The Fragrance Files

The Fragrance Files is a weekly long-form show hosted by Josh and Michy, and it is genuinely shipping, with a new episode out every Friday. That is worth stating plainly, because the fragrance podcast graveyard is large and full of shows whose websites still look immaculate.

The pitch is perfume as lived experience: scent as identity, memory, culture and personal ritual, explored through reflective conversation rather than note-by-note review. A few episodes give the flavour better than a description does - Olfactory NYC with JJ Vittoria, House of Iyrah with Samira Mbang, an episode built around Scent Fest. It is an interview show that goes to people and places, not a two-people-rating-bottles format.

Worth knowing who is talking. Josh and Michy come from the fragrance creator world - the show's own contact address sits on the Goth Fragrance Bestie domain, and one episode is titled The Perfume Guy and The Goth Fragrance Bestie. That background is what gets them the access: the interviews happen because these are people the industry already knows.

It is American, so the houses and the retail talk skew US. For a UK listener that is a feature as much as a limit - it is a window onto a market that gets a lot of releases before we do.