How Perfume Works

Women consistently rate scent as the most important factor in a man's attractiveness and men have been manipulating that for centuries with scents of all sorts. Learn about the fascinating history -- and, well, art -- of making perfumes in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know fromhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Jeers. That'd be great if that
was her named Jerry Jerry Jeers like Tony, Tony, Tony.

(00:24):
My friend needs to call them Tony, Tony, Tony. Why
is the spelling? Okay? But I thought the last one
was an E with a little accent. Well that was tony,
but he didn't say tony accent would say that. Well,
but the point is it's E, I Y are the

(00:44):
three letters when Jerry Prester Court, did you think we
were gonna be talking about Tony Tony Tony? I never
know what the heck we're gonna talk about. For the
first thirty second, I would not have predicted that one.
I was gonna tell the story, but I'm not going to. Now,
what's the cent you're wearing? Is? Oh, didn't chuck musk?

(01:05):
It's called chusk in French that means water of chuck musk. Gross. Yeah,
I'm wearing drekarn No, r Are you really no? You
think you'd be able to smell it? Well? Yeah, sure,
I never know. I don't want to, Like, I'm very
sensitive to making fun of people and what they choose

(01:25):
to do. You know, I'm not making fun of anybody. No,
but I didn't want to say you're wearing cologne. You
were wearing drekar no noir. Gross. I used to love
Drecarno war back when I was in like seventh eighth grade.
I believe it may and alive. Those are the cologne days.
I looked it up and I was like, what does
drecarno R mean? No? Are black? Um? What is dr car?

(01:47):
Apparently your car or duckr is a name for a
Viking ship, So drek car has kind of come into
um French colloquially as like a big ship or a yacht.
So I think drekarn noir. Here's the factor of the podcast.
Sadly uh means black yacht. Nice. That means you are

(02:09):
very fine because all you see is white yachts. You
ever seen a black yacht? Nope, that would be pretty slick. Yeah,
it'd be very hot. That's why they don't paint yachts black.
I would imagine, Well, yeah, I guess so, because he
sat up in the sun all day. Um, so I
wore Benetton colors. I never wore that one, and um,

(02:30):
that smell today is still very evocative. Because I have
the bottle, I don't know if I still had it.
I had it, what, Yeah, I key stired it in nineteen.
Every once in a while, when you're feeling nostalgic, you
just shed it. Though I can't find it. I just oh,
where was I thought you were saying you still had

(02:51):
the bottle? I key stired it and I can't find um. Now,
I had it for a long the longest time. I
don't think I still have it though. Um, And as
we'll see, cologne can go bad. But this isn't a
dark drawer, and it seemed to smell the same to me. Yeah,
that sounded like a perfume industry propaganda. Oh to keep you.

(03:13):
No matter what you do to protect it, it's still
going to go bad. Into That's like these vict in
are no good anymore exactly. Don't believe that for a second. No,
but definitely don't just assume that they've downgraded in potency
and take like four right. I do think, I do
think cologne and perfume could definitely go bad if not
cared for correctly, right, but if you care for it correctly, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(03:38):
we should probably just go ahead and say, if you
keep it out of the sunlight, yeah, keep the artificial
light to a minimum, keep it in its original bottle up. Yeah. Um,
supposedly it stays good for two years. Yeah. Yeah, that's
what happened. I think is bs as long as you
don't expose it to the outside air, right, keeping it
in a Sergin bottle and the sunlight's not saying they're

(04:00):
breaking its molecular chains, it's it's gonna be fine and stable. Yeah.
I mean I had literally had proof on cologne and vicodin.
I'm happy to come out on the record about that's
great man, all right, this is a good article. I thought, Well,
a nice choice. Yeah, I I agree. I think perfume
is surprisingly interesting. It's one of those things where you

(04:23):
just take for granted or you think like, oh, that's
just for the fashionista glitterati types, or you know, Madison
Avenue folks kind of thing, and then you dig into
it and you're like, no, it's pretty cool perfumes for everyone.
Even if you don't wear it, it's still interesting to
know about, like, for example, the history do you read
much of the history. Yeah, it's aw. Um, you sent

(04:45):
me some pretty cool stuff that um, and this isn't
necessarily perfume, but I guess perfume is really anything that smells. Yes,
you know, it didn't have to smell great. Yeah, we're
we're generally talking about perfume, meaning like a product that
you go by two and to change or enhance your scent. Right. Yeah.
That but if you look around, like everything is perfumed

(05:05):
unless it's specifically marketed as unscented or non perfumed. Yeah,
but just about everything else has some sort of perfuming
to it. Yeah, but it's got it has to be
a substance. That's what is the distinction between like a
perfume and an odor. Yeah. Yeah, like I guess the
odor actually comes off and say the plant. The perfume

(05:26):
is when you go to that plant and squeeze the
odor out of it, put in a bottle, put it
on your skin. Yeah, well you don't you need to
put in a bottle. Yeah, I guess not. You rub
those leaves all over you. Um. But like I said,
back in the day, ancient priest, you sent me these
things that they burned incense initially to cover up stinky
dead animal carcasses that they were sacrificing, which makes sense

(05:50):
that the Latin uh translation is through the smoke. Perfume
means yeah, like you can smell it through the smoke
of I guess he's burning dead animals, or through the
smoke you feel a lot better about sacrificing animals because
you can't smell the death. Yeah. Uh. The ancient Egyptians
very quickly, so, like originally these were priests using perfume

(06:13):
to cover up animal sacrifices. The ancient Egyptians said, we
got a better idea. Let's use the glands from those
animals to scent ourselves for loving. Well, yeah, let's put
it on our stinky parts. Yeah. Originally it was the
animal sacrifice, and it went very quickly into sexuality, and

(06:34):
ever since then, the purpose of perfume has remained virtually unchanged.
It is to um stimulate sexuality in some former fashion, yeah,
especially men wearing cologne. Yeah, and what we'll get to
some of those reasons in a bit. But um, that's
a good primer. I never really thought about that, but
I guess you're right. You're wearing it um to smell

(06:57):
more attractive even in a on the friendship tip. Sure
doesn't necessarily have to be sexual. I don't think. Well,
it depends because some of the early ingredients that stuck
around until in some cases of the nineties, and are
still being used in other cases, are from basically the

(07:17):
sex glands the scent glands of animals. Yeah, and this
article points out it's like, it's funny to think about
the first person who saw a skunk and said, you
know what I'm gonna I'm gonna get all up in
that anal gland and rub some of that on me,
or the musk deer. The musk deer you get some
of that. The beaver um produces castorium. The civic cat,

(07:43):
which is a Himalayan cat. That that's the skunk. There's
like a dozen animals they classify as civic cats. And
then ambergriss yeah or ambergris. I don't I can't remember
which way to pronounce it. Let's just say it's both
are acceptable, Okay, well read to disagree amber gree I

(08:03):
can't remember anyway. That's the whale stuff. Yes, so supposedly
everybody said, well, it's whale vomit when a whale eats
a squid and its beak gets kind of in its
stomach and it needs to dislodge it. Yeah, squid beak Okay,
I thought, I think, Yeah, it's a beak. It's probably
the most disturbing part on any animal on the planet.

(08:25):
The fact that a squid has a hard beak just
like a bird is disturbing. It just keeps me up
at night because the squid is like gelatinous and flimsy.
It's not supposed to have a hard beak that can
break bone. Well, I think it is supposed to. That's
wrong to me. Uh So if a whale has that

(08:47):
beacon its stomach after eating a squid, it needs to
get rid of it. So the common wisdom was that
it puked up this stuff and that's what ambergriss is. Yeah,
this is the sperm whale specifically, right, Yeah, but but
in this ambergriss is like this, Well, it's just like
bile and puke and that kind of thing. But it

(09:08):
floats on the on the surface of the ocean and
photo degrades and hardens and turns into this waxy substance
that's actually flammable, that can have its own scent, that
has long been and instill in some cases used as
a major ingredient in perfume. Right, Yeah, I think it's
supposed to, uh make perfume stick to your body more right,

(09:29):
It's affixative, is what it's called. Um. The weird thing
is is there recently finding out that it's possible that
ambergriss it comes out of the bottom end of the
whale the mouth they poop it out. It's basically whale
diarrhea that you're using in your perfume. So consider this,
Depending on the perfume and the fixatives that uses, you

(09:51):
could be using anal glands from a beaver and diarrhea
from a whale in order to make yourself smell sexy. Yeah.
What's insane, chuck, is that it actually works. Uh. Well, sure,
that's debatable depending on who you are. I guess. I
hate the smell of perfume, all perfumes. There's not a

(10:15):
single perfume sense even a component of a perfume that
you find. I don't like perfume. Scented perfume for women specifically,
is what I'm talking about as far as working sexually. Um,
and I and no, it doesn't. I don't even mean
like sexually necessarily that like you're worked up, getting a

(10:37):
little hot under the collar, even just relaxing. Not pleasing
to me at all. Really, Nope, don't like it? Are
you do? Do you like sense of anything? I mean,
like Emily makes all sorts of soaps and stuff. Do
you like any of those? Sense? Those are all natural?
That's the difference. Most every perfumed product is synthetic. It's

(10:57):
on the market. It depends for sure that cheaper ones
definitely are, but not all of them are most of them,
I mean, there's still plenty of that use like ambergris
what's more natural than whale diarrhea? Well, that's true, you know,
uh not here in the US, so we should point
out is illegal to use that in perfumes in the
US of A. But the Europe yes, but the European

(11:17):
perfume houses still du But no, I'm very specifically averse
to most sense because we don't use uh chemical products
as much as possible, So like I don't use scented sprays,
scented deodorants like fabreze, to me, is like the most
disgusting thing you can do to your home. Fabric softener, sheets, uh,

(11:41):
laundry detergent, like nothing nothing with with sense. I hate it.
There's nothing to me worse than like going to a
hotel and smelling scented sheets that have clearly been washed
with some kind of perfumey detergent. What if it smells
like something pleasant though, I mean like there's nothing like

(12:03):
I understand what now, They're all supposed to be pleasant,
Like this smells like lavender, and none of it does
to you. It's just like this is synthetic, so it
feels bad to me. I got you. Um, But the
the idea you just rattle off a bunch of like
um uses for perfume beyond actual perfume, and that that's
actually kind of an old concept. Um. The what's long

(12:25):
been considered the seat of Europe's perfume industry is a
gross I think g r E s s E in
the south of France, and it's got this unusual microclimate
to where all of these wonderful plants um like jasmine
and orange blossoms and lavender and all this stuff can grow.

(12:46):
And the locals figured out number one that they needed
to grow the stuff but also to extract it in
different ways. You can extract the essential oils. You can extract, absolutely,
you can extract concrete. But what you're doing is this
extracting these odorant moll acules from plants and using it
to perfume. What they were originally using it to perfume,

(13:08):
and I think, like the fourteenth or thirteenth century were
leather gloves. So remember Catherine de Medici, she's been coming
up a lot, a lot um. She was given some
scented gloves by the tanners of Gross, France, which was
originally there. That was their gig, was making leather goods.

(13:28):
But they stunk like death. So just like those ancient priests,
the people of Gross said, we need to perfume these.
They came up and started this whole trend of perfumed
leather gloves by sending a complimentary pair to Catherine de Medici,
who loved them. And then all of a sudden, bam,
Gross is not only making these awesome leather goods, it
becomes the perfume capital of the world and stays that

(13:51):
way for a very long time. Because she essentially was
the first celebrity sponsor of a product. She was in
the copies of the local rag saying I love the
smell all of my lavender leathers. Uh, that's pretty cool story.
And so that was the heart of it all. Then. Yeah,
and Gross still makes not nearly as much as they
used to, but they still produce tons of essential oils

(14:13):
every year of all these wonderful plants. Nice. Yeah, see,
I'm done with the essential oils. That's different, right, But
that stuff is frequently used in perfumes. I mean, they
might not be using it in like you're you know,
tied or anything like that. That's probably a synthetic scent.
Not probably it's absolutely a synthetics But there are still
plenty of perfumes that do use essential oils in there

(14:35):
as as smell molecules. Well, the reason people they don't
is because it's expensive. Um. All right, So let's talk
a little bit about what perfume as the stinky stuff
that you use an atomizer if you're fancy to spray
on your body to smell sexy um, and a little

(14:56):
bit about smell in general. I guess, uh, the liquid
perfume that we're talking about, it is basically just a
concoction of alcohol and water and these smell molecules. Um.
That basically what you're smelling is evaporation into the air.
And um, they do point out the article not everything
you know, it's light enough to float, but not everything

(15:18):
that's light enough to float has that's has a smell. Um,
And what do they point out? Carbon monoxide is the
common danger, right, you can't smell it, you might be dying.
That's why you have the detectors in your home. Yeah,
if all of a sudden you can't think, right, Yeah,
and there's no other reason why, it's probably carbon oxide
leak in your house. That's right. There's no old lacating
around used to check the battery on your carbon monoxide detector.

(15:41):
So the not only do some molecules not have a scent,
they're just not odorance. Some odorance aren't smelled by all people,
like apparently sandalwood, natural sandal wood is the most commonly
uncensed odorant. Yeah, the natural original, the g Yeah. So

(16:01):
even even if you are making a perfume or something
like that, you may be making something that can't be
smelled by a significant portion of the population, which is
a challenge of making perfume and the whole cilantro thing.
The posted a link to a story about that. I
know we've talked about it before. It's like ten percent
of the population as a genetic marker that thinks it tastes,

(16:23):
taste and smells soapy. Yeah, And this article points out
that what's going on is not that there's some alteration
of the smell or taste of cilantro, but that there's
a note to it missing, so that it's incomplete what
people are sensing, and therefore they find it gross. But
I saw another study that showed that of odorant receptors

(16:46):
are different from person to person. Take any two people,
of their odorant receptors are going to be just wildly different. Yeah.
So it is a real challenge to make perfume that
is pleasing to enough people. And as a result, some
people have gone the opposite way and they're just making
exactly what they think is super cool and if you

(17:07):
like it, awesome, if it smells good, great, if not, whatever.
But that's kind of counter to the main mode of
thinking in the perfume industry, which is the best exactly
because more people are going to buy it and you're
gonna make more money, and if it's a really good one,
it'll be a classic that people do develop, like a
brand loyalty to and buy again and again and again

(17:29):
year after year. Number five. Yeah, which classic perfume it is?
And it was the first perfume to use synthetic ingredients?
Did you know that? And apparently it was not a
hit right out of the gate. It was created in
the twenties, um Fortunel, But it wasn't until Marilyn Monroe,
in an interview in the mid fifties, said that all

(17:50):
she wears the better two drops of Channel number five,
that all of a sudden it was like, sure, forever,
the forever perfume. So every I bought it for his wife,
I get yeah, because it would make him think of
Marilyn Monroe. But it's just stayed that way ever since,
even even though the Marilyn Monroe story has been kind
of lost mostly to popular culture. There's a documentary on

(18:13):
Coco Chanelle. I haven't seen you yet, supposed to be good.
Oh yeah, yeah, I have to check it out. Um. So,
perfume oil specifically is a super you know, this is
what we're talking about, being like steamed or pressed out
of like a fruit or a plant or something. It's
super concentrated. So it's only it's going to be an

(18:35):
alcohol and two percent water. So that's the solvent. Yeah,
and then you take the solvent and the amount of
solvent that's combined with perfume oil. You have different types
of perfume. Yeah, exactly, so parfume and you know, it'll
say this on the bottle if you if you go
to if you've ever read the back of a perfume bottle, um,
which I had, But parfume p A r f U

(18:56):
M is at least perfume oil. Uh, depart from oh
de toilette or toilet water is ten percent and oh
de cologne is um body spray. It's light, it's very light. Yeah,
by spray, unless you're talking about like just a straight

(19:18):
up cologne can also mean a man scent, which is
sometimes way more than five percent. Yeah. I think I've
said this before. When I lived in you my Arizona
post college, there was a lot of dudes wearing cologne,
and I was like, you guys are still wearing cologne? Huh,

(19:40):
Like yeah, man, you don't work cologne. I was like, nope,
where's your curve? Yeah? And um, yeah it was. It was.
It's a very strange thing to me because I'm just
I don't know. I don't see a lot of guys
that work cologne anymore. Oh, it's definitely falling away again.
Maybe I'm in the traveling in the wrong circles. Well,
in America it was. It was cool at first and

(20:00):
then it kind of fell away, and then um, thanks
to Marilyn Monroe and Chanelle, it kind of came back
big time. UM, and then it kind of peaked I
think in the nineties for men especially UM. But it's
still going strong, like one uh one Armani Geo d Armandi.

(20:21):
I think I can't remember what it's called. Um. It
made like several hundred million dollars in you know, two
thousand and six. Is that one of the unisex ones?
Nobody's for men? Okay, yeah, yeah, if I always thought
that whole new, Uh well, it seems new, the unisex cologne.
Obvious thought that was interesting, well, design something for both

(20:42):
men and women, right, that's a throwback actually, um, Originally
there were no gender differences among any perfumes, especially in France. UM,
and the French men like to smell like lilac as well.
It was right and that you know, nothing wrong with that,
The idea that lilac is a feminine scent is new
in social construct you know. Um or the idea that

(21:05):
cedar is a manly scent. That's a new and social
construct too, and very American as well. Sure, so when
it comes to categorizing, like we're just talking about, there
are terms that are used in the biz. But um,
it's not like there's any rule about it. It's just
basically how people have grown to talk about perfume there

(21:25):
in the business of perfume, but generally there are these categorizations. Uh,
floral that's a no brainer, Fruity that's a no brainer.
Green that might be grassy or leafy. I like stuff
like that. Um, like the olive oils that tastes like grass.
You ever had those? Yeah, man, those are good? Or

(21:48):
wheat grass shot that is not good? Oh? I love it.
You don't like it? O man? I love it. It's
like drinking down some grass clippings. I think I would
rather drink grass clippings than wheat grass. Well, is clippings
actually like fescue or something? Sure, we'll take a fescue shot.
Then will herbaceous like herbs woody like? Would amber tree resin?

(22:11):
I thought that was interesting every time I want to
say uh and uh animal, like I want to say
animaniac for some reason, bodily smells that's gross. Well, that's
like from that's musky. It's a bodily smell. Well, But
then there's musc as its own category too, because it's
just so singular, right, But I mean, like, um, there's

(22:33):
also supposedly also I guess either I don't know if
it's a subtype of musk or animalek or whatever. But
fecal is another thing too. Calvin Klein's obsession is among
the perfume industry well known as a very famous fecally perfume. Yeah, yeah,

(22:54):
which one obsession? Obsession? Yeah, like a hugely selling, very popular,
a few being worn by people. If you walk past
someone in the perfume industry, they're gonna be like, there's
some real fecal notes to that one. Well, they said
in this the top notes, they say, sometimes can be
something really nasty just to attract you. I don't know
what attract means, but I guess to get your attention maybe,

(23:17):
but that'll wear off the quickest. It's not what lasts
on your body, which we'll get in that in a second.
Let me just finish this little list. Here you have
the oriental UH and it's proper usage here um amber
and spice UM, and then a few other ones are
categorized by the actual molecules like phenolic might smell like tar,

(23:39):
or lactonic creamy lacted lactose obviously, or alda heideck, which
is fatty. So those are the main categories UM, and
we will get a little bit more into that chemistry
that we teach you with right after this. Ye so chuck.

(24:14):
We talked about um perfume being diluted, like heavily diluted.
What a rip off. It's almost all alcohol, yeah, rip.
The reason why though it's not it's not a rip
You would not want the perfume oil, which again is
just essential oils or synthetic versions of those oils, and

(24:35):
fixatives or synthetic versions of the fixative. So it might
be essential oil of lavender. It's a muskrat anal gland.
And then solvent is most of the other stuff. It's unlaughing,
but it's true. And then bam, you've got a perfume
right there. But the reason why it's so dissolved and
why so much of it is alcohol is because the
way that perfumes are designed is so that the different

(24:58):
types of molecules, when they interact with the alcohol and
the alcohol evaporates, will evaporate in a certain progression of time. Yeah,
I thought this is the most interesting part of this
whole thing. The alcohol actually makes it possible to separate
those notes. Um. And they likened this article to hearing
all the parts of a symphony at once, like a

(25:20):
lot of pleasing things all at one time. Is not
necessarily good thing. No, And that's what you would get
if you stuck your face in a one ton barrel
of perfume oil. Yeah, you might say, man, this is sweet,
but you wouldn't pick up on the subtle subtleties of
those odors. Yeah, exactly. But what alcohol does is it
takes that concentrated form. It not only dilutes it, but
it again spreads it out temporally. So when you first

(25:42):
put it on, um, you put on a little perfume. Right.
The immediate notes, the top notes are what you smell immediately,
and they go from anywhere like immediate to maybe um
a few minutes. Usually. Yeah, the first ones you'll smell
and the first one to leave your body exactly. That's
the top notes, and a perfume is designed so that

(26:04):
as each set of notes in their three there's top,
heart and bass notes. Um, as each one is leaving,
the next one is starting up. So you have this
this basically flowing transition. Comparing it to a symphony is
so apt, sure, because it's just like this kind of
flowing melody of sense that worked together by um, I guess,

(26:30):
dissolving evaporating at a certain time, at a certain rate. Yeah.
And like we said before the break, there a lot
of times they will put something unpleasant in that first
top note. Um, and I guess it will just get
your attention in the store. Yeah, you just like that's
so fecal exactly, or like, um, what was it an anchorman?

(26:50):
Oh the musk Yeah, it was like Puma musk. Oh
that one the woman urine or something. Yeah, yeah, well
I can't remember, like zac line, but like seventy percent
of the time it works all the time. Um, what
was it Panther? He is Panther or something? Man, that's

(27:11):
a funny movie. Um. And then you've got your heart
notes next, right, Yeah, they kick in anywhere and last
for starting in two minutes to about an hour from
what I saw, Um, and those are gonna be It
can be entirely different. It depends is we'll see what

(27:32):
you're trying to get across. But you could do woody
top notes with a vanilla base or heart note, so
it'll go from wood to vanilla to lemon citrus bass note. Right, sure,
Or you could do it completely opposite. You can just
mix and mad. It depends, right, It depends on the

(27:55):
the the type of molecule you use. And as you're
making syntheta um odorance, yeah, you can make it a
synthetic odorant that's gonna stick around as a bass note,
even though if you had an essential oil of that lemon,
it would be just the top note because it's gonna
go away so quick. Yeah, And as we'll see later
when you when it's when you're making these perfumes, it's

(28:17):
a real science of a balancing act of getting exactly
what they want because these smells, as you said, are
coming and going and um. It is sort of like
composing a symphony again again man um, So the bass
note that's the one that's gonna stick around the longest though, right,
and come out latest Yeah, it can come out starting

(28:38):
usually about thirty minutes after you put it on, and
can stick around for a day if you're not careful
and didn't you find something where the no perfume is
going to smell the same on any two people exactly, right.
Not only is it not going to smell the same
on any two people, it's going to smell different to
any two people, right because again uht of our odor

(29:01):
receptors are different in every single person. Plus also an
odorant can activate different kinds of receptors depending on the person.
And then lastly, that person is going to encode it
differently because scent is definitely its own thing as far
as our senses go, and it's the only sense that's

(29:21):
um directly hardwired to the brain. So the odorant receptors
go straight to the brain. It doesn't send it to
a nerve cell that's nearby first, exactly, So it's like
hard our scent, of our sense of smell is hardwired
to our brain. So it evokes some serious reaction brain.
And there's also a hypothesis that our brain, the lobes

(29:45):
of our brain, evolved from olfactory buds, that that's what
they started out as and then it just grew and
grew and grew, and then we were all like brain
stem and olfactory buds and then we the brain grew
from that. Which would be like hats off to the
sense of smell, because that's what started at all interesting.
But there's there's the point is is that our sense

(30:06):
of smell is it's a big deal, um, But it's
different in each of us. And when you factor in
our body chemistry, our skin, sure, that's when it's it's
it genuinely does smell differently on different people. Well, I
would think it has to because everyone has a natural
um scent. I think, just as a person that's different

(30:28):
from one another. So when you combine it, yeah, it's
got to make a different thing. You know. It's like
if I smell like a cherry pie, which you do,
throw some cool whip on me, which I would congress.
I wouldn't do anything. I just throw cool with you know,
um in the form of a pie to the face.

(30:49):
Why not that old gag. Um. But when you're putting
on the perfume. This is this is all coming around
to this point. Um. There are ways to do it
supposedly that well, get the proper um, I get get
the most out of your perfume. Like you shouldn't put
it and rub it in your skin real hard. You
don't want to like heat it up right away or

(31:09):
anything like that, No, because then you break the chains
of the top notes and you wear them out before
your finger even comes away from your skin. Yeah, like
dab it on lightly. Yeah, sure you just did, like
the old lady moved dab it behind the air maybe
or I've seen the other lady move to uh to
do it on the wrists and maybe rub that together
a little bit and then um my, my big trick

(31:31):
was too because I never I liked the Benetton colors,
but even back then, I didn't want to be super colone.
So you know, I did the deal where I spray
it in the air then like walk through it. You know.
That's even I think mentioned in this article is as
a method. Yeah, that's a method. Okay, Um I was
really onto something. I think even rubbing your wrists together though,

(31:54):
because you're you're you don't want to generate heat. And
one of the reasons why people put it behind their
ears or on their wrists stinky behind your ears, for one,
that's one you can also smell it yourself right there.
But if you put your fingers behind your ears and
then put them, like I don't know, on your head
or something, you'll see that behind your ears is warm.

(32:15):
On your wrists is warm. These are pulse points, right,
So you're hot blood is close to the surface of
your skin. So then that heat will start to break up.
The alcohol will make it evaporate and will hence make
those different notes come out. That's all the heat you need.
Any friction is too much heat, right, So you say

(32:36):
no on the wrist rub. No wrist rub? Okay? I mean,
if you want to waste your money and just get
heart and base notes and no top notes, go for it,
all right, Josh. So let's say I thought this was
all pretty interesting too. Actually, let's say you want to
lart launch um Josh nous. You work for Polo, and
you just you want to do Josh, no this um.

(32:57):
You're in their perfume department and you say, guys, is
gonna be a trust me on this one be a
top seller? Right, So you got a Polo your bosses
and they say, all right, Josh, what we need here
is a brief um. And the brief is gonna outline, um,
because you know, again you can't say this is a
perfume everyone's gonna love because they're like, there is no

(33:18):
such thing. So write up a brief. Tell me who
was gonna love it, who it's gonna appeal to? What
do you want it to smell? Like? Yeah, what do
you want this to say? Even so, tom Ford launched
one it became very successful called black Orchid, and he said,
I want this to smell like a man's crotch. That
was one. Can I give you another brief, please? Um,

(33:38):
for pure poison from de or The brief included what
is it like to have something soft and hard at
the same time? Oh? I think we all know that,
all right? And then um, here's another one. I don't
know what this one was for. That's a viagra so, uh, yeah,
I don't know which one this is, but um, one brief.

(33:59):
This scribed what they were after as give us the
scent of a warm cloud floating in a fresh spring
sky over sicily raining titanium rain drops on a woman
with emerald eyes. That's what somebody wrote down when they
were trying to describe what scent they wanted. Yeah, I
mean that's those are legit briefs. That's that's how you're
supposed to do it. Describe not just um, the specific

(34:23):
sense that you want, but what do you want it
to say? Uh, Generally it is probably more something like
you know classy or you know prosperous or something like that,
fecal fecal um. Then you want to write out what
how you're gonna sell it, like, um, what form it's
gonna take? Um. You also want to have a marketing plan,

(34:45):
like I think we could sell this in the in
South America for the next like five years. They're going
to go crazy for yeah exactly. So then after that
it's gonna go um to a chemist and it's gonna
get mailed to what are called fragrance houses. Well, this
polo doesn't make it themselves. They come up with it themselves,
that is, and the chemist is employed by the fragrance houses.

(35:06):
And they send this brief out to a bunch of
different fragrance houses and and basically started competition who who's
going to land this account? But what we want? See
what you can do? So this fragrance house they do
a couple of things. They have the perfumers, who they
actually are the chemists who come up with the formula. Yeah,
they've got all these scents in their head and then
they know, like, oh, I know exactly what smells like

(35:28):
a woman with emerald eyes. Super smellers I would imagine, yeah,
oh yeah, you know. Yeah, there's an older tester job
out there that's supposed to be great. I don't know
if I do so hot on that. Oh yeah, you
have to have like just a naturally wonderful nose. Yeah,
my nose is not naturally wonderful. It has to make
like a curly to Uh. These fragrance houses also have

(35:50):
they don't just UM right, the formulas, they also have
the stuff in stock, um all these different ingredients in warehouses,
or they will work with another company who has it.
If they're like, we don't have um, you know, papaya, papaya,
we need to work with the company who does, they
will sub that out. And they have these chemists that

(36:12):
actually work with UM gas chromatography mass spectromty, which we've
talked about in something I can't remember what it was.
This can be used for other things. It basically analyzes
odorant molecules to to say here's here's what it's made of.
And here's how you can make a synthetic version of
it exactly right, exactly. So then you have those people,
those UM chemists analysis analysts, and then you also have

(36:37):
synthetic chemists who say who take the readouts from the
guests um chro chromatography and say, oh, I can build this,
and then they build the synthetic molecules exactly and all
just mind blowing. It is mind blow. All of these
people are employed by the fragrance houses, that's right. Uh.

(36:58):
One thing that they do. We we did talk earlier
about UM. You know how they have this stuff in stock.
A lot of times it can be the actual oils
from pressing it and steaming it. Um. But there's another
headlock exactly. Uh. There's another cool thing they have though,
called headspace, and that is when if they want an
odor um or fragrance, they will they will put like

(37:21):
an avocado in a jar and um suck out the
air every hour or constantly for hours, right, and then
they use gas chromatography to analyze that and analyze that.
There you go, and then somebody goes and builds that, right,
And that's what's called the headspace. The headspace is basically
a synthetic version of an existing natural scent that somebody

(37:45):
trademarks and then all of a sudden it becomes part
of the perfume industry's repertoire. Yeah. I mean that's the
space in the jar, that's the literal headspace, that is
is got the odor. There's a dude name um Christopher Brosius,
and he started a company called Demeter, and they're known

(38:05):
for making like really weird perfumes like birthday cake, baseball
mitt baby aspirin, which is weird stuff like that. But
what's neat is they nail it. And one of the
ways they nail it is by using by making headspaces.
One of the first ones they did was called Soaked Earth.
He took some um dirt from his parents farm, put

(38:27):
it in a bag and took it to New York
and threw it on the table and said I want this.
And they analyzed it and by god, that came up
with dirt the smell of specific to his Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
I think Pennsylvania. Interesting. Um, I guess here we can
briefly mentioned that um, knockoff cologns and perfumes is a

(38:50):
very common thing because uh, your copyright. I mean you
can tweak your formula slightly and it's totally legal, you know,
to to all that essentially same thing that's just as
slightly different under a different name. It's like the same
thing as designer drugs, except with perfumes. Yeah, remember that,

(39:10):
like the gas station if you love, if you like Georgio,
you'll love whatever we're calling what was the knockoff name
for Georgio Georgie, But there was like a whole generic
rip off line called if you like Blank, You'll love Blank.
It's hilarious, So chuck um. You take all this stuff,
You take your head space, you take your existing headspace,

(39:32):
you take your essential oils, and you put them all
together to create that um emerald I woman who has
titanium raindrops raining honor in sicily on a spring day. Yeah,
well you do anywhere from ten to a hundred of
them each fragrance house does. Then they send them to
their oder testers, and the oder tester goes, no, no, no,

(39:53):
this one's a maybe no no. I like this one
no no, maybe again yes, and then no, and then
Polo at this point has not smelled any josh this yet.
This is all they're trying to weed out the gunk
because they don't want to waste Polo's time. You know,
they don't want to send him Josh Josh, and this
is exactly no. They want to send him like one,

(40:14):
maybe two, and they do. Sure, so Polo, well then
get it. Say I like this second one, but it's
a little too strong on this one, cent um. So
they'll go back again, and it's just a process basically.
Maybe they nail it on the first time, but probably not.
It's a back and forth basically. It's it's just like
working with an editor, and they'll swap in ingredients and

(40:36):
they'll you know, like we said earlier, it's a science
basically of the right combination in the right order of evaporation. UM.
I think it's just super interesting. They put it through
product testing, of course, um to see what people think
of it, because they're not just gonna launch it out
of the blue. They want it to, like you said,
appeal to either the right demographic or the most people possible.

(40:59):
And so the one that um Polo decides that is
Josh nous y. Um they win. That Perfume House wins,
and so they get a contract to produce X number
of tons or gallons of this particular perfume, well of
the of the the perfume oil. Yeah, the undeluded stuff, yeah,

(41:21):
Polo actually produces. They take that and produce the perfume. Right.
They add the solventure to produce the perfume, the oda toilette,
the de cologne, all that stuff in the different concentrations.
They will probably also use it and maybe like a
deodor in a body lotion, all that stuff. But they
deliver them in like one ton drums of the perfume
oil that you don't want to smell until it's been diluted,

(41:42):
and then all of a sudden, the Joshness is released
into the world literally and becomes the number one selling
cologne of all time. Well, and um, Polo never knows
the exact concoction that makes Joshness either, which I thought
was super interesting. It's literally the perfumer knows this little secret.
It's gonna so after this we're gonna talk a little

(42:05):
bit um about the science of scent and whether or
not it's something that we're born with or that we learned. Alright, So, Chuck,

(42:34):
why do people wear perfume? Depends on who you ask. Um.
There's a lady named Rachel hurts Uh from Brown University.
She wrote a book called The Scent of Desire Colin
Discovering our enigmatic sense of smell, and she postulates that, Uh,
depending on how old you are and what gender you are,

(42:54):
you have your different reasons. That a young men do
it to attract women. That's why I did it right.
Older men do it out of gratitude to the women
who gave it to him money. You'd smell nice with
this on, so sure I'll wear it, dear, Uh. Women,
Depending on how old you are in the twenties, you're
more affected by I guess inspired by your friends in

(43:16):
the media. Beyonce, Sure she has a perfume dungy. Yeah.
You know who has like a surprise runaway smash hit
right now is Sarah Jessica Parker. That doesn't surprise me.
It does me a little bit. It wouldn't surprise me
in like two but like it is a top seller
right now. She's like a goddess to a certain uh

(43:37):
age group of women. Though, yeah, you're still I guess
you're right. But even still you'd think, like, yeah, I
don't know, maybe they're right. In the perfume wheelhouse, it
could be an awesome smelling perfume. I've never smelled it.
I was just surprised because you know, you're like Beyonce,
Derek Jeter, like, these are the celebrities that have that. Yeah,
it's top selling that have these top selling like cologns

(43:59):
and then so Justica Parker just I just don't think
of her like that, you know, I like her, she's great. Yeah,
I just don't think of her as that, and I'm
I'm happy for her success. Yeah, she's iconic, has a
certain demographic. Um not to me, but she's she's No,
she's an icon to Emily. I think she was a

(44:19):
big fan of that show. Um. Women in their thirties,
they say, follow no particular pattern. They're just I don't
know what they're doing. They don't know what's going on yet.
They just like what they like. I think is what
that means. Well, by the time they're forty, they say
that's simply because they like it, Like I just like
the way the smells, and I'm forty, so I'm gonna

(44:40):
just wear it. I don't care what my husband thinks
at this point or what my friends think at this point. Um,
and their sixties, they say, women think of other people's
which is like, uh, they're friends, are loved ones say
they like the white smells, which is a really nice thing.
And then a lot of um people choose per fumes
apparently that their mother or or in the same scent family,

(45:05):
either knowingly or not, but probably knowingly because um, there's
an associative learning theory of smell. You were saying before
the break, We're going to talk about whether you know
smell has learned or forborn with it. The idea that
smell is learned is called the associative learning hypothesis. Yeah,

(45:26):
that like, we come to like smells based on social constructs,
based on experience. There's supposedly evidence that smell learning begins
in the womb, even that odorant molecules can be passed
along from mother to child, and that the stuff you're
exposed to in the womb you can show a preference
for later on down the road. And Rachel Hurts is

(45:47):
a member of that camp. Yeah. And by the way,
I want to give a shout out. Rachel Hurts wrote
a chapter for the book Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward,
which is a gas in general, right, But she wrote
chapter seventeen perfume is the title of it, and it's
on UM the n I H website, the n CBI website.

(46:07):
Just search for that and they will come up the
whole chapters right there. And it's really interesting and exhausting.
But she is one of the ones who's like, this
is a learned behavior and lays out something really great,
um evidence for it. Yeah. One of her points is that,
UM that babies basically don't think anything smells bad or good. Um.

(46:30):
I don't know how they know this. I guess walking
things under baby's face to see what they make, including poop. Well, yeah,
you never never see the baby like yeah, like I'll
wallow and poop. I don't care. I'm a baby. I
don't mind the smell. You ever farted right in the
baby's face, No reaction, They just blink nothing. A couple
of times they're delighted. Well. Plus also um, other studies

(46:54):
of adults, not even babies, have shown that the same
smell can be preferred or disliked in very similar groups.
In the UK, the smell of winter green in a
study after World War Two was found to be just
generally disliked. In the US, like a decade later, the
smell of winter green was found to be generally preferred.

(47:16):
In the US, winter green is used for like candy
and gum, and it's associated with positive stuff. In the UK,
winter green was used during World War two, um for
medicines that were used in the field, so there's associations
with battle war maiming disease. So that's what winter green
is the people in the UK, whereas in the US

(47:36):
the exact same smell is pleasant. And you know, I
mean it's not like the Americans and the Brits are
the exact same people, but they're in the same cohort,
you know, are very similar cohort, and they showed like
opposite preferences, which is really great evidence for associative learning hypothesis. Yeah,
and it's also a reason why in the early two thousands,

(47:58):
the U. S. Army was not able to come up
with a stink bomb that was universally upsetting to people's
noses across cultures. They contracted out the Moll Chemical Sensus
Center in Philly and they tried to curate a universal
stink bomb smell and they said, you know, because of

(48:21):
cultural specific products and things, we had to avoid anything
like food related even if we think it really stinks,
some other culture might like it. Um. So they had
to basically go to They focused on stuff with biological
origins like vomit and human waste and burnt hair and uh.

(48:41):
They made synthetic versions of all these and got some
people in Philly and put them in a hood and
introduced the and uh, I thought it was funny that
was Philly though, they're probably like, it's not so bad, um,
and introduced They slowly infused it, and they said people
thought it was the worst thing they ever smell. Their
heads were jerk back. They would contort with revulsion and

(49:02):
then basically just try and hold their breath as long
as possible or take a little shallow breaths. Sounds like
a great stink bomb to unleash on people in Philadelphia
at least. Yeah, but they couldn't. Basically, they couldn't come
up with anything that was universally hated. So do you
remember the Air Force also tried to come up with
a gay bomb that used like some sort of perfume

(49:23):
to turn like enemy combatants into like just gay lovers.
So silly. Um. It's a shame though, because the stink
bomb is actually really like it's a great idea. You know,
it doesn't hurt anyone, there's no, it's not like a
chemical like you know, what do you call it the sprays? Yes,
not an irritant anyway. It just stinks, and it would

(49:43):
keep people out of a sensitive area if they didn't
want them there. Well, chemical um irritation is a sensation
that your nose experiences along with odors. So it is
technically a stink bomb, like pepper spray is a stink bomb.
Oh yeah, yeah, but it has like an actual physical
effect on your skin, which a stink bomb wouldn't. UM.

(50:06):
But the other school thought, though, is that it's uh,
you know, it comes via evolution basically, yeah, that it's innate. Yeah,
which this kind of makes sense that they both make
sense to me. I think it might be a mixture
of both. Um. But what's his name, Gilbert or hill Bear?
Hill Bear one of the two. So if you're in

(50:26):
the Gilbert camp, though, you're gonna you're gonna go with
the evolution because he points out that, um, when we
were evolving, you know, apples smell good because you're meant
to eat them and you're meant to spread the seed. UM.
So that smell is associated with living and living well
by eating fruits, and conversely the smell of poop and

(50:49):
vomit and urine um, which convey disease and bacteria and
all the stuff you're not supposed to be with. Under
innate hypothesis, it would be that's why we avoid those,
because we avoid the substances that carry those obnoxious smells.
Makes sense, Oh, it totally makes sense. I just think

(51:11):
to me, the evidence is more there for associative learning. Yeah,
I think I think it can be both. I don't
think it has to be mutually exclusive, and I think
it can be overwritten by the by the learning as well. Whatever.
In eight things we have UM and I don't remember,
we did a bit on a study years ago about
UM people looking for their mates according to having a

(51:35):
different immune system, which would in turn make their children
immune to more possible things. Yeah, more robust immunity and
the kids. Because you take immunity and immunity B and
putting together you've got immunity C, which is the best
of A and B. Right, So this this is like
a whole idea of why or how people select mates

(51:55):
is based on that which is scent based that's what
they think. Apparently it's this is evidenced by study after
study after study that finds consistently that women rate a
man scent as the number one factor and attractiveness more
than his appearance, more than wealth, more than anything else.

(52:16):
Scent is perennially the number one most important thing. They
think that's possible that the reason why is because um
our senses are attuned are scent is a tune so
that we can sniff out somebody with a different immune system,
so we can reproduce more robust kits. The problem is
if you factor in cologne, what you're doing is deceiving

(52:37):
that natural drive, and all of a sudden you're gonna
have kids with like zero immune system because the guy
was wearing cologne. Yeah, that makes total sense. Uh, you
don't want to confuse your potential mating mate. It's a
pretty good argument against warring cologne. Yeah. Um. And then
there is the uh, of course, the whole does this

(52:57):
stuff work anyway as far as being in sex will
attract itt Uh? And there's there's zero scientific proof that
there was any kind of um aphrodisiastic as sic aphrodisiac
i compound that you can concoct that will literally, um,
draw someone to you sexually, as much as they've tried

(53:18):
and tried to advertise that subtly or not so subtly. Um,
we are not pigs who apparently do have mating pheromones
that actually work that way. They have something called a
accessory olfactory system. Uh. And in pigs, they have something
in their nose called the vomaro nasal organ which is

(53:40):
specifically specialized to pick up on these molecules. And we
don't have them as humans. We don't have the curly
tails either. Or they say we may have them, but
it just doesn't work. I don't know which is which
is the case. Who knows. Maybe we just use their
normal olfactory senses and it's not pheromones. It's just smells. Yeah,
you know. Or you know. They say, maybe it'll make

(54:03):
you think that you're more sexually attractive, so that I'll
make you more confident exact, and thus make you more
sexually attractive. UM. I got one more thing, so I
mentioned Georgio. Georgio is a huge, hugely popular maybe the
number one cent of the nineteen eighties. Um, and it
was famously banned from some restaurants because it was so stinky.

(54:26):
Because some restauranturs are like, if you've got a couple
of people were in Georgio in here, it's gonna overpower
the smell of the food and the taste of the food.
So they banned Georgio, which all it did was accelerate sales. Well,
there are some people in this building that I wish
would be banned from our elevators. I almost never run
into that anymore. Boy, I've smelled some stuff that they're

(54:50):
not even on. In the elevator car the peagle and
I step in, I'm like, whoa like obsession that's usually
like super perfuming lady stuff? Oh got you? Yeah? You
got anything else? No? I mean there's plenty more. Yeah,
but yeah, we got so much time. Uh. If you
want to know more about perfume, you can type that
word in the search part how stuff works dot com.

(55:11):
And since I said search parts, sign for a listener mail.
That's right. I'm gonna call this a little nostre damas
bit from a Canadian. Hey guys, I'd like to say
how great. First of all, that you make my hour
long commutes to work every morning, So thanks. Um, it's
a pleasure to listen to the show, especially on Nostre Damas.
I thought i'd give you another example of what he

(55:31):
supposedly said. Quote from the Calm Morning. The end will
come when of the dancing horse, the number of circles
will be nine. It's from Nostre Damas three she said,
she says. It was said that Nostre Damas predicted the
end of the world and was explained as follows. Korea
is the calm morning country sigh dancing as in doing

(55:57):
the dancing horse is Gangham style. December twenty one, that
song reached one million views on YouTube nine zeros. In summary,
people were claiming that Dramas is prediction the end of
the world would be on December twenty one. So that's it. Guys,
keep on doing what you do. You do a great
job and you're always a pleasure. And oh the sound
effects are awesome. Kudos to Jerry. Wait to go to Jerry.

(56:19):
That's from Julia Ka in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hey, we
love Toronto, ak Toronto. Right, that's right, we love it. Well,
let's see we want to hear from you. Let us
know about your perfume preference. Uh, you can tweet us
your favorite perfume of all time or your most hated
perfume of all time at s Y s K podcast.

(56:40):
You can let us know on Facebook dot com, slash
stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at House stuff Works dot com, and
as always, join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, does it House of Works

(57:00):
dot com MHM