Skip to content

You Have to Poop in the Eiffel Tower

2026-06-19 · letter vlog · Hank · 5:38 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, self promotion, civic or action cta

Hank tells John he has to poop in the Eiffel Tower: its constantly renewed, hidden plumbing and a visit to the Paris Sewer Museum show that everything is maintenance, and that the beauty of human creation is the work, not the magic; he then plugs the Vlogbrothers educational creator grants.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The refrain and the Eiffel Tower's toilets, constantly renewed infrastructure and hidden plumbing

  • ★★ Hank says the Eiffel Tower has bathrooms on all three levels and a toilet at the very top since the beginning, when the man whose company designed and financed most of it secured himself an apartment there. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank structures the video around the repeated refrain, also its title, that you have to poop in the Eiffel Tower. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says that since its construction the tower has constantly been refitted with new infrastructure: elevators, lights, air conditioners, wires and lots of plumbing. — 00:00:25
  • ★★ Hank says the tower's builders and maintainers hide the plumbing infrastructure, which warms the pipes and manages pressures so they flow in all weather while tens of thousands visit every day. — 00:00:59
  • ★★ Hank says the tower's plumbing is designed to make clogs both unlikely and fixable. — 00:01:28
  • ★★ Hank says the infrastructure manages the air as well as the fluid in the pipes, so every flush can move from the top of the tower into the sewer. — 00:01:28

00:02:03 — Walking to the Paris Sewer Museum: the ticket mix-up and the real sewer

  • ★★ Hank walks eight minutes to the Paris Sewer Museum, where the ticket collector tells him in French there is no internet underground, so he must go back up to load the tickets on his phone. (playful) — 00:02:03
  • ★★ Hank says the Paris Sewer Museum is no Disneyland version of the sewers but the real Paris sewer, with sewage running under the grates. — 00:02:03

00:02:32 — Useful and beautiful things; everything is maintenance; the magic is a lie, the beauty is the work; congratulations to John

  • ★★★ Hank says we build things to be beautiful and impactful, but they also need to be useful, conforming to our aesthetics and our biological needs; some useful things just happen to be beautiful. — 00:02:32

  • ★★★ Hank says hidden in the beauty of human creation is a beauty only known: everything is maintenance, new abilities layered on old ones, and without constant maintenance everything would fall apart. — 00:03:10

    “everything is maintenance”

  • ★★★ Hank says our world hides the beauty of humans building for humans and of maintenance so we see only the magic; but the magic is a lie, and the beauty is the work. — 00:03:37

    “The beauty is the work.”

  • ★★ Hank congratulates John on his new book and its beautiful new cover. — 00:03:37 · John Green, Hollywood, Ending

00:04:17 — Final refrain and sign-off

00:04:38 — Post-credits in Paris: a dead rat, a city for nerds, the Vlogbrothers creator grants, Napoleon's tomb

  • ★ Hank calls Paris a beautiful place, amazing for nerds, with lots of good nerd museums. — 00:04:38
  • ★★★ Hank explains the Vlogbrothers Creators Grants: part of the channel's ad money goes into a pool, and every year creators of somewhat educational content apply for small grants. — 00:04:38 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers to tell creators they know who make educational media on the internet, not only YouTubers, about the grants; information is in the description. — 00:05:07 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★ Hank notes Napoleon is buried nearby and died, remarkably, of cancer, when you'd expect a different death. (playful) — 00:05:07 · cancer

In the description and comments

Humor (significant)

  • The tower's designer had an apartment and toilet at the top. — 00:00:25

    “making him probably at the time the world's highest pooper above natural ground level.”

  • A full building clog at home is a disaster. — 00:01:28

    “but a full building clog in the Eiffel Tower would be an international incident.”

  • The plumbing sends every flush from the top to the sewer. — 00:01:28

    “guaranteeing that your poop will be out of the tower faster than you will be.”

  • Hank arrives underground at the sewer museum without loaded tickets. — 00:02:03

    “there's obviously no internet in the Paris Sewer”

  • Hank points out that Napoleon, buried nearby, died of cancer. — 00:05:34

    “Which, what? You'd think he would have died a different way.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Eiffel Tower · maintenance

Also: cancer · Disneyland · Gustave Eiffel · Hollywood, Ending · Napoleon · Paris · Paris Sewer Museum · sewage

Replies to

← Previous: My First Novel in Nine Years Has a Cover · Next → A Very French Reunion