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Melissa Collini ('18 M.S., '22 Ph.D) first fell in love with chemistry as a teenager. Her high school teacher made the subject come alive through interactive experiments that she still remembers today.

"One time we got to hold bubbles of propane, and she lit it on fire in our hands, so we literally got to hold fire," Collini says. "You dipped your hands in water so they would be insulated from it and then you held these bubbles of gas. It was so cool!"

In college, Collini majored in chemistry -- three times over. She earned a bachelor's from the University of Texas at Dallas and then came to UNT to pursue her master's and doctoral degrees.

"My Ph.D. advisors Rebecca Weber and Molly Atkinson were both very supportive and the department chair Lee Slaughter encouraged me to pursue chemistry education research. Their leadership and guidance are what kept me at UNT and was one of the big reasons why I wanted to come back to teach," says Collini, who started as a UNT chemistry lecturer in Fall 2024.

But even before she became a full-time educator, Collini had been teaching chemistry to audiences around the world for years, with her podcast, "Chemistry for Your Life," ranked as the No. 1 chemistry podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Launching the Podcast

In 2019, after a nudge from Weber, Collini launched the podcast while pursuing her Ph.D. She reached out to her friend and UNT radio, tv and film alum Jam Robinson ('15) for guidance.

"Melissa's passion for chemistry is something where you can't be friends with her or even an acquaintance and not hear her talk about how much she loves it," says Robinson, who is a minister at the Denton North Church where he and Collini first met.  "She told me about her podcast idea, and I was getting so excited about the way that she was talking about it that I realized it would be so much fun."

So, Robinson not only helped Collini with the technical aspect of audio equipment and recording that he learned as an RTVF major, but also joined as a co-host and pupil of sorts, learning chemistry concepts right alongside listeners.

Their first episode covered the science behind how soap gets hands clean, which allowed Collini to connect fundamental chemistry concepts -- like intermolecular forces and how electrons are shared around bonds -- to an action that people take in everyday life. Other episode topics have tackled the chemistry of brewing coffee, why onions make you cry and how smoke alarms detect smoke.

"I think we have a photo from that first recording session and we're literally in this walk-in closet at the house I lived in at the time that we just kind of turned into a recording studio," Robinson says.

They haven't really changed much about the podcast set up since, he says, other than adding video so they can upload it to YouTube and breaking out of the closet into another quiet space for recording.

Gaining a Following

Based on the metrics, their podcast concept has struck a chord with listeners. All their episodes combined -- which total in the hundreds now -- have received millions of downloads over the last six years. "Chemistry for Your Life" regularly ranks as the No. 1 chemistry podcast on Apple Podcasts and among the top 125 science podcasts as well.

"There's been so much kind feedback. We feel like we're really impacting people," Collini says. "It feels so grassroots, like we're just putting it out there and it grew on its own because we don't have money for advertising."

Listeners come from all over the U.S. and the world, from Brazil to Spain. Robinson says they have one really engaged listener from Australia who declared "Chemistry for Your Life" as her favorite podcast.

"It's just crazy to think that somebody from some other place found us and listens every week," he says.

Collini also has been asked to serve as a guest speaker at high schools, talking with students about chemistry and her podcast.

"I just wanted to help people who didn't think chemistry was for them to see that it could be for them," Collini says. "And now we've built this really engaged audience of people who are excited about chemistry."

Via The North Texan