Hello!

My book Everything Is Tuberculosis comes out on Tuesday. It’s my seventh book, and is being published almost exactly 20 years after my first book, Looking for Alaska. If you’d told me back then that I’d end up writing a nonfiction book about TB, I would’ve probably responded, “I’m still alive? Amazing!” But I might also have wondered why I was writing about an old-timey disease that no longer impacts humanity, which is how I imagined tuberculosis until I visited Lakka Hospital in 2019.

Of course, as most/all readers of this newsletter know, TB should be a past-tense phenomenon but isn’t. Instead, in the 75 years since we discovered a cure for TB, we’ve allowed over 150,000,000 people to die of it. What does that say about the choices we’ve made, and the worlds we might choose instead? Those are the questions at the heart of the book.

I can’t wait for you to read it and see many of y’all on my book tour. In the meantime, I need to say a huge thank you to TB Fighters around the world, especially the folks at tbfighters.org, who’ve been working tirelessly to pressure the U.S. government to restore essential funding for fighting TB and other diseases of injustice.

John

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• You can join the TBReaders book club! The reading period starts March 18th, and anybody who wants to learn more about tuberculosis is welcome.

• Outside Magazine shared a video of tiny skiers adorably falling over.

• John spoke about Everything Is TB in Big Picture Science, CBC’s The Current, and Scientific American’s Science Quickly.

• V. Birchwood slept on a Medieval mattress for a week, taking us along on the journey.

• There’s a new baby giraffe at the Denver Zoo! You can help babysit by watching him live.

Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]

Why do firefighters use fire poles?

Dan Lewis

Blame horses.

If you want to put out a fire, you need to get water and firefighters to the scene. That’s been true for as long as there have been firefighters, which is to say, for centuries. As technology improved, so did the methods of transportation used to transport firefighters, but before we had trucks, we used horses. And unlike trucks, horses eat. So when firefighters were upstairs eating their dinner, the horses—uninvited, of course!—would often come up for a snack. That was a big problem because horse legs are pretty good at going upstairs, but they’re not built for going back down.

So to stop the horses from going up the stairs, fire stations installed tight, circular staircases. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The spiral staircases were too difficult for firefighters to go down quickly, and when something is on fire, time is of the essence. In the late 1870s, a Chicago firehouse started sliding down a wooden pole used to bale hay for their horses, and they discovered that this was a really great way to get from the top floor to the fire trucks quickly. They installed a permanent fire pole, became the fastest-responding company in Chicago, and the rest is public safety history.

Dan Lewis writes Now I Know, the free newsletter that shares a fun fact and a story behind it (like this one!) each weekday. Want to join more than 50,000 other readers and learn something new every day? Subscribe here.

This Week at Complexly

Save Our Species explores the incredible (and unexpected!) tech-based approaches being tested to help protect wildlife, including drones that catch whale snot, ferret vaccines shot from ATVs and even cryogenically frozen DNA.

Help us make a video and submit your Crash Course story!

Did you first come across it in the classroom of your favorite teacher, or online way past your bedtime? Did it help you pass a huge exam or choose a career path? Let us know about your experience with Crash Course, how you use it, and how it’s impacted your life.

Study Hall's spring courses kick off next week—perfect timing to grow your knowledge alongside the blooming season. 🌸

• Intro to Sustainability

• Power and Politics in US Government

• US History to 1865

• Intro to Human Communication

• Real World College Math

Preview the course content on the Study Hall channel and sign up for an ASU faculty-led course for just $25. Each course lasts 7 weeks and if you're happy with your grade at the end you can add 3 transferable college credits to your transcript for just $400 (less than 1/3rd of the cost for an average university course)!

Courses start March 17th! Sign up here!

Some Games to Play!

Dodeku (by Lukas Stanley)

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress)

Download Gubbins on iOS or Android!

If you post your results on social media, we’d love it if you post a link for folks to subscribe to “We’re Here” (https://werehere.beehiiv.com/subscribe)

EcoGeek is here!

A long time ago, there was a blog called EcoGeek. It was a small project run by Hank and a few friends that published periodic reports on ecology, advancements in green energy research, etc. The site has been dark for a while now, but it’s time for a new and improved EcoGeek to step into the spotlight.

We’ve scoured the internet to partner with the most eco-conscious cleaning brands and curated them into one easy-to-find spot. In alignment with the values of EcoGeek, we’re donating 100% of the profit to the Coral Reef Alliance to help tackle coral reef health at its core.

Check it out!

The things that give us energy

Last week, Hank talked about why things that give us energy are so important. Thank you to everyone who sent their energizing activities our way!

• Opening the window and breathing fresh air -Clara

• Learning to play the banjo -Grey

• Going for walks and seeing nature changing throughout the year -Miranda

• Telling my wife about discoveries, observations, and thoughts -Connor

• Cuddling with my partner on the couch -Hope

• Baking that recipe that’s been sitting in my saves -Reem

• Watching people disagree and find common ground -Liz

• Experiencing the first few warm days of spring -Caitlin

• Watching live theatre -Indigo

• Writing letters to my friends -Sydney

• Singing in choir -Molly

• Playing Dungeons and Dragons with my closest friends -Cedar

• Potluck with friends the first Friday of every month -Nicole

• Going outside and noticing plants, animals, sounds, stars... -Laurian

Calling all web developers & UI/UX designers!

Thanks to everyone who participated in P4A 2025 by watching the livestream, making videos and voting, and donating your time and money to charities.

We’re always looking for ways to improve the event, and we decided that it’s time for an overhaul of the P4A website!

Specifically, we’re looking for experienced Nerdfighters (or anyone who’s passionate about making the world a better place) to submit bids to redevelop projectforawesome.com to best serve the event and our community.

We’re accepting proposals from individuals who can do part of the work (e.g. full stack developers, UX designers, etc.) or pre-existing teams and agencies who build websites.

You can find more information and how to submit proposals here!

Proposals are due by Monday, March 31st, 2025!

And that’s the end of the newsletter!

What does hope mean to you? When do you feel the most hopeful?

Send your hope to [email protected]

We're Here is the newsletter of Nerdfighteria; the community of people that sprung up around Hank and John Green's YouTube videos. That community has many focuses and has spawned many projects but the overarching theme is that hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection. What makes the world better is groups of people trying to understand and solve problems, and people can only do that for an extended period if they're having at least a little bit of fun.