You know,
40:09
Speaker 1: they don't want to send him Josh Josh, and this
40:11
Speaker 1: is exactly no. They want to send him like one,
40:14
Speaker 1: maybe two, and they do. Sure, so Polo, well then
40:18
Speaker 1: get it. Say I like this second one, but it's
40:22
Speaker 1: a little too strong on this one, cent um. So
40:25
Speaker 1: they'll go back again, and it's just a process basically.
40:28
Speaker 1: Maybe they nail it on the first time, but probably not.
40:31
Speaker 1: It's a back and forth basically. It's it's just like
40:34
Speaker 1: working with an editor, and they'll swap in ingredients and
40:36
Speaker 1: they'll you know, like we said earlier, it's a science
40:40
Speaker 1: basically of the right combination in the right order of evaporation. UM.
40:45
Speaker 1: I think it's just super interesting. They put it through
40:47
Speaker 1: product testing, of course, um to see what people think
40:50
Speaker 1: of it, because they're not just gonna launch it out
40:52
Speaker 1: of the blue. They want it to, like you said,
40:54
Speaker 1: appeal to either the right demographic or the most people possible.
40:59
Speaker 1: And so the one that um Polo decides that is
41:03
Speaker 1: Josh nous y. Um they win. That Perfume House wins,
41:07
Speaker 1: and so they get a contract to produce X number
41:11
Speaker 1: of tons or gallons of this particular perfume, well of
41:15
Speaker 1: the of the the perfume oil. Yeah, the undeluded stuff, yeah,
41:21
Speaker 1: Polo actually produces. They take that and produce the perfume. Right.
41:25
Speaker 1: They add the solventure to produce the perfume, the oda toilette,
41:29
Speaker 1: the de cologne, all that stuff in the different concentrations.
41:32
Speaker 1: They will probably also use it and maybe like a
41:34
Speaker 1: deodor in a body lotion, all that stuff. But they
41:37
Speaker 1: deliver them in like one ton drums of the perfume
41:39
Speaker 1: oil that you don't want to smell until it's been diluted,
41:42
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, the Joshness is released
41:44
Speaker 1: into the world literally and becomes the number one selling
41:48
Speaker 1: cologne of all time. Well, and um, Polo never knows
41:53
Speaker 1: the exact concoction that makes Joshness either, which I thought
41:56
Speaker 1: was super interesting. It's literally the perfumer knows this little secret.
42:02
Speaker 1: It's gonna so after this we're gonna talk a little
42:05
Speaker 1: bit um about the science of scent and whether or
42:09
Speaker 1: not it's something that we're born with or that we learned. Alright, So, Chuck,
42:34
Speaker 1: why do people wear perfume? Depends on who you ask. Um.
42:38
Speaker 1: There's a lady named Rachel hurts Uh from Brown University.
42:42
Speaker 1: She wrote a book called The Scent of Desire Colin
42:45
Speaker 1: Discovering our enigmatic sense of smell, and she postulates that, Uh,
42:51
Speaker 1: depending on how old you are and what gender you are,
42:54
Speaker 1: you have your different reasons. That a young men do
42:58
Speaker 1: it to attract women. That's why I did it right.
43:02
Speaker 1: Older men do it out of gratitude to the women
43:04
Speaker 1: who gave it to him money. You'd smell nice with
43:06
Speaker 1: this on, so sure I'll wear it, dear, Uh. Women,
43:11
Speaker 1: Depending on how old you are in the twenties, you're
43:13
Speaker 1: more affected by I guess inspired by your friends in
43:16
Speaker 1: the media. Beyonce, Sure she has a perfume dungy. Yeah.
43:20
Speaker 1: You know who has like a surprise runaway smash hit
43:23
Speaker 1: right now is Sarah Jessica Parker. That doesn't surprise me.
43:27
Speaker 1: It does me a little bit. It wouldn't surprise me
43:29
Speaker 1: in like two but like it is a top seller
43:34
Speaker 1: right now. She's like a goddess to a certain uh
43:37
Speaker 1: age group of women. Though, yeah, you're still I guess
43:40
Speaker 1: you're right. But even still you'd think, like, yeah, I
43:43
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe they're right. In the perfume wheelhouse, it
43:46
Speaker 1: could be an awesome smelling perfume. I've never smelled it.
43:48
Speaker 1: I was just surprised because you know, you're like Beyonce,
43:52
Speaker 1: Derek Jeter, like, these are the celebrities that have that. Yeah,
43:55
Speaker 1: it's top selling that have these top selling like cologns
43:59
Speaker 1: and then so Justica Parker just I just don't think
44:02
Speaker 1: of her like that, you know, I like her, she's great. Yeah,
44:06
Speaker 1: I just don't think of her as that, and I'm
44:07
Speaker 1: I'm happy for her success. Yeah, she's iconic, has a
44:11
Speaker 1: certain demographic. Um not to me, but she's she's No,
44:17
Speaker 1: she's an icon to Emily. I think she was a
44:19
Speaker 1: big fan of that show. Um. Women in their thirties,
44:24
Speaker 1: they say, follow no particular pattern. They're just I don't
44:27
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. They don't know what's going on yet.
44:30
Speaker 1: They just like what they like. I think is what
44:31
Speaker 1: that means. Well, by the time they're forty, they say
44:34
Speaker 1: that's simply because they like it, Like I just like
44:37
Speaker 1: the way the smells, and I'm forty, so I'm gonna
44:40
Speaker 1: just wear it. I don't care what my husband thinks
44:43
Speaker 1: at this point or what my friends think at this point. Um,
44:48
Speaker 1: and their sixties, they say, women think of other people's
44:51
Speaker 1: which is like, uh, they're friends, are loved ones say
44:54
Speaker 1: they like the white smells, which is a really nice thing.
44:57
Speaker 1: And then a lot of um people choose per fumes
45:00
Speaker 1: apparently that their mother or or in the same scent family,
45:05
Speaker 1: either knowingly or not, but probably knowingly because um, there's
45:10
Speaker 1: an associative learning theory of smell. You were saying before
45:14
Speaker 1: the break, We're going to talk about whether you know
45:17
Speaker 1: smell has learned or forborn with it. The idea that
45:20
Speaker 1: smell is learned is called the associative learning hypothesis. Yeah,
45:26
Speaker 1: that like, we come to like smells based on social constructs,
45:30
Speaker 1: based on experience. There's supposedly evidence that smell learning begins
45:35
Speaker 1: in the womb, even that odorant molecules can be passed
45:38
Speaker 1: along from mother to child, and that the stuff you're
45:42
Speaker 1: exposed to in the womb you can show a preference
45:44
Speaker 1: for later on down the road. And Rachel Hurts is
45:47
Speaker 1: a member of that camp. Yeah. And by the way,
45:49
Speaker 1: I want to give a shout out. Rachel Hurts wrote
45:51
Speaker 1: a chapter for the book Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward,
45:56
Speaker 1: which is a gas in general, right, But she wrote
46:00
Speaker 1: chapter seventeen perfume is the title of it, and it's
46:03
Speaker 1: on UM the n I H website, the n CBI website.
46:07
Speaker 1: Just search for that and they will come up the
46:09
Speaker 1: whole chapters right there. And it's really interesting and exhausting.
46:13
Speaker 1: But she is one of the ones who's like, this
46:15
Speaker 1: is a learned behavior and lays out something really great,
46:19
Speaker 1: um evidence for it. Yeah. One of her points is that,
46:22
Speaker 1: UM that babies basically don't think anything smells bad or good. Um.
46:30
Speaker 1: I don't know how they know this. I guess walking
46:32
Speaker 1: things under baby's face to see what they make, including poop. Well, yeah,
46:36
Speaker 1: you never never see the baby like yeah, like I'll
46:41
Speaker 1: wallow and poop. I don't care. I'm a baby. I
46:43
Speaker 1: don't mind the smell. You ever farted right in the
46:45
Speaker 1: baby's face, No reaction, They just blink nothing. A couple
46:49
Speaker 1: of times they're delighted. Well. Plus also um, other studies
46:54
Speaker 1: of adults, not even babies, have shown that the same
46:56
Speaker 1: smell can be preferred or disliked in very similar groups.
47:02
Speaker 1: In the UK, the smell of winter green in a
47:05
Speaker 1: study after World War Two was found to be just
47:08
Speaker 1: generally disliked. In the US, like a decade later, the
47:12
Speaker 1: smell of winter green was found to be generally preferred.
47:16
Speaker 1: In the US, winter green is used for like candy
47:18
Speaker 1: and gum, and it's associated with positive stuff. In the UK,
47:23
Speaker 1: winter green was used during World War two, um for
47:26
Speaker 1: medicines that were used in the field, so there's associations
47:29
Speaker 1: with battle war maiming disease. So that's what winter green
47:34
Speaker 1: is the people in the UK, whereas in the US
47:36
Speaker 1: the exact same smell is pleasant. And you know, I
47:39
Speaker 1: mean it's not like the Americans and the Brits are
47:43
Speaker 1: the exact same people, but they're in the same cohort,
47:46
Speaker 1: you know, are very similar cohort, and they showed like
47:50
Speaker 1: opposite preferences, which is really great evidence for associative learning hypothesis. Yeah,
47:55
Speaker 1: and it's also a reason why in the early two thousands,
47:58
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army was not able to come up
48:01
Speaker 1: with a stink bomb that was universally upsetting to people's
48:07
Speaker 1: noses across cultures. They contracted out the Moll Chemical Sensus
48:12
Speaker 1: Center in Philly and they tried to curate a universal
48:17
Speaker 1: stink bomb smell and they said, you know, because of
48:21
Speaker 1: cultural specific products and things, we had to avoid anything
48:26
Speaker 1: like food related even if we think it really stinks,
48:29
Speaker 1: some other culture might like it. Um. So they had
48:32
Speaker 1: to basically go to They focused on stuff with biological
48:36
Speaker 1: origins like vomit and human waste and burnt hair and uh.
48:41
Speaker 1: They made synthetic versions of all these and got some
48:45
Speaker 1: people in Philly and put them in a hood and
48:47
Speaker 1: introduced the and uh, I thought it was funny that
48:50
Speaker 1: was Philly though, they're probably like, it's not so bad, um,
48:55
Speaker 1: and introduced They slowly infused it, and they said people
48:58
Speaker 1: thought it was the worst thing they ever smell. Their
49:00
Speaker 1: heads were jerk back. They would contort with revulsion and
49:02
Speaker 1: then basically just try and hold their breath as long
49:04
Speaker 1: as possible or take a little shallow breaths. Sounds like
49:07
Speaker 1: a great stink bomb to unleash on people in Philadelphia
49:10
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, but they couldn't. Basically, they couldn't come
49:12
Speaker 1: up with anything that was universally hated. So do you
49:17
Speaker 1: remember the Air Force also tried to come up with
49:19
Speaker 1: a gay bomb that used like some sort of perfume
49:23
Speaker 1: to turn like enemy combatants into like just gay lovers.
49:27
Speaker 1: So silly. Um. It's a shame though, because the stink
49:30
Speaker 1: bomb is actually really like it's a great idea. You know,
49:33
Speaker 1: it doesn't hurt anyone, there's no, it's not like a
49:36
Speaker 1: chemical like you know, what do you call it the sprays? Yes,
49:41
Speaker 1: not an irritant anyway. It just stinks, and it would
49:43
Speaker 1: keep people out of a sensitive area if they didn't
49:46
Speaker 1: want them there. Well, chemical um irritation is a sensation
49:50
Speaker 1: that your nose experiences along with odors. So it is
49:56
Speaker 1: technically a stink bomb, like pepper spray is a stink bomb.
49:59
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, but it has like an actual physical
50:02
Speaker 1: effect on your skin, which a stink bomb wouldn't. UM.
50:06
Speaker 1: But the other school thought, though, is that it's uh,
50:10
Speaker 1: you know, it comes via evolution basically, yeah, that it's innate. Yeah,
50:14
Speaker 1: which this kind of makes sense that they both make
50:16
Speaker 1: sense to me. I think it might be a mixture
50:18
Speaker 1: of both. Um. But what's his name, Gilbert or hill Bear?
50:24
Speaker 1: Hill Bear one of the two. So if you're in
50:26
Speaker 1: the Gilbert camp, though, you're gonna you're gonna go with
50:29
Speaker 1: the evolution because he points out that, um, when we
50:33
Speaker 1: were evolving, you know, apples smell good because you're meant
50:38
Speaker 1: to eat them and you're meant to spread the seed. UM.
50:41
Speaker 1: So that smell is associated with living and living well
50:46
Speaker 1: by eating fruits, and conversely the smell of poop and
50:49
Speaker 1: vomit and urine um, which convey disease and bacteria and
50:54
Speaker 1: all the stuff you're not supposed to be with. Under
50:57
Speaker 1: innate hypothesis, it would be that's why we avoid those,
51:01
Speaker 1: because we avoid the substances that carry those obnoxious smells.
51:08
Speaker 1: Makes sense, Oh, it totally makes sense. I just think
51:11
Speaker 1: to me, the evidence is more there for associative learning. Yeah,
51:14
Speaker 1: I think I think it can be both. I don't
51:16
Speaker 1: think it has to be mutually exclusive, and I think
51:18
Speaker 1: it can be overwritten by the by the learning as well. Whatever.
51:22
Speaker 1: In eight things we have UM and I don't remember,
51:26
Speaker 1: we did a bit on a study years ago about
51:29
Speaker 1: UM people looking for their mates according to having a
51:35
Speaker 1: different immune system, which would in turn make their children
51:40
Speaker 1: immune to more possible things. Yeah, more robust immunity and
51:44
Speaker 1: the kids. Because you take immunity and immunity B and
51:47
Speaker 1: putting together you've got immunity C, which is the best
51:49
Speaker 1: of A and B. Right, So this this is like
51:51
Speaker 1: a whole idea of why or how people select mates
51:55
Speaker 1: is based on that which is scent based that's what
51:58
Speaker 1: they think. Apparently it's this is evidenced by study after
52:03
Speaker 1: study after study that finds consistently that women rate a
52:07
Speaker 1: man scent as the number one factor and attractiveness more
52:12
Speaker 1: than his appearance, more than wealth, more than anything else.
52:16
Speaker 1: Scent is perennially the number one most important thing. They
52:20
Speaker 1: think that's possible that the reason why is because um
52:23
Speaker 1: our senses are attuned are scent is a tune so
52:27
Speaker 1: that we can sniff out somebody with a different immune system,
52:30
Speaker 1: so we can reproduce more robust kits. The problem is
52:34
Speaker 1: if you factor in cologne, what you're doing is deceiving
52:37
Speaker 1: that natural drive, and all of a sudden you're gonna
52:40
Speaker 1: have kids with like zero immune system because the guy
52:43
Speaker 1: was wearing cologne. Yeah, that makes total sense. Uh, you
52:47
Speaker 1: don't want to confuse your potential mating mate. It's a
52:50
Speaker 1: pretty good argument against warring cologne. Yeah. Um. And then
52:55
Speaker 1: there is the uh, of course, the whole does this
52:57
Speaker 1: stuff work anyway as far as being in sex will
53:00
Speaker 1: attract itt Uh? And there's there's zero scientific proof that
53:03
Speaker 1: there was any kind of um aphrodisiastic as sic aphrodisiac
53:10
Speaker 1: i compound that you can concoct that will literally, um,
53:15
Speaker 1: draw someone to you sexually, as much as they've tried
53:18
Speaker 1: and tried to advertise that subtly or not so subtly. Um,
53:23
Speaker 1: we are not pigs who apparently do have mating pheromones
53:28
Speaker 1: that actually work that way. They have something called a
53:32
Speaker 1: accessory olfactory system. Uh. And in pigs, they have something
53:36
Speaker 1: in their nose called the vomaro nasal organ which is
53:40
Speaker 1: specifically specialized to pick up on these molecules. And we
53:43
Speaker 1: don't have them as humans. We don't have the curly
53:46
Speaker 1: tails either. Or they say we may have them, but
53:48
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work. I don't know which is which
53:50
Speaker 1: is the case. Who knows. Maybe we just use their
53:55
Speaker 1: normal olfactory senses and it's not pheromones. It's just smells. Yeah,
54:00
Speaker 1: you know. Or you know. They say, maybe it'll make
54:03
Speaker 1: you think that you're more sexually attractive, so that I'll
54:05
Speaker 1: make you more confident exact, and thus make you more
54:07
Speaker 1: sexually attractive. UM. I got one more thing, so I
54:11
Speaker 1: mentioned Georgio. Georgio is a huge, hugely popular maybe the
54:17
Speaker 1: number one cent of the nineteen eighties. Um, and it
54:21
Speaker 1: was famously banned from some restaurants because it was so stinky.
54:26
Speaker 1: Because some restauranturs are like, if you've got a couple
54:29
Speaker 1: of people were in Georgio in here, it's gonna overpower
54:32
Speaker 1: the smell of the food and the taste of the food.
54:34
Speaker 1: So they banned Georgio, which all it did was accelerate sales. Well,
54:39
Speaker 1: there are some people in this building that I wish
54:41
Speaker 1: would be banned from our elevators. I almost never run
54:44
Speaker 1: into that anymore. Boy, I've smelled some stuff that they're
54:50
Speaker 1: not even on. In the elevator car the peagle and
54:52
Speaker 1: I step in, I'm like, whoa like obsession that's usually
54:56
Speaker 1: like super perfuming lady stuff? Oh got you? Yeah? You
55:00
Speaker 1: got anything else? No? I mean there's plenty more. Yeah,
55:04
Speaker 1: but yeah, we got so much time. Uh. If you
55:07
Speaker 1: want to know more about perfume, you can type that
55:09
Speaker 1: word in the search part how stuff works dot com.
55:11
Speaker 1: And since I said search parts, sign for a listener mail.
55:15
Speaker 1: That's right. I'm gonna call this a little nostre damas
55:17
Speaker 1: bit from a Canadian. Hey guys, I'd like to say
55:20
Speaker 1: how great. First of all, that you make my hour
55:23
Speaker 1: long commutes to work every morning, So thanks. Um, it's
55:26
Speaker 1: a pleasure to listen to the show, especially on Nostre Damas.
55:29
Speaker 1: I thought i'd give you another example of what he
55:31
Speaker 1: supposedly said. Quote from the Calm Morning. The end will
55:35
Speaker 1: come when of the dancing horse, the number of circles
55:40
Speaker 1: will be nine. It's from Nostre Damas three she said,
55:46
Speaker 1: she says. It was said that Nostre Damas predicted the
55:48
Speaker 1: end of the world and was explained as follows. Korea
55:51
Speaker 1: is the calm morning country sigh dancing as in doing
55:57
Speaker 1: the dancing horse is Gangham style. December twenty one, that
56:01
Speaker 1: song reached one million views on YouTube nine zeros. In summary,
56:06
Speaker 1: people were claiming that Dramas is prediction the end of
56:09
Speaker 1: the world would be on December twenty one. So that's it. Guys,
56:12
Speaker 1: keep on doing what you do. You do a great
56:13
Speaker 1: job and you're always a pleasure. And oh the sound
56:16
Speaker 1: effects are awesome. Kudos to Jerry. Wait to go to Jerry.
56:19
Speaker 1: That's from Julia Ka in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hey, we
56:23
Speaker 1: love Toronto, ak Toronto. Right, that's right, we love it. Well,
56:28
Speaker 1: let's see we want to hear from you. Let us
56:30
Speaker 1: know about your perfume preference. Uh, you can tweet us
56:34
Speaker 1: your favorite perfume of all time or your most hated
56:37
Speaker 1: perfume of all time at s Y s K podcast.
56:40
Speaker 1: You can let us know on Facebook dot com, slash
56:42
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
56:45
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at House stuff Works dot com, and
56:47
Speaker 1: as always, join us at our home on the web,
56:50
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
56:57
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, does it House of Works
57:00
Speaker 1: dot com MHM