WEBVTT - Your Body Odor,Your Destiny 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Flow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:13.840 Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to blow your Mind? 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.319 My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Douglass. And 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.320 before we started recording this episode, we were just talking 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.919 about yoga studios, which ties in nicely with today's episode, 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:24.000 which is of course about body odor. What body odor 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.240 can tell us, because I find it. When I noticed 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:31.360 body odor, it's generally two different situations. One is, I'm 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.480 on the train and there's a lot of body odor 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:37.240 going on, and it's generally an unpleasant situation because I 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:38.920 realize I'm way too close to a lot of people 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.199 and some of them smell varying degrees of bad or rancid, 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.800 and sometimes there's a there's some spoiled pants in there 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:48.160 as well, I'm sure, but there's also a body odor 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.640 component to it. Whereas after a yoga class, who good 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:54.920 yoga class, there's also a kind of a um, you know, 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.720 a milange of body odors in the air as well. 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:02.960 And I tend like that because it's kind of a 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:04.840 kind of a hey, we all just worked out, kind 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.840 of a smell, and generally, and maybe maybe arguably, the 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.480 body odors. The individual body odors I'm picking up in 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:15.800 that yoga class are simply better body odors. Is that 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:18.960 possible that that these are healthy body odors that I'm 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.480 picking up on the train or unhealthy body odors? So, 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:24.479 in other words, on the train you get a cross 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.759 section of humanity, right, And some of them I'm sure 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:32.959 smell fabulous, but then some maybe on death's door possibly, 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:35.679 But in a yoga class, for the most part, you 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.040 probably have a lot of healthy people working out, and 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.040 maybe that contributes to your sense that what you're smelling 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:45.319 is quite good. Yeah, And I don't know, Lamb, I 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.960 don't know. Actually if there's some interesting information that may 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.360 support that um and we'll get into that, but before 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.800 we do, we should probably just sort of review the 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:58.640 fact that we all have this invisible cloak of odor 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.760 on us at all time times. An odor artist Cecil 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.640 told us, who I think, it's just the greatest thing 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:08.920 since Slice bread says that we are carrying a database 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.560 of smells around with us at all times, on her bodies, 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.000 in her hair, and in our clothing, and these culminate 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.839 into a kind of autobiography of smell. This is the 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.000 smell artists the German lady. Yes, yes, yes, the woman 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:30.040 who has collected seven thousand different smells, the woman who 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:34.760 went to this high falutint gala wearing like this crazy 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:40.160 gorgeous dress, looking like Marilyn Monroe on steroids, but then 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:46.040 doused herself in molecules of dog crap just so that 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.680 when she had interactions with people, she could um, you know, 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:55.360 both elicit their they're sort of like gross response, but 0:02:55.440 --> 0:03:00.200 also through our visual process have people come to her. Right. 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:01.920 And she was the lady that was on the panel 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:05.040 we saw the World Science Festival years back, uh, and 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.120 she she was the most interesting person on the panel 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:09.960 for a number of reasons. But one of the things 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:12.840 I always come back to is her argument that we 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.680 don't give our children enough language to describe smell. That 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.760 we have a very limited vocabulary genuinely generally speaking on 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:23.919 an individual level and also just linguistically as a whole 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:26.920 when it comes to describing smells, So we end up saying, oh, 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.560 well that's stinky, or oh that's that smells gross, when 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.679 there's really there's a lot more nuanced than any given uh, 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.680 comparing any given smell to another. Right, because you always 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.440 take a shoe with stinky cheese. Right for you, it's 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.360 not stinky, it's delightful blue cheese. Right, or at the 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.800 very least, we should use a different term to describe 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.040 cheese that is maybe a little too pungent for us, 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.120 you know, uh, and even pungent. I feel like pungent 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.240 is a better word for the cheese, but it's not 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.640 necessarily the best. I mean again, language kind of fails 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.800 us to an extent when we start trying to describe 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:06.400 the complexities of the scent world that we live in, well, 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.320 it might fail us because you could make the case 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.800 that humans really got the short end of the smelling stick. 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.360 And if we don't have the full spectrum of smell 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.960 smells available to us, then we might not have the 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.000 full spectrum of language to describe them. This is a 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.280 metaphorical smelling stick, not the one that a like a 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:27.880 third grade or might bring up to you and tell 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:29.560 you to smell one end of it. As far as 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.280 I know, and would you smell it if they offered it. 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.080 Absolutely never smell the smelling stick. So one of the 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:37.880 examples of how we got the short end of the 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.039 smelling stick is that no two people smell things the 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.880 same way. Yeah, this is really fascinating because, I mean 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:49.440 it matches up perfectly with with experience, because we're always encountering, 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:51.600 you know, people who don't like a smell that we like, 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:54.679 that we think that we think of smells is too strong, 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:56.880 and they love it. I mean, just think of individual 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:00.040 perfume that you walk into a house, and they'll be 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.919 a particular odor that is it might be an instance, 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:05.960 it might be some sort of a cleaning product, and 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:08.520 to our noses is just too much, it's just too abrasive. 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.279 But to the other person, that's a pleasant smell to 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.080 wrap your life in. And and indeed, when you start 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:18.640 looking at the genetics of the situation, um, it's it's 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:22.359 pretty startling. According to the Thousand Genomes Project, they're about 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:25.839 four hundred genes coding for the receptors in our noses, 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.719 and there are more than nine hundred thousand variations of 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:32.919 those genes. So, given odor is going to activate a 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.520 suite of different receptors in the nose, creating a specific 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.599 signal for the brain, and that signal is gonna going 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:42.760 to differ from individual to individual. Yeah. Hiroaki ma Tsunami 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:47.159 at Duke's School of medicine and his colleagues found that 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.880 between two people about of the odor receptors are different, 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:53.800 and they think that's probably on the low end actually 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.039 bearing out this idea that you smell, the smells you 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:59.960 detect and the smell I detect could be very different. 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:04.039 And so then that gives you this idea that we're 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.520 not even all working off the same page when it 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:08.880 comes to smell, right, it kind of gets down to 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:11.000 that classic argument, you know, what if what if the 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.040 color I see as our engine call orange actually looks 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.800 very different to you? And that's generally generally a kind 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:19.640 of abstract discussion to get into, because how do you 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:22.640 really break that down and improve it? But in this 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:24.880 we see we see far more concrete evidence for the 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:29.039 for the for the notion that, yes, each person, me, you, 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.279 the listener out there right now, we're all living in 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:36.400 slightly different sensory worlds, because again, the world we live 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:40.640 in is ultimately just this, this this picture of of sight, sound, 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:43.159 and smell that we form in our minds based on 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.280 the information of feeding into our skulls, through our through 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:50.560 our organs, and uh, the the final product is slightly 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:53.200 different with each person. It's kind of like the whole uh, 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.640 you know, blind men in the elephant scenario. So, yes, 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.960 of the sensory landscape, the human smell landscape is very 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.560 different from person to person. In addition to that, the 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.360 reason why bloodhounds may be much better at seeking out 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:09.359 sense and identifying them is because in humans were a 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:13.720 bit hamstrung, and Professor Dorin Lancet of the Wiseman Institute's 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.480 Molecular Genetics department discovered that more than half of these 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.440 genes and humans contain a mutation that prevents them from 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.080 working properly. Yeah. These are the the olfactory genes involved 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.400 in the recepting these different smells. Yeah, so it's kind 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:29.000 of weird that we would have these but they'd be 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.240 shut off. But there's another study that has come out 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:34.880 that that gives us a reason for why that may be. Yeah. 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.640 This is a March three, UH study from the proceedings 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.440 of the National Academy of Science. Uh. The scientists looked 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.920 at the obvious question that arises from from from door 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.920 and lance it's u previous findings, and that is what 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:51.320 what what? What's the deal with this genetic loss? Uh? 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.360 Is it relatively old phenomenon that affects all primates or 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:58.440 only occur in humans. And they they looked at they 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:00.720 looked at the data, and they were able to conclude 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.640 that the drop and sharpness of spell is indeed a 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:08.320 purely Homo sapien feature. Uh, and it probably stems from 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.560 the development of our brain. Our brain ends up developing 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:16.240 to depend more and more on visual data uh than 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:18.480 it does on anything else where. When it comes to 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.080 navigating the world around us, both the physical world and 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:25.880 the social world. We're depending more on distinguishing colors uh 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:30.080 and the you know, remembering faces, etcetera, compared to simply 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:33.480 going off on what does that person smell like? You know, 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:37.719 Not to be crass, but from an evolutionary perspective, the 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.960 more bipetle we got, the less we were on all fours. Yeah. 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.559 The less we are on all fours, the less sort 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:49.280 of sense we might be butting up against. Oh well, yeah, 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:51.680 I guess that would be a decent argument to make 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.240 less less butt sniffing, if you will. Gosh, can you 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:59.199 imagine mass transit that that was not bipeedle. Well, you 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:01.360 know you say that, uh, you know, bear in mind 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.400 that on any given train, some people are setting down 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:05.920 and some people were standing up. So there are a 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:08.840 lot of people that end up with strangers butts or groins, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.079 you know, just right there in front of their faces. 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.880 So we haven't managed to get away from a completely 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.520 In fact, public transportation is in a in a way, 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.400 kind of a return home I returned to form. Suddenly 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:24.720 we are forced to, uh maybe not actively, but passively, 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:27.760 uh you know, smell the rump and nether regions of 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.280 the stranger on the train, and those rumps, those nether 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:33.520 regions are telling us something. And we're gonna take a 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.120 quick break when we get back. We're gonna find out 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:46.200 what that is. All right, we're back. Before we start 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.600 talking about humans smelling other humans, we've got to talk 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.240 about dogs smelling humans. I mean, and I'm not just 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:55.120 talking about like, you know, a dog bounding into the 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:59.240 room and automatically attaching it's nose to your crutch. I 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.440 am talking about dogs that are actually ferreting out certain 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:08.280 sense that might portend uh your degree of health or illness. Yeah, 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:12.880 obviously dogs live in a far richer uh smell world 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.440 than us poor humans. I mean, anyway, if you've ever 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:17.920 owned a dog, you know that they've basically just set 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:21.600 around just going crazy with the smells in their general vicinity. 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:22.920 And if you get them in a car, I mean 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.320 that just must be like uh, you know, for for 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.360 a dog putting it's his or her head out the 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.320 window and smelling, it must be like that scene in 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:32.679 UH in two thousand and one, a Space Odyssey where 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.000 all the lights start flashing past past your eyes. You know, 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.120 it just must just must be a psychedelic experience for them. 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.240 And so it shouldn't come as any surprise that dogs 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:46.680 have been been observed to detect certain cancers by smelling 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.120 breath and urine samples. The latest research, published in two 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.600 thousand eleven in the journal Gut, showed a laborator retriever 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:59.400 trained in cancer scent detection correctly identified of breath samples 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.480 and ninety seven percent of stool samples from patients with 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.160 colon cancer. And of course that's because there are biochemical 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.319 changes that would give a person a different scent, which 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:13.280 would we think largely be undetectable by us humans. But 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.000 there are a couple of studies out there that give 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:18.440 us this idea that we might be picking up on 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:24.160 things subconsciously. And I'm thinking about this this one research project, 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.280 This is from the Caroline Scott Institutete, and they wanted 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.439 to see if humans could detect illness and one another 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.319 through smell. They had eight healthy people who were injected 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.720 with either Libo polly saccharide, bacterial toxin that produces a 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:41.079 really strong immune response, or just saltwater, which doesn't have 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:45.200 any sort of immune response. And four hours later, just 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.920 four hours later, the researchers cut out the sweaty pits 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.720 of t shirts that participants had been wearing and stuffed 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:53.800 them into bottles. And of course you know what they 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:58.240 did with those bottles, They inflicted them on test subjects. Yes, 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:02.640 forty universe these students had those bottles shoved up under 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:05.760 their noses and they had to smell these samples and 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:10.440 rate the intensity, pleasantness, and the perceived health of the odor. 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:12.920 And what were the results. While the researchers found that 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:18.000 when the students identified samples that were really intense or unpleasant, 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.160 it turned out that those were in fact the the 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:26.400 individuals who had who had been injected with the bacterial toxin. 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.920 And moreover, the greater immune response to the toxin, the 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:35.280 greater the unpleasant reading the sample received. Right, So, so 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.240 what's happening here is that in a sense, you're anytime 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.520 there's an infection in your body, there is a battle 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.400 in your body. Uh you know, their their enemy troops 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:46.959 on the field. So you're a moon immune function sends 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:48.960 out troops to do battle with them, and you end 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:50.880 up with what with with what a lot of dead 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.440 soldiers on the field, and then those dead soldiers are 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:55.320 flushed out of your body. This is a very simplistic, 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:59.560 uh explanation and simplistic metaphor, but essentially it's changing the 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:03.480 rest of of your excretions. And then too, if you 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:05.559 could actually pick up on the smell of the excretion, 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.480 which which this particular study seems to show that we 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:12.360 can at least subconsciously pick up on those smells, then 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:16.079 we are picking up on the dead from that battle 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.240 over the infection. Right. There's there's a real message that's 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.360 being communicated there. And if you doubt that, think about 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.320 this next study, which is all about STD and sweat. 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:29.280 It's a Russian study from the two thousand and eleven 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:32.400 issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, and again it 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.200 involves armpit sweat and the human smell response we'd get 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:40.080 armpit sweat collected from thirty four Russian men ages seventeen 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.040 to twenty five. Now, thirteen of the men had gone rhea, 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:46.880 sixteen were healthy, and five had gone a rhia in 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.240 the past, but where they had recovered. The men were 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:52.920 t shirts with cotton pads in the armpits for one hour. 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:56.360 Then the pads were placed in glass vials. Eighteen women 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:58.920 sniff the vials and rated the pleasantness of the smell 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.120 on a ten point scale. Now they were given some 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:04.800 words to pick out from a list to describe the aromas. 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:11.120 So they had putrid, floral, vegetative, woody, minty, and fruity 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.640 as descriptors. The women rated the infected men's sweat as 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:18.440 less than half as pleasant as a healthy men's sweat. 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.480 And the women said about of men who had gonorrhea 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:26.560 had sweat that smelled putred, whereas only the healthy men 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:28.600 were described as a putred. And of course this all 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:32.440 makes perfect sense, right because if if an STD or 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.040 just a simple you know, bacterial infection, you know, whatever 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.320 the scenario, if some sort of of of health situation 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:41.840 causes your sweat to smell differently, then that is a 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.880 cue to other members of your species that hey, there's 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:49.160 something wrong with this particular individual. They might not be 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:52.520 the best mate, they might even be an individual I 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:56.080 need to distance myself from within the community, uh, to 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:00.400 avoid and infection myself. Yeah, I mean the messages disengaged, engaged, 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.400 something off. This is a potential other even within my 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.160 own community. Yeah. And to underscore this idea, just to 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:08.760 make sure that they had a little bit more data 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:11.400 to press this up against, they found a link between 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:14.680 the concentration of disease fighting proteins called antibodies, of course, 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.480 and the men's saliva and how pleasant they're sweat smells women. 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:22.760 The higher the antibody concentration, the lower the score. So 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:27.080 again we have that correlation there. Now you think about 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:30.400 this study and you think, well, is it possible that 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.480 you know the this this wasn't a great representative of 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.000 noses smellingness. I mean, after all, they were all women. 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.960 It turns out that you would want a woman doing 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:46.000 the armpit smelling, specifically a woman, because they may have 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:50.120 better detection of smells. Exactly, according to a two thousand 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:54.600 nine research from the Monolf Center. Uh, it's it's more 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:58.080 difficult to mask under arm odor when women are doing 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:01.880 the smelling. Uh So, not only are women better smellers 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.960 than men, but male odors were harder to block than 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:09.040 female odors. Uh So, this this is interesting because it 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.200 it gets back into the the situation we all encounter 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.040 when we're walking through the store and we're looking at 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.240 the various under armed deodorants, and we might it's easy 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.080 to think, well, what's the difference, Well, what's the difference 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:22.280 between the women's deoterant and the men's deodorant? Like, it's 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:24.800 we all have armpits. Why does it matter? Why does 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.440 one smell stronger? Why does one need this fragrance? And 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:33.400 one needs some of its cultural right? Yeah, because otherwise 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:35.120 we just all be using acts and we call it 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.960 a day. Right. Well yeah, except that, Um, a couple 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:42.560 of things. One is that again, guys cannot detect smells 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.840 as readily as women can. And to test this, they 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.040 gave some of the women and some of the men 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.560 pure under armed wet and then some sweat that had 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.560 been mixed with another scent. And here's what happened. When 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.880 fragrance was introduced, Only two of thirty two cents to 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:03.400 fessively blocked under armed odor when women were doing smelling. 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:08.879 In contrast, nineteen fragrances reduced the strength of underarm odor 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:14.800 for men, so it's not as readily apparent to men that, um, 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:19.000 there you know that some sweats might smell. In other words, 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.560 that the detection isn't there. And in addition to this, 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:27.760 the actual male odors that are omitting these molecules are 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:32.119 harder to block than female odors. So there's there's a 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:34.680 case there for a different kind of concentration, a different 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:39.680 kind of smell in men's deodorance versus women's deodorance. Well, 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:41.960 this this brings me back to the train again, where 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.160 UH any kind of public transportation system, you're gonna have individuals, 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:47.840 while reaching up to grab onto a bar or strap, 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.880 exposing that armpit perhaps to the face of other UH 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:54.800 passengers on the train. And in that situation you find 0:17:54.840 --> 0:18:00.000 individuals who are both tragically lacking in UH in fragrances 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:01.719 as other than their own body odor. And then you 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.760 have individuals who seem to be way overachieving UH in 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.600 terms of their their their personal perfume. Yeah. I worked 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:12.960 at a place once where, um, the majority of people 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.359 that were there did not use deodorants. And really didn't um. 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:18.480 They felt like it was part of the expression of 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.000 them themselves. And this was a printing room, it was 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.080 very hot, and it was just a swirl of fetted 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:30.760 armpit stink. But I wonder if if this information, if 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.840 this would mean that that females are they going to 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:39.040 be more inclined to use an overabundance of deodorant or perfume, 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.000 Since if they're going to have a heightened sense of 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.240 body odor, then it seems like they might be more 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.040 inclined to overuse, or at least use an amount of 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.480 perfume that would be interpreted by US males as too 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.200 much perfume. If they better detected them, maybe they would 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.320 avoid certain ones um. But there, I guess you could 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.560 make the case that they could enjoy certain sense more 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:02.359 and there that's right. We have to go back to 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:05.480 our original statement about how everyone's sense of smell is 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.359 slightly different everyone's since world is a little bit different 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:12.480 from the next, and that's probably why we're just constantly 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.719 encountering people who are using too much perfume or not 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.040 enough perfume, too much body uh deodorant or not enough. 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:23.439 It's because everyone is is everyone has the knobs on 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.880 their their their stink speaker adjusted in a slightly different way. 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.720 Now I'm not bringing up the pheromone angle here because 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.120 this is different. That's a that's a whole other color thing, right, 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.719 which is pretty controversial. But if you think about it, 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.000 you could take say match dot com, and you could 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:44.960 splice it with armpit samples to gauge at someone's relative 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:47.960 health and you might be able to get a greater 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.959 match here. And I was thinking about this because I 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:55.240 was thinking about the hologenium theory that we've talked about before. 0:19:55.520 --> 0:20:00.359 Um Eugene Rosenberg took some flies and it was a 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.520 single species of flies, and he cultivated them two different 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.640 groups on two different diets, brought them back together to 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.080 try to find out if they made it, and they 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.840 found that that bacteria and their guts changed the mating 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:19.000 preferences of those flies. So when I'm thinking here, of course, 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:21.399 this is really all ground breaking stuff too, because this 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:24.160 is what drives we think this is a possible explanation 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:26.800 for speciation. So I'm also thinking that you use splice, 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:31.080 you know, sort of like I like peanut coladas and 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:34.760 getting lost in the rain, along with armpit smell and 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.800 diet and maybe you could get the most accurate match 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:40.560 with a made possible. Well, you know, apparently that is 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.560 a new trend that some some folks are exploiting. Is 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:48.480 they smell based speed dating system. Sometimes they even market 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:52.480 is a pheromone based speed dating system. But again that 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.520 that's a complicated issue, like cuddle up to someone's armpit 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.119 or oh no, if I remember correctly, it's based in 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:00.800 you know, smell samples, like you in an old shirt 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:02.760 and they're kind of putting a pile and you kind 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.560 of root around in the pile and decide which smells 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:07.760 appeal to you more. And then that's used as like 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:14.200 the first level of elimination in choosing potential mates. Interesting, well, 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:16.800 I kind of feel like if it were that easy, 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:20.919 then the whole mating and dating process would be pretty 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.560 like black and white. Yeah, so, I I just don't 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:26.679 think if we're there. I think that's one of the 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:31.199 things that colors our perception of people. But obviously we 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:33.280 hope that we're deeper than the smell when it comes 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.159 to connecting with another person. Oh yeah, well, I mean 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.760 any given smell, there's so much more than just the 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:40.879 there's the sense experience of the smell. But then there's 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:44.280 the additional information we're ringing to the scenario, the ideas 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.560 about what the smell is. That's what we talked about before. 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.240 You'll have a smell of a fine cheese and an 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:53.200 athlete's uh, you know, sweaty foot, and the smells can 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:56.120 easily be confused with each other. But the context, that's 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.159 what that's what's key there, because that's what makes the 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:06.480 he's merely pungent and the foot grotesquely stinky, you know. Um. 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.399 In Paris a couple of years ago, I took a 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:12.840 perfume making afternoon workshop and I got to create my 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:16.960 own scent and I did, and I decided that it 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.000 smells actually like my husband's arm pit. I called it 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:22.480 like husband down pits or something like that. And the 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:27.000 person who was leading the workshop was horrified. Um, probably 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:29.200 for a couple of different reasons, and one of them 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:31.479 definitely had to do with the scent. And then then 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:34.040 everybody passed it around and they got that look on 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:36.160 their face like they were smelling an armpit. I thought 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:39.119 it was delightful, though, well there you I mean, it 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:42.040