Chemistry for Ding Dongs Like Jane

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dream – “Chemistry for Ding Dongs”

Host: Jane Marie
Guest: Dr. Kim Thug (PhD, synthetic organic chemist)
Date: May 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, "Chemistry for Ding Dongs," The Dream pivots to a loose, interview-driven format but keeps its focus on the pitfalls and confusions surrounding the American Dream—especially regarding science, health, and the people who complicate truth and safety. Host Jane Marie welcomes popular chemistry communicator Dr. Kim Thug to untangle pseudoscientific claims around "miracle" products, clarify how chemistry really works (and why everyone should learn it), and lampoon the confusion that allows harmful misinformation to spread. The episode is lively, highly accessible, and full of practical skepticism—serving as a crash course in thinking critically about scientific claims in everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Chemistry is Unpopular and Important

• Chemistry’s early reputation: Dr. Kim suggests most people are turned off from science—and chemistry in particular—early in their education, often due to insufficient exposure, poor teaching, or fear of math and complexity.
  • "A lot of people get scared away from science when they're in early childhood education..." (02:23, Dr. Kim)
• Late exposure leads to intimidation: Jane recalls only taking chemistry late in school, after years of “rocks and biology.”
• Looking things up then vs. now: Discussion about how easy access to information (books, now the internet and AI) changes how people approach learning—and sometimes stops them from learning foundational skills.
  • "I have a ton of just like textbooks and...reference materials, because I am still very accustomed to like going into a book." (05:06, Dr. Kim)

2. What Dr. Kim Does as a Chemist

• Not a medical doctor: Dr. Kim holds a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry, focusing on how to build molecules, such as those found in medicines and plastics.
  • "I am the less interesting kind of doctor to most people..." (06:07, Dr. Kim)
• Research highlights:
  • Investigated how much energy is needed for specific molecular changes—critical in drug safety (i.e., how some drugs can change from medicine to poison, as in thalidomide).
  • "If this part of that molecule moves in the way that you don't want it to, then that medicine stops being medicine and becomes poison." (06:46, Dr. Kim)

3. Thalidomide, Public Health, and Science as an Evolving Process

• Explaining chirality (left hand/right hand molecules): Thalidomide’s tragic outcomes stemmed from not knowing how its two molecular forms interconvert, causing birth defects.
  • "There's a story of thalidomide that I think is a fairly well known story...the left hand version, medicine, the right hand version, causes birth defects." (10:35, Dr. Kim)
• Why science changes: Public health recommendations change as knowledge grows. Dr. Kim points out that discomfort with uncertainty or evolving knowledge often stems from a misunderstanding of science as a fixed set of facts.
  • "We don't know things until we know them...We watch things happen, and we're like, we gotta figure out why that happens." (11:34, Dr. Kim)
  • "You can rewrite history all you want. You can't rewrite chemistry, you can't rewrite biology, you can't rewrite physics." (13:43, Dr. Kim)

4. Household Chemicals and Dangerous Myths

• Mixing bleach and ammonia is deadly:
  • "Absolutely never be mixed with each other. Absolutely not." (14:47, Dr. Kim)
• The bleach-drinking episode: Addresses the spread of dangerous misinformation—like drinking/injecting bleach during recent public health scares. Dr. Kim expresses sadness and incredulity but points to a lack of basic chemical understanding as the root.
  • "People get convinced that things are a good idea, and that happens because people don't understand...facts related to the situation." (16:41, Dr. Kim)

5. Why Critical Thinking is Hard—But Necessary

• Volume of misinformation: The internet makes both true and false information equally available.
• Confirmation bias: Dr. Kim shares personal strategies for evaluating information—specifically, seeking out conflicting sources before trusting something that confirms existing beliefs.

  "If I find a source...and it agrees with me wholesale, I immediately am like, nope, gotta find another source." (17:20, Dr. Kim)

• Role of subject matter experts: The erosion of trust in expertise is lamented.
  • "...We've always relied upon experts and thought, oh, this person spent their entire adult life to understand this one thing that I need a brain to understand for my life to function." (18:55, Jane)

6. Science of "Designer" Waters, Colloidal Silver, Borax, and Other Trends

Alkaline and Hydrogen Water (24:14 – 39:10)

• Alkaline water: Overhyped, potentially dangerous at high pH, and cannot significantly alter body chemistry as claimed.
  • "You cannot change significantly the PH of various aspects of your body simply by drinking water that is like slightly basic or alkaline." (25:45, Dr. Kim)
• Hydrogen water: A developing research area; may have health effects, but claims are ahead of evidence and the product is often more marketing than science. Most of the hydrogen just escapes.

  “The worst thing that happens is kind of you’re just wasting your money...” (37:58, Dr. Kim)

• Critical note: These fads flourish especially when healthcare is inaccessible or experts are distrusted.

Colloidal Silver (48:12 – 55:22)

• History and myth: Used for wound care, sometimes as folk “antibiotics.” Risks include skin discoloration (“blue man” syndrome) and disruption of the body’s complex microbiome.
  • "Colloidal silver, it turns you blue... Silver is relatively well tolerated in the body, if you will. But I think I prefer gold." (48:25-51:28, Dr. Kim)
• Modern medicine is simply more effective—antibiotics work.
  • "We have antibiotics that work and won't turn you blue. So you don't need to take colloidal stuff." (49:40, Jane)

Borax and Other Household Cleaners (15:56, 39:14)

• Borax is a cleaning agent, not a supplement: Risks from ingesting household chemicals come from a profound misunderstanding and sometimes desperation due to lack of access.

  “Can I really be mad? It's like being mad at somebody who's starving, stealing food...I can't really be that mad at you.” (44:32, Dr. Kim)

7. What Does "Synthetic" Really Mean? (55:22 – 59:34)

• Natural v. synthetic molecules:
  • The origin of a molecule (lab or plant) is irrelevant if it’s structurally identical; the “natural is better” concept is rooted in debunked ideas like vitalism.
  • "...A vitamin that gets made in a lab is the same as a vitamin that gets made in a living organism. There really isn't a difference between the two compounds themselves." (57:41, Dr. Kim)
• Contamination can occur in both contexts, but food is still the best vitamin source.
  • "If you really want to talk about where you need to get your vitamins and minerals from, you need to get it from your food point blank, period." (58:49, Dr. Kim)

8. Teaching Critical Thinking and Scientific Skepticism (59:34 – 63:01)

• Earlier science education is key: The episode closes with a call for early and broad exposure to scientific thinking—learning how to ask questions, evaluate claims, and maintain healthy skepticism.
  • "It’s really important that you kind of form that in people early on...so you don’t fall into this kind of thinking where molecules that come from, like, plants and animals are somehow different from molecules that we make in a lab." (55:54, Dr. Kim)
• Resilience and limits of the human body: Bodies can withstand a lot, but falling for misinformation about “miracle” products poses unnecessary risk.
• Systemic problems: Profit-driven healthcare and commodification of knowledge set the stage for misinformation and desperation-driven choices.
  • "I blame the commodification of education. I blame the commodification of healthcare. Generally speaking. I blame commodification and profit seeking for a lot of these behaviors..." (61:54, Dr. Kim)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the “body as magic” fallacy:
  • “Chemistry is magic. Biology is magic...but it is theoretically knowable.” (64:21, Dr. Kim)
• On critical thinking:

  “When something is telling you exactly what you want to hear...first thing you need to do is go find somebody who has a compelling case for the opposite argument.” (53:11 / 62:10, Dr. Kim)

• On Internet misinformation:
  • “There is as much incorrect information as there is correct information.” (17:20, Dr. Kim)
• On the joy of science:
  • “Our bodies are amazing systems. That's part of what makes me so sad when people drink bleach. I'm like, yo, your body is dope, son.” (28:43, Dr. Kim)
• On why profit-driven medicine leads to skepticism:
  • “...We practice medicine under a profit driven paradigm. We do not practice medicine under a patient's needs paradigm.” (42:11, Dr. Kim)
• On learning science young:
  • “People don’t get introduced to science nearly as early in their lives as they should...It’s really important.” (59:38, Dr. Kim)

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Useful Timestamps

• 01:45 – Dr. Kim Thug introduction & approach to chemistry communication
• 06:07 – Dr. Kim describes his PhD and research focus
• 08:36 – Thalidomide and molecule “handed-ness” explained
• 14:47 – Dangers of mixing bleach and ammonia; household chemical safety
• 17:20 – How to evaluate information online; confirmation bias
• 24:14 – Alkaline water, hydrogen water, and their debunking
• 39:14 – Borax and the risks of household chemicals as "remedies"
• 48:25 – Colloidal silver myth, medical uses, and risks
• 55:22 – “Synthetic” versus “natural” substances in chemistry
• 59:34 – Critical thinking, science education, and skepticism
• 62:37 – Systemic issues: commodification of healthcare/education
• 63:01 – Final reflections on chemistry education and critical evaluation

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Overall Tone

Clever, irreverent, deeply practical, and rooted in both skepticism and empathy. Both Jane Marie and Dr. Kim aim to engage, inform, and gently mock both charlatans and systemic failures—while always circling back to the value of actual expertise.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode is an entertaining, candid crash course in spotting quackery, understanding what and why chemists do what they do, and why critical thinking matters more than ever in a world full of misinformation and profit-driven pseudoscience. Dr. Kim Thug brings both technical clarity and a genuine, sometimes comic, humility about what science can and can’t know—urging everyone to ask better questions, seek out dissenting sources, and respect the expertise (and limits) of actual experts.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

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[Dr. Kim Thug]

My name is Dr. Kim Thug, as I am known on the Internet and I am a recently PhD graduate synthetic organic chemist who goes online and explains chemistry to people who otherwise might not want to know anything about chemistry. Because I'm really good at sneaking up on you with chemistry and not letting you know that you're learning chemistry until you've already learned something. And then you're like, bam. Wow, he really got me with that. Yup. Dr. Kim Cook,

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

You already brought up. One of my questions is why do people not want to know chemistry?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Honestly, I just think it's because it gets. I think a lot of people get like scared away from science when they're, when they're in like early childhood education, you know, like elementary School. First of all, I don't know how early most people end up getting introduced to science as a subject in school. I think that varies across the board. And whether or not a school even, like, offers it also depends on certain things. But then you also got this, like, I don't know, at least for when I was a kid. I felt like it was like they were very quick to be like, oh, you're good at math, you'll be good at science here. We're gonna, like, push that on you. And then. But I, like, kind of showed an interest in and aptitude that maybe some other kids would have had if they had been exposed to it in a certain type of way, you know? But like, I was kind of like shuffled into it a little bit because I expressed an interest kind of on my own. But I feel like a lot of people don't. Like, I just. I feel like a lot of people just like, they don't get exposed to it early enough.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Okay.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Such that by the time they get introduced to it, it kind of. It requires you to think about things in a way that are a little harder to do if you haven't been introduced to it earlier on, you know?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah, I don't think I took chemistry until, I don't know, late in high school or anything like that. I remember it being like environmental science and like geology, like rocks and some biology. Like, I remember memorizing every single bone in the body and that sort of thing. A lot of anatomy.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But I think I tried to do that and failed. So kudos to you. I absolutely could not do that.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

It's one of my special skills. It means nothing. It helps me in no way whatsoever to be able to memorize states in their capital. You know, like, whatever, who cares? I can just look things up. But.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny. It's funny because I feel like the fact that we can just look things up now to some degree, like, messes with us doing things, you know, like, I. I am a. I was a. I wasn't. I didn't get on. On the Internet very. Until relatively late into my childhood. And it really wasn't until college that, like, I started, like, somebody straight up people straight up had to tell me. And even to. Even to the. To this day, my wife has to remind me sometimes that you, you know, you can just look it up, right? Because, like. Cause I just. I won't think to Google.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I think I must be much older than you because when I said just look it up, I'm thinking Like in an encyclopedia on my shelf or one of the many atlases that I own or almanacs or whatever.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

No, yeah, not. But like, that's the thing. Like, I have a ton of just like textbooks and like, you know, reference materials, because I am still very accustomed to like going into a book. And if I don't have the book, then, you know, we can pontificate and have an interesting conversation about it. Maybe we can learn some things, you know, and maybe we just accept that, like we got close to the conclusion. But like, you know, and that's just kind of what it is. You know, you remember to ask somebody that you think might know. But. But now that you can look stuff up, it's just.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

And even Google has AI, it's almost overwhelming. Yeah.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Oh God, yeah.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Google's AI bot. Like, I don't even have to go to a second location anymore. When you hit Google, it'll be like, this is the answer.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I have to remind myself.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Are you sure?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I have to remind myself to just like scroll past that. Sometimes I'm just like, let me look at a couple sources and then I'll see what the AI bot had to say about it.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Well, one nice thing about being connected to the Internet is that I can watch your videos, which teach me a lot. So what was your path to your degree? Because you're a doctor as of very recently.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Right, right. So I am not a medical doctor. Just to be clear. I am the less interesting kind of doctor to most people. I am a PhD holding synthetic organic chemist, which means that I am allegedly a subject matter expert in the art of making molecules that are mostly made of carbon atom. So like, you know, think of your medicines, think of your plastics, think of pretty much more or less 90% of the materials around you probably. You know, I studied the ways in which these atoms come together and make molecules and why they do it. And of course I do not know all of it because there's just too much.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But, you know, I know enough to be able to share some things and I do enjoy sharing these things. But in order to get this degree, in addition to actually having to learn some things, I did have to do some like, fundamental research as a part of getting a PhD. You gotta do the whole, like, add new knowledge to the field thing, which makes sense. You know, it's masterwork sort of situation. And so I worked on a number of projects, but the two that ended up becoming publications were, to put it kind of simply, the first one was trying to figure out how much energy is necessary for a particular part of a molecule to move in a specific way. Why this is interesting is because if you know how much energy it takes for that particular part of the molecule to move in a certain way, you know whether or not other molecules that have similar arrangements of atoms will have similar energies, and sometimes those molecules are like medicines. And if this part of that molecule moves in the way that you don't want it to, then that medicine stops being medicine and becomes poison.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Say more about that real quick.

[Verizon Announcer]

What do you mean?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Famous example that explain your entire PhD thesis to me in five seconds. Go. Just kidding.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Let's say five seconds. I don't know, five minutes.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

We'll give you five minutes.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But, well, that was like one half of it fundamentally. And I mean, I say it that way, I admit I'm saying it that way to make it a little bit more marketable. But these kinds of studies on the kinetics of racemization, if you will, are part of understanding whether or not a certain drug or medicine or any other molecule really is going to stay the way that you want it to stay when you like, heat it up or it gets some other substance comes in contact with it.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Got it.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

There's a story of thalidomide that I think is a fairly well known story at this point of something similar to this.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

We've spoken about it on the show before because it kind of feeds the fear of pharmaceuticals. So. Yeah, can you brush us up on that?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

So the medication was developed kind of before we had as thorough an understanding that we do now of how important it is the way these molecules look in three dimensional space, you know, so like most people use hands to demonstrate this concept. If you look at your left hand and you look at your right hand and you try to put one on top of the other with the palms both facing up, you'll realize that you kind of can't do that. And that's because your hands exhibit this special type of property called chirality, where they can't really be imposed over each other because of how your hands are attached. In three dimensional space, there's a lot of molecules that are like this where like one of them is like your left hand and one of them is like your right hand. And the left hand does one thing and the right hand, one can do something completely different in a biological system because that's the key difference in most cases when it comes to that left hand versus right hand thing, the molecule cannot just easily go from the left hand version to the right hand version, usually if you have one version, it's stuck as that one version, and then you have the other version and it's stuck as that version. Otherwise, the two molecules, the left hand version and the right hand version, will frequently have a lot of the same properties. And it's kind of difficult to separate the two. And this is basically what happened with thalidomide. When they made the medication, they made one of the handed versions. They just call it the left hand version. And that version is great at curing morning sickness. And also, I think at this point, the drug still gets used because if the person taking it isn't carrying a child, then it's actually kind of fine. Because I think really the only problem was the birth defects, right?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

The left hand version, medicine, the right hand version, causes birth defects. The problem is that you can go from the left to the right hand version when the drug is in your body. And we didn't know that. And I guess this kind of touches on where I feel like a lot of people during that public health crisis we had a little while ago, I'm not sure if you heard about it. A lot of people. A lot of people felt some type of way about, like, oh, the cdc, they don't know anything. It's just they're saying this and then they're saying that and they're saying the third. And you can't trust these organizations. And I'm like, wait a minute, y'. All. Y' all do realize y' all been trusting these organizations for a while now, right? Like, you don't. Maybe you don't realize that you've been trusting them, but, like, you've been counting on them to give you accurate information about getting your flu shot and things like that, you know, and like, all these other things, like, why is it all of a sudden. And I think this kind of touches back on, like, kind of what you asked me earlier about, like, why people end up steering away from science and, like, why people end up steering away from, you know, even just, like, chemistry in particular, but science in general is. Cause there's a degree, I feel like, to which people don't. And even I had to learn this, like, in the course of getting my PhD, I had to learn this. Like, we don't know things until we know them. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like, we don't make up these rules. We watch things happen, and we're like, we gotta figure out why that happens. And it just takes the time it takes, you know, and like, unfortunately, during that public health crisis, you know, a lot of. There was a lot of things that we didn't know that we needed to try and figure out. And we were trying, but I think because of how people get presented, science as a thing to learn, where it's like. It's this body of facts that are just known and you just gotta memorize it, you know, you just kind of gotta learn this and know it, and that's just it. I think that gives people a false perception of what science ultimately is.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yes.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know what I mean?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I've been thinking about that a lot lately as we're in a new public health crisis.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Wait, which one?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I don't know. RFK Jr. For example, who fundamentally does not understand what science is like, that there are rules that are universal to doing good science.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

And he has just decided that that's not a thing anymore, even though it's been thousands of years of a thing, that all of a sudden, him and a couple of his homies are in charge of everybody now in this country, and they're gonna be like, science schmience. Anyways, my friend said no.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Oh, my God, no. Yeah, it's. Oh, I think I literally said this. Said something like, something about this to my wife, like, maybe like an hour ago, where it's like, you know, alternative facts only go so far when there are actual material facts. You know what I mean?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Like, you can rewrite history all you want. You can't rewrite chemistry, you can't rewrite biology, you can't rewrite physics. Like, we didn't make the. Again, we didn't make this stuff up. This stuff all works and happens regardless of whether or not you acknowledge the rules through which it all happens.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know what I mean? Sun's gonna rise, sun's gonna set, planet's gonna photosynthesize. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to understand any of that for it to happen.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But if you think of science as just this body of, like, oh, you know, finger wagging, you can't do what you want, then, yeah, you're in for a rude awakening.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah. When you first gave the analogy of the left hand, right hand, and how molecules can change inside your body, the first thing I thought of was, is there like, bleach in something that will kill you? Ammonia. Oh, yeah, and bleach, which separately will not kill you, but if you put them near each other, they're gonna. You die. Or if you inhale, just to be

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Clear like ammonia and strong enough concentration is in fact gonna be bad for you. And bleach also, you definitely don't want that on your skin. Like just. I want to put it out there that both of these are not exactly unhazardous substances. They still need to be treated with respect for sure. But they also should. Yeah, absolutely. Never be mixed with each other. Absolutely not.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Because the gas that comes off of them.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, yeah. No. First of all, why do people mix bleach with things? I just don't understand why people feel the need to mix bleach with things.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

They don't just mix it, they drink it. That also happened during our public health crisis. Well. Cause the president said it was a good idea in a news conference and if you couldn't drink it, you could just inject it straight to your veins and it would kill the virus.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know, I heard, you know, I know that was a thing. I don't remember if I ever actually heard that anybody actually injected themselves with bleach.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

We got a call from a daughter of a person who drank bleach to death.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But I'm not gonna sit here and tell anybody that drinking bleach is anything other than a terrible idea.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Like what? No, no.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But I mean, you can't be surprised though. You've done a lot of educating around not eating borax, right?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, I don't, you know, I didn't have the Mr. Yuck stickers as a kid. I just kind of. There was certain things I was like, that doesn't smell like something that belongs in my body. No, that just smells like I shouldn't, you know. Oh, that came in a box. That doesn't. That's not from like where the food comes from, so it's probably not food. You know what I mean? Like, there's just certain things that like, and I don't want to sound mean or disparag, you know, but like, I just, I appreciate that. You know, my parents were. My parents were pretty solid. They at least taught me that there are certain things that you're just not supposed to eat. You know what I mean?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

If it's under the sink, it doesn't go in the mouth.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I'm just like, you know. But again, like, it is easy to poke fun, but I shudder to think about like how deeply under informed people have to be to actively ingest chlorine bleach. Cause and this first of all has little to do with me being a chemist. It just smells bad. It just smells like something you shouldn't be putting in your body. Right, right. You know, so there should be that aversion. And I understood. But, you know, but I guess really, though, I skipped to the point. People get convinced that things are a good idea, and that happens because people don't understand, like, underlying facts related to the situation.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

And even to the extent that people are encouraged or do on their own, go try to read up or look up something else. We exist in a time where there is as much incorrect information as there is correct information. And if you don't have enough of a fundamental understanding of, like, I guess, chemistry in this particular case, but also biology, even then if you try to go to, like, actual primary sources to get some information about it, it's gonna be really hard for you. And I understand that because I do that sometimes with things that I'm not any kind of an expert on, like programming and Internet stuff. Clearly, I don't know much about how it works, but I have a fundamental rudimentary understanding. I know that it's not just a series of tubes for anyone who gets that reference, but like, you know, I recognize my lack of understanding, but because I know enough about something else, I know that there's a lot of things I don't know and I think about that, but it's easy to get taken in by information that. That feels right. I had to learn the skill of when I'm looking up something, if I find a source, even if I think it's a reputable source that I usually would rely on and it agrees with me wholesale, I immediately am like, nope, gotta find another source. Cause nope, I can't trust this because it agrees exactly with what I'm saying. I have to at least find one or two other things that disagree so that I can critically evaluate the opinions. But that's work. That's mad work. People work like two jobs, you know what I mean? And really, this is what your doctor's supposed to be for, right?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I mean, I guess we've just gotten rid of the idea of an expert, but we've always relied upon experts and thought, oh, this person spent their entire adult life to understand this. One thing that I need a brain to understand for my life to function. Well, I can change a tire. Okay. And I can change my oil.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Not to brag, but I can do one of those.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But if I had to, you know, I don't know how an entire your car works. Every part of the car. Like when I go bloop, bloop with my keys, I'm not exactly sure. What specifically is happening there? And I don't need to know.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

That's the whole point of subject matter.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Experts and a lot of this is like intersecting with health. We did a whole season on wellness and like the vitamin and supplement industry and just all the kind of kooky things people are doing with their bodies because they don't believe doctors know anything anymore.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Which continues to make me sad.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

The US Surgeon General says kids who spend more than three hours a day online are twice as likely to struggle with depression and anxiety. And nearly half of girls and about a third of boys say social media causes overwhelming stress. Researchers have even found that teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones are at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. I want to avoid all that stuff with my kid. Good news. There's a better option. A company called Gab is tackling this with something they call tech in steps. Instead of handing a kid a full on adult smartphone right away, Gab offers safer phones and watches designed specifically for kids with no social media. Younger kids can start with GPS enabled watches so parents know where they are and as they grow, they can move to phones with parent enabled apps. It's technology that grows with them while helping protect their mental health. The bottom line, your child doesn't need a device built for adults. I absolutely love our Gab phone for my 12 year old. I can see where she is. She can call me, others can call her if I approve them. Anytime she gets a text message that has a bad word in it, I see it. I don't have to monitor everything she says. But when she's texting with someone and they say shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Jerk. I see that Gab keeps kids connected without social media. I can't recommend Gab enough. If you're looking for a phone that makes parenting easier and gives you a little more peace of mind, check them out. Visit gab.comdream and use code dream for an exclusive offer. That's Gab G A B B Starting

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[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

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[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Do you mind if we just run through a number of the topics that you've kind of looked at?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I will do my best to be concise.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

First of all, there's all kinds of waters out there Right. Now I understand water to be two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. Is that correct? H2O. Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

That is in fact a water molecule. Yes.

[Verizon Announcer]

Okay.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

An oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms attached, bonded to it.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

And drinking that is good for your body.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Correct.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Okay,

[Dr. Kim Thug]

you need water.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

What are these waters? Does it help for water to not be water? Or.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Okay, does it help for water to not be water? All right, so wait, well, just new

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

and improved water, like it's just water. Why would we have to improve upon water?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

We don't.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Okay,

[Dr. Kim Thug]

look, no, let me, let me, Sorry. In my humble non medical professional opinion, I'm pretty confident that as long as the water does not have a bunch of dissolved, unhealthy contaminants in it of some kind, you know what I mean? Like otherwise it's water, your body's probably going to use it, it's going to be fine. So hydrogen water and alkaline water are not directly related and they're two separate things. And one of them, in my again opinion, is very much mostly a scam or not a scam. I don't wanna say it's a scam. It's not a scam. It's people, I think, trying to take advantage of a potential market.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

By overplaying the value of alkaline water. So some people who sell it will tell you that you're alkalizing your body and that has all these kinds of properties that's good for. And that is, I'm pretty sure, unequivocally false. Like you cannot change significantly the PH of various aspects of your body simply by drinking water that is like slightly basic or alkaline.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Cause aren't you pretty acidic on the inside immediately, like your stomach?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

So, yeah. So first and foremost it is important that people understand that the level of how acidic or alkaline any part of your body is is generally determined by this number called the physical and the ph. To try and put it simply, the closer it is to seven, the closer it is to being neither acidic or basic. If it's between 0 and 7, it's acidic. If it's between 7 and 14, it's basic or alkaline.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Okay.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Basicity and alkalinity are kind of often used interchangeably. So just to be clear, so when people talk about alkaline water, what they're talking about is water that in some way, shape or form has a ph that is above 7. That is to say it is some kind of basic. Now I feel like I've seen bottles in stores of so Called alkaline water with a ph of like 8.5 or even like 9. And that to me is bordering on dangerous for your mouth. Could be a little caustic.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Okay.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know, I mean, like, you'd probably be fine. I don't even want to say you'll probably be fine, but like, it's not a good idea. I don't think so. I mean, like, I believe that the core of the claim of alkaline water being more beneficial than other water comes from the fact that when you have water that has appropriate minerals dissolved in it for your body, because that's one of the other things you need water for. Right. Those sodiums and chlorides and all that other good stuff, it will have a slightly alkaline ph. But I don't know that. Just like taking a machine that uses electrolysis to convert some of the water into just straight up hydroxide ions, which is what would also raise the pH of the water. I don't really know that that' gonna do anything for you. Because it's not about the alkalinity that makes it helpful. It's just the alkalinity is like a side consequence of the water having things in it.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Electrolytes.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's that. So that's, you know, I do think that a lot of that, you know, the whole alkaline diet thing, I'm pretty confident has more or less been debunked by people who are more of an expert in this field than me. But just from my rudimentary understanding of like chemistry and equilibriums, biology and the fact that like your stomach is around a PH of like one or two. Right. Because like it's full of stomach acid, but your blood is around a ph of like 7.4 or 3. Something. Something in that neighborhood.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Aren't we cool?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. Our bodies are amazing systems. And that's part of what makes me so sad when people drink bleach. I'm like, yo, your body is dope, son. Like, you don't have like people like, oh, I got parasites or whatever. I'm like, you probably don't. You probably just need to eat a little more fiber.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah. If you do, you can get them out a different but, you know, it all.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

It all. But anyway, sorry, I'm getting a little off topic. So now that's alkaline water. Now, hydrogen water is not the same thing. Hydrogen therapy is an interesting area of research that is currently evolving and developing. What's really exciting about it from my perspective is that hydrogen gas for the most. Aside from the fact that it's, like, unreasonably flammable as a gas. Like Hindenburg. Think Hindenburg.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Lots of you listeners out there are. Aren't old enough to remember the Hindenburg.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, the Hindenburg. Famous example of hydrogen gas being way too flammable.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

It was a blimp. It was a very fancy blimp. It was a blimp with fancy catering inside. They had real china dishes that you ate off of in the little tiny bottom part of the blimp. Have you ever seen pictures of the inside of the Hindenburg passenger cabin?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I do believe I did.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

It was gorgeous. Yes.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I feel like that tracks. I definitely feel like that tracks.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But then it bonked into something and exploded and everybody died. We learned our lesson. That's like the thing you were talking about with science. You don't know till you know, but then you really know.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, then you find out, like,

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

yo, hydrogen is going to be hydrogen.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Exactly, exactly. Exactly. You know, I hate to bring the mood down a little bit, but, you know, a lot of the reason why we know things are harmful is because they harmed someone. It's not like somebody came along and they were like, oh, that looks like it would be harmful. Maybe we. I mean, sometimes that happens. You know, if you see a pit of lava, you probably think, I shouldn't go in it. You know what I mean? Like, you don't need to see.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

You know, it is ancient wisdom to be like, don't eat those berries. You know, and someone ate those berries a bunch of times.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. And they did not have a good time. You know what I mean? Like, you know, but literally, safety protocols and labs are born from this. And it's unfortunate that every once in a while, somebody. You know, I make this joke frequently to people, like, some people climb mountains and some people skydive. Some people are just chemists because it's dangerous. Like, it's fundamentally dangerous. There's a lot of very safe and relatively innocuous chemistry you can do. But a lot of stuff in my graduate work, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna be real careful with this stuff. There's some, like, you know, there's some wild, wildly. And. But the reason we know that is because, like, the reason we know mercury is toxic and bad for you is from the history of people using mercury in vaguely unregulated ways and us being like, oh, those people don't seem to. They don't seem to be doing so well anymore. Like, maybe it was the mercury to get back on the topic of hydrogen, though. Like, hydrogen, at this point, we actually recognize, aside from that, flammability might have some meaningful health benefits if you can get it into the body in a useful form. Fortunately, the gas itself is also pretty harmless to the body, as far as we can tell. Like, if you. I mean, obviously don't displace all the air in your lungs with hydrogen gas, don't do that. You do need oxygen to breathe, of course, but, like, you can breathe hydrogen gas to a degree, as long as there's enough oxygen mixed in, obviously, and that's fine. You can also drink hydrogen water, apparently. You might also be able to take baths in water that is rich with hydrogen. But it's kind of the same thing as alkaline water. Right. There's a degree to which people are attempting to tap into a emerging market and essentially get people to buy a product that purports to provide some benefit, but perhaps does not, but we don't know. Right? Like, that's the thing, is that, like, this is an emerging area of research. That's the only real difference between the hydrogen water and the alkaline water is that with alkaline water, we're pretty. I'm pretty sure the case is closed on that one. Like, that's not really much of a thing. But with the hydrogen water, there's been a lot of research into the potential benefits of hydrogen therapy in various forms. You know, so, like, I don't knock anybody for wanting to try it, wanting to look into it.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I made fun of it on the face of it just because I was like, I'm pretty sure there's already hydrogen in here. Why do I need to hydrogenate it?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

So, hydrogen water, when people talk about hydrogen water, this is fundamentally different from alkaline water. Hydrogen water is water that has had additional H2, that is to say, hydrogen gas dissolved into it in some way, shape, or form.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Okay.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You can generate hydrogen water from regular water using electrolysis. What will happen shortly is that you pass an electric current through the water, and this causes the water molecules to react with other oxygen stuff in the water and makes the two hydrogen atoms attached to the oxygen atom of water essentially stitch to each other and then become hydrogen gas. And it might change depending upon what's dissolved in the water. But ultimately, you can make hydrogen water by running electricity through some water. And what will effectively happen is the hydrogen atoms attached to the oxygen molecule will stitch to each other and become hydrogen gas. But here's the problem.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Hydrogen gas doesn't Is the gas trapped in the water?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Exactly. Hydrogen gas does not dissolve well in water. That's ultimately why, if nothing else, if you want to get a hydrogen water bottle, generator or anything, you need to get one that's like a pressurized kind of container. So situation. Because as it's generating the hydrogen gas through electrolysis, that hydrogen gas is just escaping the water. So unless the chamber that this is happening in is like sealed from the environment and can build up pressure, like, kind of like a pressure cooker would say, the hydrogen gas isn't going to stay dissolved in the water.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Also, anything like soda or like pop has carbonated, literally.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But even faster.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Faster than carbonation. Okay, that makes sense.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Which fun fact about carbonation, that is just straight up, like dissolved carbon dioxide in water. And part of why it stays there, why it can stay there longer, is because it can straight up just react with the water and the carbon dioxide will get another water molecule attached to it, basically, and become this other acid, carbonic acid. And that's part of why we use it in soda, because it helps to give it that tart flavor. But that also is part of why flat soda tastes so much extra flat and not quite as tart. Cause there's still phosphoric acid in a lot of sodas. But that carbonic acid also gives it that extra interesting.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

And I would imagine carbon gas is probably heavier than hydrogen gas as well. Is that right?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. Carbon dioxide is in fact heavier than air. It's the molecule itself has three atoms in it versus the others. And the atoms that comprise carbon dioxide, one carbon atom, two oxygen atoms, are all heavier than the atoms that comprise hydrogen gas. So, you know, two hydrogen atoms. So, yeah, I would assume that it's significantly heavier than hydrogen so it doesn't

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

float out as quick.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Okay, yeah, I forgot about that. That's a fun little thing you can actually do. If you, like, say, take some vinegar and baking soda, right, and let them react and do the bubbling thing. What you're making is a bunch of carbon dioxide gas. But if you do it in a big container, you can actually kind of trap the gas in the container. And then once you let it calm down, if you want, you can, like, light a tea, light candle, and then pour the gas onto the candle and watch the candle go out because of all the carbon dioxide gas, just like putting out the fire.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

You mean like take a cup of gas gas?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. I've been meaning to do to make like a little video of this. You just reminded me, oh, that's so fun. No, it's pretty fun.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

It's pretty cool.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I ain't going front.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

That's cool.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

So, yeah. So CO2 gas has a much easier time, like, staying dissolved in water than hydrogen gas does. So if you get one of these hydrogen gas, like, bottle water bottle situations, you need one that's gonna like, have like a pressurized container to keep the hydrogen gas dissolved in the water. But all of that belies is the fundamental issue with hydrogen water as a form of hydrogen therapy. We just straight up don't know. Right, Right. Like, we don't know. So, you know, like, we don't know how much you need and that's okay. And see, and that's the thing. It's like, in this case, that's fine, more or less. Because as far as we know, it's not. There's. You, like, you can't OD on hydrogen unless you literally suffocate yourself with the gas, which again, please don't do that. Please do not displace all the air in your lungs with hydrogen gas. Please don't do that. But I just need to say that. But you know, like, fortunately, this isn't like drinking bleach, say, where it's like, well, you know, it could be helpful, it could be harmful. It's like, no, drinking bleach is explicitly going to harm you. Like, there is no world where that's gonna be good for you beyond the fact that the bleach itself is gonna burn your throat and your mouth quite badly, is gonna react with the acid in your stomach. Stomach. And things are gonna get a whole lot worse a whole lot quicker. But hydrogen gas, as far as we can tell and have seen and know, is not really harmful. So the worst thing that happens is kind of you're just wasting your money, you know, because it ultimately, it's like, it could be helpful for you. It absolutely could. But this kind of, again, goes back to, you know, it sucks that people have to try and get two or three opinions from medical professionals in a world where you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money even when you have health insurance to go get healthcare. You know what I mean? Like, that in and of itself breeds this sort of thing, because then, yeah, everybody's gonna be trained. And I don't, you know, as much, like I said, you know, I don't really wanna make fun of or be disparaging to people who do things like that. Cause I know you're not trying to harm yourself. It's just like as absurd as it is to me, I entirely understand that if you exist in a society that does not allow you access to healthcare in some meaningful way, you gonna do what you gotta do to stay healthy.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Although I do think a big red flag, and I'm not, and I'm not saying people shouldn't try natural remedies and things like that, but I think a red flag would be being sold a product that does not have a specific purpose where like hydrogen water, it's good for you. Like, what part of me am I supposed to take a bath in it? Am I actually supposed to put it on the inside? And what for? Like, where is it gonna, how's it gonna. What kind of makes me like, what

[Dr. Kim Thug]

is the mechanism through which this is going to improve my life? Not yet.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I mean, ye Borax thing, I see people pushing that around, like eating, ingesting Borax, which is like a cleaning product. I have never seen anybody be like, and this is exactly what it's for. The one thing that borax can do instead, it's like part of your healthy diet should be a tablespoon of Borax.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

And I don't, which I'm just like, no, no, no, absolutely, absolutely not. You're just like, please, please, please just don't do that. Like, just so many reasons not to do that. Like, I. But you touch on a very, a very important point that I think is part of what I hope to achieve with at least some of my content. And I know, I know that it doesn't all hit this, hit this note, but I try is the ability to look at what's being presented to you a little bit more critically. You know, I mean, and that's kind of what I was saying earlier. I was like, if I'm trying to look up information about something and I find a source that agrees with me wholesale, the first thing that I do is go and immediately even just if I know, like, I'll go to try actively to find a source that disagrees with me wholesale, because I am a human being. We are all human beings, which means

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

we have human brains become pre programmed with confirmation bias.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Exactly like, you know, I wish more people worked within the philosophy of my brain isn't exactly my own. Because it's not exactly your own. Your brain is shaped by everything you've experienced in your life, whether or not you chose to experience it. You know what I mean? And that affects how you react and respond and think about all sorts of things, including when you get presented with some information and whether or not you kind of accept it wholesale or you kind of question it a little bit. And I really, I want to encourage as many people as I can not to be like Debbie Downer, sort of pooh pooey, like, everything's terrible skeptic, but just be critical. Like the good old adage, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You know what I mean? It probably is too good to be true. And when you get to that point where you just have to take something on faith, you need to recognize, whoa, whoa, whoa, what am I assuming here? Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what am I taking on faith here? But you get wrapped up in the excitement of this might solve all my problems. And so I.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But I think that's what people who are skeptical of modern Western medicine also say, though, that you have to question everything and make sure that you're not getting hosed by big Pharma. It's the same principle that they're operating

[Dr. Kim Thug]

off of, only the only real difference is that, unfortunately, is the existence of clinical trial data that the average person cannot evaluate on their own. So that kind of becomes an issue. And I mean, the unfortunate reality is also that, like, I had to be careful saying this.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

You can just tell it's just you and me, no one's listening.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yes, yes, yes, right, exactly. I just gotta be careful saying this. In our current administration, we practice medicine under a profit driven paradigm. We do not practice medicine under a patient's needs paradigm. Exactly right. So there's a real degree to which pharmaceutical companies will engage in certain practices that lead to them making outsized profits and not necessarily innovating a lot. That is not the same as pharmaceutical companies pushing products that don't work.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know what I mean? Like the naturopaths will say that, like, yes, do your research. So go ahead and look up the U.S. the United States Pharmacopoeia's monogram, you know what I mean, for the medication that your doctor is telling you that you should take. You know what I mean? Like, go ahead and do that. Go ahead and try to read it. If you can't, ask your doctor to help you understand it. Now this is again where we end up at that problem though, right? Like we don't have access to the experts, and a lot of people have been programmed to not look at experts as experts. So we end up in this like, really, really unfortunate, like, vicious loop of people just wanting to try something because they don't think that there's a solution out there. And there is. But, like, it's hard to get for a lot of people. So I said, you know, I think. I think I said it in one of these videos that I made. It might have been the Borax video that, like, I understand people like, you know, if you say you got an eye infection and you really can't go to the doctor because you work two jobs six days a week and you got a kid and you know that Borax will work as a biocide in some ways. So you. Or, you know, you're like, all right, well, if I take some really dilute bleach and drop it in my eye, you know, I mean, it's better than me. Just like, you know, it's like, I'm like, I don't want you to do that. Please don't fuck. Please don't do that. Please, God, do not do. But, like, can I really be mad at. It's like, to me, it's like the same as, like, being mad at somebody who's starving, stealing food. It's like, yo, you. You need that. You know, I can't really be that mad at you. And so I just. I just.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I know it's frustrating.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I'm not going to present, like, I have a solution that doesn't involve universal access to health care.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Like, straight up and down. I don't know that there's a solution. Aside from that.

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[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yep.

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[Dr. Kim Thug]

Learn [e-mail] Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

A rich life isn't a straight line

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to a destination on the horizon.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with

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detours, new possibilities, and even another passenger or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Edward Jones Member, SIPC. Even with some error areas of pharmaceutical science, there are unknowns, like, for example, psychiatric medications. Like, I take a few and when I ask my psychiatrist, what does this exactly do in my brain, they're like, well, we have theories.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Oh yeah.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But what they really mean is we

[Dr. Kim Thug]

have looked and we're still figuring it out.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

We're looking. And what we've done is listened to people and done tons and tons and tons of trials. And for the most part, this seems to work for people for this condition. I can't tell you exactly what happens inside your mushy gray brain matter. But what we have noticed is a common outcome that doesn't seem to do more harm than good or whatever. And that's another example of why you need to trust experts, you know, because they have put the work in. It's not Gary down the street being like, I decided to.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I read these blogs, I read some blogs, you know what I mean? And all these blogs were saying this, you know what I mean? And this one dude, his blog, he says he's a doctor. So, you know, but I gotta be careful with that. Cause I also say I'm a doctor online, right?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

So, you know, but

[Dr. Kim Thug]

not a medical doctor. Not a medical doctor.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Can we talk about. I just got reminded of another thing because Gary down the street also likes to recommend colloidal silver. What is that?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

That one Colloidal silver, it turns you blue. Colloidal silver has an interesting. Yeah, it's got a. It's got an interesting little story behind it, but, yeah, the long and short of it. So colloidal silver is what you get if you could take a really, really small, like, tinier than you could see marble of silver. Right. And you had, like, millions of those, and you mix that up in some water. It's not quite dissolved in the water, but it's also not like. It's just like. It's like milk. Almost like, you know, like, if you let milk sit for a while, eventually you get the proteins to coagulate and stuff. It's kind of more like that, like a colloidal suspension, but it's of, like, silver particles that are all really small. Now, it is true that silver has antimicrobial properties. It is not necessarily true, or it is not necessarily well understood as to whether or not it can do this in your body with any kind of selectivity. I do, if I'm not mistaken, because it's been a little while since even I've read about. But historically, people did use colloidal silver here and there with, like, varying degrees of success.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

With wound care, mostly, right?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. With, like, wound care, not really internally. I think there maybe possibly are stories of people having used it, like, as an internal antibiotic, but I don't know for sure.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But, like, we have antibiotics that work and won't turn you blue. So you don't need to take colloidal stuff.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Like, also, antibacterial stuff is also not great to have 100% of the, like, people who take colloidal silver take it every day. You wouldn't take amoxicillin every single day or slather your body in Neosporin every day.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Exactly. Like, no, no, because. Especially because you have to remember, and this is. This is a very fun and interesting emerging area of research, is the significant importance of our body's various microbiomes, like the gut microbiome and the skin microbiome, even like your hair microbiome. Like, these microbes are with you all the time, and they are exposed to the same things you're exposed to. And there are definitely, I'm sure, some people who will argue that, like, we as humans are just, like, transports for, like, all the microbes that live in our body synergistically and helpfully, and we need them there to help us stay

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

alive, and they need us so they can reproduce in us.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's symbiotic. Now, you. Yo, that's the circle of life, fam. Like, you better get with it, dog. Like, I don't know what you want. That's how this works, dog. Like, what you want? Like, it's. Ain't nothing wrong with it, you know, Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Some. I don't want to say. No, honestly. No, I take that back. None of them are good, none of them are bad. They have their place. And if they get out of place, it can be a problem.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

But if you also don't have them, it can be a problem for you, too. That's part of why you only supposed to take antibiotics for the amount of time you're supposed to take them. As you mentioned, with, like, amoxy.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know, so. Yeah, I hadn't even remembered that point with colloidal silver. The other thing is, you know, just like, the whole turning you blue and the kind of, like, metals toxicity issue of it, which silver is relatively well tolerated in the body, if you will. But I think I prefer gold.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Goldschlager. Just kidding, right? I actually hate gold, colloidal gold.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Although I feel like I saw that somewhere online at some point. I feel like I did, but I might not have. That might not be true. It might have just been like a jo.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But, like, it's the Kardashians version of colloidal silver. They don't do colloidal silver in that household. It's all colloidal gold. Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Honestly, it's hard to be mad at people for doing it. And I will try to never be, like, mad or upset with people about that because at the end of the day, it comes to, like, being convinced that this is your only option, you know? But, like, yeah, no, it's very unaffective for what a lot of people end up using it for. I feel like for the level of potential harm that it could cause you in the long run, for the way that a lot of people seem to want to advertise its use. I'm not saying that it's going to be the end of the world for you or it's going to cause you wild health consequences. If you, like, once, twice a year, use the little colloidal silver on your skin, we get exposed. And this is going back to what we said earlier. Our bodies are amazing. Our physiology is insane. The things that people can heal from even without that much intervention from, like, quote unquote, modern medicine or Western medicine or Whatever. Like, the fact that our bodies can heal in the ways that they can heal is a little crazy. You know, we might not be able to regenerate limbs, but we can tolerate a whole lot of abuse before our bodies are really like, I, you know, I can't. We not doing this anymore.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Oh, you're talking to the daughter of a dentist whose main piece of advice anytime you don't feel good is, eh, it'll go away.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

It's like, you know, it's like you just keep an eye on it. Just keep an eye on it.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But it'll get. Yeah, it'll get better.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

It'll probably be all right.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Oh, your knee hurts. I'm sorry.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

This here, look, get off of it for a minute, you know what I mean? You be all right? You know, like, I like.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

It's probably a virus. That's what he always says, probably a virus. I mean, that's the answer every time.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I don't know about that, but although it is, as a side note, it is rather interesting that it was posited. I want to say it was positive sometime in the 80s. I'm sure one of your viewers is going to get mad if they know this. They're going to get mad at me.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Oh, we have listeners. No one can see what we're doing right now. So we have listeners.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, but I'm sure some listener will get mad at me for getting these details not entirely correct, but there was some scientists who posited, I want to say in like the 80s or 70s, that we were gonna figure out in the next 30 to 50 years from the 70s or 80s, that a lot of the cancers that we thought were just cancer are actually caused by viruses. And they have been kind of proven fairly correct in that we have discovered that part of my PhD research actually involved me looking into drugs to combat hepatitis B virus because that hepatitis B virus can cause, what is it? Liver cancer. Yeah, hepatitis B virus can cause liver cancer. But that isn't something that we, you know, like, we like. Our understanding of the extent to which viruses themselves will induce cancerous mutations in bodies is of relatively recent, you know, so maybe, you know, it's a virus.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

My dad kind of. He thinks that lots of things are caused by, like, if I'm like, my elbow hurts, you know, he'll be like, prior virus.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I don't know about that. I don't really think about that.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

I don't know either. I don't know either, but I got. But he's the expert. No, I don't know.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

You know, our bodies are pretty resilient. So like the people who are like, oh, I take it every day, I'm like, that's a little bit of much exposure. You know, like if you do this once a month and you just, and you really feel like it's doing something for you, you know, I'mma tell you you probably shouldn't do it. But I'm also try to be real with you that like, that maybe isn't enough to be meaningfully harmful to you. But like, I mean, too much of anything is bad, bad for you. Right?

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

One last thing I wanted to get your thoughts on is since you are a synthetic chemistry expert, what are synthetics and why are so many people freaked out about them? Like in everything, not just our food and vitamins, but in everything, like, oh, it's synthetic. And it's my understanding that if you're synthesizing the word synthesize, like you're making the thing that already is a thing. So it's. Is that right? Am I being stupid? It's right.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Oh yes, that is correct.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Nailed it. Can you talk about that?

[Dr. Kim Thug]

If you are synthesizing, you know, amoxicillin, you are making the molecule amoxicillin. I think a lot of people, this I think really comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of like the nature of chemistry, I guess. But I think a lot of, for a lot of people there is a pervasive belief which I think also kind of tracks back to the fact that people don't get introduced to chemistry early enough in life. So it's difficult to think about things from the perspective of chemistry, especially because then you don't learn it. But like it's, it's actually kind of valuable to your day to day life because you don't fall into this kind of thinking where molecules that come from, like plants and animals are somehow different from molecules that we make in of a lot lab. This is related to a old and very much debunked idea within science called vitalism, which for a while, because again we did, we watched things happen and then came up with rules based on experiments. After for a while it was believed that certain molecules and therefore substances could only be derived from living species and living sources. So like, I think urea was one of the famous examples that ended up debating debunking this theory. I forget who it was that made urea the first time, but they made it using like essentially straight up, like the equivalent of like, just like salts. If I just to try and keep it simple, like the equivalent of like potassium. Of like potassium. Okay, no, let me try and, let me try and think. I think you used an isocyanate and hydrolyzed it with base or something you could be saying.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But basically right now. And I would guide going along with it. Okay, sure.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I don't remember. I'll be perfectly honest. I don't remember exactly the reaction he used to make urea, but he made it from effectively things you would think of as rocks, inorganic compounds that never came from a living thing to begin with. And this was a huge deal when he did it because it proved that it's not true. A vitamin that gets made in a lab is the same as a vitamin that gets made in a living organism. There really isn't a difference between the to compounds themselves. Now I have to talk about isolation, which is, as you might imagine, getting that compound out from wherever it is that it's currently existing. In that process, it is not impossible for contaminants to end up in the final product that wouldn't necessarily be there if it were derived from a natural source. But there are issues with this idea because that same thing can happen when you try to derive it from a natural source as well. Right. So if you, you know, if you really want to talk about like where you need to get your vitamins and minerals from, you need to get it from your food point blank, period.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

And you better wash everything, you know, because you're not. If you're talking about contaminants.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Oh, yeah, right. For real. Please do wash your fresh fruit and vegetables. Yes, please, please do not just like throw that into a splendid. Don't just throw that into a blender and make a juice out of it. It's going to be a bad idea. Trust me. Again, this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier though, about how resilient our bodies are. I understand people wanting to be careful about what they put in their diet and people want to live as long as they can. And yeah, modern medicine is expensive, so people got to. Prevention is better than the cure. But you also do got to remember that if you spend so much time and energy and effort and anxiety on these things that don't actually matter that much, you might just be doing worse things for your health.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

You can't live off cortisol, I'll tell you that.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

I mean, some people do. They don't have a very good time, I promise you. And the people around them don't either, but they go for it, I think. Yeah, I think a lot of everything that we talked about today, I think really circles back to the fact that 1:1 people don't get introduced to science nearly as early in their lives as they should. For the amount of ways and places in which a firm understanding of science or at least just being able to think about things critically in that scientific mechanistic, there's an explanation manner. It's really important that you kind of form that in people early on. I think that's one of the big advantages that I have had in being able to study this and do this. And my fundamental interest is very much helped by the fact that I started looking at and learning about very early in my life. But because of that and the fact that like there's just so much more of our lives now, like pharmaceutical commercials, for example, I'm like, why do people need to sit up? Why do I get commercials for medicines? It's like, no, my doctor should be able to just prescribe for me, like, you know, the medication that I need.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Right. But it's about money making. Yeah. Branding.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah. You know, but like understanding and being able to evaluate whether or not some actual medical product or some bit of information somebody's giving you about like some product or service you could use is helpful. Because I mean this, this isn't just for science. This is also for like, you know, people just getting scammed by, you know, the Prince emails, You know what I mean? Like, you know, this is just generally the ability to be critical of information that you're presented with. But like, that becomes difficult if you don't have a firm grasp of the fundamentals behind. Behind it. You know, it becomes real easy to just kind of go with what somebody tells you if they sound very confident about what they're saying and you don't really understand enough about it, you know, to question it directly. And that again, like I said, you know, when somebody or something is telling you exactly what you want to hear or exactly what you think you agree with, the first thing you need to do is go find somebody who has a compelling case for the opposite argument. Because you're getting sucked into your confirmation bias that we all come with as human beings beings. And you gotta be careful. Cause that will get you into trouble. You know what I mean? That is gonna end up having you drinking colloidal silver twice a day, you know what I mean? Turning your liver blue. But I don't blame individuals like that. I blame the nature of our system. I blame the commodification of education. I blame the commodification of healthcare. Generally speaking. I blame commodification and profit seeking for a lot of these behaviors because once you do that, you kind of remove the goal of best outcomes for everybody. The market cannot decide what the best course of treatment is for a given disease.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

And sometimes the market decides that the best outcome is for a lot of people to die.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

It's happened more than once. And that, you know, that in and of itself is like, one of the real underlying problems. And they're just like, we. If we can move away from that in some meaningful capacity somehow, definitely not gonna happen in the next four years, probably.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

But, you know, we'll all be better off.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

Yeah, yeah, it'd be great. But in the meantime and in between time, like, you know, the most that I will ever try to do and hope to do is give people a little bit more of a view of the broadness of a subject and remind people that critical evaluation of information is key to being able to, you know, live a life, like, without ending up getting sucked into these, like, kind of rabbit holes of untrue information that ultimately might end up just harming you, you know? And I guess this is where, like, I try my best, you know, I try my best with Kim Thug, right? Like, I want to present information in a way that people will be encouraged to go and look up a little bit more about it, potentially themselves, or at the very least, come away with an understanding that the world is bigger than they thought and that there are reasons why things are the way they. They are. We got here through a known pathway, you know what I mean? Like, I always disliked when I would ask my parents things as a kid where I was like, oh, well, why is it raining if the sun is out? And they would say something like, oh, it's because God's going bowling. It's like, don't do that. Don't do that. Please don't do that. Nah. Like, I'm just like, yo, don't do that. Like, tell me you don't know. Just tell me you don't know. But there's a reason. There's like, an action, actual mechanical reason that's based in fact. Because I feel like a lot of people end up growing up with those kinds of explanations for things in their lives, and that makes people feel like the actual explanation to some degree, is just, like, inscrutable. Chemistry is magic. Biology is magic. The systems that keep even, just like bacteria alive are wild, you know, like, the number of chemical reactions that happen with a whole bunch of random reagents just, like, all sloshing around within that little bacterium. Now multiply that by like 20 billion, you know what I mean? For like your body. I understand that we can't necessarily know everything, but it is theoretically knowable.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

Well, thanks so much for talking to me.

[Dr. Kim Thug]

This is an absolute pleasure. I do indeed enjoy this. I thank you so much for inviting me on. I really, really do appreciate the opportunity.

[Podcast Host (Jane Marie)]

That's it for this week. We have a tip line open. Call us at 3232-4814-8832-2348-1488 and leave us a message about anything that you think is funky out there. What's going on, guys? Talk to me.

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[Dr. Kim Thug]

Learn [e-mail] Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.