The Science of Severance (with Karen Aldridge, Dr. Kim Hellemans, and Mike Lang)
The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott
Audacy, Red Hour, Great Scott
4.9 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, the podcast turns its focus to one of Severance's biggest influences: the science of the brain. First, Ben and Adam talk to one of their favorite fictional scientists, Karen Aldridge, who plays Dr. Asal Reghabi, about working with their science consultant on set and what it's like pretending to perform brain surgery. Then, they are joined by a real scientist, Carleton neuroscience professor and host of the Minding The Brain podcast, Dr. Kim Hellemans. They ask Dr. Hellemans all about the brain, how memories are formed, and what "real life severance" looks like. Finally, Ben and Adam talk to Mike "The Mailman" Lang — a military veteran, mailman, and Severance superfan — about how Severance resonates with him as someone with PTSD.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Severance podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is presented by The Farmer's Dog. |
| 0:05.6 | Try fresh, healthy food at thefarmer's dog.com slash severance. |
| 0:11.0 | Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. |
| 0:12.8 | I'm Adam Scott. |
| 0:13.9 | And this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we're talking all about everything having to do with severance. |
| 0:20.2 | And this week we'll be breaking down one of the biggest influences of the show, science. |
| 0:26.4 | That's right. I wanted to do a science-themed episode for a long time because I know so little |
| 0:31.7 | about it. So I thought this would be the time to actually learn. And it's very exciting because |
| 0:36.6 | we also have our favorite fictional |
| 0:37.9 | scientist, Dr. Asal Ragabi, Karen Aldridge herself. Karen Rules. And then we'll be joined by an |
| 0:45.8 | actual doctor, Dr. Kim Helmonds. She's a neuroscience professor at Carlton University, and she hosts |
| 0:52.7 | her own science podcast called Minding Your Brain. |
| 0:56.1 | We're going to ask her about all sorts of things having to do with the brain and the mind |
| 1:00.0 | and how memories are formed and how the severance procedure relates to reality and all sorts of |
| 1:06.8 | stuff like that. Yeah. And then finally, we're going to talk to a super fan, a friend of mine, |
| 1:12.5 | a guy who has a very personal connection to the show. His name is Mike Lang. He's a mailman and a |
| 1:18.8 | military veteran. We met a few years ago at Comic-Con when we did our panel. And he was telling me |
| 1:23.9 | when we met there about how much the show resonated with him. And so we've become |
| 1:28.3 | friends since and he's come and visited the set and stuff. And so I'm excited to talk to him too. |
| 1:33.1 | Yeah, Mike's a great guy. All right, this is a packed episode. So let's get into it. Yeah. |
| 1:43.1 | How 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 |
| 2:05.3 | in our house. It never even was like a thing that we talked about. And I'm curious for you |
... |
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