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A Million Things at Once

2022-09-13 · letter vlog · John · 3:56 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: Personal life, Internet & YouTube, Pop culture) · mode: Personal update · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion, fundraising ask

John runs through a million things: Hank's painful shingles, seeing the first cut of the Turtles All the Way Down film, his semi-secret John's Channel, Pizzamas coming, his cameo in Welcome to Wrexham, enjoying writing, and progress of the community's Sierra Leone health project in Kono.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank's shingles; John to see the first cut of the Turtles All the Way Down film

  • ★★★ John says Hank is sick with shingles, which is extremely painful and sucks, and he is sorry. — 00:00:00 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John jokes that because Hank was too sick to make a video last week (week of 5 September 2022), John was deprived of four minutes of high-quality infotainment. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John says that when Hank is sick he feels sad and worried because Hank is so great. — 00:00:00 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ John is going to see the first cut of the Turtles All the Way Down film this week (week of 12 September 2022); release is a long way off, and he is very excited and a little nervous. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says he will try to make some John's Channel videos about the film. (hedged) — 00:00:00

00:00:47 — The semi-secret John's Channel and its 17-view video

  • ★★★ John reveals that, besides Hank's channel, for several months there has been a semi-secret John's Channel where he makes his own stuff. — 00:00:47 · hankschannel
  • ★★ John started the channel as an experiment in building an organic audience for shorter videos; it failed: a video on tuberculosis and Toulouse-Lautrec got 17 views in two months. — 00:00:47 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says ironically that his YouTube success does not depend at all on having started in 2007, meaning it largely does. (satire) — 00:00:47

00:01:16 — Pizzamas is coming (the mustache); John's cameo in Welcome to Wrexham

  • ★★★ John says Pizzamas is coming, which is why he has a mustache: two weeks each year of daily videos selling things with his mustache on them for charity. — 00:01:16 · Pizzamas
  • ★★★ John appears in the next episode of Ryan Reynolds and his friend Rob's show about buying and running Wrexham AFC, teaching a crash course on the history of Wales. — 00:01:16

  • ★★★ John recommends Welcome to Wrexham even to non-football fans: it's about how football, of all the unimportant things, is the most important. — 00:01:16

    “how football, of all the unimportant things, is the most important”

00:02:04 — John's writing and Escape Into Meaning; Sierra Leone project progress in Kono and thanks to donors

  • ★★ John is busy writing, which is really nice and fun; he had forgotten that writing can be enjoyable. — 00:02:04
  • ★★ John calls Evan Puschak's Escape Into Meaning a great book, from which he learned that writing is the way he has thoughts. — 00:02:04
  • ★★★ John says the community is on track to raise over $30 million over the first five years of this decade for a stronger health system in Kono District, Sierra Leone. — 00:02:04 · Nerdfighteria, Sierra Leone
  • ★★★ John says in Kono 1 in 20 women will die in childbirth and 1 in 10 children won't survive to age 5. — 00:02:34 · maternal death, child mortality
  • ★★ Most of the money goes to building, staffing, maintaining and supplying the Maternal Center of Excellence, a teaching hospital in Koidu; some supports primary health care, especially in Kayima. — 00:02:34 · Maternal Center of Excellence
  • ★★ John says the Kayima clinic is the main source of medical care for over 90,000 people and lacks reliable running water and electricity. — 00:03:03
  • ★★★ Thanks to increased support, the Kayima clinic is being renovated and is hiring and training staff to become a safe place to deliver babies and refer complicated cases to the hospital. — 00:03:03
  • ★★★ John says this progress has attracted new grants from big foundations so other Kono clinics can improve, the long-held hope that big global-health players would join. — 00:03:03 · global health
  • ★★ John thanks donors at pih.org/hankandjohn, subscribers to the Awesome clubs, and everyone who gives the crisis their attention. — 00:03:32 · Partners In Health

In the description and comments

Humor (significant)

  • John says too little attention has been paid to how Hank's shingles affect the literal center of the observable universe. — 00:00:00

    “at least when I'm observing it. Me.”

  • After his video on tuberculosis and Toulouse-Lautrec got 17 views in two months. — 00:00:47

    “so yeah i'm a really good youtuber whose success is not at all dependent upon the fact that i started in 2007”

  • Explaining his new Pizzamas mustache. — 00:01:16

    “if you're wondering why I look like an off-brand Rhett McLaughlin”

  • Listing the stars of Welcome to Wrexham after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. — 00:02:04

    “and a guy whose personal YouTube channel has 167 subscribers.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

People: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · Rhett McLaughlin · Rob McElhenney · Ryan Reynolds

Projects: hankschannel · John's Channel · Pizzamas

Works: Escape into Meaning · Turtles All the Way Down (film) · Welcome to Wrexham

Organizations: Maternal Center of Excellence · Partners In Health · Wrexham A.F.C.

Concepts: child mortality · global health · maternal death · observable universe · primary health care · Shingles · tuberculosis

Places: Kayima · Koidu · Kono District · Sierra Leone · Wales

Only in the description or credits: Evan Puschak

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