Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Smelly Homes

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

Does your house smell? No? What if we told you it’s impossible for you to know whether  it does or not?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. This is Josh. There's Chuck, Jerry's here, Dave's here.

His heart is at least. We carved it out of him like it was the temple of doom. And this is short stuff about one of my deepest fears. Your house smelling? Yeah, I'm worried. It's a general concern of mine that my house smells and I don't know it, but everyone who comes over knows it. Well, can I start this off with a very quick little story? Sure. When I lived in LA many years ago, my friends, Brett and Stacy lived in a house in Pasadena

that had a very distinct smell. It was a good smell. It wasn't like a bad smell, but you know, all houses have an odor. Sure. Many years later, I went to the house of our mutual friend, Andy Ciara, writer of the hit movie Palm Springs, and his wonderful wife, Amanda, and their two kids. And their house, they lived in near Pasadena, smelled the same way. And then last year, I went to LA and I went and dropped by our mutual friend, Ben Harrison's house. Ben and his lovely wife, Rachel, Ben of the Greatest Generation podcast. Right. And their house smelled the same way. And they live in Highland Park,

not too far from Pasadena. I don't know if it's a Pasadena thing or that part of the valley, but all of these houses smelled exactly the same. And it was so evocative. When I walked in, I was like, Ben, your house smells like my other two friends' houses. It may be an LA thing. It may be part of the products out there. I have no idea what it was, but it was identical and very, very strange to witness with my nose. Can you describe the smell? No, not at all. It's a house smell. It's not like it smelled like cigarettes or dog poop or anything. It's a house smell.

It smells like radon. Yeah. I mean, it's a good smell. Their houses all smelled fine, but it was the same fine smell. So, Chuck, I'm a little disappointed in that story because of two things. One, I thought it was going to be apropos of my fear. And two, I thought that it ultimately is going to assuage my fear. It didn't do either of those things. No. Everyone's house has a smell. You just don't know it if you live there. This is just getting worse and worse for me. All right. Let's talk about house smells because if someone's house smells,

it is really possible and more than that, entirely likely that that person really genuinely has no idea that it smells, even in some of the worst cases where it stinks and reeks of like set in pet odor, like years and years of pet odor that has just not been cleaned up and is in the duct working, is on the baseboards and is everywhere, that person genuinely probably doesn't know that their house smells like that. And the reason why is because we become sensory adapted to things like smells. We've talked a lot about this. Remember Leighton inhibition when we first ran into that one? Sure. I think that was in our schizophrenia episode, maybe. Yeah.

Yeah. That's basically that. There is a point where your senses no longer need to tell your brain what they're encountering. Your brain's like, okay, got it. I've already determined the house smells like cat pee. Doesn't matter. Let's be on the lookout for threats or enticing things. And we become desensitized. And apparently we become desensitized to smells particularly quick. Yeah. I think out of all the senses, smell is the first one that you get used to. There are experts that say just a few, and I think this came from our old colleagues at House Stuff Works. Right. And they, to their credit like would do interviews and stuff with experts. And one of the experts

said it just takes a few breaths sometimes even to get used to a smell. And it takes, they say, if you're gone for about a week, you can become desensitized. And then when you come back to your house, you could re-smell that smell. And this horrifies me because when we used to go on long trips, I would come back and be, and think it was our house sitter would have this sort of funky musky smell. And now I think it's just our house smell, which it has to be. Man, we've always had at least four pets, always two dogs and at least two cats, sometimes three dogs. And our house has to smell. It just, it has to. There's no way around it. Okay. I am going to demonstrate what a friend does. Chuck, I've been to your house multiple times with your dogs there. And I can

tell you that your house does not smell in any kind of offensive way or any way that people are talking about how your house smells behind your back. Your house smells fine. Well, I will say this to you, my friend. I know you and I know you, me and I know that you guys are very clean, like, I wouldn't say clean freaks, but, or obsessive, but you really are into like having things clean and tidy. I guarantee you your house does not smell in some, some funky, terrible way. I hope so. I appreciate that. It feels like I had to pull your teeth out to get it, but I appreciate it. But I guarantee you, it does have a smell. Yeah. I just hope it's a good smell because it's true. Some people's houses just smell good. They smell like a mu mu or something.

Yeah. I mean, we, we are pretty good about cleaning, but there's just only so much you can do. Like, the front couch in our sunroom is the dog couch and that thing stinks. Yeah. I'm telling you, your house is not, it's not, your house doesn't smell. You don't have a smelly house. Okay. All right. I appreciate it. So, but yes, I know that fear because I've come home and, and after like a week and been like, is this where our house smells like? Does it smell weird? I don't, I don't like this. What can we do about this? You know? Well, just stay in, stay around for about an hour and then it's like, oh, it doesn't smell. Thank goodness because you've become resensitized. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then step two is don't make any friends,

don't have anyone over, then you don't have to worry about it. Case closed. So the reason you become so desensitized to your house smell is because you're not only being like exposed, like, you know, pretty quickly after just a few breaths, you're constantly being exposed to your house smell. So it's impossible for you to smell your own house. Yeah. But if you are like, okay, there's some things that I want to do. I want to make sure that my house doesn't smell. There's steps you can take. And I think we should take a break and then we'll come back and talk about them after this. Great. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise

or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on

this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. So if you're like, guys, I'm not convinced. I'm worried that my house still smells. We're here. Actually, our friends at House of Forks are here to suggest some things you can do. And the first thing is just look for low-hanging fruit. Do you have towels bunched up in the corner that have mildew growing on them? If the answer is yes, you might want to get rid of those because they might be

making your house smell. Yeah, keep your ducts clean. Keep your litter box emptied. If you have mold and mildew, that's going to make your house smell. So get your filtration system checked, that kind of thing. That is the lowest of the low-hanging fruit is clean your litter box more regularly. Definitely. And then some people step it up and say, okay, I've done all those things. Not only do I want to get rid of bad smells, I want to make my house smell good. Well, there's an entire industry that's dedicated to that. I would recommend something natural, like a nice bouquet of dried lavender or a bouquet of dried eucalyptus. Those are two of the greatest smells in nature. Those will certainly help. You can even go a step further and put them

in your return air duct, which is pretty great because then it gets that scent throughout your house. Yeah, that's a nice, I don't want to say hack. Don't say hack. I didn't. It's good. Certainly don't say life hack. But that also demonstrates smells get around your house through your HVAC system, just FYI. Good or bad, your house's HVAC system doesn't care. It's going to send them around your house. Yeah, I like a citrus smell. So sometimes I'll do a little lemon squeeze on a filter or something. And it's a pretty short-lived experience. It's not like that filter just smells like lemon for months and months or anything like that. But it's a nice citrusy blast throughout the house. Do you, when you squeeze the lemon, do you say simple-fimple?

I do, actually. Okay, good. Simple-fimple, lemon squeezy. That's right. So you can also use one of the best-selling products of the beginning of the 20th century, something called Fabrice. And we don't normally do buzz marketing. We don't mean to do it here, but Fabrice actually has one of the most interesting stories of all times. It's actually taught in marketing classes in business school because when Fabrice first came out, it was a total flop. Yeah, I think, and I remember this, when Fabrice first came out, it was marketed as, hey, if you've been to a smoky bar or something, or if you have a couch like Chuck Bryant does, you can get rid of these foul odors and make your corduroy coat that was

in that bar not smell like cigarettes anymore. And those were sort of the basis of the early commercials. And they didn't work out very well at all. So they shifted very successfully to a campaign that was more like, hey, after you've cleaned your house and you're done, just let this product be sort of the final cherry on top. Right. And the reason why it didn't work at first is because they realized that people become desensitized to their houses smell. And so the people who needed Fabrice to get the smelly-ness out of their house were the ones who weren't aware that they actually needed it, which means you're not going to sell a lot of Fabrice. So they changed it, like you said, to saying, no, this is the punctuation mark on your cleaning.

It's the last part you do. It lets you know the job's done. It's a little kiss of cleanliness. And Fabrice just took off like a rocket from there. That's right. And they have, it's a very big piece of the market because they realize they could expand to all kinds of quote unquote air freshening products with that label. I was looking into it. I found a little Thoughtco article on how Fabrice works. And basically, it's a carbohydrate called beta-cyclodextrin. And it's like a donut shape. And it actually attracts odor molecules into the donut and basically wraps around them, which means those odor molecules can't come in contact. Or when they do come in contact with their noses,

they can't bind to our odor receptors. So they're still there, but they literally can't smell them. It's impossible for us to smell them. That's right. And if you look up stuff like our products like this Toxic Online, you're going to find a lot of opinions. One thing we should say is that the U.S. law allows companies to basically hide things under the label fragrance. There's like 4,000 different chemicals that can be included in the product as fragrance. Some are safe. Some are great. Some are very much carcinogenic. The Environmental Working Group, which we talked about before, did a very famous study in, I think, 2009, where they found that Fabrice had 87 more chemicals in their product than they

listed, some of which were highly toxic. I think they have changed things since then, but this was a big shocking report in the mid, I guess, yeah, mid-auts. Is that right? Yeah, mid-auts. I think things have changed since then, but in order to not get served divorce papers, you know what I have to talk about for a second. What? Oh, yes, of course. My wife's company, Mama Bath & Body, because Emily makes room spray, and she makes soy candles. I told her about this, and I was like, well, what's in your room spray? Name all the ingredients. She said water, alcohol, and essential oils. That's it. That's when it's in her room spray. In her soil candles are soy wax, essential oils, and then here's the key, well, two keys.

Soy wax is a key because most candles that you get in the store are paraffin wax, which is a petroleum byproduct, gross, gross, gross. Cotton wicks. The wicks are made out of cotton, and most of the wicks in paraffin candles are not. The smoke that is coming up, that black smoke from a candle, is no good to be in your house. If you're interested, you can go to loveyourmama.com to check out her room sprays. See, I told you guys we don't do buzz marketing. I have to, man. This is her passion, and stuff like when I mentioned mass-marketed smell good products in your home, that's a big, as you know, trigger for our house and our family. These fragrances that people think, oh, it just makes your house smell great,

and to us, it makes us sneeze and gives us allergies and stuff like that. Yeah, or the clip-on air fresheners that give you a migraine, even though you've never had a migraine before in your life, the kind you put on a car's air vent. Yeah, part of the study from the environmental working group studied a bunch of stuff like that, and they did tackle Febreze a little bit, but the real offenders were some of those nasty, like, gelatin toilet, you know, things you'll drop in a toilet or plug into a wall. Yeah. I don't know if they've cleaned up their act or not, honestly, but we don't use that stuff either. I mean, you could smell them. They smell like chemicals. It doesn't smell like an actual smell. Like, they have to make up new

names for these things. They're not like, we're not legally allowed to call this citrus. Yeah. Yeah, I know, it's a problem. I really think that when historians look back or even average people look back at 100, 150 years, this is going to be one of those periods where they're like, wow, the federal government really did not protect the American people, and in fact, sold them out pretty hard every which way. It's a shameful time to be alive. Agreed, and I get to be married another day. Good job, Chuck. And good job, Emily, with loveyourmama.com. Since I said that, everybody, that means short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio,

visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.