Science Friday - ‘Common Side Effects’ And An All-Healing Mushroom | The Unique Smell Of Snow

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

In "Common Side Effects," the starring scientist finds a mushroom that can heal any ailment. But powerful people will do anything to stop him from cultivating it. And, a combination of environmental factors and the way our bodies function play a role in how we perceive the smell of snow.In ‘Common Side Effects,’ A Clash Over An All-Healing MushroomIn the new Adult Swim show “Common Side Effects,” an eccentric scientist has a secret: He’s discovered a strange mushroom that can cure any illness or injury, and he wants to get it to people in need. The only problem is that a pharmaceutical company doesn’t want that secret to get out and will do anything to make sure he’s stopped.Joining Host Flora Lichtman to break down this fungal drama, and the science that inspired it, are the show’s creators, Steve Hely, who previously wrote for “30 Rock” and “Veep;” and Joe Bennett, creator of the animated sci-fi show “Scavengers Reign” on Max.Why Snow Has That Crisp, Clean SmellIf you know snow, you might know that it has a particular smell to it. It has to do with where you are and how cold it is. It may even involve the memory parts of your brain.Producer Rasha Aridi talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the science behind that snowy smell, featuring Dr. Johan Lundström, snow aficionado and professor of psychology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Flor Lixman. Today in the podcast, why does snow smell the way it does? But first, a new animated TV show makes fungi the star. If there were a medicine that could cure almost anything, what would that look like? And mushrooms seemed exciting from a storytelling perspective. In the new adult swim show, common side effects. An eccentric scientist has a secret. He's discovered a strange mushroom that can cure any illness or injury, and he wants to get it to. the people in need. The only problem is that a pharmaceutical company doesn't want that secret to get out and will do anything to make sure he's stopped. The show is pioneering a brand new genre that I hope will dominate my algorithm, the mycological thriller. This might look like individual fungi, but what you're seeing is a single intelligence. The Blue Angel mushrooms could have

effects 100 times anything we've ever seen. They want to nipped in the butt. I'll call the DEA right now, whatever it takes. Joining me now to talk about this fungal drama are the show's creators Steve Healy and Joe Bennett. Steve was a writer for 30 Rock and Veep, and Joe is creator of the animated sci-fi show, Scavenger's Rain on Max. Welcome to Science Friday. A pleasure to be here.

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Okay, so this story revolves around a magical mushroom. Are either of you fungi freaks? We're both enthusiasts of mushrooms as insane phenomena. It's hard not to be interested in mushrooms, and the more you learn about them, the more interesting they become. Some of them will kill you. Some of them are delicious.

Some of them make you feel funny. They communicate. There's so much we have to learn about them. Older than humans. Older than plants and animals. Yes. I think it's fair to say we're pretty interested in mushrooms. Yeah, you talk about them lovingly and you write about them lovingly.

Let me play a quick clip. A mushroom. Not just any mushroom. The caviar, the ghost orchid of mushrooms. I mean, the chances of this growing naturally. Francis, it's like a one in a billion Goldilocks situation. A special valley, isolated by mountains. The fog lasts just long enough.

The humidity is just right. The limestone in the soil is perfect to provide. produce a rare, specific kind of grass. And in this grass, grows a very, very intense mushroom. Did you base your mushroom off of a real mushroom? Like, was there some inspirational mushroom for you? There is a mushroom in New Zealand. I forget the scientific name for it that's like bright blue. But I had gone to, I wrote a book about a journey I took through South America and I tried some of the various plant medicines on offer down there. ayahuasca and stuff like that. And Joe and I were talking about this. And we got to talking about a sort of thought experiment of if there were a medicine that could cure almost anything, what would

that look like and what would happen? And a mushroom felt right because mushrooms are strange and our human interactions with them are a little strange. They're kind of hard to grow. Humans have a long history of harvesting plants and fruits and nuts and stuff. But mushrooms are a little, they feel like they're difficult to contain. And that seemed exciting. from a storytelling perspective. The bad actor in your story is a pharmaceutical company. And of course, right now there's tremendous pushback and discontent with the pharmaceutical industry. Why did you want to explore this?

Joe and I are interested in how interacting with the healthcare system is annoying. Yeah, we all know. Yeah. But on the other hand, it brings us all these wonderful things. I mean, people keep asking us like a big farm as an enemy, but we're all grateful to Big Pharma for the wonderful products they've provided. But on the other hand, once you have systems that are profit-driven and motivated by things like stock price and shareholder value, warped incentives enter into the system.

And our villains in the show aren't exactly, we don't intend for it to be like a particular evil person, but rather like the way the system kind of warps and changes and creates these twisted outcomes for people. You know, on the same note, I think scientists can often be flattened in pop culture, like in TV and movies. This is a pet peeve of mine. Like, they end up just being like the jargony, do we be socially challenged man. And I didn't feel that way about your scientists. And I wondered if you thought about that, like breaking that stereotype at all. Well, we were thinking about that there are a whole bunch of characters who are kind of on the fringe of science.

Like people who are out there kind of pushing it. And sometimes what they're doing is not fully accepted right away. And it takes a while for it to enter into the mainstream. And they're often, they can seem a little strange. But as you mentioned earlier, they can be kind of charismatic and exciting. Yeah, from that kind of fringe side, John Oroche from adaptation. Right, the movie based on the Orchid Thief. Right.

We kept going back to this guy. Like, he's such a, you know, he's maybe a little, he's a little dirty. He's a little unhinged. He's got dirt under his nails. But he's super confident. He's extremely smart. He would always just sort of represent himself in court. You know, he can kind of like find the loopholes and things and ways of getting around things.

And these characters are also funny and they often have contradictions. Joe and I, we went to visit a great desert botanist out in the Mojave desert. And, you know, this is a person who's very in touch with the natural world and knows how to raise all kinds of desert plants. And we went to see her and she just had like a 32-ounce Carl Jr., like Pepsi on her desk and both the blend of like, you know, the stuff that we eat and drink and the natural stuff and chemicals and all that mix-up seemed exciting to us. Joe, why animation for this show? I came from a sort of independent animation background. And animation for me was just a means to tell a story. I've fallen more and more in love with the idea of 2D animation and things that.

are hand-drawn. It just feels like, especially this day and age, you know, it's nice to see, like, this is a scene that was crafted by a human person,

and, and, you know, people really, like, labored over this, and you kind of see it. Joe, let's talk about your other show, Scavengers Rain a little bit.

So this is an animated show about a group of people trying to survive after they crash on an alien world. And to me, it was sort of like Miyazaki,

meets David Attenborough, like nature documentary set in another world. Let's play a clip. Nothing really makes sense. It's like a puzzle. We just can't help the instinct to give meaning to things we don't understand. Oh, God. I think there's something out there. Joe, how are these two shows related in your mind?

I think a big part of it was just, humans in their relationship with nature. You know, I grew up in the woods. My parents built a lodgab and I was surrounded by 20 acres of woods. I had no neighbors. I guess, like as a child, there were times where it felt a little insufferable, but kind of in hindsight, I feel like it really fostered my creativity. And also, I developed a profound respect for an interest in nature.

And I think I would say that the main overlapping themes of these two things are our relationship with nature and the sort of certain fragility and I guess the repercussions on when it's being abused. And I guess thinking about sort of mycelium, the idea of mycelium as a neural network that's connecting all of these plants and organisms, you know, and I just got really inspired by all that. And even today, we're like, we're still uncovering all of this incredible stuff in nature. Just trees are able to talk to each other, you know, like that's just insane. to think about. And that was like a more recent discovery. It's just wild. Yeah, no. I mean, I love the creatures in scavengers rain. Like I just find them so engaging. And I wondered,

what's your process for dreaming up, you know, animals or nature on another planet? Well, it's funny that you asked that because me and my co-creator, Charles, we really had a difficult time trying to come up with something that doesn't already exist in nature on Earth was like, oh, it's almost all of it's already here and we're just not aware of it. So a lot of it was just sort of cherry picking from that. You mean, you say David Attenborough, I mean, I was watching nature docs nonstop and I was like, it's just, it's all there. There's so many mind-blowing symbiotic relationships that are just so inspiring and almost kind of like, I'm not trying to to reinvent the wheel here.

That came through. I mean, for nature lovers, it felt like there were all these kind of Easter eggs, you know, when you saw the aliens doing these behaviors that we know exist on Earth, like organisms enlisting other organisms to collect their food for them. So I really appreciated that about the show.

Steve, on Veep and 30 Rock, you know, obviously you're exploring politics in the world of TV. Do you think there's like untilled ground for comedies that take place in a science, context? Oh yeah, totally. I mean, there's a lot that's weird and paradoxical and strange about science and biology. And it's both funny and strange that we are walking around in these biological units that are confining and also exciting and we'll never quite understand. And we're all trying to master them with our brains, which are, of course, also part of the

biology. So it's a mess when you start to think about. And that makes for comedy. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, this is my secret hope, not secret because I'm telling you. I really want someone to make the lab like an office style show. Oh, yeah. Set in the lab. Let's collab off channel. I'm here for it. Help me make this happen. We try to live every day like it's Science Friday. All right. Well, that seems like the perfect place to leave it. Thank you both for taking the time to chat.

Thanks for running us. Thank you. Flor, it's a pleasure to be here. Steve Healy and Joe Bennett are the creators of this series Common Side Effects, now airing on adult swim and streaming on Max. We have to take a quick break, but don't go away. When we come back, what makes the smell of snow so distinctive? Snow itself is porous and spongy, so it's really good at grabbing on the odors and trapping them. Sci-fry producer Rasha Arredi is out in the cold doing some reporting for us. Rasha, give me the snow down. Where are you right now? Yeah, I am right outside my apartment building. We just had a big snowstorm come through, and I'm standing in like seven inches of like very fluffy snow, which is the most I've seen in like years. So it's a big day. And it also brings back a familiar scent, the smell of snow. I'm not sure I know the smell of snow. Can you describe the smell of snow?

Okay. It smells clean and fresh and like a lot of nothingness. But part of it is also the feeling, like, the air is so cold that my nose is tingling, and the air in my lungs is really sharp. And so altogether, it just, it tells me there is snow, even if I would close my eyes. So I got to thinking, why does snow have a smell? It really is just water. So what is this that I'm sniffing? Surely someone knows what snow smell is made of. And maybe you should go somewhere warmer for this part. Yeah, don't have to tell me twice.

I like snow, and I've experienced snow a lot in my life. Dr. Yuan Lundstrom isn't just a snow aficionado, but an olfactory expert. He's trying to untangle how smell works at the Keralinska Institute in Stockholm. Born and raised also in northern Sweden, where we are quite familiar with snow, and we have it from basically September to April. So, Flora, here's the first thing you need to know. Snow itself is porous and spongy, so it's really good at grabbing on the odors and trapping them. So when you smell snow, you're mainly smelling what it kind of sponged up.

Let's see you're scoping up the snow from a bundle of roses. The chemical that you're smelling is going to be alcohol. It's called phenotyal alcohol, which basically are in plants and roses. My snow never smells like roses. Yeah, me too. I'm in a city, so I'm, you know, picking up notes of pollution, fumes from cars, asphalt, stuff like that. So, unfortunately, not roses. Okay, so the next thing you need to know is that when you sniff snow...

It's actually physical objects that you are smelling. So those physical objects are very, very small chemicals are traveling up to your nose. And those chemicals bind to odor receptors, and that info gets sent to your brain. Then those molecules can get absorbed into your body. So, Flora, chew on that next time you're in a stinky public bathroom. Absolutely not. I will not chew on that. Okay, here's a question for you, Rasha. Why weren't you picking up car exhaust in your snow bouquet?

Yeah, so the snow holds on to those odors. But the air itself has been kind of cleaned up by the snow, kind of like a natural air purifier. In fact, the air will probably smell the cleanest a few hours into a snowfall once it's kind of scrubbed the air. air. And because snow holds on to odors, it'll probably smell worse after it's been piling up on the ground for a few days versus if it's falling fresh. That adds up to me. Yes. So the other thing that we need to take into consideration is that even though there are odors in the snow for us to sniff, whether or not we actually pick up those scents is another question. And that's for a couple of reasons. One is the air itself. When the temperature drops, so does humidity. And the

Odors end up kind of moving in slow-mo, so they're less likely to waft up into our noses. Oh my gosh. Is that why a pile of garbage is so much stinkier in summer than it is in the winter? Yes, exactly. Things are stinkier in the heat, including us. Speak for yourself, Russia. Fair enough. And another reason we might not be picking up the subtleties of the snow bouquet is that our noses just don't work as well in the cold. Like, we're snottyer, for example, which gets in the way of smelling. Russia, is the smell of snow related in any way to petrachore, you know, that smell after it rains?

Yeah, so some scents might be similar. Like, you might pick up that earthy, musty smell of a chemical called geosin. It's found in soil and water. So if it rained right before it snowed or if snow is like sitting on a pile of fresh soil, it might pick up that scent. And our noses are actually really good at sensing Gio's men. Like if you poured a teaspoon of that chemical into like 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools, you'd still be able to smell it.

Wow. Okay, so the last thing you need to know about the snowy smell doesn't have as much to do with our noses as much as it has to do with our memory. Only those odors that have some kind of meaning to us, particularly if to have an emotional meaning, tend to be remembered. Smells that are most distinct to you tend to be associated with happy memories. Yuan says it might have to do with how our brains are wired. So the part of our brain that processes smells sends that information straight to our limbic system,

which includes parts of the brain like the hippocampus and amygdala, which are key in regulating emotions and memory. Other senses take quite literally a longer route to get to the limbic system, but smell has a shortcut. These intimate, unfiltered connection between the sense of smell and the memory of the brain are helping us to really encode and remember odors for a very long time. So every time I smell snow that has a very wet character, I'm taking back to our cabin up north, just around the Arctic Circle.

If we go there in the spring sometimes and the lake starts to open up, then you have this very strong wet snow smell, which for me is a very pleasant experience. Hmm. Rasha, do you have memories that you think make your brain sensitive to the scent of snow? Yeah, I think so. Every time I smell snow, it takes me right back to being like a little kid, having snowball fights with my little brother, Nibel, and sitting in front of the TV, like hoping and hoping that school would be canceled the next day.

So, yeah, really happy times. Maybe that's why it's so distinctive to you. Yeah, I think so. Rasha, I wish you many more trips down Smemory Lane. Oh, thank you, Flora. Same to you. Thanks, Rasha. And that is about all we have time for.

Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including... Jason Rosenberg. Dee Petersmith. Sandy Roberts. Shoshana Bucksbaum. I'm Flora Lickman. Thanks for listening.