John reads widely about tuberculosis and 19th-century illness (2022)
story · status: told 3×, last update 2026 · last event: retold (2026-08-25)
Origin known from later mentions
2022 in the title is when this began; it first appears in the videos read here in 2023, so the earlier part is known only from what is said later.
Part of: Everything Is Tuberculosis: John's nonfiction book about tuberculosis (2024)
Told alongside: Awesome Coffee Club: the brothers' coffee subscription for charity (2022)
About: tuberculosis, memoir, invalid, Everything Is Tuberculosis
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-31 | told | John explores these questions in his free time for fun, which would have been hard to explain to his 19-year-old self. | I'm Going Back to College? 00:01:27 |
| 2023-02-07 | update | John says, as if it were news, that he has been reading a lot about tuberculosis recently. (playful) | Mid-Morning Existential Crisis: The Format Returns 00:02:20 |
| 2023-02-28 | update | John says he has just read a bunch of 19th-century invalids' memoirs. | Empathy and its Limits 00:02:47 |
| 2023-03-28 | update | John says he has been reading a lot about tuberculosis lately: many journal articles and over 20 books. | My Tuberculosis Reading List 00:00:00 |
| 2023-05-16 | update | John calls making connections between human history and tuberculosis his favorite leisure activity. (playful) | Did TB Cause World War I? 00:00:29 |
| 2023-06-13 | update | John's deep-dive topic is tuberculosis, which he calls the oldest, deadliest and, in his opinion, least understood infectious disease in human history. | touched by a king 00:00:00 |
| 2023-07-14 | update | Hank admits that during the last year he sometimes thought John was over-investing in tuberculosis, a feeling he no longer has: going deeper shows people working on real solutions. (playful) | The Good News Video 00:00:29 |
| 2023-07-18 | update | John says his tuberculosis obsession goes so far that even on vacation he is reading a book about Arthur Conan Doyle and his contributions to tuberculosis research. (playful) | Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse 00:00:00 |
| 2023-08-15 | update | John came home from that trip obsessed with tuberculosis and spent the next few years learning about it, often thinking of and praying for Henry but never daring to ask what happened to him. | Henry 00:03:14 |
| 2023-08-22 | update | John's current favorite tuberculosis fact comes from rereading the book Living in the Shadow of Death; he admits it can seem he only thinks about tuberculosis. | The Panera Phenomenon 00:00:58 |
| 2023-09-05 | update | John says his Cheyenne, Wyoming has been figuring out how tuberculosis's change happened and how to tell its story. | I Ain't Even Here, Sergeant. I'm in Cheyenne, Wyoming. 00:01:40 |
| 2023-09-14 | update | John recalls a memoir by a woman who had TB as a child in mid-20th-century US sanatoriums until streptomycin saved her; going home, she had forgotten being touched with love. | Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES 00:48:37 |
| 2023-09-15 | update | Hank says he would love to read a John Green book about tuberculosis; John is definitely the expert on it. | The Worst Disease in Human History 00:00:35 |
| 2023-10-17 | update | Over the last couple of years John has mostly been writing, somewhat obsessively, about tuberculosis, which is exactly what he wants to write about. | My Next Book 00:02:47 |
| 2023-11-07 | update | John says that when he started writing about tuberculosis a few years ago he expected a small, straightforward project with no risk of a movie adaptation; it has not been small, because tuberculosis is not a simple concept. (playful) | NaFaDoYBIMSCoM 00:00:29 |
| 2023-11-28 | update | John admits that yes, he has a favorite tuberculosis book of the year. (playful) | John's (Mostly Book) Holiday Gift Recommendations 00:00:29 |
| 2024-02-06 | update | With Hollywood not chasing The Anthropocene Reviewed or his forthcoming tuberculosis book, John says this may be his last time seeing hundreds of people make something wonderful together. (hedged) | The Truth of How Books Become Movies 00:04:52 |
| 2024-04-16 | update | In a channel comment, John says his next work is a nonfiction book about 19th-century human responses to tuberculosis, unlikely Hollywood material. | I Already Got Paid creator comment |
| 2024-05-28 | update | John says he is writing a book about the history and presence of tuberculosis, which will come out next year (2025). | A Midlife Crisis 00:02:26 |
| 2024-06-25 | update | John must finish his book so it can come out next year (2025), and that alone feels like too much work for his depressed brain. | taking a break 00:00:58 |
| 2024-08-07 | update | Answering a patron, John says he still reads mostly about tuberculosis because he is in the last edit of his book. | Dear Hank and John Livestream! 00:28:39 |
| 2024-08-20 | update | John woke up over the Irish Sea, started reading a great book about tuberculosis called Breathless, and landed in London, taking a cab when his train was cancelled. | Thoughts from Places: BROMLEY! 00:00:00 |
| 2024-10-22 | retold | John says he began writing about TB because writing is how he thinks and he wanted to remember what survivors and experts taught him; eventually he set aside the novel he'd been working on. | My New Book: Everything Is Tuberculosis 00:01:40 |
| 2024-12-31 | update | John calls Everything Is Tuberculosis the culmination of three years of his obsession with tuberculosis, its ongoing prevalence, and what that says about the world. | I Just Can't Do It Anymore 00:03:53 |
| 2025-02-25 | update | John says his wife Sarah jokes that in his mind everything is about tuberculosis and tuberculosis is about everything, and she is right. (playful) | EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS 00:09:05 |
| 2025-03-14 | update | Hank says John has focused for years on tuberculosis, a massive problem few others think about, which objectively makes sense even if not to Hank's interest-seeking brain. | Probably the Luckiest Thing in my Life 00:02:39 |
| 2025-11-04 | update | Replying to Hank, John says his tuberculosis obsession is a path into a larger obsession he has had since being a hospital chaplain: why suffering is so unjustly distributed and what human-built systems can do about it. | The Real Question 00:00:00 |
| 2026-08-25 | retold | Researching Everything Is Tuberculosis, John read Gail Perkins's memoir The Baby's Cross: infected by raw milk at three, she spent over 13 years in a sanatorium and came home unaccustomed to touch. | The Great Thing about Infectious Disease 00:03:24 |
What is said about it
13 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2023-01-31 · I'm Going Back to College? — John asks why he grew up thinking TB was a disease of 19th-century poets, and why the world is not on fire with the injustice of tuberculosis. — 00:01:27
- 2023-01-31 · I'm Going Back to College? — John admits he romanticizes college: he imagines only courses fitting his interests, like a social history of tuberculosis, not required ones like math. — 00:01:56
- 2023-02-07 · Mid-Morning Existential Crisis: The Format Returns — John recently came across an 1833 book, The Infirmities of Genius, which says authors have a personality that makes them unusually susceptible to tuberculosis. — 00:00:00
- 2023-02-28 · Empathy and its Limits — John says 19th-century invalids' memoirs often express feeling ignored and left behind, as if their community's empathy could not reach them because they had become invisible. — 00:01:27
- 2023-02-28 · Empathy and its Limits — John says we can't yet listen well to birds, but we can listen to other people, as 19th-century people could have listened to invalids. — 00:02:47
- 2023-03-28 · My Tuberculosis Reading List — recommendation: John recommends Phantom Plague by Vidya Krishnan, probably his favorite TB history: approachable and readable yet rigorously researched. (hedged) — 00:00:58
- 2023-03-28 · My Tuberculosis Reading List — John says he learned from Phantom Plague that Arthur Conan Doyle took part in TB research and that TB shaped ideas of vampires. — 00:00:58
- 2023-07-18 · Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse — John says five years ago, at 40, he thought himself fairly well informed but did not know tuberculosis was the world's deadliest infectious disease, which is part of why he is now obsessed with it. — 00:00:00
- 2023-08-15 · Henry — John says people often ask him why he is obsessed with tuberculosis, and this video is why. — 00:00:00
- 2023-08-22 · The Panera Phenomenon — John: Citing the book, John says that in 1852, when Franklin Pierce was elected US president, his wife was sick with tuberculosis. — 00:00:58
- 2023-11-07 · NaFaDoYBIMSCoM — John: Three years later John has still not finished the tuberculosis writing. — 00:00:58
- 2024-08-07 · Dear Hank and John Livestream! — recommendation: John recommends John le Carré's The Constant Gardener, a spy novel about tuberculosis: very good. — 00:28:39
- 2025-02-25 · EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS — John says he started writing about TB to understand how an illness could quietly shape so much of human history. — 00:06:20