July 16, 2025 • 70 mins
Although most people may not notice this, the living world is rife with an everpresent, invisible chemical conspiracy: pheromones. These chemicals can warn of danger, entice mates, mark territory and produce sophisticated behavioral changes in every species they touch -- but what about humans? Conventional science has argued humans don't play the pheromone game, but as Ben, Matt and Noel learn in tonight's episode... there may be more to the story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. In a message from
us to everyone listening, baby, you smell.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Sex man, there going to be there right there.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
We can smell you through the phone.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Right through the miracle of modern technology, in the right circumstances.
Who doesn't love to hear that? First off, don't call hr.
I'm not hitting on anybody, it's.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Just you're hanging on the whole audience.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I think it's I think it's a great reference, and
I hope it gave everyone a chuckle. Nol. I love
the sex panther reference. I know it gave you a
laugh and Dylan, I can I could picture you giggling
a little bit. Hopefully.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
They say it's like a dirty diaper full of Indian food.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Or something like, Ryan, I'm gonna be honest with you,
that smells like pure gasoline.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I feel like that's also a send up of Droquar Noir,
one of the most divisive colognes, is it. It's divisive, man,
I didn't know that like it. People who dislike it
capital d dislike it.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
I think I maybe mentioned that I've become a bit
of a cologne guy, and I have a little little
boudoir collection of colognes, and I do not own Drucar Noir.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
You and I both bought a cologne while we were
on the road.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I bought it correctly, Yeah, but I about the same
one as Yeah, I bought a couple of sense.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Like Aviator Navigator Navigator.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, you were super close. We we also. I don't
know if this has happened to anyone else, but if
you were in a long relationship, have you ever kept
an article of clothing from a loved one, like their
shirt or something like that for the smell?
Speaker 4 (02:23):
No, just me all right, hey, listen, no judgment in
the air. Brother. Ah.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
Yeah, Usually it's after a it's after a breakup, though,
and it's a piece of clothing they've left behind, and
it just makes you.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Sad, Yeah, because you're like your positive version of this.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, there's a version where it's like a more long
distance thing and you just want to have the scent
of that person around you when possible. Yeah, I think
that's the that's the way I've encountered that situation.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
In Japan, you can buy them from vending machines.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh no longer, God damn, we could talk about it. Yeah, yeah,
sorry creepy people, But but zur real l for creepy
people the world over, or at least I think we're
starting with this because it tells us just that little
anecdote of the ways in which smell can influence the
(03:17):
human life. It is the Yeah, it's the number one
encoder of memory in the humans. A single scent can,
like Helen of Troy, launch a thousand memories. And we
may indeed do an experiment with this if you'd like
to play along at home in tonight's episode or series.
We're not sure. But what if there's something more play
(03:39):
to smell? What if there's an invisible communication system, a
conspiratorial agglomeration of chemicals that influences and unconsciously pushes human behavior.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
What if, indeed and what if our bodies were just
designed to have this thing that we are not consciously
aware of constantly excreting.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
And do we still have it? Are we still in
the game.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Why don't we take a quick break here a tiny
word from our sponsor. We'll come back and jump right
into this pretty exciting, smelly topic.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Here are the facts, all right. They're called pheromones. Are
they real? Headline is, yes, pheromones are real. They're often
misrepresented or misunderstood. We were talking about Dan Harmon's It
can be so mad at us for complimenting a heist film,
but you guys remember Ocean's Thirteen.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
We were talking about the heist film Dan Harmon, be
damned if you ask me, absolutely, I'm the bag man.
That's all that matters. And Ocean's Thirteen was kind of
a banger. They're a fun they're fun series of movies,
a bit.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Of a romp.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
The Pick of Destiny, one of the finest films ever created,
is a heist film.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
I mean, make a movie is already kind of a
heist on a studio? Sure, yeah, So therefore is not
any film at some level of heist even well, sometimes
the studios or the heisters. Anyway. In Ocean's thirteen, there
is something called the Gilroy pheromone, and it's deployed in
(05:19):
the film as though it's a known grift, right, And
the idea is you can take a patch, a dermal
patch similar to like a Nicktine patch or something, and
you can put it just below your jawline where it
touches your circulatory system, and it will emit a pheromone
that makes one absolutely the sexiest person in the room.
(05:45):
That's not true, and actually it's a shout out. The
reason they're calling it Gilroy is because it's a shout
out to the longtime screenwriter of the Jason Bourne franchise. Anyway,
that doesn't matter. That's for a different show. Point. Is
it's calling to mind the idea of pheromones and pheromones.
(06:07):
They're often misrepresented. Right as we said, it's really a
group term for any internally produced or endogenous chemical that
is made and somehow emitted in small amounts by one
organism to inspire a specific reaction from another organism in
(06:29):
that same species.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yep, you can see it in all kinds of creatures
like ants, spiders, pigs, flowers, all kinds of creatures across
this entire planet, and it appears that maybe humans are
one of those organisms.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
And the study of pheromones can be traced back to
relatively recent human history, the early eighteen hundreds. There's this
French naturalist name is Jean Henri Fabre. He discovers that
he's really into moths. Our buddy Jean, and he says, look,
(07:09):
I can take a female emperor moth. It can attract
for reasons I don't understand, says Jean, a dozens of
male moths given some ambiguous set of circumstances. And he says, further,
even if I put this female emperor moth in a
cage and I kind of cover the poor girl up,
(07:31):
male moths can still fly exactly toward it with high accuracy,
with like daredevil level accuracy. What's happening? He doesn't know.
He doesn't have a word for it yet. He's just like,
this is nuts. Science is crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
But it was cool because you know, like any scientists
easy has that hypothesis. Well, it's unseen. I can't detect it,
so perhaps it is a scent of some kind m hm.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Right, which is a reasonable assumption or reason question to
pose fast forward nineteen fifty nine. This is where we
get the term pheromone. A guy named Peter Carlson teams
up with a guy named Martin Lusher, not Luther, and
there are two researchers at the Max Blank Institute for
Biochemistry in Munich, and they say, Okay, we know that
(08:20):
some animals emit some kind of cloud that is largely
invisible to humans most times. And some of these animals
that emit these clouds of molecules, the cloud composition is
different from the clouds that are emitted by other animals.
(08:41):
Something about some of these emissions influences other organisms, and
not every lifeform may use these chemicals to the same effect,
not every life worm may distribute them in the same way.
At this point, Carlson and Lucier primarily talking about to
sort of here's one for the vets in the crowd,
(09:03):
both veterans and veterinarians, a sort of spray and prayse strategy.
And they're just like spray that musk, Yeah, just flying
around like a like a freshman in college who just
found out about axe body spray.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
They're just you ever heard the term like people talking
about like an animal that like sprays, you know, Like,
isn't that a thing like dogs do cats will Skunks
certainly do it, but I believe cats do it. You've
heard people talk about cats spraying. It's not the same
as peeing though, right, No.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Not quite, because it's meant to exhibit some of these
same things we're talking Other animals have different deployment strategies.
They're much more strategic. They store up their special weird chemicals,
their bio weaponry or biocommunication devices, and then they pick
(09:56):
a specific spot and then instead of all around the room,
they poop poop in these in these strategically located areas well.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, sense, if you think about a line of ants
when you're looking at you know that occurring. It's not
because the ants are following the next ant in front
of them necessarily, which can be helpful, you know, to
have a visual line. But often it's these sense that
we're talking about that they leave behind and they create
trails so that other ants can know where to go,
(10:29):
like to head home or to go to find food.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, and we need an important point of differentiation here.
A pheromone is different from a hormone. There's a venn diagram,
and it's really about the application and deployment. So both
pheromone and hormone are group words for signaling molecules. They're
(10:54):
mostly made of proteins, but hormones in any living thing
are defined by how they act within and upon the
creature itself. Pheromones act outside of the body and are
meant to alter or influence the behavior of another organism,
a separate thing outside of the you almost always in
(11:19):
the same species.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It's weird because they have their different kinds too. Within that,
there are releaser pheromones that have like that fast acting
effect on things, and then primer pheromones that are slow
paced and have more to do with behavior and development,
especially in young or you know, creatures. Whatever the young
is of, usually a female who is releasing the pheromones.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Right, and there are alarm pheromones, and then, of course
a great interest to the humans the ones that may
influence reproduction and attractiveness for the ed of iramones and
chiramones as well the the etymology nerds in the crowd.
I think we'll enjoy the way these guys came up
(12:05):
with the term pheromone from the Greek word pharren to
bear or to transport, and from the word hormone to
stimulate or to excite our pals. Nathan Chandler and Nicholas Gervis,
writing for Our Old Alma Matter how Stuff Works, put
it this way. Pheromones are a chemical way for creatures
to quote, transfer excitement from one to the other. They're
(12:28):
everywhere earlier just mentioned insects, A lot of vertebrates. Mammals
are not immune to this. They're present incrustations. This is
of interest, I think to all of us. Birds don't
seem to be in on the game.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
That's a good point. They don't.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
They poop on things, but they don't really Huh, why
is that they don't have the glands phomones.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
I mean, we could, as we'll see, we can maybe
conclude it's because of narrow scoped research.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Maybe we just don't know.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Why do a lot of mating rituals, A lot of
movement based attractions, very elaborate dances and things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, Well they're these things that thanks
to Size Show, which is a show on YouTube that
we used to check out a lot, at least back
when we were making videos and stuff. They they put
out a video in twenty sixteen called how Pheromones effect
who were attracted to and in there they specifically are
talking about organs that are not present in humans and
(13:32):
that are not present in a lot of different animals
that can specifically pick up pheromones. So the specific signaling molecules,
chemicals that are not something that we would pick up
through our nasal passages and our olfactory senses. That's nasal
organ yes, correct. So like the fact that if you've
(13:54):
got some animals that don't have that thing, that specific organ,
they're probably not going to be making use of this,
or you could even tell if another creature in their
species was making use of it, which.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Is interesting because it implies this sort of ordered like
communication like matrix I guess we could call it, where
like animals can almost communicate with each other, but it's
going to be something that's going to completely elude other species.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Right, Yeah, to the idea of a hidden conspiracy of communication. Look,
Pheromones also exist in some fungi algaie sly modes. They
exist in or algae, I should say, for notoriously great
communicators in other towards notoriously and fantastic communicators, and pheromones
play a big part in that as we define them.
(14:42):
So this stuff is real, it's going to be invisible
to the human eye. Going back, I want to spend
some time on ants, because you won't walk by a
trail of ants invading your house, chasing a errant milk
dyed and see some sort of glowing purple trail pulse
full of ant pheromones. But they do use these specific
(15:04):
scent chemicals to guide other ants to food. Termites and
ants in particular are world famous for the complexity of
their pheromonic systems.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Pheromonic a word I think I made up.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
It doesn't I think it did good. If it doesn't exist,
it should and it does.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Now Welcome to English. We're all still learning it. But
these little guys, they have libraries worth of chemicals that
are used to communicate and coordinate movements of their their
massive colonies. You know. So there's an interesting note. I'm
sure we've all heard this. Did you guys hear that
some people are convinced they can smell ants just the
(15:44):
presence of ants?
Speaker 4 (15:46):
No, I haven't heard anybody claim that one.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I guess. I mean we move in different circles outside us.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yeah, but you out with the ant people over here, that's.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
A weird one. I'm still not sure how to how
to Elon took word rock for me parse. That's a
great save. So humanity still doesn't know fully how pheromone
science works across the board. Instead, humans know how some
pheromones work in some creatures. But we can even with this,
(16:19):
we can see some astonishing commonalities. So maybe we talked
about this and stay with the ant example for a moment.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Yes, let's so first, using chemicals to communicate is a
super like evolutionarily advanced sense. I mean, you know, if
we haven't indicated this already, we're pretty impressed by this
ability in the animal kingdom alone. In some environments, like
with birds for example, we're talking about visual or auditory
(16:47):
signals might not be as efficient, you know, because densely
you know, vegetated areas for example, not good line of sight.
A lot of insects are very very small and they're
not exactly seeing the other insects. So why not find
a scented way of communicating time speaking to the great
(17:07):
creator here, just go for that. That'd be a good one.
Imagine if those hypothetical ants that you're talking about. Ben
just were like yelling at each other instead of there's
too many of them. It's just not practical.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Hey, guys, there's a milk dot. Guys again said there's
a milk dot.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
You just.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
I think makes the joke for sure, something along those lines,
not the milk dve thing, but.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
It's that way over there. Yeah, So that's a really
I love that because you know you're you're signaling in
this case. Permones are being used to communicate in this
way like a U generally a positive thing, right, but
we also like.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
A hobo code or something.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Sure, we're handling gretel bread problems of smell.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh exactly, but we we just the creepy thing here,
I think is that that can be turned on its
head by another species, like a predator species, like this
exact thing that you're trying to communicate through these these smells,
these sense whatever we're gonna call these pheromone chemicals. Do
you guys know about the American female bullus spider?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Ooh do tell?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Okay, Okay, this freaked me out because it weaponizes this
ability that some creatures have. Female American bullus spiders do
this crazy thing where they don't create a web or
something like that you would see generally, at least here
in the Georgia area. They don't create one of those
little cave things, you know, like a trapdoor, spider wood
(18:34):
or something like that.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
They make spider hole.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
They make a tiny little trapez like web, and then
they hang down from that web and they spin up
a bunch of silk and this substance that's kind of
like glue. It's very akin to like super glue or something.
They spin up a what they call a bullus. It
looks like a little water droplet. Yeah, And then they
basically have that hanging down from one of their appendages,
(19:00):
one of their eight legs, and fishing pole. They call
them fishing spiders. And what they do is they emit
the pheromones or chemicals that mimic the pheromones of specific moths,
specifically briskly cutworm moths. Like the females and the males
(19:20):
are attracted to their body where the spider is the body.
And then they use their little fishing pole thing. They
fling it at the male moths catch them and all
the silk that's attached inside their kind of unravels around
the creature, the moth, and they reel it in like.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
A fishing credible. I mean, that is impressive.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
And let's also not forget that the most dangerous species
of all humans. I mean you always hear jokes almost,
but I think it is done about certain types of
animal musk being used to bait traps, things like to
attract the thing that you're after.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
It's a very yeah, it's a time tested thing, right,
even unto stuff like distributing deer scat right or deer
sent or bear scent. This is something that the non
human animals clocked and evolved way before the first primates
(20:14):
came down from the trees.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Oh dude, I've got one more example here, because we're
talking about how long ago it's been. Well, plants have
been around for quite a bit longer than many animal species.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
There is a specific species of orchid known as the
b orchid. Guess what this does, Guys, attracts bees. It
looks like a dang bee. Now, it's an orchid that
has cool It has the bottom part of it, it
looks like a bee, and then it emits mimicking alomones.
(20:47):
It's very much like again, pheromone chemicals that mimic specific
female bee pheromones, so that the males will come over
and attempt to mate with the orchid and grab all
that paul in and spread it all over the dank place.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
It doesn't this already happen though naturally with flowers, they're
just looking for an edge.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
This orchid needed.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
We want more, We need more attentions, so we're going
to look like a sexy.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
B What causes That's the big question, right? What pass
is that kind of change in a plant species to
where it is now creating the chemicals that it needs
to attract the pollinator?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I believe, yeah, similar similar to the many other cases
of symbiotic communication or interaction. Uh, there is specificity, right,
that's key. You can see it in the world of
parasites as well. Pheromones are a little less hopefully a
little less parasitical, but I love the point that they
can be, and have been and will be weaponized. And
(21:45):
that'll that'll apply further when we get to some stuff
that you alluded to briefly a few moments ago. So
we established that first. It's a great way to communicate
if you are not going to be relied on visual
or auditory or a signals. Second in our list of three,
pheromones can function as an alarm system. They're not all
(22:07):
created equal. A lot of danger pheromones are short lived
because you don't want to normalize it. If you're at
school and the fire alarm goes off every day, then
eventually you're gonna ignore the fire alarm. The boy who
cried wolf, et cetera. Third, pheromones definitely do play a
big role in predation, in attraction, in reproduction. They influence
(22:29):
the sexual development of insects, plants, as well as a
surprising bevy of mammals. Now, not to call anybody out,
but a lot of our a lot of us in
the audience tonight, are humans. So how does this apply
to me? We may be asking classic human question. This
brings us to the humble Homo sapien. It is no surprise,
(22:52):
right with all the proven science, even though it's I
guess you could say it's kind of recent in that
a lot of the best words has occurred in the
West in maybe less than a century. It's not surprising
that human scientists have instantly sought to understand what, if
any role pheromones play in the great human story. So,
(23:16):
for instance, can humans create chemicals that mark territory? Let's
put our p jokes here. I think it's still legal
to pee outside in Finland, by the way. I mean,
we've all seen maybe a dog mark in its territory, right,
there's a chemical reason they're doing that. They don't just
disrespect the proverbial fire hydrant. Can humans create something internally?
(23:40):
Can humans secrete something that inspires attraction and mates? Can
humans secrete a substance that warns their fellow humans and
human like things of danger. It's weird because for a
long long time modern science thought, yes, this applies to
all animals except for us. When it comes to humans,
all this pheromone talk is malarkey. It sounds good, but
(24:03):
it doesn't pass. Dylan, help me out here. The smell
test not walking them back.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
So if ever, we're inappropriate.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
So we've already got so many fantastic threads to pick
up right in our bull is here. However, we're in
a new age of this science. We are learning things
that may just upend everything humans assumed they knew about
the pharomone.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Well, hey, guys, why don't we take a quick pause here,
I think it's a good breaking point, and here a
word from our sponsor, and then come back into the
human experience of all of this.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, this is the
deep water. That's what this is. The headline is the following.
Pheromone research remains murky and controversial when we're talking about humans.
This dude to several a few of them are painfully obvious,
and a few are hilarious and surprising. First we gotten
(25:07):
for this one. Human adults have no functioning vomeroonasal organ
that's the little thigamagig that processes pheromone signals. So it
could be that people everyone you know, is a lot
like a one way radio broadcasting system, Like they talk
(25:28):
endlessly about themselves, but they never listen. They're they're sending
these chemical messages into the void, and people are walking
around exposed to those messages, yet they are bereft of
a receiver that would allow them to understand and react
to those signals. That's that's one of the popular theories.
(25:49):
Have you guys heard that one before.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, I mean that's just the science where we just
don't have that thing. So they're one of the interesting
pieces of research. Attempts at researching this stuff has been
trying to pair what could be those chemicals coming out
and then a scent that is not those chemicals, but
it is in some way related. Right, often focusing on
(26:12):
sweat and other excretions essentially that you can smell you
can't pick up those signals, and seeing if that can
actually be in some way connected to the actual pheromones
that are being released. It's like, if I smell that scent,
I know I'm getting hit with pheromones.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
I'd like to take a side note two on that point.
Humans have historically had a difficult time studying themselves. It
reminds me of our conversations with Wargey Cham across a
couple of different shows. That's one of the big reasons
there are so many mysteries about the human brain. It's
very difficult through methodology to ask a thing to study itself.
(26:52):
A second fact is hilarious. This is just brass tacks
of any scientific research that we're going to explore tonight.
When we're talking about finding human pheromones. One of the
big problems is that humans are living creatures, constantly creating things, factories,
big cities unto themselves. They're big universes unto themselves, which
(27:15):
means humans are smelly. One of the biggest challenges in
pheromone research this is a true story, is finding cleanliness
and baseline odorlessness in human participants, because that's not your
We're trying to create a control state that does not
naturally exist. The chemicals that produce smell in humans are
(27:38):
often natural, and they come from a panoply of biological
processes or processes if you want to put a tie
on it, things like diet, your health, your age, your
level of exercise, any medical condition. That might be a
story for another day. But a pheromone is an invisible
(27:59):
passing you're in this chemical mix. A smell itself is
not a pheromone. Maybe like a good metaphor for this, well,
we'll see what you guys think. Imagine an airplane, okay,
and let's think of the smell as the exhaust from
the engine right the contrail or chemtrail. If you're nasty,
that's the stuff you can consciously perceive. The plane itself
(28:23):
is an agglomeration of factors wind, sweat, skin flakes, fabric,
all the stuff that could carry that sensation to you,
the passengers on the plane, the folks riding the plane,
those are the chemicals you don't see. So scientists are
very much like detectives here. They're trying to figure out
who's on that plane.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, and they're trying to do it. I mean for science, right,
but also for commerce. Imagine if you could unlock the
things that make others become attracted, like we were talking
about on the very top, right, something you could weigh
that all of a sudden attracts mates or everybody. It
just it makes you the most important person in that room,
(29:07):
and it's done secretly and silently. Like you, guys, we've
all seen the fragrances that get pushed everywhere on Instagram
and other places that allegedly have pheromones.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Right, yes, yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Those things, those things are ubiquitous at this point, and
you can probably well, okay, you can make a lot
of money right now saying that you've got pheromones in
your products. Imagine if you actually did.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Right, Yeah, that's good. That's a good observation. I agree
with it because another a third problem here is we
see pheromones can do so many specific things and so
many other organisms terrifying and amazing accomplishments because there's so
many choices. It's the curse of the blank page for
the researcher. You have to kind of know what you're
(29:59):
looking for before you start searching, because again, the chemical
emissions are quite complex, so you could it's like, you know,
in a weird way. It reminds me of our earlier
episodes on the Vatican Secret Library, wherein there's so much
stuff in that library. You can maybe find the book
(30:20):
you want, but you have to know exactly what book
you want and what author, And that's why some of
the research into pheromones for humans can be so stymy. Also,
it's pretty narrow in scope being humans. Not to sound
too cynical, the scientists are largely focused on the possibility
(30:41):
of what we will call attraction pheromones. To the point
about the Colonne stuff or the perfume, it's the idea
of how can we how can we leverage this to
the advantage of reproduction.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Well, yeah, again, I think specifically because you can create
a product you can sell if it's got that in
that then people will buy it. A lot of this
comes from research on Oh gosh, I think they are
bores in Germany. The males of some of the boares
there in Germany produce and drostenone and in drostenol in
their saliva, and when they just happen, all they have
(31:18):
to do is breathe on a female that is in heat,
and the female, at least according to two studies, will
essentially assume a mating position when the right when the
to right things occur and that pheromone hits their senses,
which is, you know, again the kind of thing that
could be used in I don't want to see nefarious ways,
(31:41):
but in a way that would just be you would
see dollar signs in many people's eyes, I think.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Which will lead us to potential pitfalls.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Agreed.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Another aspect here in the difficulty of human pheromone research
is that unlike a lot of other mammals, bores for instance,
of course the common K nine man's best friend. Another
twist to the plot is that humans are highly dependent
upon visual cues less so consciously dependent upon olfactory cues.
(32:17):
So that's why if you're human and hearing this, most
of your in person interactions are going to lean more
heavily on visual stimuli than on spoken word. That's why
we get those old sayings like it's not what you
say about how you say it. Smell does matter in
close proximity. To be clear, please believe us, folks, it
(32:39):
is a very good thing that you cannot smell everyone
you see on a screen, or for that matter, spell
everyone you hear in a podcast. Got some nods, no laughs,
but we got some nods. I like a solemn agreement.
So we have to say it. And this is going
to ruffle some feathers perhaps, but as of this evening,
(33:02):
as of July eleventh, of beautiful Friday, when we're recording this,
there are no pheromonic substances that have ever been proven
to directly influence human behavior in a significant way in
a peer reviewed study. Lots of caveats to that, but
that's the current scientific consensus.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Well that and of course we don't have access to
whatever secret trials are happening on military basis right where
soldiers are being subjected to all kinds of stuff, because
we know what's happening, he says, kind of conspiratorially, but also.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, we're on the same page. That was one of
my first questions too, Right, if there was if there
was a true Gilroy Pheromone, as depicted in Ocean's thirteen.
Then why on earth would you allow the public to
have it? You would want it for you would want
it for weaponization purposes.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
So maybe they're really is one.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Perhaps they call it the Kissinger scent. Right, Yeah, everybody's
walked out of the meetings, say screw Southeast Asia. That
guy smells fantastic.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
Housinger Kissinger from.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
A rose shout out the seal.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
How else did that guy have such sway? I don't know.
Speaker 5 (34:21):
Man, demonic powers, powers and musk.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, I like the point about must science has uncovered
some critical insights that both inspired this episode and shows
us there's more to the story if we look at
some specific studies. Uh, there's one I think we all
saw back in twenty seventeens by It was led by
oh gosh, I'm trying to remember the name Lee Simmons. Yes,
(34:49):
Lee's Lee Simmons, L E. I. G. H. Is the
the person running point on the study. And what they
did was pretty interesting. They had people self identify as heterosexual.
They said, okay, we're going to show you a series
of opposite sex faces. So if you are a lady
(35:11):
and you're into dudes. We're going to show you some
pictures of dudes, and you give us the hot or
not rating, and the same, you know, vice versa with
male participants. And the trick was that they were asked
to rate these faces after being exposed to two steroids.
And this calls back to the earlier mention of the
(35:34):
measurements of swine. Right at this point in twenty seventeen,
these two related things, andros didnone or A and D
for the purposes of my terrible English and estra tetrinol
or eest for the purposes of terrible English. They said,
we're going to expose these people to these things because
(35:56):
we think they may be human pheromones. A and D
is found in male sweat and semen est is found
in female human urine. So the participants get exposed to this.
They're also asked to judge neutral faces. Right, twenty seventeen,
So we got the photoshop technology. These are images of
(36:17):
men and women blended together into a single gestaltic face.
And Science Magazine, I think, does a lovely job depicting
the mission of this study.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Right.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
So the authors kind of proposed that if the steroids
were pheromones, female volunteers given A and D would see
gender neutral faces as male, while male volunteers given EST
would see gender neutral faces as female. They also put
forth a theory that the steroids corresponding to the opposite
(36:55):
sex would lead the volunteers to rate opposite sex faces
as being better looking.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
And what did they find?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, how that workout? Yeah, per the leaders of the
study themselves, they found no measurable correlation. But it's important
to me. Yeah, I know, but it's important to note.
Lee Simmons, who we mentioned earlier, said, look, human pheromones
probably do exist. The issue is only that none of
(37:24):
them have been conclusively identified, and Simmons went on to
do more work in this field. By the way, we
kind of picked this study because it created a back
and forth, a proper discourse. Other scientists and experts in
the field are chiming in. They're raising questions about how
the study is conducted. And a lot of people were
(37:45):
green with Simmons and they were saying, these things do exist,
there is some mechanism at play. We just don't know
how to ask the right question, which means we don't
know how to really study it. Again, it's a big
library just like termites and ants. So we have to
figure out the specific book we're looking for.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Well, yeah, it's really interesting because in this case, you're
looking at you cold images of faces, and no matter
what those faces look like, they're ultimately just two dimensional
images on a screen. Right, And how do if those
are indeed pheromones, how would that just affect the visual
because as we said, we're highly visual creatures. Right, So
(38:28):
if you've got the I don't know. There's so many
variables at play there. If you actually had a human
we were talking about the cleanliness issue, right, if you
just had human bodies lined up that people were testing,
which has been done with specific pheromones being pumped into
a system, it would change things. But again, you would
have no way because the right question isn't there yet.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
M Yeah. Really it's the art of finding the right question,
isn't it. I love that point. We know there are
cific studies that everybody who is familiar with this UH
is probably waiting for us to mention there are things
that indicate some kind of hidden mechanism at play. Two
(39:13):
of the most well known cases we're all adults here
are ovulation and kid the not fellow conspiracy realist. The
study of tears like actual wah wah emotional tears.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
The study of tears should be like a goth band name.
I'm just putting that out there. Pretty good.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
That's pretty good, man. Hey, you're the one that's good.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Thanks pal. Actually I'm quite sad.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Actually, oh, don't be sad.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Well, let's still let's talk about it. We humans excrete
some things, and you know, some of the primary ones
are down below.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
We read all over the place.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Downstairs.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Excretion, Yes, the night.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
What do they call them? Emission?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Sure, sure, we sure, lots and lots of sweat across
our entire body. It's one of the cool technologies that
mammals figured out. Many mammals figured.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Out, super analog. I love it.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
It's dope. I'm getting a lot of that right now
on day twelve of my air conditioning being proken. But
like you know, it does cool stuff for us, right,
But tears are another thing that are specifically linked to
how one of us as an organism is doing, like
what's happening to us, how we're doing. It's a signal,
(40:34):
a visual signal for somebody else, right, for another one
of us organisms. But I wonder and you can see
like the minds of the scientists going, I wonder if
that substance being leaked out of the body could actually
trigger a pheromone of some sort.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
And it's also fair to ask, given the human eye,
given its proximity to hormone reproduction centers or hormone producing
centers and other like, it's in the neighborhood of the brain,
you know what I mean. It feels like a dumb question,
it's important to ask. We know that there are different
(41:12):
genres of tear. There's the there's stuck in my eye.
I've got a piece of glass in my eye. That
kind of tear. Oh, I got peppery well.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
And in those cases, the tear is designed to wash
the thing out of your eye or to like be
like a self correcting kind of little little feature, right,
and has a very different chemical composition as a result.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Interest, So an emotional tear is a whole different little
sippy sip of reactions.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
But it is interesting that it's a visual cue as
well as.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
A subs Yeah, and as as we know, tears have
a smell. I feel like I'm accidentally saying some creepy
things in this show.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
I think it's accidentally on purpose, if anything.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
But I don't know how about the smell tears. I
know there's the like wipe away tears especial if you
have a kid and it's well, yeah, I mean like
accidentally or just you know, kissing somebody who's really sad.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Sure there's a SALTI composition. Yeah, so we're This isn't
just our collection of opinions and anecdotes here, folks. There
was a fairly recent study in twenty twenty three led
by Shanni Agrin that got weird with it. They collected tears.
They got about two thirds of a cup each of
what they called, as you would say, emotional tears, and
(42:33):
these were triggered by emotional responses rather than just having
something in your eye. And they got these from a
small sample size of six female identifying people who also
self identified as easy criers. And then, okay, I'm the
ethics of this are interesting. Can someone describe what their
(42:55):
team found when they had the male volunteers literally smell
the tears.
Speaker 5 (43:00):
Smell the tears the new album by Spinal Tap. Yeah,
our Agron's team had mail volunteers snarfed the scent, as
you put it, then of those tears, and in doing so,
they found the parts of the male brain linking aggression
and smell lit right.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
On up and followed by a drop in testosterone levels.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
It just makes you, It jennels you up a little bit,
doesn't it. You know, it makes you a little cuddlier.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
And a drop in aggression by forty three point seven percent.
That's huge. And I just wonder if you guys have
you know, not to make it anecdotal, but if you
guys have ever been in that situation where you're upset
about something and someone you're upset with begins to cry,
All yeah, I feel that's that thing where everything switches
and you're now in protector mode, right.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
Which can also be weaponized by the way these you know,
by certain manipulating types. Let's just say crocodile tears. I
think they call them.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Yes, yes, God, I love English a fascinating language. The
further aspect here is that the team was able to
identify where this happened, where these chemicals right that they
were the male volunteers were interacting with when they were snarfing,
where they were hitting in that body, and there are
(44:22):
four specific olfactory receptors that latched on to this mystery
protein in those emotional tears. It appears there's something to this,
and I think maybe at this point we continue further
into the breach, because some of the most fundamental research
(44:44):
on the mystery of human pheromones comes not from tears,
not from colones, but from ovulation. What do you guys say,
should we take a break and then dive into this one?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, swim in an ocean of tears.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Of tears, and we have returned speaking of hidden mechanisms.
As we said, two of the most well known, scientifically
fascinating genres of exploration here are tears and ovulation. In fact,
(45:22):
one of the first and most famous modern attempts to
prove that human pheromones exist come to us from an
absolute powerhouse researcher Martha McClintock. In the nineteen sixties. McClintock
is a student at Wesley College and she notices something
strange the semester starts. She's got door mates, of course,
(45:45):
and this is a place where all the people in
the dorm are women. She notices they have different menstrual cycles.
At the start of the semester. You fast forward toward
the end of the semester three four months and their
menstrue cycles have appeared to sync up, as if by magic.
Why how does that happen? And I think a lot
(46:07):
of us in the crowd tonight have experienced that firsthand.
Have you guys ever heard about this phenomena.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
I've not witnessed this phenomenon personally, but I certainly have
heard you know, myths around it, and I do wonder
if it is sort of like some of those lunar
sinking things that get talked about, if like is a
real phenomenon, or if it is maybe a little circumstantial.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I would just say I've seen this kind of thing
happen before, even on family trips and stuff, when there
are a lot of women in the house and is
a longer period of time, and then strangely enough, the
cycles move forward or backward and then they get really
close to each other. And again that's an anecdote, but
it's just kind of what I've seen well, And in
this case, we're talking about the all of the women
(46:51):
together experiencing I don't know, a cycle shift and synchronization.
What does it have to do with pair moost? Do
we think that the pheromones of someone who is entering
a specific part of like going into ovulation, would then
trigger other females around them to also go into ovulation.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
That's a question, right, because correlation does not equate to causation.
But this is a good branch of inquiry, right. All
scientists are again essentially detectives, and mcclin block is raising
some of the same questions. We have. What's happening, Let's
look for clues. We have people who are all experiencing
(47:32):
at this point a menstrual cycle. Yeah. One, but they're
all in close proximity because they live together. Two, which
means they're exposed to all those things that you're exposed
to when you hang out with other people, skin flakes, sweat,
you know, urine smells, things like that. So to your
question that could there be something that is interacting some process?
(47:57):
She is already in the nineteen sixties, of course, as
a scientists, she's already well aware of the concept of
pheromones and non human animals. So she says, what else
could explain this? Right? Could it be some like gravitational
effect of the moon? She likes pheromones for it. She says,
there's got to be something, and she continues this work
(48:18):
for decades and decades. Her initial findings are technically still
a subject of debate, but it launched a global search
for answers. It's a search that continues today. There's a
great professor named Lei Shing Sun who wrote for Psychology
Today a while back and said the following quote. Plenty
(48:39):
of other studies have struggled to replicate but Clintox findings.
Critics have pointed fingers at everything from statistical slip ups
to pure chance, and just like that, the groundbreaking first
evidence of human pheromones starts to look shaky. Now we
are Leafolk, We are not the boffins in this field
of expertise. But I don't know, man. It's like that
(49:02):
old question with a true crime investigation, what's the threshold
of circumstance? How much circumstantial evidence can accrete before it
looks a lot like proof of something?
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, or excrete perhaps?
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Yes? Sorry, well the horse secrete?
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Yes? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
I would say mental cycles are such an interesting thing
to study when when I'm thinking about it compared to
the tears study, because the way our society has for
a long time and continues to kind of hide the
menstrual cycle, right.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Verified of it and shame shame people for it.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, exactly, But but it's just such a hidden thing
in the world and in culture, and when you're walking
around and existing in the world, anyone who's experiencing a
mental cycle and anyone who's not experiencing it, it just
doesn't exist at least visually unless you know, you see
like generally the trash or you know, if you're cleaning
bathrooms and things like that, you're never even going to
(49:59):
encounter it, or maybe doing laundry or something. But I'm
just it's an interesting thing to study because it wouldn't
have the same visual cues that crying would associated with
and attached to it. So if there is something happening,
I would say it's much more likely that there's some
unseen central pheromon pheromonal thing at play.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Also, and this is with respect to our non binary friends.
What makes ovulation scientifically fascinating is that in this particular study,
it removes males from the equation right there. There's not
a study that mcclint locke has at this point where
she's asking, what if we have ten dudes living in
(50:42):
that same dorm, how does that affect things? So there
are a lot of questions, Well, we're seeing appears to
be a natural phenomenon, and please conspiracy realist right to
us about this, and it seems that it it occurs
fairly consistent. That's the one big thing. Like a lot
(51:03):
of us in the crowd to night have experienced this
phenomenon measured in this study, or you've got your own
experiences with it firsthand, or you've heard about it, and
the question is why and how does that mechanism exist.
I think it's it's fascinating because, oh gosh, like twenty
(51:26):
seven years after her initial study, mcclintlock has another groundbreaking
study where she says, I've found that small amounts of
these different chemicals, these different protein structures do have some
sort of effect on human behavior. The question then becomes
(51:46):
what effect, why? How long does it last? So I
know a lot of us go into these kind of
things skeptical, and there's a reason for that. But the
art of skepticism is admitting when something does appear to
have sand right, not just zealously saying no, I don't
(52:08):
like it, poopy doupe, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw
I saw a TikTok Reel or whatever the hell they
call him of like really bad freestyle wrap battles, And
there was this unfortunate young lady that said something to
the effect of doop de poop or something like that.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
Remember when Kanye did a poopy doop thing? Sorry, I
got you rail there. Big Friday energy, y'all.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Yeah, yeah, Big Friday Energy. Now I'm gonna have to
look that up.
Speaker 4 (52:42):
I'll try to find it. It was really funny.
Speaker 5 (52:44):
At one point, she makes a really bad rhyme involving
the discovery of DNA and.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
The double helix and the double helix. I remember there
was this is so unrelated, but no, I remember distinctly.
In my battle wrap days, we used to boo people
who thought the smartest thing you could say in a
battle was super califragilistic xpialidocious, just because it has a
(53:10):
lot of syllables in it.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Super califragilistic xp atrocious.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, super califragilistic extra urindoses for the science in there.
Just pan track.
Speaker 4 (53:25):
I found this.
Speaker 5 (53:26):
She says, whooped de do do you got?
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Well?
Speaker 4 (53:31):
You got to see the delivery.
Speaker 5 (53:33):
She's also wearing like a kind of a reppropriated childlike
Native American headdress all.
Speaker 4 (53:39):
The time and as very white.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Okay, all right, well I'll send it along for.
Speaker 4 (53:46):
Yeah, on your behalf.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
I need to see the visual cues I guess they'd say,
and how it's being said. Okay, all right, So anyway,
look here we find the potential armpit falls. We could
call them of pheromone science and humans. There's a lot enough. Hey, hey,
we serve at the pleasure of the language. Yeah, there's
(54:09):
a lot of quackery afoot a pit about a boot.
Some of it is by well intentioned, if misguided people,
and some of it is sold as a grift by
straight up charlatan's who are in love with your money
and think you should break up with your money. So
we should look at some potential missteps. I didn't know
(54:31):
this until checking out an excellent Skeptoid episode from last year.
We don't always get along with the skeptoid folks for
a number of reasons, but in twenty twenty four they
had an episode on pet pheromone products. I heard of
callman sprays, yeah, but I hadn't heard of straight up
(54:52):
pet pheromone products. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
To what end I guess is my question.
Speaker 5 (54:55):
I don't know about this, this particular niche either.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
You guys a as cat owners, you need to learn
about this.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
They do.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
You've seen those little fragrance things that you can plug
into your wall, like glade plugins or whatever they're called.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
I have tons of them to get rid of the
cat piece men.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Well, there are specific ones that you can buy, and
I've had them in my home before that give off
allegedly some kind of calming cat pheromone sense thing that
makes cats more chill and not afraid.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
I need this.
Speaker 5 (55:29):
I'm looking it up right now for Amazon Prime Day.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
It's always Amazon Prime, it's always lobster Fest, it's always Halloween.
Speaker 4 (55:38):
And cat pheromone diffusers.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
So these pet pheromone products, as Skeptoid notes, they claim
to solve every imaginal problem archie, anxiety, angression, poopy pee.
Speaker 4 (55:53):
So you're saying they don't work because I just ordered something.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Yeah. The thing is there's no real oversight on these
claims for these products as applied to non human or
indeed to human animals. This is not saying this is
so important we have to say this on air. This
is not saying they automatically cannot work. This is saying
there is no regulatory mechanism to ensure that they do work.
(56:20):
And I personally, I imagine the placebo effect is a
play in at least some of these cases, meaning that
in the case of pet pheromone products, the owner unconsciously
changes their behavior which reflects upon the behavior of their pets.
Speaker 4 (56:35):
Whatever it takes, man.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Right, And I mean, secondly, I agree with you al
And secondly, probably more important for the humans here listening tonight,
it's going to be human pheromone products. Similar to the
pet situation. This stuff purports the change behavior of living
humans around you, but in this case, the emphasis is
(56:58):
not on changing how people poop. It's on sex. Baby,
That's that's what the humans.
Speaker 4 (57:04):
Finally, we're getting to the sex panther.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, what if you could walk
into a social situation and like the club, perhaps the club,
and and just you know, people are immediately attracted you.
We've been talking about the whole show. I did, guys,
bring I bought. I purchased three different colognes here that
are allegedly pheromone colognes. They're titled Raw, Vigor, and Midnight.
(57:29):
I've tested them all out on humans and just myself
and my dog. She was not interested whatsoever in just
the smells. But then humans did find that they smelled
like cologne better than just my you know, sweaty self.
So well, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (57:48):
But did they instantly want to make sweet love to you?
Speaker 2 (57:51):
Well not really, I would have to say that. Unfortunately.
Well I don't think so, because my question is like.
Speaker 5 (57:57):
If what are these claims and to your point then
about the pet stuff, is there FDA oversight of these
claims of human pheromonals and where the hell are they.
Speaker 4 (58:06):
Getting them from? Who are they extracting these from?
Speaker 6 (58:10):
This is all off by children, so this is uh yeah, sorry,
I'll just seeing that this is all off my favorite
new album.
Speaker 3 (58:20):
Yes, you're you're right. It's a great question. There is
absolutely no regulatory or medical oversight to the purported efficacy
of these claims because the science isn't there at all.
So you could you could say that maybe we sound
(58:40):
like we're woop deepooh poohing the idea of that coding
yourself in these substances, we'll make other people find you
more attractive, more interesting, more captivating, or dryly put spray
this junk on you appear to be a more advantageous
candidate for reproduction.
Speaker 5 (58:57):
Well spray made those claims too, Oh sure, Like in
the back in the day, that was a big selling
point of the axe body spray.
Speaker 3 (59:06):
Some of the old Pheromone clone actually openly advertised that
add thoroughbred horse sweat and stuff like that, Matt, do
you want to do you have the active ingredients for?
Let's go with maybe Midnight or raw?
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Uh Raw is made with real bits of panther, so
you know it's good, just kidding. Raw doesn't say anything
about what's inside mysterious. Well, the name is the ingredient. Yeah,
maybe so perhaps you know they it could have regular
stuff that you'd find on the what is it the
(59:39):
scent wheel or whatever the heck that thing is that
you can look at, which is really cool actually, And
what are the notes, Matt? Where are the notes? The
fragrance wheel, that's what it's called. I don't know what
the notes are. I couldn't tell you. It smells weird
to me, very musky, all of these do?
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Musquite?
Speaker 4 (59:58):
Are you all familiar with a novel that I believe
was called Perfume?
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Yes, I Love? Recommended to me by Matt Riddle for
end of the show.
Speaker 5 (01:00:07):
Yeah, there's a film version of it that I think
is quite good from the director of Run Lola Run.
And it's about a perfume mia or whatever who can't smell.
And it's sort of like the whole point of it
is he's like this Beethoven type figure.
Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
Who was it a Beethoven who went deaf?
Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
Anyway, the idea is his medium that he is so
passionate about is the thing that he cannot himself experience
and he becomes in the in the course of the
of the story, uh, insane.
Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
In a serial killer type.
Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
And it's the guy that plays him in the movie
is the voice of Paddington, who I really like a
lot whose name is Escaping Me. But there's a Nirvana
song based on this work the book called Scentless Apprentice,
which I've always thought was very striking name. So yeah,
check out Perfume. It's interesting kind of rumination on a
lot of these things. It goes into this idea of
(01:00:59):
a traction and where all these things come from.
Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
Yeah, Matt Riddle, I don't know if you listen to
the show, but thank you again for recommending that book.
I actually I reread it. Yeah, this is and shout
out to Dylan too for the Nirvada recommendation here in
the chat that you mentioned as well. Nol, I think
you've got some parallel thinking. Here's the question, is this
all a cynical grift? Does any of this work? We're
(01:01:24):
gonna ask that question because a lot of us in
the audience tonight might be too embarrassed to ask aloud,
right because your friends and your peer group and your
cohort will naturally say, why are you so interested, creepy dudes?
Here's the answer, record scratch. If we could get one
of those tennessee perfect, thank you, record scratch. Yes, sometimes
(01:01:45):
it does work caveat asterisk. Probably not for the reasons
listed on the label. And if you buy someone with labels,
there's no arguing that people have tried this stuff countless times,
and you can find all these anecdotes of them saying
in testimony from their own reports that they experienced measurable results. Why.
(01:02:09):
That's why we had to hammer hard on the pet
pheromone thing.
Speaker 6 (01:02:13):
The elephant in the nose here is the placebo effect.
If you believe that you have access to something that
gives you an edge, that it can cause you to
behave differently, to be more extroverted, right to exhibit body
language chest confidence, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Chin up, which is a diminishing perturn. If you've ever
seen someone with their gin too high and their chest
do out anyway, it looks odd, does look odd, it
looks weird. I guess it looks confident. But these might
be little infintesimal adjustments, but they do add up. And
(01:02:50):
as another recent study argues, confidence plus extraversion or two
of the main six factors, and what people across the
lobe considered cool. That's a fun study too. So maybe
you apply this substance worse sweat after dark or whatever,
and you are now incentivized you feel better about yourself,
(01:03:14):
like you just had a new haircut, and you were
also further going to test it to see if you've
got your money's worth. So now you're more likely to
seek out new company to boldly explore whether or not
you got grifted right. And that means you're going to
be more likely to speak to people that you may
not have spoken with earlier, or you are more likely
(01:03:35):
to engage more deeply in an interaction. You know what
I mean. I think that's that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 5 (01:03:45):
Yeah, what do you say, Ben Colonne is something to
be discovered, not an ounce announce. I go for the
minorist of sprints. I kind of spray it in the
air and then waft my hand through it, as opposed
to spring it directly on my body.
Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
That's the way it's happened, right, And we know through
the science of scent that it works with your scent,
whatever that thing is that you're spraying on you to
create whatever somebody experiences from the outside.
Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Right. I do love the note about smell because, as
we said at the top, this is one of, if
not the primary, encoder of relived experience in the human
brain what we'll call memory. And we don't have the
time to do it tonight. Maybe we can do it later,
but right now, for example, if I named a smell
and we really took the time to describe it, then
(01:04:34):
we in the audience would be transported back to us.
It would trigger you toward a series of specific memories
and images, and those in turn would trigger emotive responses,
and it would trigger a primed state based on your
experience of those memories, which is why longtime romantic partners
like each other's smells. This is why, this is part
(01:04:57):
of why businesses and casinos and stores will pipe in
artificial smells to prime you, to put you in that
cognitive place, to trigger a potential purpose.
Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
There's just this I'm imagining a place like that is
pumping in smells like that, right, but it's specifically actual
pheromones or something. Just everybody walks into that store, just in.
Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
A bang room.
Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
Yeah, got a problem, oh dear, Well, you know it's interesting.
Speaker 5 (01:05:24):
I mean, you're talking about the emotional connections and the
sense memory of smell. It is another fun thought experiment
where if you were to quote unquote describe a smell,
could you do it without describing other smells?
Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
Like at a.
Speaker 5 (01:05:37):
Certain point, you would need to do it from a
completely emotional uh perspective, which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
I think you could pull it off. This is one
of those great writing experiments to know, because I know
you can pull it off through hacking other sensory inputs.
Touch specific words will conjure the smell without necessarily referring
to the smell. A more difficult version of that is,
(01:06:06):
how do we describe a color exactly? You know? Right?
So it's really fun and it'll help you become a
better writer for any writers in the audience.
Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
And that's why Perfume is such a fascinating read and watch,
because it deals with a lot of these themes that
we're talking. I mean, it's dark, by the way, Like
like I mentioned, I hope I made that clear.
Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
It's not a heroic main character. Nah, it's a bad dude.
But it is a very interesting dissection of like some
of these senses and the way they connect to emotion
and memory.
Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
And there's so so much more to the story here.
Pheromones are by any measure, non human animals and human
animals alike. This is an evolutionary conspiracy. The real question
then becomes our humans knowingly or not somehow in on
the game. It could be that our human friends don't
omit or react to pheromones quite the same way that
(01:07:00):
other creatures do. Or maybe not all humans are equal
in their transmission or ability to receive these chemical signals.
Maybe it's largely vestigial, you know, like your gallbladder.
Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
Aheah, yeah yeah, tonsils are wisdom, teeth.
Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Yeah yeah, or tails right right, right right. We'd love
to hear your experiences with this. If you're a scientist
in pheromones or related fields, we'd love for you to
write to us. Maybe the one thing to take away
I don't know. I think the one thing to take
it away here for anybody who is traveling the haphazard
roads of romance and love, hygiene clean yourself like. Hygiene
(01:07:41):
is by all accounts, even more important than confidence when
it comes to human to human attraction.
Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
No question it.
Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Or maybe don't clean yourself a little bit, Maybe work
out a little bit, work up.
Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
A sweat, yeah, and then take that shower because it.
Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Feels so good, and then work up a sweat again
because we got we got to use the sweat as
maybe pheromones.
Speaker 4 (01:08:05):
And then shower again.
Speaker 5 (01:08:07):
Guys, I'm sorry, Matt, I think we're we're operating on
counter purposes.
Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Well is the attracting question. Yeah, Hygiene's not necessarily smell.
Hygiene's also I mean, clean your breath right, clean your
mouth if you can. A hygiene is much more than that.
You can find various reports from any side of the
romantic spectrum that says confidence is great, but also showing
you can take care of yourself is phenomenal and Unfortunately
(01:08:36):
a lot of people find that to be somewhat an
extraordinary concept. Anyway, we got your back, fellow conspiracy realists.
Good luck out there. We would say break a leg,
but come on, in this economy, tell us your thoughts.
Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
You can afford it.
Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Yeah, you could always write to us, give us a call.
If you sip those social medis, you can find us
on the lines.
Speaker 5 (01:08:58):
Find us of the handle conspiracy stuff. We exist on
Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy,
on x FKA, Twitter, and on YouTube with video content
glor for perusing enjoyment on Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy
stuff show and there's more.
Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Yes, we have a phone number. It is one eight
three three st d WYTK. When you call in, give
yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we
can use your name and message on the air. If
you'd like to send us an email.
Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence.
We receive the spell it be well aware, yet unafraid.
Sometimes the void writes back when nothing else subsists from
the past, after the people are dead, after the things
are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things
remain poised a long time, like souls conspiracy at iHeartRadio
(01:09:46):
dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. In a message from
us to everyone listening, baby, you smell.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Sex man, there going to be there right there.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
We can smell you through the phone.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Right through the miracle of modern technology, in the right circumstances.
Who doesn't love to hear that? First off, don't call hr.
I'm not hitting on anybody, it's.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Just you're hanging on the whole audience.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I think it's I think it's a great reference, and
I hope it gave everyone a chuckle. Nol. I love
the sex panther reference. I know it gave you a
laugh and Dylan, I can I could picture you giggling
a little bit. Hopefully.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
They say it's like a dirty diaper full of Indian food.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Or something like, Ryan, I'm gonna be honest with you,
that smells like pure gasoline.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I feel like that's also a send up of Droquar Noir,
one of the most divisive colognes, is it. It's divisive, man,
I didn't know that like it. People who dislike it
capital d dislike it.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
I think I maybe mentioned that I've become a bit
of a cologne guy, and I have a little little
boudoir collection of colognes, and I do not own Drucar Noir.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
You and I both bought a cologne while we were
on the road.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I bought it correctly, Yeah, but I about the same
one as Yeah, I bought a couple of sense.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Like Aviator Navigator Navigator.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, you were super close. We we also. I don't
know if this has happened to anyone else, but if
you were in a long relationship, have you ever kept
an article of clothing from a loved one, like their
shirt or something like that for the smell?
Speaker 4 (02:23):
No, just me all right, hey, listen, no judgment in
the air. Brother. Ah.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
Yeah, Usually it's after a it's after a breakup, though,
and it's a piece of clothing they've left behind, and
it just makes you.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Sad, Yeah, because you're like your positive version of this.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, there's a version where it's like a more long
distance thing and you just want to have the scent
of that person around you when possible. Yeah, I think
that's the that's the way I've encountered that situation.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
In Japan, you can buy them from vending machines.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh no longer, God damn, we could talk about it. Yeah, yeah,
sorry creepy people, But but zur real l for creepy
people the world over, or at least I think we're
starting with this because it tells us just that little
anecdote of the ways in which smell can influence the
(03:17):
human life. It is the Yeah, it's the number one
encoder of memory in the humans. A single scent can,
like Helen of Troy, launch a thousand memories. And we
may indeed do an experiment with this if you'd like
to play along at home in tonight's episode or series.
We're not sure. But what if there's something more play
(03:39):
to smell? What if there's an invisible communication system, a
conspiratorial agglomeration of chemicals that influences and unconsciously pushes human behavior.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
What if, indeed and what if our bodies were just
designed to have this thing that we are not consciously
aware of constantly excreting.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
And do we still have it? Are we still in
the game.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Why don't we take a quick break here a tiny
word from our sponsor. We'll come back and jump right
into this pretty exciting, smelly topic.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Here are the facts, all right. They're called pheromones. Are
they real? Headline is, yes, pheromones are real. They're often
misrepresented or misunderstood. We were talking about Dan Harmon's It
can be so mad at us for complimenting a heist film,
but you guys remember Ocean's Thirteen.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
We were talking about the heist film Dan Harmon, be
damned if you ask me, absolutely, I'm the bag man.
That's all that matters. And Ocean's Thirteen was kind of
a banger. They're a fun they're fun series of movies,
a bit.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Of a romp.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
The Pick of Destiny, one of the finest films ever created,
is a heist film.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
I mean, make a movie is already kind of a
heist on a studio? Sure, yeah, So therefore is not
any film at some level of heist even well, sometimes
the studios or the heisters. Anyway. In Ocean's thirteen, there
is something called the Gilroy pheromone, and it's deployed in
(05:19):
the film as though it's a known grift, right, And
the idea is you can take a patch, a dermal
patch similar to like a Nicktine patch or something, and
you can put it just below your jawline where it
touches your circulatory system, and it will emit a pheromone
that makes one absolutely the sexiest person in the room.
(05:45):
That's not true, and actually it's a shout out. The
reason they're calling it Gilroy is because it's a shout
out to the longtime screenwriter of the Jason Bourne franchise. Anyway,
that doesn't matter. That's for a different show. Point. Is
it's calling to mind the idea of pheromones and pheromones.
(06:07):
They're often misrepresented. Right as we said, it's really a
group term for any internally produced or endogenous chemical that
is made and somehow emitted in small amounts by one
organism to inspire a specific reaction from another organism in
(06:29):
that same species.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yep, you can see it in all kinds of creatures
like ants, spiders, pigs, flowers, all kinds of creatures across
this entire planet, and it appears that maybe humans are
one of those organisms.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
And the study of pheromones can be traced back to
relatively recent human history, the early eighteen hundreds. There's this
French naturalist name is Jean Henri Fabre. He discovers that
he's really into moths. Our buddy Jean, and he says, look,
(07:09):
I can take a female emperor moth. It can attract
for reasons I don't understand, says Jean, a dozens of
male moths given some ambiguous set of circumstances. And he says, further,
even if I put this female emperor moth in a
cage and I kind of cover the poor girl up,
(07:31):
male moths can still fly exactly toward it with high accuracy,
with like daredevil level accuracy. What's happening? He doesn't know.
He doesn't have a word for it yet. He's just like,
this is nuts. Science is crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
But it was cool because you know, like any scientists
easy has that hypothesis. Well, it's unseen. I can't detect it,
so perhaps it is a scent of some kind m hm.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Right, which is a reasonable assumption or reason question to
pose fast forward nineteen fifty nine. This is where we
get the term pheromone. A guy named Peter Carlson teams
up with a guy named Martin Lusher, not Luther, and
there are two researchers at the Max Blank Institute for
Biochemistry in Munich, and they say, Okay, we know that
(08:20):
some animals emit some kind of cloud that is largely
invisible to humans most times. And some of these animals
that emit these clouds of molecules, the cloud composition is
different from the clouds that are emitted by other animals.
(08:41):
Something about some of these emissions influences other organisms, and
not every lifeform may use these chemicals to the same effect,
not every life worm may distribute them in the same way.
At this point, Carlson and Lucier primarily talking about to
sort of here's one for the vets in the crowd,
(09:03):
both veterans and veterinarians, a sort of spray and prayse strategy.
And they're just like spray that musk, Yeah, just flying
around like a like a freshman in college who just
found out about axe body spray.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
They're just you ever heard the term like people talking
about like an animal that like sprays, you know, Like,
isn't that a thing like dogs do cats will Skunks
certainly do it, but I believe cats do it. You've
heard people talk about cats spraying. It's not the same
as peeing though, right, No.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Not quite, because it's meant to exhibit some of these
same things we're talking Other animals have different deployment strategies.
They're much more strategic. They store up their special weird chemicals,
their bio weaponry or biocommunication devices, and then they pick
(09:56):
a specific spot and then instead of all around the room,
they poop poop in these in these strategically located areas well.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, sense, if you think about a line of ants
when you're looking at you know that occurring. It's not
because the ants are following the next ant in front
of them necessarily, which can be helpful, you know, to
have a visual line. But often it's these sense that
we're talking about that they leave behind and they create
trails so that other ants can know where to go,
(10:29):
like to head home or to go to find food.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, and we need an important point of differentiation here.
A pheromone is different from a hormone. There's a venn diagram,
and it's really about the application and deployment. So both
pheromone and hormone are group words for signaling molecules. They're
(10:54):
mostly made of proteins, but hormones in any living thing
are defined by how they act within and upon the
creature itself. Pheromones act outside of the body and are
meant to alter or influence the behavior of another organism,
a separate thing outside of the you almost always in
(11:19):
the same species.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It's weird because they have their different kinds too. Within that,
there are releaser pheromones that have like that fast acting
effect on things, and then primer pheromones that are slow
paced and have more to do with behavior and development,
especially in young or you know, creatures. Whatever the young
is of, usually a female who is releasing the pheromones.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Right, and there are alarm pheromones, and then, of course
a great interest to the humans the ones that may
influence reproduction and attractiveness for the ed of iramones and
chiramones as well the the etymology nerds in the crowd.
I think we'll enjoy the way these guys came up
(12:05):
with the term pheromone from the Greek word pharren to
bear or to transport, and from the word hormone to
stimulate or to excite our pals. Nathan Chandler and Nicholas Gervis,
writing for Our Old Alma Matter how Stuff Works, put
it this way. Pheromones are a chemical way for creatures
to quote, transfer excitement from one to the other. They're
(12:28):
everywhere earlier just mentioned insects, A lot of vertebrates. Mammals
are not immune to this. They're present incrustations. This is
of interest, I think to all of us. Birds don't
seem to be in on the game.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
That's a good point. They don't.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
They poop on things, but they don't really Huh, why
is that they don't have the glands phomones.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
I mean, we could, as we'll see, we can maybe
conclude it's because of narrow scoped research.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Maybe we just don't know.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Why do a lot of mating rituals, A lot of
movement based attractions, very elaborate dances and things like that.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, Well they're these things that thanks
to Size Show, which is a show on YouTube that
we used to check out a lot, at least back
when we were making videos and stuff. They they put
out a video in twenty sixteen called how Pheromones effect
who were attracted to and in there they specifically are
talking about organs that are not present in humans and
(13:32):
that are not present in a lot of different animals
that can specifically pick up pheromones. So the specific signaling molecules,
chemicals that are not something that we would pick up
through our nasal passages and our olfactory senses. That's nasal
organ yes, correct. So like the fact that if you've
(13:54):
got some animals that don't have that thing, that specific organ,
they're probably not going to be making use of this,
or you could even tell if another creature in their
species was making use of it, which.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Is interesting because it implies this sort of ordered like
communication like matrix I guess we could call it, where
like animals can almost communicate with each other, but it's
going to be something that's going to completely elude other species.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Right, Yeah, to the idea of a hidden conspiracy of communication. Look,
Pheromones also exist in some fungi algaie sly modes. They
exist in or algae, I should say, for notoriously great
communicators in other towards notoriously and fantastic communicators, and pheromones
play a big part in that as we define them.
(14:42):
So this stuff is real, it's going to be invisible
to the human eye. Going back, I want to spend
some time on ants, because you won't walk by a
trail of ants invading your house, chasing a errant milk
dyed and see some sort of glowing purple trail pulse
full of ant pheromones. But they do use these specific
(15:04):
scent chemicals to guide other ants to food. Termites and
ants in particular are world famous for the complexity of
their pheromonic systems.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Pheromonic a word I think I made up.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
It doesn't I think it did good. If it doesn't exist,
it should and it does.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Now Welcome to English. We're all still learning it. But
these little guys, they have libraries worth of chemicals that
are used to communicate and coordinate movements of their their
massive colonies. You know. So there's an interesting note. I'm
sure we've all heard this. Did you guys hear that
some people are convinced they can smell ants just the
(15:44):
presence of ants?
Speaker 4 (15:46):
No, I haven't heard anybody claim that one.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I guess. I mean we move in different circles outside us.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yeah, but you out with the ant people over here, that's.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
A weird one. I'm still not sure how to how
to Elon took word rock for me parse. That's a
great save. So humanity still doesn't know fully how pheromone
science works across the board. Instead, humans know how some
pheromones work in some creatures. But we can even with this,
(16:19):
we can see some astonishing commonalities. So maybe we talked
about this and stay with the ant example for a moment.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
Yes, let's so first, using chemicals to communicate is a
super like evolutionarily advanced sense. I mean, you know, if
we haven't indicated this already, we're pretty impressed by this
ability in the animal kingdom alone. In some environments, like
with birds for example, we're talking about visual or auditory
(16:47):
signals might not be as efficient, you know, because densely
you know, vegetated areas for example, not good line of sight.
A lot of insects are very very small and they're
not exactly seeing the other insects. So why not find
a scented way of communicating time speaking to the great
(17:07):
creator here, just go for that. That'd be a good one.
Imagine if those hypothetical ants that you're talking about. Ben
just were like yelling at each other instead of there's
too many of them. It's just not practical.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Hey, guys, there's a milk dot. Guys again said there's
a milk dot.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
You just.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
I think makes the joke for sure, something along those lines,
not the milk dve thing, but.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
It's that way over there. Yeah, So that's a really
I love that because you know you're you're signaling in
this case. Permones are being used to communicate in this
way like a U generally a positive thing, right, but
we also like.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
A hobo code or something.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Sure, we're handling gretel bread problems of smell.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh exactly, but we we just the creepy thing here,
I think is that that can be turned on its
head by another species, like a predator species, like this
exact thing that you're trying to communicate through these these smells,
these sense whatever we're gonna call these pheromone chemicals. Do
you guys know about the American female bullus spider?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Ooh do tell?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Okay, Okay, this freaked me out because it weaponizes this
ability that some creatures have. Female American bullus spiders do
this crazy thing where they don't create a web or
something like that you would see generally, at least here
in the Georgia area. They don't create one of those
little cave things, you know, like a trapdoor, spider wood
(18:34):
or something like that.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
They make spider hole.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
They make a tiny little trapez like web, and then
they hang down from that web and they spin up
a bunch of silk and this substance that's kind of
like glue. It's very akin to like super glue or something.
They spin up a what they call a bullus. It
looks like a little water droplet. Yeah, And then they
basically have that hanging down from one of their appendages,
(19:00):
one of their eight legs, and fishing pole. They call
them fishing spiders. And what they do is they emit
the pheromones or chemicals that mimic the pheromones of specific moths,
specifically briskly cutworm moths. Like the females and the males
(19:20):
are attracted to their body where the spider is the body.
And then they use their little fishing pole thing. They
fling it at the male moths catch them and all
the silk that's attached inside their kind of unravels around
the creature, the moth, and they reel it in like.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
A fishing credible. I mean, that is impressive.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
And let's also not forget that the most dangerous species
of all humans. I mean you always hear jokes almost,
but I think it is done about certain types of
animal musk being used to bait traps, things like to
attract the thing that you're after.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
It's a very yeah, it's a time tested thing, right,
even unto stuff like distributing deer scat right or deer
sent or bear scent. This is something that the non
human animals clocked and evolved way before the first primates
(20:14):
came down from the trees.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Oh dude, I've got one more example here, because we're
talking about how long ago it's been. Well, plants have
been around for quite a bit longer than many animal species.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
There is a specific species of orchid known as the
b orchid. Guess what this does, Guys, attracts bees. It
looks like a dang bee. Now, it's an orchid that
has cool It has the bottom part of it, it
looks like a bee, and then it emits mimicking alomones.
(20:47):
It's very much like again, pheromone chemicals that mimic specific
female bee pheromones, so that the males will come over
and attempt to mate with the orchid and grab all
that paul in and spread it all over the dank place.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
It doesn't this already happen though naturally with flowers, they're
just looking for an edge.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
This orchid needed.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
We want more, We need more attentions, so we're going
to look like a sexy.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
B What causes That's the big question, right? What pass
is that kind of change in a plant species to
where it is now creating the chemicals that it needs
to attract the pollinator?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I believe, yeah, similar similar to the many other cases
of symbiotic communication or interaction. Uh, there is specificity, right,
that's key. You can see it in the world of
parasites as well. Pheromones are a little less hopefully a
little less parasitical, but I love the point that they
can be, and have been and will be weaponized. And
(21:45):
that'll that'll apply further when we get to some stuff
that you alluded to briefly a few moments ago. So
we established that first. It's a great way to communicate
if you are not going to be relied on visual
or auditory or a signals. Second in our list of three,
pheromones can function as an alarm system. They're not all
(22:07):
created equal. A lot of danger pheromones are short lived
because you don't want to normalize it. If you're at
school and the fire alarm goes off every day, then
eventually you're gonna ignore the fire alarm. The boy who
cried wolf, et cetera. Third, pheromones definitely do play a
big role in predation, in attraction, in reproduction. They influence
(22:29):
the sexual development of insects, plants, as well as a
surprising bevy of mammals. Now, not to call anybody out,
but a lot of our a lot of us in
the audience tonight, are humans. So how does this apply
to me? We may be asking classic human question. This
brings us to the humble Homo sapien. It is no surprise,
(22:52):
right with all the proven science, even though it's I
guess you could say it's kind of recent in that
a lot of the best words has occurred in the
West in maybe less than a century. It's not surprising
that human scientists have instantly sought to understand what, if
any role pheromones play in the great human story. So,
(23:16):
for instance, can humans create chemicals that mark territory? Let's
put our p jokes here. I think it's still legal
to pee outside in Finland, by the way. I mean,
we've all seen maybe a dog mark in its territory, right,
there's a chemical reason they're doing that. They don't just
disrespect the proverbial fire hydrant. Can humans create something internally?
(23:40):
Can humans secrete something that inspires attraction and mates? Can
humans secrete a substance that warns their fellow humans and
human like things of danger. It's weird because for a
long long time modern science thought, yes, this applies to
all animals except for us. When it comes to humans,
all this pheromone talk is malarkey. It sounds good, but
(24:03):
it doesn't pass. Dylan, help me out here. The smell
test not walking them back.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
So if ever, we're inappropriate.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
So we've already got so many fantastic threads to pick
up right in our bull is here. However, we're in
a new age of this science. We are learning things
that may just upend everything humans assumed they knew about
the pharomone.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Well, hey, guys, why don't we take a quick pause here,
I think it's a good breaking point, and here a
word from our sponsor, and then come back into the
human experience of all of this.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, this is the
deep water. That's what this is. The headline is the following.
Pheromone research remains murky and controversial when we're talking about humans.
This dude to several a few of them are painfully obvious,
and a few are hilarious and surprising. First we gotten
(25:07):
for this one. Human adults have no functioning vomeroonasal organ
that's the little thigamagig that processes pheromone signals. So it
could be that people everyone you know, is a lot
like a one way radio broadcasting system, Like they talk
(25:28):
endlessly about themselves, but they never listen. They're they're sending
these chemical messages into the void, and people are walking
around exposed to those messages, yet they are bereft of
a receiver that would allow them to understand and react
to those signals. That's that's one of the popular theories.
(25:49):
Have you guys heard that one before.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, I mean that's just the science where we just
don't have that thing. So they're one of the interesting
pieces of research. Attempts at researching this stuff has been
trying to pair what could be those chemicals coming out
and then a scent that is not those chemicals, but
it is in some way related. Right, often focusing on
(26:12):
sweat and other excretions essentially that you can smell you
can't pick up those signals, and seeing if that can
actually be in some way connected to the actual pheromones
that are being released. It's like, if I smell that scent,
I know I'm getting hit with pheromones.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
I'd like to take a side note two on that point.
Humans have historically had a difficult time studying themselves. It
reminds me of our conversations with Wargey Cham across a
couple of different shows. That's one of the big reasons
there are so many mysteries about the human brain. It's
very difficult through methodology to ask a thing to study itself.
(26:52):
A second fact is hilarious. This is just brass tacks
of any scientific research that we're going to explore tonight.
When we're talking about finding human pheromones. One of the
big problems is that humans are living creatures, constantly creating things, factories,
big cities unto themselves. They're big universes unto themselves, which
(27:15):
means humans are smelly. One of the biggest challenges in
pheromone research this is a true story, is finding cleanliness
and baseline odorlessness in human participants, because that's not your
We're trying to create a control state that does not
naturally exist. The chemicals that produce smell in humans are
(27:38):
often natural, and they come from a panoply of biological
processes or processes if you want to put a tie
on it, things like diet, your health, your age, your
level of exercise, any medical condition. That might be a
story for another day. But a pheromone is an invisible
(27:59):
passing you're in this chemical mix. A smell itself is
not a pheromone. Maybe like a good metaphor for this, well,
we'll see what you guys think. Imagine an airplane, okay,
and let's think of the smell as the exhaust from
the engine right the contrail or chemtrail. If you're nasty,
that's the stuff you can consciously perceive. The plane itself
(28:23):
is an agglomeration of factors wind, sweat, skin flakes, fabric,
all the stuff that could carry that sensation to you,
the passengers on the plane, the folks riding the plane,
those are the chemicals you don't see. So scientists are
very much like detectives here. They're trying to figure out
who's on that plane.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, and they're trying to do it. I mean for science, right,
but also for commerce. Imagine if you could unlock the
things that make others become attracted, like we were talking
about on the very top, right, something you could weigh
that all of a sudden attracts mates or everybody. It
just it makes you the most important person in that room,
(29:07):
and it's done secretly and silently. Like you, guys, we've
all seen the fragrances that get pushed everywhere on Instagram
and other places that allegedly have pheromones.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Right, yes, yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Those things, those things are ubiquitous at this point, and
you can probably well, okay, you can make a lot
of money right now saying that you've got pheromones in
your products. Imagine if you actually did.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Right, Yeah, that's good. That's a good observation. I agree
with it because another a third problem here is we
see pheromones can do so many specific things and so
many other organisms terrifying and amazing accomplishments because there's so
many choices. It's the curse of the blank page for
the researcher. You have to kind of know what you're
(29:59):
looking for before you start searching, because again, the chemical
emissions are quite complex, so you could it's like, you know,
in a weird way. It reminds me of our earlier
episodes on the Vatican Secret Library, wherein there's so much
stuff in that library. You can maybe find the book
(30:20):
you want, but you have to know exactly what book
you want and what author, And that's why some of
the research into pheromones for humans can be so stymy. Also,
it's pretty narrow in scope being humans. Not to sound
too cynical, the scientists are largely focused on the possibility
(30:41):
of what we will call attraction pheromones. To the point
about the Colonne stuff or the perfume, it's the idea
of how can we how can we leverage this to
the advantage of reproduction.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Well, yeah, again, I think specifically because you can create
a product you can sell if it's got that in
that then people will buy it. A lot of this
comes from research on Oh gosh, I think they are
bores in Germany. The males of some of the boares
there in Germany produce and drostenone and in drostenol in
their saliva, and when they just happen, all they have
(31:18):
to do is breathe on a female that is in heat,
and the female, at least according to two studies, will
essentially assume a mating position when the right when the
to right things occur and that pheromone hits their senses,
which is, you know, again the kind of thing that
could be used in I don't want to see nefarious ways,
(31:41):
but in a way that would just be you would
see dollar signs in many people's eyes, I think.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Which will lead us to potential pitfalls.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Agreed.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Another aspect here in the difficulty of human pheromone research
is that unlike a lot of other mammals, bores for instance,
of course the common K nine man's best friend. Another
twist to the plot is that humans are highly dependent
upon visual cues less so consciously dependent upon olfactory cues.
(32:17):
So that's why if you're human and hearing this, most
of your in person interactions are going to lean more
heavily on visual stimuli than on spoken word. That's why
we get those old sayings like it's not what you
say about how you say it. Smell does matter in
close proximity. To be clear, please believe us, folks, it
(32:39):
is a very good thing that you cannot smell everyone
you see on a screen, or for that matter, spell
everyone you hear in a podcast. Got some nods, no laughs,
but we got some nods. I like a solemn agreement.
So we have to say it. And this is going
to ruffle some feathers perhaps, but as of this evening,
(33:02):
as of July eleventh, of beautiful Friday, when we're recording this,
there are no pheromonic substances that have ever been proven
to directly influence human behavior in a significant way in
a peer reviewed study. Lots of caveats to that, but
that's the current scientific consensus.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Well that and of course we don't have access to
whatever secret trials are happening on military basis right where
soldiers are being subjected to all kinds of stuff, because
we know what's happening, he says, kind of conspiratorially, but also.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, we're on the same page. That was one of
my first questions too, Right, if there was if there
was a true Gilroy Pheromone, as depicted in Ocean's thirteen.
Then why on earth would you allow the public to
have it? You would want it for you would want
it for weaponization purposes.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
So maybe they're really is one.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Perhaps they call it the Kissinger scent. Right, Yeah, everybody's
walked out of the meetings, say screw Southeast Asia. That
guy smells fantastic.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
Housinger Kissinger from.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
A rose shout out the seal.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
How else did that guy have such sway? I don't know.
Speaker 5 (34:21):
Man, demonic powers, powers and musk.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, I like the point about must science has uncovered
some critical insights that both inspired this episode and shows
us there's more to the story if we look at
some specific studies. Uh, there's one I think we all
saw back in twenty seventeens by It was led by
oh gosh, I'm trying to remember the name Lee Simmons. Yes,
(34:49):
Lee's Lee Simmons, L E. I. G. H. Is the
the person running point on the study. And what they
did was pretty interesting. They had people self identify as heterosexual.
They said, okay, we're going to show you a series
of opposite sex faces. So if you are a lady
(35:11):
and you're into dudes. We're going to show you some
pictures of dudes, and you give us the hot or
not rating, and the same, you know, vice versa with
male participants. And the trick was that they were asked
to rate these faces after being exposed to two steroids.
And this calls back to the earlier mention of the
(35:34):
measurements of swine. Right at this point in twenty seventeen,
these two related things, andros didnone or A and D
for the purposes of my terrible English and estra tetrinol
or eest for the purposes of terrible English. They said,
we're going to expose these people to these things because
(35:56):
we think they may be human pheromones. A and D
is found in male sweat and semen est is found
in female human urine. So the participants get exposed to this.
They're also asked to judge neutral faces. Right, twenty seventeen,
So we got the photoshop technology. These are images of
(36:17):
men and women blended together into a single gestaltic face.
And Science Magazine, I think, does a lovely job depicting
the mission of this study.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Right.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
So the authors kind of proposed that if the steroids
were pheromones, female volunteers given A and D would see
gender neutral faces as male, while male volunteers given EST
would see gender neutral faces as female. They also put
forth a theory that the steroids corresponding to the opposite
(36:55):
sex would lead the volunteers to rate opposite sex faces
as being better looking.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
And what did they find?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, how that workout? Yeah, per the leaders of the
study themselves, they found no measurable correlation. But it's important
to me. Yeah, I know, but it's important to note.
Lee Simmons, who we mentioned earlier, said, look, human pheromones
probably do exist. The issue is only that none of
(37:24):
them have been conclusively identified, and Simmons went on to
do more work in this field. By the way, we
kind of picked this study because it created a back
and forth, a proper discourse. Other scientists and experts in
the field are chiming in. They're raising questions about how
the study is conducted. And a lot of people were
(37:45):
green with Simmons and they were saying, these things do exist,
there is some mechanism at play. We just don't know
how to ask the right question, which means we don't
know how to really study it. Again, it's a big
library just like termites and ants. So we have to
figure out the specific book we're looking for.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Well, yeah, it's really interesting because in this case, you're
looking at you cold images of faces, and no matter
what those faces look like, they're ultimately just two dimensional
images on a screen. Right, And how do if those
are indeed pheromones, how would that just affect the visual
because as we said, we're highly visual creatures. Right, So
(38:28):
if you've got the I don't know. There's so many
variables at play there. If you actually had a human
we were talking about the cleanliness issue, right, if you
just had human bodies lined up that people were testing,
which has been done with specific pheromones being pumped into
a system, it would change things. But again, you would
have no way because the right question isn't there yet.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
M Yeah. Really it's the art of finding the right question,
isn't it. I love that point. We know there are
cific studies that everybody who is familiar with this UH
is probably waiting for us to mention there are things
that indicate some kind of hidden mechanism at play. Two
(39:13):
of the most well known cases we're all adults here
are ovulation and kid the not fellow conspiracy realist. The
study of tears like actual wah wah emotional tears.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
The study of tears should be like a goth band name.
I'm just putting that out there. Pretty good.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
That's pretty good, man. Hey, you're the one that's good.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Thanks pal. Actually I'm quite sad.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Actually, oh, don't be sad.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Well, let's still let's talk about it. We humans excrete
some things, and you know, some of the primary ones
are down below.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
We read all over the place.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Downstairs.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Excretion, Yes, the night.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
What do they call them? Emission?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Sure, sure, we sure, lots and lots of sweat across
our entire body. It's one of the cool technologies that
mammals figured out. Many mammals figured.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Out, super analog. I love it.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
It's dope. I'm getting a lot of that right now
on day twelve of my air conditioning being proken. But
like you know, it does cool stuff for us, right,
But tears are another thing that are specifically linked to
how one of us as an organism is doing, like
what's happening to us, how we're doing. It's a signal,
(40:34):
a visual signal for somebody else, right, for another one
of us organisms. But I wonder and you can see
like the minds of the scientists going, I wonder if
that substance being leaked out of the body could actually
trigger a pheromone of some sort.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
And it's also fair to ask, given the human eye,
given its proximity to hormone reproduction centers or hormone producing
centers and other like, it's in the neighborhood of the brain,
you know what I mean. It feels like a dumb question,
it's important to ask. We know that there are different
(41:12):
genres of tear. There's the there's stuck in my eye.
I've got a piece of glass in my eye. That
kind of tear. Oh, I got peppery well.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
And in those cases, the tear is designed to wash
the thing out of your eye or to like be
like a self correcting kind of little little feature, right,
and has a very different chemical composition as a result.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Interest, So an emotional tear is a whole different little
sippy sip of reactions.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
But it is interesting that it's a visual cue as
well as.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
A subs Yeah, and as as we know, tears have
a smell. I feel like I'm accidentally saying some creepy
things in this show.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
I think it's accidentally on purpose, if anything.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
But I don't know how about the smell tears. I
know there's the like wipe away tears especial if you
have a kid and it's well, yeah, I mean like
accidentally or just you know, kissing somebody who's really sad.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Sure there's a SALTI composition. Yeah, so we're This isn't
just our collection of opinions and anecdotes here, folks. There
was a fairly recent study in twenty twenty three led
by Shanni Agrin that got weird with it. They collected tears.
They got about two thirds of a cup each of
what they called, as you would say, emotional tears, and
(42:33):
these were triggered by emotional responses rather than just having
something in your eye. And they got these from a
small sample size of six female identifying people who also
self identified as easy criers. And then, okay, I'm the
ethics of this are interesting. Can someone describe what their
(42:55):
team found when they had the male volunteers literally smell
the tears.
Speaker 5 (43:00):
Smell the tears the new album by Spinal Tap. Yeah,
our Agron's team had mail volunteers snarfed the scent, as
you put it, then of those tears, and in doing so,
they found the parts of the male brain linking aggression
and smell lit right.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
On up and followed by a drop in testosterone levels.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
It just makes you, It jennels you up a little bit,
doesn't it. You know, it makes you a little cuddlier.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
And a drop in aggression by forty three point seven percent.
That's huge. And I just wonder if you guys have
you know, not to make it anecdotal, but if you
guys have ever been in that situation where you're upset
about something and someone you're upset with begins to cry,
All yeah, I feel that's that thing where everything switches
and you're now in protector mode, right.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
Which can also be weaponized by the way these you know,
by certain manipulating types. Let's just say crocodile tears. I
think they call them.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Yes, yes, God, I love English a fascinating language. The
further aspect here is that the team was able to
identify where this happened, where these chemicals right that they
were the male volunteers were interacting with when they were snarfing,
where they were hitting in that body, and there are
(44:22):
four specific olfactory receptors that latched on to this mystery
protein in those emotional tears. It appears there's something to this,
and I think maybe at this point we continue further
into the breach, because some of the most fundamental research
(44:44):
on the mystery of human pheromones comes not from tears,
not from colones, but from ovulation. What do you guys say,
should we take a break and then dive into this one?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, swim in an ocean of tears.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Of tears, and we have returned speaking of hidden mechanisms.
As we said, two of the most well known, scientifically
fascinating genres of exploration here are tears and ovulation. In fact,
(45:22):
one of the first and most famous modern attempts to
prove that human pheromones exist come to us from an
absolute powerhouse researcher Martha McClintock. In the nineteen sixties. McClintock
is a student at Wesley College and she notices something
strange the semester starts. She's got door mates, of course,
(45:45):
and this is a place where all the people in
the dorm are women. She notices they have different menstrual cycles.
At the start of the semester. You fast forward toward
the end of the semester three four months and their
menstrue cycles have appeared to sync up, as if by magic.
Why how does that happen? And I think a lot
(46:07):
of us in the crowd tonight have experienced that firsthand.
Have you guys ever heard about this phenomena.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
I've not witnessed this phenomenon personally, but I certainly have
heard you know, myths around it, and I do wonder
if it is sort of like some of those lunar
sinking things that get talked about, if like is a
real phenomenon, or if it is maybe a little circumstantial.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I would just say I've seen this kind of thing
happen before, even on family trips and stuff, when there
are a lot of women in the house and is
a longer period of time, and then strangely enough, the
cycles move forward or backward and then they get really
close to each other. And again that's an anecdote, but
it's just kind of what I've seen well, And in
this case, we're talking about the all of the women
(46:51):
together experiencing I don't know, a cycle shift and synchronization.
What does it have to do with pair moost? Do
we think that the pheromones of someone who is entering
a specific part of like going into ovulation, would then
trigger other females around them to also go into ovulation.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
That's a question, right, because correlation does not equate to causation.
But this is a good branch of inquiry, right. All
scientists are again essentially detectives, and mcclin block is raising
some of the same questions. We have. What's happening, Let's
look for clues. We have people who are all experiencing
(47:32):
at this point a menstrual cycle. Yeah. One, but they're
all in close proximity because they live together. Two, which
means they're exposed to all those things that you're exposed
to when you hang out with other people, skin flakes, sweat,
you know, urine smells, things like that. So to your
question that could there be something that is interacting some process?
(47:57):
She is already in the nineteen sixties, of course, as
a scientists, she's already well aware of the concept of
pheromones and non human animals. So she says, what else
could explain this? Right? Could it be some like gravitational
effect of the moon? She likes pheromones for it. She says,
there's got to be something, and she continues this work
(48:18):
for decades and decades. Her initial findings are technically still
a subject of debate, but it launched a global search
for answers. It's a search that continues today. There's a
great professor named Lei Shing Sun who wrote for Psychology
Today a while back and said the following quote. Plenty
(48:39):
of other studies have struggled to replicate but Clintox findings.
Critics have pointed fingers at everything from statistical slip ups
to pure chance, and just like that, the groundbreaking first
evidence of human pheromones starts to look shaky. Now we
are Leafolk, We are not the boffins in this field
of expertise. But I don't know, man. It's like that
(49:02):
old question with a true crime investigation, what's the threshold
of circumstance? How much circumstantial evidence can accrete before it
looks a lot like proof of something?
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, or excrete perhaps?
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Yes? Sorry, well the horse secrete?
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Yes? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
I would say mental cycles are such an interesting thing
to study when when I'm thinking about it compared to
the tears study, because the way our society has for
a long time and continues to kind of hide the
menstrual cycle, right.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Verified of it and shame shame people for it.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, exactly, But but it's just such a hidden thing
in the world and in culture, and when you're walking
around and existing in the world, anyone who's experiencing a
mental cycle and anyone who's not experiencing it, it just
doesn't exist at least visually unless you know, you see
like generally the trash or you know, if you're cleaning
bathrooms and things like that, you're never even going to
(49:59):
encounter it, or maybe doing laundry or something. But I'm
just it's an interesting thing to study because it wouldn't
have the same visual cues that crying would associated with
and attached to it. So if there is something happening,
I would say it's much more likely that there's some
unseen central pheromon pheromonal thing at play.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Also, and this is with respect to our non binary friends.
What makes ovulation scientifically fascinating is that in this particular study,
it removes males from the equation right there. There's not
a study that mcclint locke has at this point where
she's asking, what if we have ten dudes living in
(50:42):
that same dorm, how does that affect things? So there
are a lot of questions, Well, we're seeing appears to
be a natural phenomenon, and please conspiracy realist right to
us about this, and it seems that it it occurs
fairly consistent. That's the one big thing. Like a lot
(51:03):
of us in the crowd to night have experienced this
phenomenon measured in this study, or you've got your own
experiences with it firsthand, or you've heard about it, and
the question is why and how does that mechanism exist.
I think it's it's fascinating because, oh gosh, like twenty
(51:26):
seven years after her initial study, mcclintlock has another groundbreaking
study where she says, I've found that small amounts of
these different chemicals, these different protein structures do have some
sort of effect on human behavior. The question then becomes
(51:46):
what effect, why? How long does it last? So I
know a lot of us go into these kind of
things skeptical, and there's a reason for that. But the
art of skepticism is admitting when something does appear to
have sand right, not just zealously saying no, I don't
(52:08):
like it, poopy doupe, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw
I saw a TikTok Reel or whatever the hell they
call him of like really bad freestyle wrap battles, And
there was this unfortunate young lady that said something to
the effect of doop de poop or something like that.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
Remember when Kanye did a poopy doop thing? Sorry, I
got you rail there. Big Friday energy, y'all.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Yeah, yeah, Big Friday Energy. Now I'm gonna have to
look that up.
Speaker 4 (52:42):
I'll try to find it. It was really funny.
Speaker 5 (52:44):
At one point, she makes a really bad rhyme involving
the discovery of DNA and.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
The double helix and the double helix. I remember there
was this is so unrelated, but no, I remember distinctly.
In my battle wrap days, we used to boo people
who thought the smartest thing you could say in a
battle was super califragilistic xpialidocious, just because it has a
(53:10):
lot of syllables in it.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Super califragilistic xp atrocious.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, super califragilistic extra urindoses for the science in there.
Just pan track.
Speaker 4 (53:25):
I found this.
Speaker 5 (53:26):
She says, whooped de do do you got?
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Well?
Speaker 4 (53:31):
You got to see the delivery.
Speaker 5 (53:33):
She's also wearing like a kind of a reppropriated childlike
Native American headdress all.
Speaker 4 (53:39):
The time and as very white.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Okay, all right, well I'll send it along for.
Speaker 4 (53:46):
Yeah, on your behalf.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
I need to see the visual cues I guess they'd say,
and how it's being said. Okay, all right, So anyway,
look here we find the potential armpit falls. We could
call them of pheromone science and humans. There's a lot enough. Hey, hey,
we serve at the pleasure of the language. Yeah, there's
(54:09):
a lot of quackery afoot a pit about a boot.
Some of it is by well intentioned, if misguided people,
and some of it is sold as a grift by
straight up charlatan's who are in love with your money
and think you should break up with your money. So
we should look at some potential missteps. I didn't know
(54:31):
this until checking out an excellent Skeptoid episode from last year.
We don't always get along with the skeptoid folks for
a number of reasons, but in twenty twenty four they
had an episode on pet pheromone products. I heard of
callman sprays, yeah, but I hadn't heard of straight up
(54:52):
pet pheromone products. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
To what end I guess is my question.
Speaker 5 (54:55):
I don't know about this, this particular niche either.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
You guys a as cat owners, you need to learn
about this.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
They do.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
You've seen those little fragrance things that you can plug
into your wall, like glade plugins or whatever they're called.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
I have tons of them to get rid of the
cat piece men.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Well, there are specific ones that you can buy, and
I've had them in my home before that give off
allegedly some kind of calming cat pheromone sense thing that
makes cats more chill and not afraid.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
I need this.
Speaker 5 (55:29):
I'm looking it up right now for Amazon Prime Day.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
It's always Amazon Prime, it's always lobster Fest, it's always Halloween.
Speaker 4 (55:38):
And cat pheromone diffusers.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
So these pet pheromone products, as Skeptoid notes, they claim
to solve every imaginal problem archie, anxiety, angression, poopy pee.
Speaker 4 (55:53):
So you're saying they don't work because I just ordered something.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Yeah. The thing is there's no real oversight on these
claims for these products as applied to non human or
indeed to human animals. This is not saying this is
so important we have to say this on air. This
is not saying they automatically cannot work. This is saying
there is no regulatory mechanism to ensure that they do work.
(56:20):
And I personally, I imagine the placebo effect is a
play in at least some of these cases, meaning that
in the case of pet pheromone products, the owner unconsciously
changes their behavior which reflects upon the behavior of their pets.
Speaker 4 (56:35):
Whatever it takes, man.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Right, And I mean, secondly, I agree with you al
And secondly, probably more important for the humans here listening tonight,
it's going to be human pheromone products. Similar to the
pet situation. This stuff purports the change behavior of living
humans around you, but in this case, the emphasis is
(56:58):
not on changing how people poop. It's on sex. Baby,
That's that's what the humans.
Speaker 4 (57:04):
Finally, we're getting to the sex panther.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, what if you could walk
into a social situation and like the club, perhaps the club,
and and just you know, people are immediately attracted you.
We've been talking about the whole show. I did, guys,
bring I bought. I purchased three different colognes here that
are allegedly pheromone colognes. They're titled Raw, Vigor, and Midnight.
(57:29):
I've tested them all out on humans and just myself
and my dog. She was not interested whatsoever in just
the smells. But then humans did find that they smelled
like cologne better than just my you know, sweaty self.
So well, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (57:48):
But did they instantly want to make sweet love to you?
Speaker 2 (57:51):
Well not really, I would have to say that. Unfortunately.
Well I don't think so, because my question is like.
Speaker 5 (57:57):
If what are these claims and to your point then
about the pet stuff, is there FDA oversight of these
claims of human pheromonals and where the hell are they.
Speaker 4 (58:06):
Getting them from? Who are they extracting these from?
Speaker 6 (58:10):
This is all off by children, so this is uh yeah, sorry,
I'll just seeing that this is all off my favorite
new album.
Speaker 3 (58:20):
Yes, you're you're right. It's a great question. There is
absolutely no regulatory or medical oversight to the purported efficacy
of these claims because the science isn't there at all.
So you could you could say that maybe we sound
(58:40):
like we're woop deepooh poohing the idea of that coding
yourself in these substances, we'll make other people find you
more attractive, more interesting, more captivating, or dryly put spray
this junk on you appear to be a more advantageous
candidate for reproduction.
Speaker 5 (58:57):
Well spray made those claims too, Oh sure, Like in
the back in the day, that was a big selling
point of the axe body spray.
Speaker 3 (59:06):
Some of the old Pheromone clone actually openly advertised that
add thoroughbred horse sweat and stuff like that, Matt, do
you want to do you have the active ingredients for?
Let's go with maybe Midnight or raw?
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Uh Raw is made with real bits of panther, so
you know it's good, just kidding. Raw doesn't say anything
about what's inside mysterious. Well, the name is the ingredient. Yeah,
maybe so perhaps you know they it could have regular
stuff that you'd find on the what is it the
(59:39):
scent wheel or whatever the heck that thing is that
you can look at, which is really cool actually, And
what are the notes, Matt? Where are the notes? The
fragrance wheel, that's what it's called. I don't know what
the notes are. I couldn't tell you. It smells weird
to me, very musky, all of these do?
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Musquite?
Speaker 4 (59:58):
Are you all familiar with a novel that I believe
was called Perfume?
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Yes, I Love? Recommended to me by Matt Riddle for
end of the show.
Speaker 5 (01:00:07):
Yeah, there's a film version of it that I think
is quite good from the director of Run Lola Run.
And it's about a perfume mia or whatever who can't smell.
And it's sort of like the whole point of it
is he's like this Beethoven type figure.
Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
Who was it a Beethoven who went deaf?
Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
Anyway, the idea is his medium that he is so
passionate about is the thing that he cannot himself experience
and he becomes in the in the course of the
of the story, uh, insane.
Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
In a serial killer type.
Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
And it's the guy that plays him in the movie
is the voice of Paddington, who I really like a
lot whose name is Escaping Me. But there's a Nirvana
song based on this work the book called Scentless Apprentice,
which I've always thought was very striking name. So yeah,
check out Perfume. It's interesting kind of rumination on a
lot of these things. It goes into this idea of
(01:00:59):
a traction and where all these things come from.
Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
Yeah, Matt Riddle, I don't know if you listen to
the show, but thank you again for recommending that book.
I actually I reread it. Yeah, this is and shout
out to Dylan too for the Nirvada recommendation here in
the chat that you mentioned as well. Nol, I think
you've got some parallel thinking. Here's the question, is this
all a cynical grift? Does any of this work? We're
(01:01:24):
gonna ask that question because a lot of us in
the audience tonight might be too embarrassed to ask aloud,
right because your friends and your peer group and your
cohort will naturally say, why are you so interested, creepy dudes?
Here's the answer, record scratch. If we could get one
of those tennessee perfect, thank you, record scratch. Yes, sometimes
(01:01:45):
it does work caveat asterisk. Probably not for the reasons
listed on the label. And if you buy someone with labels,
there's no arguing that people have tried this stuff countless times,
and you can find all these anecdotes of them saying
in testimony from their own reports that they experienced measurable results. Why.
(01:02:09):
That's why we had to hammer hard on the pet
pheromone thing.
Speaker 6 (01:02:13):
The elephant in the nose here is the placebo effect.
If you believe that you have access to something that
gives you an edge, that it can cause you to
behave differently, to be more extroverted, right to exhibit body
language chest confidence, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Chin up, which is a diminishing perturn. If you've ever
seen someone with their gin too high and their chest
do out anyway, it looks odd, does look odd, it
looks weird. I guess it looks confident. But these might
be little infintesimal adjustments, but they do add up. And
(01:02:50):
as another recent study argues, confidence plus extraversion or two
of the main six factors, and what people across the
lobe considered cool. That's a fun study too. So maybe
you apply this substance worse sweat after dark or whatever,
and you are now incentivized you feel better about yourself,
(01:03:14):
like you just had a new haircut, and you were
also further going to test it to see if you've
got your money's worth. So now you're more likely to
seek out new company to boldly explore whether or not
you got grifted right. And that means you're going to
be more likely to speak to people that you may
not have spoken with earlier, or you are more likely
(01:03:35):
to engage more deeply in an interaction. You know what
I mean. I think that's that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 5 (01:03:45):
Yeah, what do you say, Ben Colonne is something to
be discovered, not an ounce announce. I go for the
minorist of sprints. I kind of spray it in the
air and then waft my hand through it, as opposed
to spring it directly on my body.
Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
That's the way it's happened, right, And we know through
the science of scent that it works with your scent,
whatever that thing is that you're spraying on you to
create whatever somebody experiences from the outside.
Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Right. I do love the note about smell because, as
we said at the top, this is one of, if
not the primary, encoder of relived experience in the human
brain what we'll call memory. And we don't have the
time to do it tonight. Maybe we can do it later,
but right now, for example, if I named a smell
and we really took the time to describe it, then
(01:04:34):
we in the audience would be transported back to us.
It would trigger you toward a series of specific memories
and images, and those in turn would trigger emotive responses,
and it would trigger a primed state based on your
experience of those memories, which is why longtime romantic partners
like each other's smells. This is why, this is part
(01:04:57):
of why businesses and casinos and stores will pipe in
artificial smells to prime you, to put you in that
cognitive place, to trigger a potential purpose.
Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
There's just this I'm imagining a place like that is
pumping in smells like that, right, but it's specifically actual
pheromones or something. Just everybody walks into that store, just in.
Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
A bang room.
Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
Yeah, got a problem, oh dear, Well, you know it's interesting.
Speaker 5 (01:05:24):
I mean, you're talking about the emotional connections and the
sense memory of smell. It is another fun thought experiment
where if you were to quote unquote describe a smell,
could you do it without describing other smells?
Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
Like at a.
Speaker 5 (01:05:37):
Certain point, you would need to do it from a
completely emotional uh perspective, which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
I think you could pull it off. This is one
of those great writing experiments to know, because I know
you can pull it off through hacking other sensory inputs.
Touch specific words will conjure the smell without necessarily referring
to the smell. A more difficult version of that is,
(01:06:06):
how do we describe a color exactly? You know? Right?
So it's really fun and it'll help you become a
better writer for any writers in the audience.
Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
And that's why Perfume is such a fascinating read and watch,
because it deals with a lot of these themes that
we're talking. I mean, it's dark, by the way, Like
like I mentioned, I hope I made that clear.
Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
It's not a heroic main character. Nah, it's a bad dude.
But it is a very interesting dissection of like some
of these senses and the way they connect to emotion
and memory.
Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
And there's so so much more to the story here.
Pheromones are by any measure, non human animals and human
animals alike. This is an evolutionary conspiracy. The real question
then becomes our humans knowingly or not somehow in on
the game. It could be that our human friends don't
omit or react to pheromones quite the same way that
(01:07:00):
other creatures do. Or maybe not all humans are equal
in their transmission or ability to receive these chemical signals.
Maybe it's largely vestigial, you know, like your gallbladder.
Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
Aheah, yeah yeah, tonsils are wisdom, teeth.
Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Yeah yeah, or tails right right, right right. We'd love
to hear your experiences with this. If you're a scientist
in pheromones or related fields, we'd love for you to
write to us. Maybe the one thing to take away
I don't know. I think the one thing to take
it away here for anybody who is traveling the haphazard
roads of romance and love, hygiene clean yourself like. Hygiene
(01:07:41):
is by all accounts, even more important than confidence when
it comes to human to human attraction.
Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
No question it.
Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Or maybe don't clean yourself a little bit, Maybe work
out a little bit, work up.
Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
A sweat, yeah, and then take that shower because it.
Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Feels so good, and then work up a sweat again
because we got we got to use the sweat as
maybe pheromones.
Speaker 4 (01:08:05):
And then shower again.
Speaker 5 (01:08:07):
Guys, I'm sorry, Matt, I think we're we're operating on
counter purposes.
Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Well is the attracting question. Yeah, Hygiene's not necessarily smell.
Hygiene's also I mean, clean your breath right, clean your
mouth if you can. A hygiene is much more than that.
You can find various reports from any side of the
romantic spectrum that says confidence is great, but also showing
you can take care of yourself is phenomenal and Unfortunately
(01:08:36):
a lot of people find that to be somewhat an
extraordinary concept. Anyway, we got your back, fellow conspiracy realists.
Good luck out there. We would say break a leg,
but come on, in this economy, tell us your thoughts.
Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
You can afford it.
Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Yeah, you could always write to us, give us a call.
If you sip those social medis, you can find us
on the lines.
Speaker 5 (01:08:58):
Find us of the handle conspiracy stuff. We exist on
Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy,
on x FKA, Twitter, and on YouTube with video content
glor for perusing enjoyment on Instagram and TikTok where conspiracy
stuff show and there's more.
Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Yes, we have a phone number. It is one eight
three three st d WYTK. When you call in, give
yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we
can use your name and message on the air. If
you'd like to send us an email.
Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence.
We receive the spell it be well aware, yet unafraid.
Sometimes the void writes back when nothing else subsists from
the past, after the people are dead, after the things
are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things
remain poised a long time, like souls conspiracy at iHeartRadio
(01:09:46):
dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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