What is gluten?
Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist.
Jam:And I'm not.
Melissa:And welcome to Chemistry For Your Life.
Jam:The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.
Melissa:Okay. So first, before we get started, I'm, of course, excited for this episode, but I'm also excited had to give a shout out to Lynn s who joined our Patreon as a supporter at the h bonders level. Yay, Lynn.
Jam:Thank you so much, Lynn. We're so excited to have you join our super cool community of patrons, and you too can join at patreon.com/chem for your life.
Melissa:And, Lynn, with the h bonder level, that means you can come to our coffee hour, which we'll be having in the next few weeks.
Jam:Oh, yes. Yeah. Super fun. We'll have our 2nd ever one Here in December.
Melissa:Very exciting. Okay. So last week, we did a longer episode. I try to do one of those before the holiday season so that people have something they can, you know, bank on
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:To to listen on their airplane or their long drive or whatever it is they'll be doing
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Or if they just wanna go on a long walk. But this time, I think we're gonna give you a little bit of a shorter one. It is, however, Still steeped in the holiday season.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:My house is already decorated for Christmas, which when this is coming out, seems like Not a big deal, but it's been decorated for Christmas since November 15.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:But one of my favorite things about the holidays is Food.
Jam:Right. Damian?
Melissa:Love food.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:I love sharing meals with people. It's just a natural way to commune together.
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:And it's just so good.
Jam:Yep. Yeah. Completely agree.
Melissa:But there are also people that have food intolerances.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:And a big one of those is gluten.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:I'm doing this like it's a big reveal, but I guess they already know because they can see the title.
Jam:Yeah. But that's always the case. You know?
Melissa:So what we're gonna talk about is what is gluten? Okay. And we're I'm gonna talk about this this week. If I can find good resources, we may come back and revisit and talk about gluten intolerances and celiacs.
Jam:Okay. But for
Melissa:this week, we're just gonna talk about what gluten is.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And I'm gonna do something a little bit different today.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I'm gonna give you the analogy first.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. So my mom had a big Christmas tree. K. A really big one. Like, I think it was 7 feet tall, and it was really wide around the base.
Melissa:Uh-huh. It was huge. I remember when we went and got it Instead of having a real Christmas tree every year, she said we need to use it this many times for it to pay for itself because back then, fake Christmas trees were kind of a new thing.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Those are the plastic ones. You know?
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And it was really expensive. And Heads up. It's lasted that long and more. I think it's more than 20 years old.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:And now my brother has it. It is more than 20 years old because we first got it before we moved houses. So it has to be more than 20 years old.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:And now my brother has it in his house.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:But one of the ways she would decorate it And I haven't seen anyone else do this, and I don't know how this happened is she had these long chains of beads, like silver beads.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:Like, the kind you see, like, Mardi Gras necklaces type thing in New Orleans Right. That are just, like, silver beads, but it was these really long strands.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:And she would decorate the tree with those. Have you seen anyone do that before?
Jam:I mean, I feel like I have, but I don't really Pay, like, tons of attention to how the different trees are.
Melissa:Well, I really liked it. It was fun. But every year, it was the biggest pain because they would be a huge tangled mess because they were super long strands of beads. You know?
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:And they would fold in on themselves, they would get tangled. You know? It was this whole thing. So this is the basis for my analogy.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I want you to imagine those Christmas beads, so silver beads in these long strands.
Jam:Silver beads.
Melissa:Yeah. Exactly.
Jam:That's not lyric, but you know?
Melissa:Yeah. What did you say?
Jam:So that's not really the lyric, but
Melissa:That's okay. It was perfect.
Jam:And then I
Melissa:want you to imagine some short red chains of beads.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:We didn't have these, but I just want you to imagine them.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And now imagine the silver beads, they get twisted and clumped up all in themselves, and the red beads do that too. And then we throw them all into a container to store them for the year. And as we're jostling them around, putting them up, then the red masses of beads and the Silver masses of beads start to intertwine
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And form a huge mass of beads. K. That's gluten.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Sort of. That's my analogy for gluten.
Jam:Which one? The red beets, the silver beets, or both?
Melissa:Both together.
Jam:Okay. Okay. Gluten is the whole thing.
Melissa:Gluten is the big mass.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. So gluten It's commonly found in bread. It's naturally occurs in wheat, which is usually the foundation for flour that bread is made out of.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And it's actually made up of 2 types of proteins. There's a lot more actual proteins, so they sort of sort them into 2 types.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:1 is gliadin, and 1 is glutenin.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. And so there's the Gliadin type and the glutenin type. And just a of protein and just a reminder of what proteins are, Proteins are made up of repeating units of amino acids, and amino acids are Carbon based molecules, there are some common ones that we all need to live, and they have a specific functional group at the end with Carboxylic acid and an amine close together. We've talked about, like, functional group is a specific arrangement of atoms, And, carboxylic acid and amino acids, we've both talked about those before. They're just a specific functional group.
Melissa:K. And when they're next to each other, they call them amino acids.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And they're very common biology. So these amino acids will you know, they they'll have a specific pattern of repeating units. And if that specific pattern of repeating units over and over again makes a protein, but also proteins fold in on themselves. We talked about that a lot on the episode we did about eggs
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Which is also kind of Christmassy themed because we talk about Christmas lights in that episode.
Jam:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So a good analogy for these proteins would be like the silver beads. The amino acids are the beads, those repeating units. And altogether, the long chains of repeating amino acid is like this strand of beads. And then when they get crumpled up and they start to fold in on themselves, That's like your protein.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. However, sometimes there are proteins that are Short, so they're made up of, like, 1 or 2 repeating units of those amino acids, and that's it. Sometimes called monomers. So polymers are long chains of repeating units. What do we call them?
Melissa:The big molecule?
Jam:Oh, yeah. A big molecule made of A lot of smaller molecules?
Melissa:Small molecules. Yeah.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:So some if you just have one of these molecules, that's a monomer. And if you have, like, A short repeating chain, that's called an oligomer.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:But then the big one is the polymer. Okay. So sometimes you have proteins that are, like, shorter chains.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. So that's your brief reminder on what a protein is. Basically, just a type of polymer.
Jam:Okay. Mhmm.
Melissa:They have the long strand of palm or long strand of repeating units, and they fold in on themselves. So you have In gluten, these 2 types of proteins, the gliadin and the glutenin. Gliadin is short protein.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So the it they sort of separate them out, and the gliadins are like the Short red chains of beads we talked about. K. They have less repeating units. Sometimes they might just be 1 repeating unit, so the monomer. And they fold in on themselves more like spheres.
Melissa:They're like small spherical poll proteins.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And then the Other kind, the glutenins, are longer or and more rope like proteins, and both of these are already present in wheat. Okay. So it's like when you have you're putting your decorations away for Christmas, and you have your ball of red beads and your ball of Silver beads separately.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And then when you throw them in a tub to carry them upstairs, put them in the attic wherever they go, and they start to mix in, This is like the kneading phase of dough. So you've got your dough, and you've got your separate things in there. And then as you knead dough, sometimes Sometimes people say that activates that gluten.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And what that literally means is when you have flour with water that's, like, allowing movement, Your 2 separate types of proteins are able to come into contact and start to form a network.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And they do this with all different kinds of bonds. There's covalent bonds, which are the kind where, like, electrons are equally shared or Somewhat equally shared.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:There's some ionic bonds, so maybe part of the amino acids are positively charged or negatively charged, and they find something else that's like that, and then they can they can find the opposite charge, and that will hold them together. There's intermolecular forces, h bonds, hydrogen bonds, like our hydrogen bond or tier Yes. Where there is maybe an Oxygen, a fluorine, or a nitrogen, probably nitrogen, that's able to find a hydrogen and bond to it. There's probably actually both of those. Nitrogens with hydrogens and oxygens with hydrogens because of the structure of amino acids.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So we've talked about those different intermolecular forces before as well. So there's all these kinds of bonds that hold bonds and not quite bonds. Hydrogen bonding is not really bond. That hold together our proteins.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And that makes A structure, a network that makes dough be able to keep its shape, but also be elastic. So the short proteins, the gliadins, allow the dough to move around more easily because they're they're, like, kinda small. They act almost like a solvent. They Give it its viscosity, its movement.
Jam:K. And
Melissa:then the glutenins, the long ones, are responsible for the strength Because they're long, they're holding things together, and the elasticity, why it can stretch out and come back. So these proteins kept together by bonds and intermolecular forces make a network, Like a big elastic protein network Mhmm. And that's gluten.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:And gluten is what allows bread to have this sort of structure when we bake it. Yeah. In other things. It's not just in bread, but bread's the easiest one to imagine.
Jam:Right. Interesting.
Melissa:And one thing I think is interesting, especially, is you can according to one of the things I read, you can wash away, Like, underwater, gluten's not as soluble as other things.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So you could make up a dough and then wash off some of the starches And see mostly gluten left behind. Isn't that weird? Yeah. I've wondered because sometimes whenever, my husband does, like, Sourdough breads.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:And sometimes it's really annoying to clean. And I've one I wonder now if what I was trying to scrub off was actually like that. It'll, like, get on this, the sponge. We have, like, these they're not really sponges, but it'll get on the, like, wash cloth type thing I'm using. Uh-huh.
Melissa:And it'll be just this, like, white Stuff that won't rinse off, and it's, like, really sticky. And I'm Uh-huh. Now I'm like, what's that? Like, bare glued.
Jam:Yeah. Interesting.
Melissa:So isn't that cool?
Jam:Yeah. That's kinda crazy.
Melissa:So that's completely
Jam:it was, but I did not that's not why I would've guessed. I mean
Melissa:It's a really complex, complicated polymer that has these ties between protein proteins, so that's called cross link.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:It's a strong cross linked polymer that gives this, like, three d structure to bread and other things with wheat in it.
Jam:Dang. Interesting.
Melissa:Yeah. And that's gluten.
Jam:Dang. Seems like harmless to me. I mean
Melissa:Yeah. It did talk about briefly. We could touch on some of what what seems like it father's intestines, but I wanna wait until I can give it a full episode. Bite sized pieces. You know?
Melissa:Yeah. And I also like this because It's a lot of different concepts that we've talked before revisit it. So we've talked about polymers before. We've talked about proteins before. We've talked about what a bond is before, And we've talked about intermolecular forces, and all of those are at play in this spread.
Melissa:So just like oftentimes I talk about on episodes, oh, I already know a lot of the concepts, But I didn't know it in this setting. Uh-huh. Now you can have that experience. Like, you already knew a lot of these concepts. You and the listeners have Probably already heard a lot of these episodes.
Melissa:If you haven't, hopefully, you're still able to track with us. So you've heard about a lot of these things before, and now you're just Seeing them again in a new setting.
Jam:Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So should I try to send it back to you?
Melissa:Yeah. And then I have a fun fact that I saved for you.
Jam:Okay. Nice. I love fun facts, especially when they're fun and they're factual.
Melissa:It it it's both fun and factual.
Jam:Good. Well, you kinda made it easier on me because there's already an analogy that works really well and helped me understand it. So thank you for that.
Melissa:It's still your job.
Jam:It's still my job. But so when you or I have, like, a nice, big, large sort of French baguette kind of thing, We cut into some slices.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:You cut into it, and you see this delicious structure inside that is all these, like, You know, bubbles, but then all these parts that are connecting to each other. Mhmm. They give it this solidness. Even bread that's, like, got a really soft crust has that. You know?
Jam:Like, French bread has, like, a strong crust, so maybe we could trick ourselves into thinking the structure in the middle doesn't matter as much. But Yeah. Like a really soft bread.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:That structure on that sort of webby you know, all the things that are connecting where the bubbles aren't
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Is the structure that's from gluten. Correct?
Melissa:Yes. I like how you said anywhere my bubbles are. Yeah. The yeah. That's great.
Melissa:That's a great way to describe it. It's a thing that keeps that shape for bread.
Jam:And it comes from gluten, which is this Tangled network
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Of 2 main different things.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And Going back to the beginning of the bread stage, you get flour and water and stuff. They mix together. Those things are already there, but they aren't network yet. Yes. Correct?
Melissa:Yeah. The protein is in the wheat. I think I wrote something that says it's in these proteins exist in the endosperm of the wheat. Okay. So I think that's, like, the thing that lets the seed live off of it, but I'm not a biologist and can't remember, honestly.
Jam:That also makes sense because, of course, But the thing that happened, but flour is pretty not structured, pretty not sticky, pretty not you know?
Melissa:Yes. A lot
Jam:of things haven't happened yet.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:So when we take that flour and we mix it with water, whatever the things you're mixing, depending on the kind of bread you're creating
Melissa:Maybe yeast or baking soda, baking powder. Water. Yeah.
Jam:Then you start kneading it together. There but before you started doing that, there were already existing these 2 main kinds of structures there. This monomer, which is the
Melissa:You don't have to remember. They was almost gonna just call them short proteins and long proteins.
Jam:Yeah. I had it in my head for a while thinking I'm gonna remember this and say it back to you. The glutenin one is easier to remember
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Because it sounds exactly gluten.
Melissa:So the glutenin is a longer one. Right. The shorter it they can be monomers or other short units Uh-huh. Are, gliadins.
Jam:Gliadins. I was gonna say glendonin without, you know, close gliadin. So we got these short Sort of monomer, just short chains
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Of proteins. Right?
Melissa:They're they are proteins. They're short chains of amino acids.
Jam:Amino acids, which is a protein.
Melissa:Right? And I didn't even think about the fact that you could have 1 monomer, and it technically count as a protein. Mhmm.
Jam:But I
Melissa:did look up to confirm, and it did say that Proteins are 1 or more
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:Repeating units of these amino acid chains.
Jam:Got it. You got that one, which is a shorter chain. Mhmm. Then you got the real long one, the glutenin Uh-huh. Which is a polymer, long chain made up of a bunch of repeating units, Repeating proteins.
Jam:Correct?
Melissa:Mhmm. Oh, no. It is a protein made up of repeating units.
Jam:It is a protein. Okay.
Melissa:So polymers are big class of molecules, you know, made up of small molecules. Right. And then proteins is a type of polymer.
Jam:Right. Okay. Got it.
Melissa:So there's, like, the big proteins and the small proteins, but both of those proteins are also types of polymers.
Jam:Got it. Got it. Got it. But not all polymers are proteins. Right.
Jam:Okay. Yes.
Melissa:Like, the diaper thing we did?
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:I wanna do a series called everything is a polymer, which isn't exactly true, but the polymers just keep coming
Jam:up. Right.
Melissa:They're in plastics. They're in diapers. They're in Teflon. They're in our body. I think DNA is technically a polymer.
Melissa:It's like everything is a polymer. They're in our bread. Yeah. They're in our bread. They're
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Yes. They're everywhere. So
Jam:So we've got that long chain.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And that's a guttinen. Mhmm. And so it's this much longer chain like this like the longer string of beads. Yes. And so when we start combining all the ingredients to our bread, kneading it all together, We're mixing together these short chains, these long chains, and it's all getting this mixed tangled mess, which
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:It starts already to be noticeable to us because the dough has a has a structure to it as we start kneading it together. Yeah. Starts being Flexible, but also having an elasticness to it. It wants to come back together and all that stuff. We can already start noticing that.
Jam:And then when we do all the Rest of the process and bake the bread, we get the benefit of this structure that's made up of Tangled long chains
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Polymers and the mixed in with these shorter chains
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:That start to that just give us this big I like the word network because Yeah. I immediately have this imagined, like, Kind of web of Yeah. All kinds of things connected in all kinds of ways. Network that does create the structure of our bread.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Yeah. It makes it taste good.
Melissa:It makes it taste good. And, you know, so the there's that big structure, and then there's all the other things that common bread that are on it. So if it's in a rich dough, like, all the proteins and stuff from the eggs are there, and the milk, and then there's, you know, the, like, starch Starchy things that come from the wheat. There there are other things besides just the protein in your dough. Okay.
Melissa:There's other things besides just gluten.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:But gluten is like the background, and then all the other stuff is thrown onto it.
Jam:Got it. Got it. Yeah. Okay.
Melissa:So that's what gluten is.
Jam:That's what we need. Okay. Interesting.
Melissa:Now so here's your fun fact.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:This is a good complex polymer that has good, water solubility, like, low solubility in water.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And it has a good elasticity, but it's still viscous. That's called viscoelasticity.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:And because of this, it's being used In biomaterials, like biofilms and gels and foams and even bioplastics Mhmm. Because it's Uniquely strong, not water soluble, and has a good flexibility. Interesting. Taking the ideas and lessons we're learning from nature, that we're learning from gluten, and trying to apply it into what they call biomaterials, which are materials that are developed, like, from nature, kind of.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And then they are probably better for the environment than just, like, plain old plastics. Yeah. Isn't that cool?
Jam:Interesting. Yeah. That's crazy.
Melissa:And they can be used in engineering and industry and all kinds of stuff.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:That's a very, brief overview of biomaterials, but I that was fun. I didn't even think about the fact that bread is really this polymer unit is so complex. They're trying to learn more about it. There was A lot of, papers that said, like, oh, we just don't know a lot about bread, which that's a common thing that we're learning is there's a lot that we don't know. And but what we do know about it, we were wanting to try to recreate in other ways to use in industry and use in other applications because it's very good.
Jam:Right. Yeah. It's kinda interesting how little work it takes on our part. You know? Like, we're mixing stuff together, but then this network just sort of happens.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And it's like, okay. Nature is doing stuff. Yeah. Nature's doing a lot of the work here.
Melissa:We're allowing things to come into contact with each other, and doing
Jam:the rest.
Melissa:Yeah. It's making so many different bonds and forces that are holding it together.
Jam:Yeah. Dang. Crazy.
Melissa:I know. Isn't that really wild? It seems so simple. Yeah. But it's actually so complicated.
Melissa:Yeah. And I liked this episode because it had the vibe of some of our earlier episodes are shorter, you know? Mhmm. And a little bit, like, There's a solid chemistry lesson in there, and I feel like we had that.
Jam:Totally.
Melissa:So that this is a fun one. It's like throwback to our roots
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:For the holiday season Hello? Get a shout out, decorating the Christmas tree with my mom. Every year for the 1st weekend in December, we would do that together. So
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:It's about that time of year and, yeah. So she'd I think she would have enjoyed hearing this analogy used about For Christmas decorations.
Jam:Yeah. A 100%.
Melissa:Awesome. Well, now I'm gonna do something else a little different. And normally, what we'll do is, You know, something happy from this week. But as we're approaching the holiday season, I thought it would be fun for us to say something that we're thankful for and that we're Looking forward to for the upcoming holidays.
Jam:Nice. Okay. Well, it's always hard to, like, answer the thankful questions because there's always a bunch of things. Right?
Melissa:Yeah. So many things.
Jam:And there's also things you don't wanna not have said. You know?
Melissa:Yeah. It's okay. You can be blanketly thankful for your whole life.
Jam:Yeah. The whole life.
Melissa:A few things out.
Jam:I think one thing is different this year, obviously so Em went back to work after having our 2nd kid only a few weeks ago. And so I've been really thankful for that that we've tried to set up a rhythm that we get, like, a really good family day, or at least most of the day.
Melissa:Oh, and this is the first time had a consistent schedule.
Jam:Correct.
Melissa:So that I could see that being a big deal.
Jam:Yeah. So Em is, the whole time I've been married and even before that Has not had a consistent schedule. This is the same days every week Yeah. Which is pretty common for anyone who works in medicine and a few other industries, of course. But Family time, all 4 of us know their agenda.
Jam:Nothing else we're trying to work worry about or work on, or we don't even try to, like, cook dinner time. Like, we're not doing, like, meal prep stuff and had that. Just get all that out of the way. Half family time, and we tried to set that up before and went back to work. Mhmm.
Jam:And it's worked pretty well. It's not, like, perfect, but It's worked pretty well. It's a good rhythm, and it's something that I really look forward to now. Now that we have a bunch of days during the week where She's watching the kids, and I'm watching the kids, and we're, you know, switching back and forth and passing the baton. And I'm working when she's watching them.
Jam:She's working when I'm watching them. And then we at least get Part of a day.
Melissa:Yes. Half
Jam:or sometimes all of the day, to just hang out and be a family. It's like that. But thankful for that.
Melissa:Yeah. That's a good one.
Jam:The thing I'm looking forward to, is that late in December, My whole side of the family is gonna get together, which we haven't all seen each other since February. Mhmm. Which means that mainly that's specifically my brother who lives in Kentucky, I haven't seen him and his wife, his 2 kids since February. And so that'll be really nice to all get together, and just gets more complicated To get time together. The kids are all ages that makes it hard.
Jam:They've got 2 kids. We've got 2 kids. He hasn't met my new kid yet.
Melissa:Oh, yeah.
Jam:Their their family hasn't other than on FaceTime. So looking forward to that and pulling off all of us getting together in late December. So that's the thing I'm looking forward to.
Melissa:That's good. I like that one.
Jam:What about you?
Melissa:Well, our family, Mason and I, are jealous of your Family day, and we kind of wanna do something similar because I've gone out of town or been out of town or away pretty much Once a month or more. Like, actually, in the last month, I think it's been closer to I've gone on 3 trips since, like, Mid October. Uh-huh. And some of them have been pretty long. And so and then when we're home when I'm home, we're trying to fit in everything we're doing.
Melissa:So that's been a little chaotic. Yeah. But, also, it's made us realize we really want some time to slow down and do less and, like, spend time where we consistently have time together. So we're gonna try to do that.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:So that's been something that I'm looking forward to. Yeah. Even in the holidays, we intentionally were like, we don't want our holiday season to be chaotic. Last year, Thanksgiving and Christmas were really close together, and his family does a lot for Thanksgiving. So we have, like, a big meal
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:For that day and, like, the you know, it's just a it was like then we were with his family, and then we drove all day, literally a whole day Yeah. From his Family to my family, and there was no break in between. It was just it was so great to be with family, but it was just so hectic.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And so this year, we intentionally built in breaks between things so that we had time to slow down. And I'm really excited about that part of, our holiday season. That's what I'm looking forward to, to go off of your family day. We're trying to have our build in some family days too.
Jam:Yeah. That sounds a lot better and a lot more enjoyable and less stressful for sure.
Melissa:And then the thing that I'm thankful for, I think being away from home a lot, you can easily realize how How nice and lucky you are to have a good cozy home. Yeah. And it's been cold lately. And when I think people who are houseless and on the street, I feel like I'm just really thankful that we have some place that we can be Yeah. And some place to go home to.
Melissa:And so, just wanna remind you all to be generous as you can with that kind of thing this, holiday season. Yeah. And then also really thankful for friends. My, A close friend of mine, her mom passed away. And just thinking about how that was hard for me and how my friends helped me get through it so much, And then how thankful I am that now I can share some of that with her
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Is not because she's going through that. That's awful. But it's just, like, Kind of a healing experience, but also kind of like, wow. I'm really lucky because I know not everybody has this. Yep.
Melissa:And so just being able to share some of that together. So I think those are 2 big things that I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've been really thankful for my bed every time I come home.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And our house is all decorated, and it's very cozy. And, you know, so that's been really nice. And then I've just been thankful for my friendship to Help me get through some really hard times and that I can be with them as they go through some really hard times as well. Yeah. So I think those are mine.
Jam:Those are good. Very good.
Melissa:Alright. Well, as we kick off the holiday season, I hope y'all are thinking about what you're thankful for. You can message us and tell us what you're looking forward to because we love to hear from you. And we're really thankful for y'all, obviously. It's so exciting that I get to live out my science communication dreams and that Jim and I get to teach people about chemistry is so exciting, and we would not be able to do that without awesome listeners like y'all.
Melissa:So thank you so much.
Jam:And thank you, Melissa, for teaching us and for disambiguating and explaining complicated things.
Melissa:Disambiguating is a good one. Yeah.
Jam:That's one of the words that I just I don't know. I like it. I wanna find a way to use it anytime I I can. Wilson, I have a lot Ideas for chemistry topics of chemistry in everyday life, but wanna hear from you so you can reach out to us with your questions and ideas on our website, chem for your life.com, And share your ideas, your thoughts, your questions with us. We'd love to hear from you.
Jam:If that help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, go to patreon.com/ chem for your life or tap the link in our show notes to join our super cool community of patrons. If you're not able to do that, you can still help us by subscribing in your favorite podcast app reading and writing review on Apple Podcasts that also helps us share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Collini and Jam Robinson. Jam Robinson is our producer, and the episode it was made possible by our financial supporters over on Patreon. It means so much to us that you wanna help make chemistry more accessible to even more people. Those supporters are Lynn s yay. Thanks for joining.
Melissa:Nicole c, Timothy p, Brie m, Chris and Claire s, Hunter r, Steven b, Avishai b, Chelsea b, Christina g, Emerson w, Shadow, Brian k, Suzanne s and Jacob t. Thanks again for everything you do to make chemistry for your life happen.
Jam:We'd also like to give a special thanks to s Navarro who viewed this episode. And if you'd like to learn more about today's chemistry lesson, check out the references for this episode in our show notes or on our website.
