Natalie Kearns is a theatrical prop artist currently based in London, Ontario, where she is the head of Props for the Grand Theatre. In the past, she's worked on projects such as an "emo musical" called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream set in seven cast-iron bathtubs.

Ken Finn has been a prop master for television and film for almost a decade, working on projects as diverse as Safe, a Jason Statham gangster movie, and Pan Am, a Christina Ricci period drama about flight attendants. Most recently, he worked on the Cinemax series The Knick.

Something about the cocaine monomyth extends deep into the American psyche. Almost every story about it begins by saying "cocaine is bad," but eventually adds a whisper of, "but it's expensive and makes you feel assertive, so it's actually good." That seductive feeling of getting away with something, or of getting-caught-but-what-a-ride, is as American as is it gets: You can see it in movies like Goodfellas, but also anytime anyone namechecks Bonnie and Clyde, or in every image of Paul Newman ever shot. For better or worse, cocaine's mythology embodies that feeling perfectly. Which makes it an ideal thing to put in your movie (or TV show). Which, in the grand American tradition of co-opting dangerous things, means it must be faked.

Ken Finn is a prop master who's been helping filmmakers do just that since his first gig involving fake cocaine, on "one of the early seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." These days, one of his primary jobs is on the television show The Knick, which, to put it bluntly, stars Clive Owen as a turn-of-the-century surgeon who invents powdered cocaine. At this point in his career, however, Ken feels like he's got his work cut out for him.

"Cocaine is probably one of the two or three easiest [drugs to fabricate]," Finn tells Hopes&Fears. "It's just a white powder."

Not just any white powdery substance will do, of course. Says Ken: "You don't want to use powdered sugar because it gets sticky. You really don't want to use flour either because if it gets damp at all it just becomes clumpy." Instead, it's almost always inositol, a B-vitamin compound. "In fact," says Ken, "if you ever snort it, you might get this familiar feeling. A certain memory, like, 'Hey, I've tasted this in the back of my throat before.' What I've learned since then is that actual cocaine is oftentimes cut with this stuff. If you ever do shitty [cocaine], You might actually be ingesting this stuff without even knowing it."