The Science of Severance (with Karen Aldridge, Dr. Kim Hellemans, and Mike Lang)

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This show is brought to you by the farmer's dog.

Hey, it's me, Adam, and I'm really excited about this one because we have two dogs and like every family who has a dog or two, we love ours to a borderline crazy degree.

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The Severance podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is presented by the Farmer's Dog.

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Hey, I'm Ben Stiller.

I'm Adam Scott.

And this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we're talking all about everything having to do with severance.

And this week, we'll be breaking down one of the biggest influences of the show, science.

That's right.

I wanted to do a science-themed episode for a long time because I know so little about it.

So I thought this would be the time to actually learn.

And it's very exciting because we also have our favorite fictional scientist, Dr.

Asal Ragavi, Karen Aldridge herself.

Karen rules.

And then we'll be joined by an actual doctor, Dr.

Kim Hellmans.

She's a neuroscience professor at Carleton University, and she hosts her own science podcast called Minding Your Brain.

We're going to ask her about all sorts of things having to do with the brain and the mind and how memories are formed and, you know, how the severance procedure relates to reality and all sorts of stuff like that.

Yeah.

And then finally, we're going to talk to a super fan, a friend of mine, a guy who has a very personal connection to the show.

His name is Mike Lang.

He's a mailman and a military veteran.

We met a few years ago at Comic-Con when we did our panel, and he was telling me when we met there about how much the show resonated with him.

And so we've become friends since, and he's come and visited the set and stuff.

And so I'm excited to talk to him too.

Yeah, Mike's a great guy.

All right, this is a packed episode, so let's get into it.

Yeah.

How are you doing, Adam?

What's going on?

Oh, man,

not too much.

I'm excited about this episode.

You know, my dad is a retired biology professor, so I grew up in a very science household.

Yeah, my dad is Jerry Stiller.

He was not that.

There was no real interest in science in our house.

It never even was like a thing that we talked about.

And I'm curious for you having a dad who's a science teacher, was that, did he encourage you to learn about science?

Did he help you with your homework?

What was the relationship?

Yeah, I did not do well in the sciences in school.

I remember he had to come to my high school at lunch to talk to me and my biology teacher because I was failing biology.

And that was a particularly fun afternoon.

Yeah.

But we would go on these long trips with him with him and his biology class.

They would go on these like month-long camping trips in the Sierras and he would teach while he was out there.

So I would go on all those trips with him and and just walking down the street with my dad, he can point out every single tree, every fauna, every squirrel that runs across everything and tell you why it is the way it is, where it comes from, the chemical basis of, I'm sure I'm already saying something wrong, but he knows everything about every surface and object that's that's around us at all times.

Do you think he, when he had to go in with you to the, you know, to the office, to the teacher's office, I knew you were going to ask me, No, I'm just going to do that.

No, I'm just curious.

Do you feel like he felt disappointed or did he feel like what, you know, I'm just curious, as a parent, was he like wanting you to be more into biology?

He never pressured any of us, my brother, sister, or I, into any of that.

My brother did become a brilliant computer engineer, but no, I think he was probably disappointed just because I was failing a series of classes at the time.

And, you know, taking the time out of his day to come talk to my biology professor probably wasn't great.

So, you were like a problem kid?

You were like out in the streets getting into trouble in Santa Cruz?

I wish I was.

That sounds really cool.

I was actually down in the drama department, focusing too much on plays to be bothered with biology.

When you weren't hanging out on the set of the lost boys, that's right.

That's right, that's right.

Well, I was not a good science student at all.

I managed to get out of high school without taking chemistry or physics.

Oh, really?

Yeah, because I went to like a sort of progressive school on the upper west side of Manhattan where at that time you could sort of, I took an astronomy class.

But ironically, my favorite teacher who still teaches at the Calhoun School where I went to this day was the science teacher, John Rader, and he's still teaching.

I mean, this is like, he's been teaching for 50 years.

Wow.

And he was actually the sort of like the most inspiring teacher to me, even though I was awful at science.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Have you ever played a scientist?

I don't think I've, no, I don't think I've ever played a doctor.

Oh, really?

What?

So interesting.

Do you know something about

me that I don't know?

Disagree vehemently.

You played a doctor of some sort in Flirting with Disaster.

Oh, one of my favorite movies.

That's right.

Dr.

Copeland.

Mel Copeland, yeah.

I guess he was like a, some sort of like a scientist.

I don't think I did a lot of research for the role.

Because it wasn't really like, you know, I didn't have to talk about it that much.

Right.

I played a scientist once.

You probably don't even have to ask which role.

As you, I'm sure, know, I was a scientist in Piranha 3D.

Oh, a marine biologist.

A marine biologist.

And you know what?

I haven't seen it.

I haven't seen it.

Wait.

Wait.

What?

I know.

I feel like I got to go back and revisit a bunch of Adam Scott's earlier work.

Did you, what kind of research did you do for the marine biologist in Piranha 3D?

You know, all I really did was kind of remember how my dad dressed and the kind of glasses he would wear when he was, because he is a marine biologist.

So I kind of modeled my wardrobe and glasses and afterwards.

So that's interesting.

So yeah, so you kind of like had that template.

That's right.

And the piranhas, they were ferocious.

So they needed a good biologist there.

Is it worth seeing that movie when it's not in 3D?

Like just seeing it regular?

Piranha 2D.

Piranha 3 2D.

I think

there's a lot of fish in it.

Cool.

All right.

Then check it out.

Christopher Lloyd is like the exposition person in the movie.

He tells us all about where they come from and stuff.

Anyway, well, that's a good segue to our first guest that's coming on because Karen Aldridge, who's this incredible actress who plays Asaul Regavi, and she's been in great shows like Fargo, and she was on Broadway and Matilda, the musical.

And she, you know, had to come onto our show with a very, I think, you know, kind of a challenging role.

And man, she just is so great.

So please, let's welcome Karen Aldridge.

Yes.

Hey, Karen.

Hi.

Hey, how are you?

I'm well.

Thanks for having me do this.

Thank you for doing it.

Oh, thank you for being here.

Oh, my God.

It's great to see you.

Good to see you guys.

We're excited to talk to you because I was just saying, you came on our show with a very challenging role, I think.

You had to carry the weight of a lot of exposition and explanation and backstory, you know, late in the season.

And then, in that same first scene, also kill somebody.

Yeah, and ground so much of the, you know, science fiction portion of the show.

You had to really ground it and explain it.

Thanks.

It was fun.

Can I ask you?

Because working with you was really fun and talking about how different actors approach things and working with different actors as a director.

You know, you coming in for that scene, that first scene, you really, I felt like you were a very instinctual actor and watching you do the audition tape and then watching you do takes, I felt like there was never one take that was similar to the other.

Yeah, which I find being so I have been fortunate in the past couple of years to do some on-camera stuff and I separate it like I say on camera as if it's an other

because I do a lot more theater.

That's my background.

I like to play though.

I just like to play.

And Adam, I don't try risky things if it's not the veiled to me.

And you do that.

And it's not to say that for the purposes of this podcast.

It's just to say that, like, oh, he plays.

It's like you're playing.

Or you won't be mad if I do that.

More this, more that.

Part of the thrill of working with you was watching and not knowing what you were going to do next.

That was so instructive to me of Mark and Assal's relationship, too, is this unpredictability of this mysterious person who shows up because the character is mysterious.

Yeah, I mean, I have to say that makes me just think of the dynamic between the two of you because it's this mix of serious, you know, jargon and techno-speak and whatever your secret kind of mission is that we don't know in terms of your backstory.

So you're like a super serious person, like intense.

You know, you kill a guy with a baseball bat at the first scene.

It's like, that's this level of intensity.

But then when you and Adam get together, what developed was this wonderful comedic sort of thing, too, that just naturally evolved, especially in season two.

And you know, we have the scene like when you first show up in season two, we should play that because it always makes me laugh.

Jesus Christ, are you trying to burn a message to your enemy into your retinas because your computer told you that was a brilliant idea?

Yeah,

no, no,

what?

No, no, no, no, no.

What are you?

What?

It doesn't work.

Shit.

The switch briefly dilates the pupils.

Clean slate.

Okay, also, you blind yourself.

And how was the enemy gonna send you a message back?

That's his problem.

I don't know.

Mark, unlock the door.

Why?

We need to talk.

Oh, my God.

Mark, unlock it.

Oh, my God.

Mark, unlock this fucking door.

You're such a funny thing.

That was so fun.

It's so great.

Also, like, what a weird setup for a scene, too.

You're like parked down by the river and, you know, doing your thing at him.

And then all of a sudden, you like open her eyes and she's just standing there.

Yes.

And yet I totally believe it.

To me, that was like, what a great re-entry for your character.

And, you know, just sort of like, I don't know, just like a natural sort of rhythm that you guys find it was fun and you really kind of let us if i'm remembering correctly karen and kind of just let us go there a little bit and improvise a bit yeah i don't question anything absurd in life i don't i love this this show because it absurd is a good word in my my world and immediately i'll say one of the characteristics of it would be that you can find this laughter in such grief or heartache or something that's where it doesn't belong laughter in an odd

and I really tread that in pretty much everything.

I try to find it in every little part that I do.

And I just, I live it.

It's so much fun to, when you're working with an actor that you don't know quite what you're going to get, but you know that you're in the right ballpark and everybody, you know, like you're, that you're consciously keeping yourself open to what's going to happen.

And, you know, you do it so convincingly in the, you know, like when you're doing the scene where you have to put the needle in the back of Adam's head and you're so, you got like a lot of props and you're doing like such specific stuff.

What is that like for both of you, Adam, when you've got, you know, Karen there doing this stuff to you?

And look,

what, what goes on there?

I was so happy that I was on my end of it because all those dials and gadgets and needles and scalpels.

That stuff is so hard.

I couldn't believe how you were keeping it all straight in your head.

No way.

You just had to sit there.

You had all the hard stuff to do.

Well, see, you say that, but see, okay, I'm just going to be real.

I'm good with like techie stuff.

I am a techie and I can put together stuff and I don't look at manuals.

So that's not hard.

I didn't want to hurt you.

It's the same with Michael during that season one.

I really practiced that baseball swing and a distance from him.

I just.

And that's not easy, by the way, because you have to make it look like you're hitting him, but you have to line up with the kids.

I mean, it's so much technical stuff.

Yeah.

Get the bat behind his head so you sell the hit or make it look like you're putting the needle in adam's head but it's not really going in all of that stuff but that that makes sense though now knowing also that you are very good with you know technical specifics and things like that i just think it's fun i like buttons my my husband knows i i like the elevator pushing i like to do that please just i'm warning you the tactile

yes i really dig it i miss the phones that you know i miss all buttons I love them.

Phones with buttons.

That was fun.

Buttons with buttons.

Did you have any conversations with our doctor, our kind of science consultant?

I did.

Vijay.

Dr.

Vijay was there and he did speak to me.

And it was really great because he sort of confirmed a few things that I already did, the research of where everything is on your, on the head.

But he showed me how to...

coolly because Dr.

Vijay is really cool how to hold shit how to hold your the the props in the proper way and so we did consult on that so that i could keep some of it if it didn't you know infer like how you're gonna shoot something or whatever so yeah he was that physical that yeah those things are really important that's just super important you know for me i would never be able to understand what dr bj understands i call him dr bj's dr argowal but i call him dr bj he says that though he called he totally saw this but like i'm never gonna get you know in my mind i'm never gonna be smart enough to understand that but i can try to like understand like you said like what is his manner you know how would you say this how do you hold something that at least can give you a way into it you obviously understand more than i do with the text

yes like just the scientist part of it i do need to know what the heck i'm talking about but there are people and so like this is the line i can know a lot about dr viget and then i have to be present as a human being doing a scene as an act you know do me so you have to kind kind of not, because there is a lot of stuff that I over-research for the moment, or maybe I have it in my journal that's like, oh, to be used later, say.

Do you know what I mean?

About who you are as a character.

But I overthought stuff on the first day.

I promise you, I was overthinking.

Yeah, but you had a lot to do in the first day because we had to do this like steady cam walk and talk shot, like bringing you into the room.

And it was just all, it was all so much.

But do you think Rigabi, it's so funny because it always feels to me like she's sort of like on the edge of total like she's always so afraid of up and you just get the idea that she's

she's killed she killed two people now so i'm like i'm like she won't admit that but i mean she's like worried she did not want to kill this one and she can't kill this one for some reason she cannot this one can't and this is last

is she is she more of a scientist or a doctor because a doctor is like trying to save people but a scientist is trying to do experiments and learn stuff it sounds just the way you said that like she doesn't want to kill somebody because she doesn't want to screw up the experiment as opposed to caring about their life.

She's a scientist, she's totally scientist.

Yeah, anyway, that was great talking to you.

So, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you, Karen.

Thank you,

good to see you.

Look forward to seeing you again soon.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Karen.

Bye.

Bye.

All right, it's time for us to take a quick break.

And when we come back, we'll be joined by neuroscientist and Carleton professor, Dr.

Kim Hellmans.

Hey, Adam, you got any trips coming up?

We do, actually.

We're going to go for our first parents' weekend, visiting our son off at school.

Oh, wow.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

Wow.

You're already there.

That's amazing.

We're already miss him and just can't wait to get over there.

Yeah, that'll be fun.

And so what are you doing with your house when you're away?

Well, I'm not exactly sure why.

What do you mean?

Well, I'm just saying that, you know, if you're away, you could actually be hosting an Airbnb.

Huh.

Yeah.

That's, I mean, I've used Airbnb on a few family trips before and loved it, but love Airbnb.

Christine is actually doing a movie right now.

She's staying in an Airbnb.

Yeah, it's the best.

It's so much better than a hotel.

I guess this whole time, whenever we're out of town, we could have been making a little extra cash while we're gone.

See, that's what I'm saying.

It makes total sense.

Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host.

I will.

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Hey.

Hi.

Hey, doctor.

Call me Kim.

Hey, Kim.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, too.

We're very excited now to be joined by a a real doctor, a neuroscience professor at Carleton University and the host of the Minding Your Brain podcast, Dr.

Kim Hellmans.

Kim, welcome to the show.

Great to be here.

You are a person who understands how the brain works for real.

We are people who don't really.

Can you tell us?

how you feel about Severance?

You know, what was your first reaction and, you know, the places you think it hits on reality and places it doesn't.

But what was your first reaction to seeing the show?

Well, Well, I think it was like the, you know, some of the first episodes that I was watching.

And I was, I think one of them was when Helly was getting her implant.

And so I'm sitting there watching.

I'm like, wow, this is actually pretty realistic.

She's in the halo, right?

To keep the brain still.

You don't want to be wiggling around your head because you're going to, you know, one millimeter to the left and you'll hit the wrong area of the brain.

And then the other thing that was pretty wild and realistic is in some neurosurgical preparations, the patient is often awake.

And that seems pretty eerie to some people.

I think it's really played up in the show is watching Ellie sort of go, you know, her eyes are kind of moving around.

But it's because there are no pain receptors on the surface of the brain.

You know, you do just have to do a bit of a local anesthesia.

You open up the skull.

And then once you're in there, the patient can be awake.

And often that's what you want.

Because if you're trying to do some kind of preparation in the brain, you don't want to, for example, lesion out that person's auditory cortex so they can't hear, or the area of the brain that's involved in language.

Anyway, so when I was watching that, I was like, oh, this is real.

And then even where you guys, where the implant is going is pretty accurate when it comes to the areas of the brain that we know are involved in memory.

So obviously the point of the show is you're implanting something that's going to impact memory.

And it's definitely in that sort of middle, lower brain region.

As I was watching, I was like, oh, this is pretty spot on.

That always blows my mind that there's just like this one area in the brain that I guess if you screwed around with it or took it out or do it, you like lose all your long-term memories.

Lose all your memories.

Yeah, which is just

fascinating.

It's actually like a physical space in your brain.

That's right.

It's the hippocampus.

Because that's so much of what makes a person.

That's right.

Your memories.

It's everything.

And that's what I was going to ask you, Ben, is if you were inspired by any of the work of Marcel Proust.

Well,

the author of Marcel Proust.

I mean, I'll tell you, you know, just really purely as an actor, I learned about Proust when I was in acting class because an acting teacher said you should read, I think it was memories of things past.

That's right.

It was referenced in an early acting class by an acting teacher saying because

the idea of what the Stanislavsky method, method acting that we all hear about, a lot of it is related to sense memory.

Yeah.

And the idea of being able to, in acting class, the way they teach it is the idea of, you know, a scene where you're very emotional and you have to cry.

But if you're trying to cry, that's not going to work or it's going to feel fake.

But if you can find a memory

that is emotional to you, then you will organically actually start to feel that emotion.

And a way of accessing that memory is sometimes through the senses.

And that's what was taught to me.

So the idea of if you can remember the smell of a, you know, a doll you had when you were a kid and try to go back into that and it's what that unlocks for you yeah so purely on that level never really talking with dan about it but that's i've always thought about that in acting and it's very powerful yeah i had no idea that those that would have been related but as you know the the whole sort of thesis of that writing is that we are but a collection of our memories that is who who is our identity and that's the theme of severance is this notion of two minds possibly in one brain, not having access to those memories of themselves.

So that's why I was like, huh, I wonder if there's a bit of Prussian, the memory of him as a boy.

Well, he ate a Madeleine that was dipped in tea, and he immediately was transported back to his boyhood.

It is very powerful.

And I think you're right.

It gets to the heart of, I think, the emotional sort of core of the show, which is the thing about feeling and both identity and sort of like what makes up who we are, but also how strong that emotion is and the questions in the show of whether or not when Irving would smell, you know, a Madeline, would he get Irving, would he get sent back to some sort of a feeling from his Audi Irving, you know, which we talk about all the time, the ideas of what is permeating and what might trigger something permeating.

And, you know, we get into it with reintegration in season two with Mark, where he's literally reintegrating.

But those questions, I feel, are there for the actors in almost every scene, really, to play around with.

I mean, is that a thing?

Like, you've done a lot of work with addiction and relating the history of early trauma to how that affects people later in life.

Could you talk a little bit about that?

Because that's very strong.

And those things sort of stay with you.

And I guess, do they get imprinted in the brain or how does that work?

Yeah.

So when an individual experiences trauma, and you know, I work in understanding early life trauma, which is particularly potent.

So, people have experienced these traumatic events before the age of 18.

Even childhood traumas are somewhat even more different.

What's happening is your memory systems are activated, so we're learning something in the brain, and often learning involves association between things.

So, you know, when I'm learning a name of a fruit, I see the shape of the fruit, the color of the fruit, the smell of the fruit, the taste of the fruit, all those things are being associated together in the brain.

Now, imagine then we've got a traumatic event that's associated with something.

I'm making this up.

An orange, right?

Now you've got the orange associated with a trauma and what's happening is you're activating the brain systems that are involved in stress and a key part of the brain called the amygdala, it's Greek for almond, tiny little almond shaped structure, is activated at the same time because what it's saying is this is really important.

Pay attention to this because you need to learn about this to avoid it in the future.

You don't want to eat an orange again because that was was associated with that highly traumatic event.

And we as organisms are hardwired to avoid things that might kill us and be attracted to things that are going to help us survive.

So the brain kind of lights up like a Christmas tree and all the different parts of the brain are activated at the same time because you want to basically say to every cell in the body as well, this is scary.

This is something that we need to avoid.

And so in addiction, what that does is it's reprogramming those circuits such that the person is hyper-responsive to stressors in the future.

So what we say is somebody who has a predisposition to addictions, they're almost like their reward centers are down-regulated, so they feel kind of unhappy most of the time, and their fear centers are hyperactive, so they're scared.

They don't feel safe because safety was threatened.

So, I feel crummy and I feel unsafe.

And so, what happens when we take substances is it kind of brings everything,

that feels really good.

You feel safe again, and you feel good again.

And then the brain is hardwired to say, again, approach the things that make me feel good and avoid the things that make me feel bad.

And that's why addictions are powerful.

Well, the addiction aspect of it to me is interesting because I think that there's kind of always been a metaphor for severance being a way of trying to deaden the pain.

Escape.

And for me, I always thought of that was sort of like Mark, you know, on the outside, Audi Mark at first season, you know, has definitely drinking, a drinking issue, trying to deaden the pain, but then he's also deadening the pain by by not wanting to really experience anything for a number of hours a day.

And I feel like that, you know, idea of like, you can't really,

you can like suppress and suppress and suppress, but you can't ever make that pain go away.

It's always going to be there somewhere.

It's like PD says, right?

And I think, you know, in the first season, pain is always there.

You're just not that aware of it.

And that's, you know, I think that you just have to somehow, I guess, in terms of when you're dealing with addiction, is it about somehow finding ways for people to cope with that, to cope with the pain, and to be able to like accept, somehow accept it or take it out of the shadows and not try to suppress it, obviously with a substance or severance or whatever it is, but to try to just to accept it somehow?

Yeah, the only way through is through, right?

If we avoid the trauma, if we avoid the pain, it might temporarily relieve it.

And that's what substances do to some extent, scrolling on social media, another extent, you know, we all have ways in which we avoid those uncomfortable moments.

But the only way that we're ever going to reach the other side is if we actually do the hard work through that difficulty.

So do you think that Mark being severed to avoid the trauma slash grief of losing his wife was a good idea for him to do or not?

Slash, do you think there are good applications for severance?

Yeah, and it's an excellent question because I think that the ethics of these things is another major theme of the show.

And, you know, I work with people who have substance use disorders and, you know, I see the pain, I see the struggle.

You know, I'm in this business because ultimately what we're trying to do is understand and develop better ways through.

And some people would give anything to literally turn off a switch and, you know, be severed or to not feel the pain.

And like I said, on the one hand, we're in that business of trying to find those better ways.

But on the other hand, is Mark removing the opportunity, not having that opportunity to grow through that pain, right?

That's the one thing that I think of is that will he ever then not experience the joy, the possible joy and benefits of moving through that pain.

What if there's something, the healing, what's on the other side of that healing, right?

So it's like the stuckness of the severance procedure is what worries me.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's so clear when you think about it in those terms with what's going on on the severed floor and how Mr.

Milchik talks to the innies, you know, season one and the first, you know, when they have the chair circle.

And it's just like about, you know, like we don't have things like death here.

We don't have no pain here.

And what the innies, you know, really learn over the course of the season and into the second season is like, well, no, that's, you can't exist and be healthy without feeling those things.

That's right.

Yeah.

The whole circle, the whole gamut of a human condition, the universality of it is we all experience pain.

We all experience struggle.

And it's also the dichotomy of, you know, can't have pleasure without pain.

Exactly.

And I also find one of the interesting things about the show is these people that are all they know for their whole lives are these hallways and these four walls.

And it just doesn't work.

They need more than that.

Either they need more of that presented to them or their minds are going to do it for them.

And they create relationships, they create an equivalent to death, they create stakes because the human mind needs needs more stimulus than that.

If you're thinking of people who are in situations like this, does the human mind kind of burst out of a situation like that in one way or the other?

Like, what is that?

Well, they did all these experiments, I think back at McGill, I believe, which is my alma mater, a long time ago, these sensory deprivation experiments.

Have you heard about these?

Where they like sensory deprivation tanks in India.

By the way, one of the movies we watched early on for Severance was Altered States, which is a Ken Russell movie, which is all about that.

Yeah.

So you know that the brain, like if it's not adequately stimulated, it will start hallucinating.

It'll start making things up.

People will develop psychosis if they go long enough.

And it's interesting because the endless hallways, right, the sterility of it is very much,

I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, this almost sensory deprived environment where they, and yet they are finding joys, right?

They're having relationships they're experiencing love uh affection uh friendship uh but it's almost like it's not deprivation it's not deprived because they aren't aware of what else there is so it's yeah but their minds are expanding anyway yeah i feel like that's sort of like a an egan sort of point of view you're having on that it's like hey

they're not missing anything we just don't know what they're not missing that's right but then really clued into that early on with just the idea even of the paintings in the hallway you know with Burt and Irving.

Like the appreciation, the way that they take it and the way Irving and Bert appreciate those paintings, because it's really the only sustenance, the only visual, you know, stimulation.

And little things, obviously the perks for Dylan, these little things are so,

they don't question it until they are, their mind is opened up to the reality, oh, these are actually, there's so much more out there.

Well, we're watching it thinking this is a perk, right?

When they had the watermelons.

right?

Yeah.

You know, like we forget, or I was forgetting, that's all they know, right?

And to them,

it's a huge, what is this carved head out of a watermelon?

This is fantastic.

A hard-boiled egg.

I don't know how eggs could ever be considered a perk for anybody.

Ben, by the way, I had a hard-boiled egg for lunch today.

Really?

Yeah.

Good protein.

It was great.

Great protein.

Okay.

Thank you.

It's your life.

It's your life, Adam.

It sure is.

I have a question, like, just in terms of what people think about the brain versus the mind

versus the soul.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh.

In like three minutes.

But maybe start with brain versus the mind.

Okay.

So I'm channeling my dear colleague here, Jim Davies, who co-hosts our podcast.

And he says the mind is the product of the brain.

The brain is the hardware.

It's the thing that's doing.

And the mind is the outcome of what the brain brain is doing now the soul

whoo uh i don't know i know it's not certainly not located in the pineal gland like descartes believed at one point right so really how would he even get to that theory i mean how do you even get to the theory when you're like when people are dissect and this is such a non-scientist question like people dissect brains how can you figure out that the amygdala is that little part right there when you're you know is actually where the fear centers or this is where the hippocampus is where the memories are like how do you

through imagery and right?

Yes, we're constrained by the tools that we have.

So, as we advance with technology to be able to look inside the brain and measure the brain and record the brain, that's how our understanding of the brain has advanced.

And I think Descartes, like they just, this was the 1800s, they had no way to image inside the brain.

It was really dead bodies.

But I do want to ask you, if we're talking about the mind and the brain, if you were inspired at all by the split brain studies.

I never heard of the split brain studies.

Oh, oh boy.

Okay, so imagine the brain.

In your mind's eye, it looks like kind of like a walnut that's two halves, right?

So we have the two cerebral hemispheres, and these two cerebral hemispheres is what you've probably heard left brain and right brain thinking, right?

That's where it comes from, because we have the left and the right cerebral hemispheres.

They're connected by like a highway of fibers called the corpus callosum.

So imagine it is literally like a highway connecting two cities.

Those fibers connect the left brain and the right brain.

And in the 1960s, there are a couple neuroscientists out of University of California, Santa Barbara, I believe, Roger Sperry, Michael Gazaniga, that discovered that when people had intractable epilepsy, so seizures that couldn't, they were having like hundreds of seizures a day, if they severed, if they cut that corpus callosum connecting the two cerebral hemispheres, it would actually alleviate the seizure activity.

This is awesome, great.

So this was called a split brain procedure.

Now, where the cool thing is, and the wild thing that leads to this notion of are we actually two minds in one brain?

Is they started to do all these neuropsychological testing with these split-brain patients?

What they would do is they'd get a computer screen, a cross in the middle of the screen, and they'd cover the right side of the screen from the patients, and they'd flash an image to the left side of the patient, okay, in the screen.

So it was like, let's say, a broomstick.

Now, this image would go only to the right side of the brain, but then couldn't travel over to the left side of the brain because the corpus callosum was cut.

And so the experimenter would say, What did you see?

The patient says, I saw nothing because the language side wasn't able to access the image on the right side of the brain.

Here's the wild thing.

Then they would say, Are you sure you didn't see anything?

No, I didn't see anything.

They give them a pen and their left hand.

Well, just draw, draw something.

And they draw a broomstick.

Whoa.

Yeah.

So, and it gets gets even eerier other situations they had a woman who said she would get up in the morning and her left hand would reach out to grab a red shirt and her right hand would smack it away and pick out a blue shirt no i know

so this to me is severance

wow

literal literal severance of the two sides of the brain so is it in practice then yeah the procedure yeah

yeah kim is there so much more to discover about the brain?

You're talking about we're only as good as the tools we have.

We're, you know, 2025, so much incredible stuff.

It's such an incredible time for science.

Is there so much more to discover?

Oh, yeah.

So much we don't know.

Oh, yeah.

I would say the brain is still the organ that we understand the least in the human body.

There's, you know, technology is booming.

We're starting to uncover more about the electrical activity of the brain.

We know a lot more about the chemical activity of the brain.

Like our brain wave activity.

That's something that, you know, things like that, I think are still uncharted territory.

We need more neuroscientists.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just, to me, it's, I would say, mind-blowing.

So, Kim, we have a series of rapid-fire questions we thought we'd throw at you just to see.

Are you good with that?

Are you down to do that?

Hit me.

Let's go.

Is it true that we only use 10% of our brain?

No, false.

Okay.

Okay.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Can we stop rapid fire?

Because I want to hear more about that.

Sure.

So that's actually a myth that started out with a series of studies that were done in the 1800s where there was a French neuroanatomist that was removing most of a chicken head and found, oh, look, the chicken can still peck and eat food

and came to this conclusion.

We don't need 80% of our brain.

That's so false.

You're using all your brain all the time.

It's just most of our circuits at any given time are inhibited, right?

We're not flailing around, you know, think about our motor inhibit, like actively inhibited.

We're not, we're, our speech, we're not swearing unconsciously.

And when we do, when that happens, that's Tourette's syndrome.

And that's when there are these circuits that are misfiring.

So the way I say the default state is most things are actively suppressed.

And then we experience our lives that ultimately what it has to do is overcome that inhibition to then engage in a behavior and move towards something or back away from something because something something really interesting and novel is causing that disinhibition.

Yeah, sure.

It's amazing how that you've heard that forever.

You only use 10%.

I really believe that.

Yeah.

All right.

Sorry, Adam.

You want to do the next one?

Can you burn a message into your retinas like Mark tries to do in season two?

She's laughing.

You don't have video, but she's laughing uncontrollably.

No.

Yeah, that was a bad idea, right?

It didn't work.

You'd fry your retinal ganglion cells.

Just doing it fake on the show.

Yeah.

Did it hurt?

Almost burned.

I did have who is alive burned into my retinas for a couple hours.

I bet.

Like if you have bright lights.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's clever.

It's clever.

Let's put it that way.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

Props was like, okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to put this bright light with who is alive under this, and then you're going to put the sheet over your head.

And I was like, oh, so we're just doing the thing.

Okay, third question.

What foods should Lumen stock in their vending machine to support brain health?

Sardines.

Yeah.

Anything with omega fatty acids.

I love sardines.

How about this, Ben?

Almonds.

Okay, I like almonds.

Can they be roasted?

Yeah, sure.

Why not?

Okay.

I think just a sardine on like a Ritz cracker is a great way to enjoy a sardine, right?

Ben's face says otherwise.

I mean, I'm trying to think of any way, any way you could possibly prepare a sardine that would make it appetizing, and I can't think of it.

But I want my brain to be healthy, so I don't know.

Put it in a pasta, make up a pasta, add a little bit of olive oil, crush up the sardines, they become flaky.

It's Parmesan cheese.

We're good.

Sure.

Okay.

Thank you so much for joining us.

This has been, we could talk for another three hours about this stuff.

Honestly, opportunity of a lifetime.

Thank you for creating an amazing show.

Just love, love, love nerding out with you.

Keep on, keeping on and making us all smile and wonder if we should get the severance procedure or not.

Thank you, Kim.

Check out that Minding Your Brain podcast.

Yeah.

Kim, and we'll see you again soon, Al.

Thank you.

All right, it's time for another break.

When we come back, we'll be talking with my friend and severance super fan, Mike the Mailman Lang.

Stay tuned.

Adam.

Yeah.

I want you to close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Okay, give me a second.

It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.

Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Okay, keep them close.

If our partner, ZipRecruiter, was helping Lumen hire for various roles, how do you think HR would feel about ZipRecruiter's ability to search resumes quickly via keywords?

Let me get into character here.

I think they'd love it.

It's efficient.

It's targeted.

We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Okay, you can open your eyes now.

Oh, thank you.

So if you were actually a business owner and not an actor who plays a guy who works at a weird company, like you do in the show,

ZipRecruiter has all these tools and features and more.

And they're designed to make hiring faster and easier.

So see for yourself when you try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash severance.

ZipRecruiter excels at speed.

It's smart technology.

Starts showing your job to qualified candidates immediately.

And if you've got your eye on an exceptional candidate, you can use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply message to personally reach out to them.

Yeah, see how much faster and easier hiring can be with ZipRecruiter.

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

You know what?

Lumen should make ZipRecruiter a perk.

It's way more fun than a finger trap.

Finger traps are not even fun.

No, I actually get legitimately claustrophobic when I use a finger trap.

Yes, I know.

Even the prop ones.

Totally.

Because the finger traps are real.

It freaks me out when I use it.

You know what else is real?

What?

ZipRecruiter.com is real.

So go to it, ziprecuiter.com/slash severance right now to try it for free.

That's right.

Ziprecruiter.com slash S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E.

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Hey, Mike.

Hey, Adam.

How are you doing?

Good, man.

Good to see you.

Hey, man.

Good seeing you guys.

Yeah, hey.

We're really excited to end the episode with a good friend of mine and Severance Super fan, Mike Lang.

Also known as Mailman Mike, apparently.

Is that true, Mike?

Is that how you're known?

That is true in both this fandom and in the Bucks, you know, basketball fandom.

Everybody calls me Mailman Mike.

That's so cool.

Super Bucks fan, too.

And as a Knicks fan, we have a friendly Knicks-Bucks rivalry and appreciation appreciation and support.

And we're going to go actually going to see a Knicks game this year together, which I'm excited about.

That is very exciting.

So, yes, there's mutual appreciation.

So, Mike, how did you and Ben meet?

So, back in 2022, you guys did a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, and I waited in line for three hours and then sat

in that room watching everybody else's panel.

When Severance came on, I got in line to ask a question, and then I came up there and asked a a question about traumatic themes and PTSD in the show.

And a day later, Ben messaged me on Twitter and it took off.

After that, we just started chatting about basketball and going back and forth.

So that's where our friendship began.

Yeah, it was great.

You know, I was so taken by the question that you had because first of all, it was the first time we're in front of people.

talking about the show at Comic-Con.

We'd been doing the show and it was out in the world, but then like all these people showed up for the panel.

I remember thinking, this is crazy.

We actually have fans of the show.

And then the questions that started coming were, you know, all sort of related to the show.

And then Mike came up and said, I'm a veteran.

I've dealt with PTSD and this really related to me in a way personally that I thought was so interesting and something that had thought about a little bit, but the way that you were affected by the ideas of what Severance could do and the questions it brought up for you personally.

Maybe you could just talk a little bit about that in terms of like what your connection was when you watched the show in relation to your experience.

Yeah, so I'm a post-9-11 war veteran.

I spent over 500 days in Iraq.

I do have PTSD.

I've talked about it openly.

And strangely, watching Severance, I was hit with memories from my time at war.

And I know you guys didn't do it on purpose.

It just happened.

And the biggest example is you, Adam, in the first episode.

You're crying in the car, going through this very emotional moment.

And as viewers, we don't know why.

But for me, that brought me back to 16 years prior to 2006 when I was at war.

And I had a similar thing happen to me

where I couldn't handle the stress anymore.

And I couldn't handle all of the...

traumatic events that were happening around me, the missions, the injuries, losing friends.

And I sat in a shipping container and I bawled my eyes out for about 20 minutes because I just had nowhere to go.

Like I had no one to lean on.

I was by myself.

So I took this time and I just completely let everything out and then went back to doing my job with like nothing happened, but I just couldn't do it anymore.

And when I saw this on the screen, I just...

flashed back to it and I hadn't really thought about it in a deep way in quite some time.

So that's where this starts.

And going through the first season, I just started paying attention to the traumatic themes within the characters and seeing what was going on and why they were choosing to sever themselves.

And that's something that I would have done had I had the option to remove the traumatic memory from going to combat.

First of all, thank you.

I'm so honored that you had a connection with the show.

And it's interesting that you say that it's severance is something you would have jumped at the channel.

I mean, not putting words in your mouth is something you would have participated in.

Right.

Do you feel like that severance itself, it would have removed those traumatic memories or it just would have like given you some time off from the traumatic memories?

Is that what it is about it?

It looks like a reprieve to you from those memories.

It does.

It looks like it's a break from not only the memory, but also the moment.

So, in the moment, that the stress and the tension is so high, and as a soldier, you have nowhere to go with that.

Your life for, you know, weeks and months on end is the same.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner is all the same.

The missions are the same.

Nothing changes.

And that stress level becomes so high that, yes, I would like a moment where I don't have to be on alert 24-7, where you're afraid of, is this going to be your last day?

Like, are you going to die today?

Or is something so bad going to happen that I'm going to witness, you you know, an airplane crashing, having to put tourniquets on people?

Like, that's really what I would want, is the break.

Like, could I have a break from that?

And then later in life, when you have PTSD, you think back and go, if I could have just not experienced this, I wouldn't be who I am now.

Like, I would be normal.

I would feel great.

And severance is like the cheat code, right?

Because therapy is the hard work.

When you go to therapy, you've got to find the therapist.

You have to do all of this.

Severance takes that away and makes it simple so it looks from the viewer it looks simple like this would be very easy sure yeah even when you when you said about just when you had to go off and just cry and let this out which by the way sounded completely normal to me of what anybody would have to do in such a situation that you're going to feel these feelings but then the part that got me was you said then you had to just go right go back out there and do it again or do whatever you were doing as if nothing had happened, but have to do it again over and over again.

And I think there's something about the idea of the severance procedure being like, okay, that would be a great break from it.

But in life for you, I mean, you had to go forward in your life and you're obviously dealing with your PTSD in different ways.

Right.

But does it feel like you're kind of severed in a way from your experience

in Iraq in that you're going, delivering mail, going to box games, living your life.

People don't know your experience and you almost have to compartmentalize it in a way.

Yeah, you do now feel

very numb to the past.

Like the average person does not know what I've gone through or what most combat veterans have gone through.

They just assume you're fine or that your life is fine.

Like they see you doing your job or hanging out with your friends.

It's the like the little moments, the quiet moments where you're left to your own thoughts or there's something that triggers you to think about those memories and feelings and brings you back down and you have to like tell yourself everything's okay and you're here in the present and not in the past.

It's not like in movies and television where you see the flashbacks to war.

Like it's it's the emotion.

that really brings you down, the depression that really gets to you.

It's not thinking about getting shot at or terrible moments.

For me, it's like a smell.

Like a smell can set me off and all of a sudden I am back there, but I'm in the present.

Like I can be delivering the mail and a smell of jet fuel will set me off and then I am just depressed the entire day because I'm remembering a moment in time that now has brought me down, but I'm still here doing what I have to do.

Yeah.

And is it even sometimes not literally pinpointing a moment?

It's just a visceral, like.

physiological reaction to that smell and you're depressed and you're not exactly sure why or are you is your brain pinpointing a specific memory when that smell comes to you now it is a specific memory I want to think right like after the war coming home I didn't understand what was happening I didn't know why I wasn't like

I wasn't sleeping or why I would like these triggers would happen that has come with the hard work like having going through all the hard work of therapy and figuring out what the the triggers are and working through all of that but for now when that happens, I know exactly where it is.

I know exactly what it's coming from.

It's not random.

It's just old memories that were from very intense moments that have stuck with me.

And I can't remove that.

I can't get rid of it.

It's just part of me now for the rest of my life.

Like therapy takes me so far.

And as time goes on, it lessens, but it's always there.

Like it's been 20 years since my first deployment to Iraq in 2005.

It's still with me.

Like it's just a little bit lesser.

Yeah, I mean, that's the sort of the reality of our memories.

And we were just talking to a neuroscientist talking about that, the power of a smell or a sense that can bring back a very, very visceral memory.

Or, you know, when you were talking about it, you know, I haven't been through your situation, but we've all experienced grief or losing someone and that feeling of that pain that is always with you on some level that you can find ways to deal with it.

But I think what you, you you know, just as a veteran, I'll say like what you're saying to me is very impactful because we really don't think about that as people going about in our lives.

We're not thinking about everybody's lives and what, you know, everybody's dealing with something.

What you're dealing with is something that's very, very strong, traumatic.

very painful memories that people, I think, you know, just don't.

It's not like people don't want to know about it, but it's that thing of like, unless you've experienced it, you probably really can't empathize as much with what that pain is.

By the way, I have to mention the show Homecoming.

I don't know if you've seen it, the Sam Esmond show.

Yes, yes.

I thought that was a really, really well-done show that was kind of getting to this idea a little bit too, the idea of some sort of technology to have veterans or

soldiers be able to go to war and not remember.

It's always fascinating when we see that in like television and you have these ideas.

And then when you're in the moment, like at war, you'd be surprised how many people will will tell you the same thing.

You could go back 20 years and I've had guys I had conversations with that would be like, oh, if we could just not remember any of this,

we'd be playing poker and having a great time.

But instead, we're at war and we're like looking, you know, living in a tent, looking at each other like, this sucks.

Like, I don't want to think about this.

And then you come home and it's like, no one wants to talk about it.

Like, no one wants to sit down and talk about the bad things.

They just want to pretend it didn't happen.

But then in your dark moments, it's there it's with you and that's reflected within severance like we see your character Adam drinking a lot and unfortunately a lot of us that went to war have gone through that we've been in that situation not only to suppress feelings but also to sleep like it is something to not have dreams not have nightmares it's a crutch and that's another you know real aspect of the television show to real life yeah it's a very human thing it's a very yeah it's just you know, we're all having to deal with levels of that, but that's such an intense thing that you're talking about.

I found with season one and with Mark, when we were working on that, kind of making the decision of Mark not wanting to move on,

this feeling is all he has left of her.

And so he's miserable and he wants to escape it for eight, nine hours a day, but he's doing nothing to move on or to heal or to anything because there's something comforting that's anchoring him.

And that is this grief and these feelings.

I, as a viewer, I don't know if this is right, but I took it as the character needed eight hours to be a productive member of society and for the rest of the time could just feel like shit and live in that grief.

And that's what the character wanted to do.

And you portrayed that, you know, excellently.

But that's how I took it as the viewer, like, oh, he needs an income, and the only way he can have the income is to do this.

And then he can feel however he wants, dealing with that grief, the loss of his wife.

I thought that was brilliant because not everyone can do that in real society.

They lose their careers, they lose their jobs, they lose their families,

and everything's a mess.

But in this situation, you have a character working and then going home and reliving that grief over and over again and never wanting to get better.

Yeah.

That's true.

But also, I think that's another metaphor in the show is that work itself can be real work in real life can be that for people too.

The numbing thing.

The idea of workaholism or, you know, kind of finding a place where you can sort of, you know, just disconnect from all those feelings and the things you think of because you busy yourself, you busy yourself and you put all of yourself into it, you know, and not leave space to actually feel the feelings that are painful that come up when you're not doing that.

Yeah, it's a good distraction.

It helps you distract from any sort of issue.

And when you throw yourself into that work, you're just off doing it.

Like, it doesn't get in the way.

It doesn't bother you because you're distracted by working.

All right.

Maybe we shift gears for a second here.

I just want to say you came to visit the set.

You and Kelly came a few times.

Yeah, we came a few times.

And I was told by a couple different actors that there has not been many people to the set.

So we feel a little spoiled that we've gotten to come come along and, you know, check everything out with you guys and see, you know, the behind the scenes of Severance.

Yeah, no, it was great to have you.

And the first season, we had no visitors because it was COVID.

Right.

Yeah, that's right.

I don't think any of our family members, nobody came at all.

And you came beginning of the second season, right?

Yeah, I came.

You came a couple times.

I came a couple times.

I came in 2023

when you guys weren't filming at all, and you and I just hung out and went around the sets.

And then we came back in 2024 while you were filming the Cold Harbor finale.

And it was a massive spoiler, but it was like so funny

because you have like this joke with, like, you and Kelly started this when we were walking around.

You might not remember, but she told you that, like, I'm not a big spoiler person.

So every room we went into, you were looking around, like, oh, that's a spoiler, spoiler, and then just laughing.

And I thought this was so great

to just live this moment and then, you know, get made fun of by both my partner and Ben Stiller.

Well, it was sort of like I wanted, you know, you to visit stuff, but like it's impossible not to have spoilers if you're visiting.

What was the spoiler that you saw?

It was when you entered the Cold Harbor room and you found Gemma making the crib.

Right.

That's like the spoiler of all spoilers.

Totally.

Yeah.

So I got to watch Adam come in the room a hundred times and a hundred different takes and different emotions and different energy every time, which was so fascinating to see because you never, like as a viewer at home, you get to see what you guys have put out into the world.

You don't see all of the different...

trial and errors that have gone through to find that perfect scene.

So it was really fascinating to sit with Ben and watch Adam and Deechin go through this.

And it was really cool as a fan to be, you know, five feet away and watching through these monitors to seeing these actors play this scene out.

That just blew my mind as a fan.

Like, oh, this is this is deep and cool to witness.

Thanks, Mike, for talking to us.

This has been so great.

Hey, before you go, are there any recommendations you might have?

I really appreciate you talking about your PTSD.

And I wonder if there are any sites or resources for people who have PTSD that you would recommend or any advice in terms of how to approach dealing with it.

Yeah, if there's anyone listening that's a veteran and they do feel out of place and they don't know what to do, I would recommend starting with their local Veterans Affairs hospital and trying to find out a good mental health counselor for you or a therapist.

There's also therapists in the private sector.

If you want to read a really interesting book that opened my mind towards PTSD, I gave Ben and Dan a copy of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

That really made me come out of my shell to talk about PTSD.

And even if you're afraid to talk about it, start journaling and writing your thoughts down.

And when you feel more comfortable, share that with a loved one or a friend or even a random stranger that's not going to judge you.

But I would say, you know, reach out to your local VA or find a local therapist and go through that process to...

you know, get this stuff off your chest and start untangling the wires in your brain because that's really what PTSD is.

It's tangling all the wires and you really need to fix that to be a more productive member of society.

Great.

Great.

Thanks, man.

Thanks for having me.

And last thing before you go, where are you predicting the Bucs end up

in the East at the end of the season?

Well, I mean, I'm a diehard, so I would see them, you know, as a number one seed.

But I know we're going to go through New York here, so we'll probably be number two, you know.

I like the optimism.

I like it.

Fear the deer.

Fear the deer.

All right.

Thanks, thanks man thank you thanks mike thank you

wow what a conversation yeah so fascinating to me uh whenever we talk about this stuff the parallels that come up in terms of what people are talking about and this concept i know the neuroscientist and mike both bringing up the power of smell on the brain and your memories.

It was amazing.

Yeah.

And talking to Karen was great.

Yeah.

Her approach to the work, I just love how she approaches it.

So this was a really fun episode, man.

Yeah, super fun.

And that's it for the episode.

The Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam will be back again next week.

You can stream every episode of Severance on Apple TV Plus.

The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott.

If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your other podcast platform of choice.

It really makes a difference.

If you've got a question about Severance, call our hotline, 212-830-3816.

We just might play your voicemail and answer your question on the podcast.

Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Gabrielle Lewis, Naomi Scott, and Leah Rhys-Dennis.

This show is produced by Ben Goldberg.

It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basil.

Show clips are courtesy of fifth season.

Music by Theodore Shapiro.

Special thanks to the team at Odyssey: Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LeVay, Melissa Wester, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.

And the team at Red Hour: John Lescher, Carolina Pesakov, Jean-Pablo Antonetti, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Sam Lyon.

And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin, and Christy Smith at Rise Management.

I'm Ben Stiller.

And I'm Adam Scott.

Thank you for listening.