hem Thug: Science is, science is life., Yo.

I mean, I guess I, I, I, hold on before I like ramble for an hour for this one question. So I fell in love with science early on in my life when I originally wanted to be a wizard. Like no bullshit, a hundred percent real talk. I, you could ask people who knew me when I was a kid, kid, like I wanted to be a wizard.

Because I was like, yo, these medicines that I take when I’m sick are like the healing potions and games, and those are made by the witches and the wizards, and I wanna make the healing potions. So bet. Then at some point I figured out that it, wasn’t magic, it was chemistry. And I was like, well, same difference. 

Joel: My name is Joel and I’m a recovering nerd. I’ve spent the last 25 years bouncing between creative jobs and technical teams. I worked at places like Nickelodeon to NASA and a few other places that started with different letters.

I was one of the first couple hundred people podcasting back in the early aughts until I accidentally became an IT analyst. [00:01:00] Thankfully, someone in the government said, “Hey, you’re a nerd that talks good.” And that spun me off into the world of startups, branding, and marketing, for the same sort of researchers and startup founders that I used to hang out with. 

Today, I help technical people learn how to get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

On Nerds That Talk Good, I want to help you do the same. I talk with some of the greatest technical communicators, facilitators, and thinkers that I know who are behind the big brands and the tech talk that just works. 

 This is one of the first guests that I spotted and I put on my wishlist, and he was gracious enough to, uh, uh, to get back to me. Uh, and so I, I cannot wait to introduce you to today’s guest nerd. So here we go.

Joel: With nearly 273,000 followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Chem Thug is a content creator and is known as the people synthetic organic chemist for his videos explaining chemistry concepts for the non-science nerds out there, he simplifies complex science topics for a broad audience. [00:02:00] Discusses trends like the dangers of drinking. Borax provides insights into chemistry, safety. A lot of inside chemistry jokes are fun. Particular favorite of mine is when he addressed the hydrogen water bottle craze and an amazing stitch, which I’ll include in the link.

And he is done some really fun videos on everyone’s favorite elements like lithium, radium, and lead, if you can have a favorite element. He is most definitely following in the footsteps of Carl Sagan, bill Nye. And if you’re of a certain generation, like I am Mr. Wizard, who taught me everything I need to know about science.

So, Chem Thug, thank you so much for joining on, Nerds That Talk Good today, man.

Chem Thug: I mean, thanks for having me, especially with that intro. Put me on the same, on the same level as Carl Sagan. Oh, wow. All right. I mean, I appreciate that for sure. I do. I do very much enjoy Carl Sagan’s work. It is, it was, I unfortunately didn’t see it until I was an adult, but it was.

It was kind of one of those oh yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, no, this confirms I was good. I was good all along for loving science.

Joel: And he was a [00:03:00] real a real pioneer and innovator in the stuff that he was doing. Really turning, science popular before there, we had Popular Science, but that was really only popular among scientists. And he’s done a lot. And I think what, what you’re doing now is really taking that to another level and into some other mediums.

But I’d like to start just here, the nerd origin story. I know that your wife kind of bamboozled you into doing this, kind of tricked you into it. I wanna hear that story, but what, what, what got you here, man?

Chem Thug: into just being a chemist like

Joel: Where, where does science come from? First of all? For, for you.

Chem Thug: For you. Science is, science is life., Yo.

I mean, I guess I, I, I, hold on before I like ramble for an hour for this one question. So I fell in love with science early on in my life when I originally wanted to be a wizard. Like no bullshit, a hundred percent real talk. I, you could ask people who knew me when I was a kid, kid, like I wanted to be [00:04:00] a wizard.

Because I was like, yo, these medicines that I take when I’m sick are like the healing potions and games, and those are made by the witches and the wizards, and I wanna make the healing potions. So bet. Then at some point I figured out that it, wasn’t magic, it was chemistry. And I was like, well, same difference.

Right? And it just never really went away after that. I was very fortunate, and you’ll probably hear a story like this, if you, if anybody, if you ask anybody, like how did you get into something technical or specific early on? It’s yeah. ’cause I had like access to books that like talked about it.

Like we had a bunch of textbooks in my house when I was a kid and I didn’t really like going outside like that. So I would just sit inside and read textbooks and encyclopedias. Yeah. Kind of for funsies. I know. I mean, this is Nerds That Talk Good. Is it not? You know what I mean? Like I, I used to make, I used to take notes from some of the books, just so like, interesting things that I thought I wanted to remember.

I, I, I, I wish I could find it now, but I had a notebook where I like listed all the like, names of cosmological bodies, [00:05:00] like the different stars and planets that were known at the time. And like little details about them, like how far they. Were from our planet. Just things I pulled from encyclopedias and textbooks and the like, like I listed.

What else did I thought? Like at some point I like became fascinated with the concept of negative numbers. I was like, how is that a thing? How can you have numbers that are negative that just what you can do math with this? What, like two years before they ended up teaching it to us in school.

I was just always like one of those people that was just like, yo, but wait, but like you can figure out things like you can know things. Yo and I had access to stuff that would show me how. So that’s really what got me there, which I frankly, I feel like a lot in. It’s kind of why I make the videos the way I make ’em.

Right? I feel like a lot of people are like that. I feel like most people actually are deeply interested in science and understanding the world around them. I think humans are fundamentally very curious creatures. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere, granted this may be apocryphal, but I read somewhere that there is some like potential neurological mechanism for releasing dopamine when you learn something new and you feel [00:06:00] satisfied that you’ve learned something new. And I mean, it’s also kind of probably integral to our survival that we, learn new things and change our minds sometimes.

You know what I mean? So like I, I do my best to like. Kind of give this love to other people just by being real about it. You know what I mean? It’s just nah, yo, this is fascinating. We figured all of this out because we needed to, you know what I mean? And a lot of it we figured out straight up by accident, you know what I mean?

Like just, just straight up by accident. You know what I mean? But yeah, I, I really just started out like I, I. I just kind of came out the box being curious about, how this, how this end fits to this odd and why everything works the way it does. And I was just lucky that I had access to books and people who were like, “oh yeah, here’s, here’s another book.

Here’s another thing. Here’s, I’ll entertain you and talk to you about this for a minute. Sure.” but then yeah, as you mentioned, my wife kind of, she didn’t bamboozle me. I don’t want that. I don’t want that on the record, she did not bamboozle me. It was.

Joel: It was a surprise.

Chem Thug: Surprise. It was, [00:07:00] it was just like unexpected. I don’t know.

Should I just, should we just roll into that, I

Joel: Yeah. Tell, tell me all about this. I love the story.

Chem Thug: this. So she did not bamboozle me and I love her to death for this because I wouldn’t, this wouldn’t be a thing if it weren’t for her, but it was a Christmas break. I was, while I was still in grad school, which I only recently finished.

But I was playing video games on the couch. ’cause the game she played was kind of lame and she wasn’t trying to play it. So I was playing this other game that I was like, ah, I wanna check it out. And she saw this video on TikTok and she was like, “Hey, can you explain why this water is freezing in the air like this?”

And I was like, “oh yeah, it’s because like when, when you throw the water in the air it’s like super heated. So like it’s gonna vaporize quickly, but then it vaporizes and cools very quickly and it makes like tiny, tiny snowflake crystals.” And she was like, “yo, that explanation” I, I, I think I did it better then.

But but she was like, “that explanation is great. Can I make a video of you making that explanation?” I was like, “yeah, sure, why not?” Let’s just do it. And we made this first video and it got I don’t know, I think maybe 10,000, 15,000 views. And I was like, wow, that’s kind of a lot, ’cause we, we never done anything before.

It was like, oh, that’s kind of cool. All right. [00:08:00] And then it just so happened that I think the next day or a couple days later, she saw this video about, I think that was the one where somebody had used bleach to clean a litter box,

Joel: Mm-hmm.

Chem Thug: Or it was one of the bleach related videos. I’ll be honest, I don’t actually remember which of the two it

Joel: Is there a lot of bleach videos out there?

Chem Thug: Yeah. I, I almost became the bleach guy in the beginning. It was weird. But I did a video about, explaining why you can’t mix chlorine or why you can’t mix bleach with vinegar. Oh yeah, I think that’s what it was. It was, it was explaining why you can’t meet mix bleach with vinegar, and that one went crazy.

Like for, I think that one got I think that one ended up ultimately with like almost 700,000 views or something like that, or like it was, or one of the early bleach ones. And that was more or less the point where I was like, oh. Maybe, maybe it’s useful for me to tell people these things. ’cause people seem to care.

Okay. I was like, all right, I guess, I guess we could do this. And then, and then the next couple videos, just kind of, of the next 10 videos. A bunch of them just did really [00:09:00] well.

I, I, I mean this genuinely, like me and my wife never imagined. That this would become what it became, especially in the timeframe that it did.

Like we saw an overwhelming amount of love in our early videos that just like catapulted the channel to, to like a hundred thousand followers. And like, I don’t, it was, it was way faster than like I ever imagined that sort of thing would happen. And I knew at the time I was like, this is. This is very unusual, but like, I love every one of those people.

You know what I mean? Every, every one of those comments that I would get with people like, oh man, I wish you were my science teacher. Oh man, I, I never, I never knew this thing, and I always thought this, like, that kind of, it, it, it makes it. It makes it more rewarding to keep doing it, ’cause it’s like, oh, I feel like people actually want to hear and see these things that I’m trying to talk about. And then I get a little bit of leeway to just like talk about things that I think are fun and interesting. Like that sodium benzoate video I did, that was just straight up me being like, wait, what?[00:10:00] 

Nah. And I looked at, I was like, oh, oh wait. It really does though.

Most of my life. I’ve just wanted to explain these things to people anyway, because the whole reason why I learn anything really is to tell it to other people

Joel: And, and I love that so many of your videos are in reaction to other videos out there, and I mean, you’re not, I, I wouldn’t position you as one of the, the debunkers, but you’re definitely about elevating, scientific literacy. You’re just about showing people like, okay, this is why this works, or hey, you don’t actually have to mix the vinegar and baking so together, because in the end, what you’re just getting is salt water, so you might as well. save the vinegar and just do a teaspoon of salt water anyway. And it’s it’s directly appli. I just watched that video by the way. I don’t even, there was like, I was like, wow, okay, I’m gonna have to go tell my wife that. ’cause we buy white vinegar by the jug full and it’s like, all

Chem Thug: Oh yeah.

Joel: smells

bad 

Chem Thug: I mean 

Joel: bad. 

Chem Thug: no, [00:11:00] yeah, I mean like, so, so real talk you can probably do about as effective cleaning with citric acid as you can with vinegar. Citric acid is a slightly stronger acid and it doesn’t smell as bad. That said it is a slightly stronger acid, so you do gotta be a little bit more careful with it.

‘Cause like concentrated solutions of citric acid can like actually kind of burn you a little bit. But yeah, nah, like the whole reason why we know any of the things that we know is because somebody was like, why did this happen when I did this thing? You know what I mean? Somebody was like, yo, when I put this, when I lit this thing on fire.

It let off this weird smoke and this weird smoke is different from this other smoke and I wanna understand this weird smoke. Or we had a problem that somebody wanted to solve, you know what I mean? Or there was something that people were trying to figure out how to do some stuff. We just kind of acc… straight accidented on, you know what I mean?

At a certain point we like figured out that oh, well, two and two equals four. So four and four must equal something. Let’s go figure out what that is. But so much of why we do science is [00:12:00] entirely tied to the enterprise of improving the what’s, what’s the word, the standard of living of humanity.

Period. That’s like what it’s at its core was like originally from my perspective, philosophically, of course I’m not like an expert on science history. Don’t, don’t, don’t at me, but like from, from my perspective and like my heart and soul, the point of science is to elevate the conditions of living of all of humanity by doing our best to figure out from as reproducible standpoint as possible, how anything works. And because of that, a big part of knowing science means that you understand how the world around you like comes together and interacts. So one of the more tangible examples for me has been like was recently was the realization that I can use baking soda as de for deicing rather than calcium chloride.

And that and the reason I know this is because I’ll, and I’ll give you the full technical reason. The reason I know this is because I’m familiar, I’m familiar with the concept of freezing point depression and the fact that that is a result of really just anything being [00:13:00] dissolved in water. Anytime water has something dissolved in it, you’re gonna de, you’re gonna depress the freezing point.

That’s just like a thing. And I learned that in a science class. You know what I mean? But then one day I was out of ice melt and I was like, and I’ve tried putting just alcohol on the ice and that, mixed results, it’ll get slippery before anything happens. You don’t wanna do that. But you know, I kind of had a moment where I literally in my head, just put two and two together.

I was like, wait, baking soda dissolves in water and I got a whole lot of baking soda. I could probably use that to de-ice. I don’t know if it’s gonna work as well, but it’s actually kind of great if you use like. Powdered baking soda because it’s really, really fine powder. So it sticks to the surface of the icing.

Makes it very, very, very, very, very frictiony and gives you lots of traction. And it’s oh, well, I mean, yeah, I, I just kind of thought of that because I know a little bit of science, but also it just, it. It changes the way that you like, interact with your world around you. When you understand more about like, why things come together, the way that they come together, and you know how all these bits of matter like bump into each other and work, you, you, you [00:14:00] get a better ability to approach your problems.

You know what I mean? Where you’re like, all right, well I don’t know how this works. But I know it’s gotta work somehow. You know what I mean? Like it’s, there are rules to the system. It’s not just, things aren’t just like popping in and out of the ether and I’m not just like at the whims of, some greater force.

It’s nah, like things happen for some kind of reason and I could just take a minute and try to figure this out. And that’s, that is, that is one of the main things that I always hope to try and communicate with my videos to try and give you a succinct answer to your question is the ways in which understanding more about the way the, the mechanisms of the world makes it easier for you to live your life in this world.

Because when things happen, you have a better ability to understand what’s happening and then respond to what’s happening rather than react to what’s happening.

Joel: There was a video you had and it was a stitch where somebody was just like, didn’t we just make up science? And, and everybody’s no, science is, and and your response was, we made it up, but the rules keep working.

Chem Thug: [00:15:00] Yeah, that’s really what it

Joel: like we, science is our explanation for things and I love that, it works somehow and I’m gonna figure out how it works.

That’s a, it’s a great thing to live by,

Chem Thug: yo straight up and down, straight up and down, especially with reading older papers for trying to do videos where I tie in the history of it. ’cause that also I think helps to build a broader and a broader appreciation for these science rules that you just get taught. Is that yo, we were wrong for so long.

Like we just did not know, like we knew so much nothing. Just garbage knowledge,

Joel: Yeah.

Chem Thug: just straight up. Trash. But, but it was the best we had and it was vaguely reproducible in certain situations. And so we worked with it and it got us to where we are now. And it horrifies me to think that it could happen in my lifetime that there is some fundamental discovery made that completely require, that requires a complete overhaul of [00:16:00] chemistry the way that we understand it.

And I really hope that that doesn’t happen in my lifetime. Or if it does, I’m in a position where I can just go learn the new chemistry, I guess. But like it’s. It’s, it’s scary, but it’s also kind of exciting because it is our reality. You know what I mean? This is, this is like one of the, one of the things that humans are kind of just built to do is like, all right, well we, we exist in this environment.

We gotta figure out how to, how to like, make it work. And just to be clear, technological progress is, we think of hard sciences like the physics and the chemistry and the biology, but like even things like understanding like how indigenous peoples in the Americas had a deep, well, well like, well, I guess, yeah, well researched understanding of the ecosystems that they existed in and how to exist, like in kind of more in tandem with them.

Like that in and of itself is its own form of like technological understanding. Granted, we didn’t have the science of ecology at the [00:17:00] time, you know what I mean? As we, as we do now, but yeah, like that was. That’s, that’s science. Like understanding that oh, I have to rotate these crops, otherwise this field isn’t gonna be able to grow things anymore.

Understanding they’re like, oh, well, I kind of can’t cut down all these trees. I gotta only cut down a few of these trees. And if I’m, if I’m clever about which ones I cut down, where I can actually encourage the growth of other trees that I want growing here, like these are, this is just as.

That’s just as difficult to understand and tweeze out as the fundamental elements, but also just as important, like we’ve just, we do this, humans do this, and I want to encourage people to do it. I want to encourage people to just yo, like I know enough to ask a question intelligently. You know what I mean?

Joel: And it, it almost becomes more real when it’s, when it’s in baked in part of your culture and you ha just have that like the Native Americans, they weren’t thinking, okay, time to put my farmer hat on, or time to put my ecology hat on. They were just like, this is what we do because [00:18:00] this is what works and makes sense.

And I almost feel like. When things become technological or when things become a discipline and then we’re teaching them, or I just had this conversation this morning, when you separate concept from culture. It’s harder to learn the concepts and you’d think it’d be easier because you’re like, here’s a straight up formula.

But when you contextualize it, and that’s what I love. What, what are some of the, the interesting feedback that you get back from people when, when you know, I mean you’re not teaching in, in a class, but you’re teaching to a large number of people. What are they telling you about? ” I got it. That flipped on a switch.

I understand this now.”

Chem Thug: I, yeah, I do. I, I, of course do get comments from people are like, nah, sorry, I still didn’t catch it. And I’m like, damn.

Joel: Mm-hmm.

Chem Thug: Well, maybe I, maybe I’m not the perfect messenger, but I get more comments on average of people saying things a more along those lines of oh man, I get this now.

Or, oh man, this makes so much more sense. Probably my [00:19:00] fa- don’t know about favorite, but I. Most recent example is this, this I think it’s like almost 20 minutes this video that I that I p- that I put together. And my wife was so kind to put together the visuals that make it work, on atoms and molecules and how atoms come together to make molecules.

And essentially in that video I try to explain what is, what sometimes can be about like two weeks worth of intro Kim stuff in about 20 minutes. And.

I don’t necessarily know that I did the best job of that video in terms of making it, putting it in a context that people would appreciate because at a certain point it does become difficult to it’s hard to put the con put orbitals in a context that people like. I mean like even I like the times when I think about orbitals in my day-to-day life are the times when I’m really being a nerd for no reason, [00:20:00] but, I do my best to make it approachable and use common language, which is part of which goes kind of to the point you’re making also in that, yes, I disagree entirely. Siloing and defining disciplines as this thing versus, and removing it from the broader context in which it was developed does in a lot of ways a disservice to learning in general.

Because our brains, I don’t think, I mean, I’m not, again, I’m not a neurologist. That’s not what my degree’s in, but I don’t feel like our brains are designed to learn things in that way. Our brains, I think, are overwhelmingly designed to learn things as they’re connected to other things. And so whenever you want to teach somebody something, the best thing you can do is teach it to them in a context that is related to.

As many other things that they already know about as possible or might already have an interest in, or might at least just be vaguely more familiar with. If you just give somebody a [00:21:00] formula, you know what I mean? And they’re not already somebody who’s like into math, and you tell them that they can use this formula to, predict the lotto numbers.

They might be like, yeah, okay. I mean, sure, but. I, I, I’m not trying to use this formula. Like this formula looks complicated and like a pain, but no it’s, it’s very important that, I think it’s very important, not just for making it easier for people to learn this stuff, but making it.

More embedded in like the social zeitgeist generally, like the importance of it and the value of it. Like I feel like we, I don’t know if this is a thing. If it is a thing then, I’m caught not knowing it was a thing. But I feel like we need more of those like faraday type lecture situations where you just have like scientists going around to like theaters and just like doing science shows for people and like presenting to the public like new knowledge and information.

That’s just, it’s like I know we got museums and I know we got, like the Hayden and all of that and but I feel like it needs to be [00:22:00] put more in people’s faces, just because I think that makes it easier and better for more people to engage with it. It just gives them another context that’s like the information that’s not a classroom.

Like you said, like the more you silo the knowledge, the more you make it less connected to other things. The actually more difficult it kind of becomes to learn, and even more so to communicate, because if you only know it in this one narrow context, you can only really talk about it in that narrow context.

You know what I mean?

Joel: I think it also gets to, the, the, the popular culture and, and when the culture starts thirsting for knowledge, it’s, we’ve seen a decline in expertise over the past 20 years. Right. And, and even in the, the climate that we’re in politically, a lot of skepticism around science, but at the same time, we elevated, I think a couple years ago, well, longer than that now, the, the, the nerd, right.

Big Bang Theory got really [00:23:00] popular and all, we had all these characters that were nerds even going back to, Steve Urkel, but he wasn’t an, he wasn’t a, a. Character that you looked at because, and you were like, I like him because he’s smart. It’s, I like him because he’s got these other trappings in this, this, stereotypical thing.

And I think it, I think it’s hard because, you don’t come off as a prof, you don’t come off as a, as a scientist and a and a nerd, nor should you like, have to do that to be taken seriously.

Chem Thug: I mean, look at this point, they sent me my degree. I got the piece of paper. So anybody who wants to try and come at my neck, go read my thesis.

You know what I mean? Like I did it. I ain’t trying to hear it. It’s not perfect, but it is valid. I did that work. You know what I mean? It’s real and yeah. But I don’t think it’s important. I think scientists look like everybody. I think we’re, like I said, we’re all scientists. All of us are scientists.

Everybody does science every day. Anytime that you’re like, I wonder if this route will be faster [00:24:00] than the other route that I take, you literally just didn’t experiment and you took an observation when you noticed that it was faster, and you were like, oh, okay. My conclusion is that I should take this route.

That is literally how this works like that’s just actually how all of our existence is centered around us being like, does this work? No. Does this work? No. Does this work? Yes, this works. Okay, cool. So we’re gonna do that now. Next problem. Does this work, like literally it’s just been guess and check.

Like it actually has just been guess and check. You know what I mean? It’s so many. Like educated guesses, guesses built on the, long standing on long spent experimentation in years and in some cases, centuries of research into the topic. But it’s still a fucking guess. 

Joel: Yeah.

Chem Thug: and we all do that and it’s yeah, there’s this weird current of anti-intellectualism that I’ve always felt throughout my life.

I don’t know. I, I, I, I. I think a lot on social and political things, but I never feel comfortable like really talking on them to people who, I don’t know, like personally like that, but [00:25:00] or even like in this kind of a forum, but I have always just kind of felt at least in the US, like the idea of being smart was always kind of like frowned upon.

And I don’t know why that is or not frowned upon, but devalued where it was like, all right, cool. Yeah. Sure. We need you around. Yeah, but can you like go over there with being smart and it’s but.

Joel: Yeah.

Chem Thug: just never understand that. It just, it never made sense to me. But yeah, look, I got picked on a lot as a kid, you know what I mean?

I was part, yeah, I, I, I didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid, you know what I mean? And I was, I was told I was, I was correcting people on things at four years old, apparently. One of the earliest words I knew was “actually” apparently so, 

Joel: Oh, now, now I’m just picturing a little baby Chem Thug with the beanie and the beard and just, “well, actually the Tooth Fairy…”

Chem Thug: Actually,

Joel: that’s,

Chem Thug: it’s no, it’s, it is ridiculous.

Joel: I told you this was an amazing episode. I’m just smiling ear to ear, cutting this thing together. I couldn’t wait to share it with y’all. The other thing I can’t wait to share with [00:26:00] y’all is my brand new book, which is gonna be coming out in early June. So if you want to get an early read on it, I am enlisting to people from my Book Army, which means you can get a full digital copy, to preview.

All that I ask is that you say nice things about me on Amazon when you actually buy the book. So, uh, you can sh uh, shoot me a message. joel@messagespecs.com, or you can go to nerdthattalksgood.com/book. Sign up for that. I’ll get in touch with you. I’m gonna have some giveaways, swag, opportunities to have private one-on-ones with me, uh, for my book Army.

But, uh, I, I’m just, I’m so excited about this. It’s been a long time coming. Definitely not as long as, uh, uh, Chem Thug was working on his PhD though. So, uh, let’s get back to this conversation because it’s about to get really fun.

Who out there do you really admire Who’s, who’s sort of stepping into this, this new realm? Because again, we’ve got centuries and centuries of this, this guess and check all this, this body of work, but now it [00:27:00] comes down to.

Presenting it very quickly. And I mean, TikTok, you could do a 10 minute video on it. I don’t think, I still don’t think those are the ones that perform well. I think it’s the people who get to the crux very quickly. Who else besides you, ’cause os obviously you’re one of the best. Who else out there is is doing it?

Great. Maybe even other subject matters that you’re picking up stuff from.

Chem Thug: I, hmm. If I’m gonna be perfectly honest, I don’t necessarily think I’m that good. I don’t necessarily think I’m that amazing. I think, I think I do a pretty decent job of explaining things, and I think my wife does a really good job of elevating my explanations. But in terms of like the breadth and scope of what I can do with my current resources and setup, yeah, there are definitely people who are doing more than me, like ACSReactions’ channel, they’re channel is great. I really, I’ve always kind of been a fan of SciShow what do you call it? Oh, there’s this one channel, that I really like the Octopus Lady on YouTube. I very much have enjoyed her stuff and it’s, it’s [00:28:00] interesting ’cause I, I frequently am not that into like marine biology related things like that.

But her videos are pretty, her videos are pretty top notch. And there’s there’s also what’s his name? He makes, he makes these videos about animals; what’s…? TierZoo. There we go. TierZoo. He’s pretty, he’s pretty fun. But then I also like you, I don’t know if I’m the person to ask this question too though, dog.

‘Cause I like people like, I like people like NurdRage and like Doug’s Lab and U-238 who’s not on YouTube anymore, but shout out to him. ’cause like he had some great videos, you know what I mean? There’s like what’s his name? What was his name? Oh, why can’t I remember his name now? Oh.

He was one of, oh man, he’s one of the old, he’s one of the OGs of YouTube chemistry. Uh uh, but I mean, these are just like straight chemistry channels, right? These are not for the general public. 

But like I, I generally have an appreciation for anybody who does this. Quite frankly, I don’t care if you’re, I don’t, I really don’t care if you’re, if you, if you are bad at it or if you think you’re bad at it.

If you are somebody who has [00:29:00] technical expertise in some field, you need to get in front of a microphone and start explaining technical things to people. Period. We need to stop acting like people don’t know things. Straight up and down. I don’t really, eventually you’ll get good at it. If you, if you keep at it, you’ll get good at it.

That’s just kind of the way it works, as long as you’re trying to get better at it, you know what I mean? But I genuine especially, and that’s not me just trying to be like political or whatever, like having done this, like I have a PhD in chemistry. I would rather in some instances just be in the lab synthesizing a molecule than trying to figure out a video.

Because in some ways it’s actually easier for me to just go synthesize a molecule than it is for me to make a video and record the video. And then my, I, my wife, I don’t even do the editing in the post. That’s all my wife and mostly because I can’t ’cause my computer’s too old. Literally it’s 10 years old.

I’m surprised it’s able to do this video conference right now. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. You know what I mean? But like, but I, I feel like you feel my point. Like I, I get, like I said, I, I, I, I definitely, I definitely really do appreciate like I said, like s [00:30:00] SciShow, and SciS how, Octopus Lady, ACSReactions, NightHawkInLight is actually also another good one that I really like.

And I’ve liked his stuff a lot. And his stuff is very much his stuff is very, if you’ve not watched any of his stuff, I would, I would check it out. ’cause his stuff, a lot of his stuff is like, how to use this science for this chemical process to do so, yeah, we put these physics rules together to make this really cool little device that you can have fun with.

I think he made like a, like a, like a bottle rocket gun or something like that at one point. And he made this like forgotten flame flame insulator material called starlight, I think it’s called that. Like he was just like, yeah, I did enough research to kind of, I think I pieced together what the formula is.

Watch me test it. You know what I mean? It was, I was like, oh, his, his stuff is great, but that’s what I, but that’s what I’m talking about. It’s yo, do you know how to do something? Are you good at something? Go tell people how to do it. Go, go, go, go give people good information on something.

As long as it’s legit good information. As long as you can like back it up with something that was like empirically measured in a meaningful way and proven to be true, go, go forth and let people know because [00:31:00] this is hard. But the more people there are doing it, the more of it there will be out there.

The more other people will appreciate it and the. In some ways, the easier it’ll become because a lot of what makes it hard is being able to make videos on topics that like people will in fact engage with and find interesting. There’s a ton of stuff that I’d love to talk about in chemistry like there was something I was thinking about.

It was something I was thinking about recently that’s like relatively, relatively technical and I, but I’m like, but you know, if people knew just enough chemistry, like they could appreciate the quirk of this, you know what I mean? I’m like, can I put a video together that makes sense? It’s ah, I could, but if there’s, if, if there’s a wealth of people making the, putting out this kind of information then, maybe more people, I, I’d be, I’d feel more comfortable and confident putting out a video like that, or trying to put together a video that’s on a more technical subject, I think. I think it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s the fact, it’s something vaguely real quick.

It’s, it’s kind of related to my PhD research. So I made these molecules, or I tested these [00:32:00] molecules that can work as magnesium sensors. They fluoresce on when they’re in the presence of magnesium and the, the mechanism through which they do it was discovered initially in salicylic acid, which I’m researching for another project that I’m doing. And this is just like a random thing that I came across and I’m like, “oh my God, this is fascinating to no one but me.”

Joel: Right. You’re, you’re making, you’re making those connections and it means something to you and you’re like, I have to share, I have to tell people about this.

Chem Thug: And I wanna, but that’s what I mean, where I’m like, nah, if you have the ability to do this, please do it. If you ever wanted to try doing it, just do it. It’s hard. It’s very hard. So I admire everybody who tries to do this, everyone who’s tried to do it, even the people who weren’t necessarily great at it, you know what I mean?

Like I, it’s necessary. It’s necessary. You know what I mean? In the same way that it’s necessary that we all be a little kinder to each other so that we all feel a little bit more [00:33:00] encouraged to be kinder to the next person. You know what I mean? It is necessary to put this kind of content and this kind of information out there.

You know what I mean? If there’s a lot of it, people will stumble across it and they will find it, and some people will engage with it, and some people will learn things from it. You know what I mean? Even the people that I don’t think are great might be great for some other people that I’m not good for.

So yeah, nah, I, I just wanna see as much of this out there as I can, you know what I mean? Like I’m really about that.

Joel: It’s definitely self perpetuating. The more it’s out there, the more people see it, the more popular and interested. You, you create new creators or you, you provide that permission structure. To go a little bit deeper what’s the most difficult technical concept that you’ve had to explain, like w that you’ve, or that you’ve chosen to, that you felt that you put out there, that you feel you did a good job on?

Chem Thug: So I personally think that Adam’s video was real was I did a good job. Personally, I think I did a good [00:34:00] job. The algorithms seem to disagree a bit, but I think I did a good job. Other, another example, I think I. Probably my rec crystallization video. I did a video explaining the this, and actually I was, I was not aware that this was the thing people did.

But apparently as a Halloween decoration, a thing that you can do is take like a piece of bone, oftentimes a skull, and put it in a solution of a supersaturated solution of borax. And then, let it cool down and the borax crystals will grow on the skull. And it’s, you got like a crystal coated skull and, it’s, it’s pretty cool actually.

And so I did a video kind of in response to that. It was like explaining how re crystallization works. And I think also I feel like I did a pretty, that explanation I’m fairly proud of. I think it was accessible, I think it was. And I also feel like that video was fairly well received based on the comments that I got.

But the Cat Litter box video where I explained the Hoffman [00:35:00] Rearrangement, so. The question. The thing is, with that one is I’d like to think that I just did a really good job of explaining the Hoffman Rearrangement to people, and that’s why that video did well. I know that that’s not why that video did well.

I’m very aware that that is not the reason that video did well. 

Joel: You gotta have a hook. 

Chem Thug: Right. Well, so the funny thing about it is that like I got, so that video in particular, like I, I got like a little. I don’t know if excited is the right word, but like I was deeply intrigued by it because first of all, I like, if I clean my cat’s litter box, I’m just gonna hose it out a little bit like, ’cause I, in my experience, they want to have a little bit of their funk in there, so I’m not gonna clean it too hard.

But when I thought about it, I was like, man, using bleach to clean a litter box. I don’t know, there’s a lot of ammonia in there. And I thought about, I was like, actually, is there ammonia in there? It just smells ammonia in. And I did a little bit of reading and I was like, it’s, it’s, it’s just a lot of urea.

[00:36:00] Oh no, because that in particular I was just like personally yo, wait a minute. And like un, un, un related for me, the reaction of urea with hypochlorite and under specific conditions and with particular apparatus, of course, is used by home chemists to make hydrazine sulfate for use in other chemistry.

You know what I mean? Just like making dyes and things like that, you know what I mean? Making like funky, interesting looking molecules that, make cool crystals or whatever. But but I was like, but no, it’s happening in the litter box. Oh no, it’s happening in the litter box. So I think there was a very much an element of that came like this, this energy and kind of like amusement that I had over this where I was like, oh man, this reaction that gets used in a lab, gets used by home chemists was like.

Probably important to discovering something related to this or like a useful technique for doing this early on in synthetic te in synthetic chemistry [00:37:00] also just happens to be the reason why you can’t use bleach to clean a litter box. It is like LOL.

Joel: It,

Chem Thug: Of course. That’s a thing

Joel: I think it’s that, that curiosity and that glee, I mean, you just like when you, when you light up, that makes people like, I mean, you, you said it earlier, you learn something and your brain gives a little bit of those wee chemicals and it’s like the dopamine hit. And I think, I think people see that.

And that’s I wanna learn, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna know what he knows so that I can, I can feel that. And it, it’s, it’s something that you can. Feel over and over and over again, but you know, it’s not as, the, the hit’s not as good the second or third time, so you gotta go and learn more. And, and, and I think, I think people who get it get it.

Um, 

Chem Thug: Learning is hard. Also in general it is not necessarily easy to learn things and especially when you consider that not to get too much into the history and the politics of things, but the ability to read even was not something that was seen as [00:38:00] like being something that everybody should be able to do throughout even most of human history at this point.

You know what I mean? So you gotta take that into account when you consider how difficult it is for people in general to learn things. ’cause a lot of people just have misinformation. And in order to learn something, you have to do at least two things. One, you have to admit that you were incorrect about something.

Two, you have to change your mind. Both of these things are actually fairly difficult to do in my experience, at least. I’ve, I’ve spent years working on the ability to change my mind, I mean, and admit that I am incorrect about something. I’m much better at it now than I used to be when I was a wheel ad.

But, that’s hard. That’s, that’s hard to do. So I, I wanna make that easy for people, I guess, in whatever way that I can, where it’s I, I, I try not to, I try not to. I. I try to make it a point in my videos to always be as generous as I [00:39:00] can, except in the cases where I think somebody’s trying to like, use, take advantage of people’s lack of information to trick them and to scam them basically.

You know what I mean? That’s, that’s where like the hydrogen water bottle video came from, kind of. ’cause it was like, nah, these, most of these are not a vibe.

Joel: Yeah. Yeah. That may have been one of the, one of the first videos that I saw you on ’cause they were. Everywhere. And then there you were doing what you could to kinda like be the, be the voice of reason and push against it. But not in a scolding way. Just in a hey, if you wanna do this, that’s cool.

It’s only 20 bucks on the TikTok shop, but you’re better off, over here.

Chem Thug: Yeah, yeah. You better off spending that 20 bucks or some blueberries, you know what I mean? You probably gonna get just as much antioxidant activity, you know what I mean? And it’s gonna taste better,

Joel: I, I do love blueberries. They’re, they’re my, they’re my number one fruit anyway. I got distracted by fruit.

Chem Thug: no, no, you’re good. No, you, I mean, I, I’ve, it happens. I love fruit in general.

Blueberries in particular, I like dry blueberries. For some reason. Fresh blueberries, [00:40:00] I, I don’t know, but dry blueberries, I will demolish a bag of just like dried blueberries they’re so good. But yeah, nah, sorry, that, yeah. Super tangent.

Joel: so speaking of on tangents, what do you do to balance out or, your academics? You, you got the, the PhD finally pulled that through, so congratulations on that and all the work that goes to that. And then all this, all this content that you’re doing with, with your wife. Is there a, is there a middle?

Like are you, are you doing chemistry for fun around the house or do you sometimes need to switch the brain? I mean, you mentioned video games that they out outset, but what, what do you do to unwind and, and recenter?

Chem Thug: Do I do chemistry around the house. So it’s just, it’s so funny that you said it that way because quite frankly, for a little while, yes, I was just kind of doing chemistry like. Around the house, I would have like little things going in like the bathroom, and then sometimes it might be going in like the living room and it would all be relatively innocuous [00:41:00] things, you know what I mean?

Just like trying to re crystallize this some trying to, or try to trying to grow a really big crystal of potassium tartrate cream of tartar. Or like making some like calcium, making some copper acetate to make blue fire. Like they’re relatively innocuous things.

That one’s you, you gotta be careful with copper waste. Just let me just say that out loud, but. Yeah, so. I am one of those people that like, just does chemistry for fun, I am no bullshit. Dead ass. A hundred percent. Like I, I, I don’t have a video of this. I might have some like random footage I took of it, but I remember a while ago I made so the, the active ingredient in a lot of lead.

Paint testing kits that you get at hardware stores is this stuff called potassium ozonate, which you can Google it. The molecule looks kind of funky. But the point is you can make it fairly easily. Well, I, I, I guess a chemist can make it really easily by reacting this stuff [00:42:00] called anatol, which is this like sugar type molecule that I think occurs naturally in our bodies, but it occurs naturally in a lot of plants.

And for a while we thought it was like an essential nutrient. Then we figured out it wasn’t. But you can react that with nitric acid to make this potassium ozonate after you do like a couple workup steps of like potassium acetate. And so I did this for funsies because I wanted, because, well, mostly because the crystals of potassium ozonate are apparently like this, violet red color, and they can get, you can grow like really big ones if you’re careful. And the color was gorgeous. The color was absolutely gorgeous. And it just so happened that I, where I was living at the time, I decided we, I, there was some paint peeling and I decided we wanted to know if it had lead in it.

So I was able to use this to test the paint for lead. And it, it turned out the paint, the paint did have lead in it. So, I didn’t have to buy the kit, but but yeah, like I, I just did that for fun ’cause I wanted to see this oxidation and in the process I captured the, the nitrogen dioxide gases that came off and recon condensed them into a liquid, which is [00:43:00] unnecessarily dangerous. Like it just entirely unnecessarily dangerous. But oh, that green color man, like I don’t think I’ve ever seen, oh, it wasn’t green. It wasn’t quite green and it wasn’t quite blue. I have always described it as the color I believe you would get if you took a sapphire and you were able to melt it down, into just like into a liquid that was still the color of the sapphire, just as a liquid, like it was, it was this amazing color that I sealed in some ampules and kept for a little bit before I used it to make some sodium nitrate. But I just for fun, just ’cause. ’cause I know how to do this stuff. The same reason somebody bakes cakes for fun. You know what I mean? So it’s oh, I wanna bake a cake.

I wanna try making this cake. All right, so I’m gonna make this cake. I want to try making this molecule because I think I can make this molecule and so I’m gonna try and make this molecule. You know what I mean? It’s just like you can’t eat the molecule afterwards. So, people are

Joel: You shouldn’t.

Chem Thug: yeah, you really shouldn’t.

Although it continues to bogle my mind how long we went. Just like tasting the [00:44:00] things that we made in chemical reactions as chemists before we before we were like, maybe we shouldn’t, we probably shouldn’t do this anymore. I think smell and smell is probably enough. We can, we can, we can just do smell like,” 

yeah.

Joel: Yeah. 

Tony keeps, keeps passing out over there. Yeah. Someone’s gotta taste the crystals. I don’t know, man. That’s, it’s on the checklist. Maybe we don’t do that no more. Well, I, I gotta say this has been an absolute, just a, a blast. So much fun. Chatting and learning. Where, where can people like, follow you?

Obviously you’re across all the channels and I’ll be including. Links, but what else, what’s coming up? Anything exciting? You can you can preview for us or

Where do you want to go next with this project?

Chem Thug: So. I would like to eventually get to a point where I can do demos, basically do like actual, like synthesis demos and things like that, like small reactions and things like that, and like kind of put it into a broader context that gives value to people for it. But right now [00:45:00] I, I should say my wife is very, very, very, very dedicatedly working her way through what is currently a 24 minute long video on sulfuric acid. That is really just kind of me talking about the history of sulfuric acid, but the fact is that sulfuric acid is responsible for us being able to do so much in our day-to-day lives.

Like for us, having access to so many things. For us understanding the nature of so many things like sulfuric acid, just like pops up in so many places throughout our, even before we knew it is sulfuric acid, like it’s ancient form of oil, of vitriol and the vitriol minerals that it came from. Like it’s kind of interesting and a little.

Unreasonable how, like universally important this chemical has been and like continues to be. So yeah, that video will hopefully be coming out. I don’t know, it’s, it’s long and my wife is [00:46:00] working on it. But other than that though, I do have, some, some some projects that I’m working on with ACSReactions actually.

And so, and definitely be on the lookout for that, although I don’t want to, I don’t want to name anything. ’cause I don’t, I, it’s not necessarily set in stone yet that I’m specifically gonna be on. We still working on some things, but, but other than that, yeah, no. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.

Sometimes, I guess Instagram definitely gets neglected a bit. I, I apologize to the people who follow me on Instagram, but thank you so much for being there. Check me out on YouTube though. There’s definitely more going on there. 

Joel: Well, Chem Thug, this has been so much fun. And we, we, we chatted earlier in, in prep for this and I, my wife was, I told my wife today, I said, I said, I’m, I’m, “I’m talking with Chem Thug today.” She said, “finally, ’cause you’ve been talking about that,” like really excited. So this has been a real pleasure.

I think… 

Chem Thug: yeah, no, it’s been an actual absolute pleasure dog. Like I very much enjoyed this.

Joel: Well, I think you’re, that, you’re a a, like I said, that next generation up there with Sagan and Bill Nye and, [00:47:00] and definitely, definitely too humble about it. So thanks for coming on and I, I can’t wait to see what crystals you you mix up and taste next.

Chem Thug: in, I’m, I’m not tasting anything. I made just for the record, not tasting anything I made in a lab. Not doing that. But yes, I will be cooking up some crystals that are legal, totally legal crystals of things.

Be on the lookout.

Joel: Awesome. Thanks man for coming on.

Chem Thug: man. Thanks, Joel. I really appreciate being here. It’s been an absolute pleasure and a privilege. And yeah, I I look forward to to continuing to serve more content that just makes people think about this stuff. Just a little bit more, just a little bit. Just, just think about a little bit.
 

Joel: if you want links to the resources mentioned on the show, head on over to the episode page. And for information on booking a message therapy workshop, getting your hands on the MessageDeck, to check out my upcoming book, or just buy me a coffee, go to nerdthattalksgood.com/podcast. 

 Until next time, happy messaging.
 

 Remember, you [00:48:00] don’t have to speak well, you only gotta learn how to talk good.