The Stinky Stone

“It worked. But it never happened. His mother never gave him the stone. The uncle never gave it a moment.”

That is the core of this episode of Dead Rabbit Radio, which begins with a skeptical look at “pheromone maxing” before settling into a genuinely unsettling paranormal story about a stinky stone, a mimic, and a question that has no good answer.

The episode opens with host Jason Carpenter examining a new trend called “pheromone maxing”—the idea that men should stop bathing and stop using deodorant or cologne to let their natural body odor attract women. Carpenter is skeptical that this is a widespread phenomenon, but he is interested in the underlying science. He notes that every article debunking human pheromone attraction has to admit that it works in every other mammalian species. He finds this inconsistency hard to accept. “It would be such an outlier,” he says. “Humans are still so instinctual. We’re barely above the beasts.” He offers the example of nesting behavior in pregnant women—an uncontrollable urge to clean the living space before childbirth—as evidence that humans retain powerful biological instincts. If that instinct exists, he argues, it is not unreasonable to believe pheromones play some role in human attraction, even if science is reluctant to confirm it.