Alie Ward (host)

You know, I smell it in New York and it doesn't raise any flags of like, oh, just because you're in some parts of the country, you're used to people smoking it wherever.

But it's yeah, it's funny that I would get homesick.

If you're like, I wish there was a book that mentioned the smell of drugs, head on over to, say, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which sprinkles in a little hash, smoke, and the smell of huffing ether through a drenched Kleenex and then stumbling through Circus Circus.

Or get a hit of Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, which contains gorgeously hysterical

thick prose like at the moment she was lying in an unlit room of uncertain size which smelled of pot smoke and patchouli oil and they moseyed south down the alleys of gordita beach in the slow seep of dawn and the wintertime smell of crude oil and salt water

Also, there's a description in Inherent Vice that is so striking, it just might as well be a teleportation device made of words.

And it reads, "...there were blacklight suites with fluorescent rock-and-roll posters and mirrored ceilings and vibrating waterbeds.

Strobe lights blinked, incense cones sent ribbons of musk-scented smoke ceilingward, and carpeting of artificial angora shag in various tones, including oxblood and teal."

not always limited to floor surfaces, beckoned alluringly.

I feel like you know exactly what that motel room smells like as soon as you turn the key, which brings us back to patron Abigail Riggle's question.

Is there a scientific explanation behind why fresh and stale smoke smell so different?

And the answer is yes.

Science calls this third-hand smoke, and it's made of the mix of nicotine, formaldehyde, and naphthalene that settles on surfaces into fibers and builds up over time.

So the Mayo Clinic cautions that you can't get rid of third-hand smoke with more airflow.

So fans, open windows, not going to help you.

And it's hard to clean off third-hand smoke with typical household cleaning.

So please, science, tell us how.

Well, a 2020 paper titled Remediating Third-Hand Smoke Pollution in Multi-Unit Housing, Temporary Reductions and the Challenges of Persistent Reservoirs said that using a combination of dry and wet methods is most effective.

So dry cleaning involved simple green all-purpose cleaner followed by some distilled white vinegar left on surfaces for a few minutes.

But then wet cleaning was a bigger job with like professional steam cleaning teams and enzymatic preparations, attention paid to pH and all that.