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Wet Sand and Duck Art
Payton Mitchell & John Green
March 21, 2025
Hello!
My book Everything Is Tuberculosis is finally out in the world, and I’m thinking today about Shreya Tripathi, the TB activist who died of the disease in 2018. Shreya was a fan of my novel The Fault in Our Stars—she was rereading the book in the months before her death—and she fought her government for access to the lifesaving drug bedaquiline, which Nerdfighteria did so much to lower the price of recently.
Although Shreya won her court case and was eventually given bedaquiline, the drug came too late for her. Dr. Jen Furin wrote in remembrance, “Nothing could be done to make the lung cells healthy again: only scars remained.”
Shreya should still be here with us. Her death was unnecessary and the result of human-built systems failing to acknowledge the full humanity of others. Almost every death from TB in 2025 is the same—a failure not of comprehension or technology (although we need better education and tools in the fight against TB!) but of resource allocation and distribution.
The current global pullback in health funding will see more people die of this preventable and curable disease, which breaks my heart. But I find hope in the TB Fighters of today. From India to South Africa to the U.S., so many people are joining the fight against this disease. It’s a tremendous encouragement despite the circumstances.
Thanks to everyone who’s read the book so far; I hope you like it!
John
You can always email us at [email protected]
This Week in Stuff
A very good dog went viral on TikTok for helping his owner get ready.
The eastern monarch butterfly population nearly doubled this year!
The Action Lab explained why wet sand seems to dry out when you step on it.
Artist Nina Faith shares adorable duck art on Instagram.
High school students in North Carolina celebrated a historic band competition win.
If you have a signed copy of Everything Is Tuberculosis, John made a color-coded guide to help you determine when yours was signed.
Signature guide by John
Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]
Sierra Leone has reduced maternal death rates by almost 75% since 2000
Hannah Ritchie
In 2000, Sierra Leone had the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world (alongside South Sudan). Around 1,800 pregnant women died for every 100,000 live births.
Since then, risks for mothers have plummeted. The country has focused on expanding healthcare, increasing the retention of skilled medical staff, and improving access to crucial medicines and treatments. In 2010, it rolled out free healthcare to pregnant women and children.
The results are shown in the chart. Maternal mortality rates have fallen by 74% in two decades.
While these rates are still extremely high — rates in the safest countries are around 100 times lower — Sierra Leone has made massive strides in saving both women and children.
Our World in Data is a UK-based non-profit organization that publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. You can find more of their data insights here.
This Week at Complexly
It's Patron Appreciation Month at Eons, and you're invited! To celebrate, join us for a livestream on March 27. Become a member at Patreon.com/eons at the Paleozoic level or above by March 31 and receive the very first Eons trading card! Plus, show your love for Eons and the Permian Era with our new t-shirt only available this month.
Ride down memory lane with returning original host Stefan Chin as we reminisce, try to remember what we've learned, and still learn new stuff in the final episode of SciShow Tangents.
Some Games to Play!
SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress)
This Gubbins postcard was made by Lian. Send yours to [email protected]
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)
World TB Day at Keats & Co
Everyone’s favorite holiday is coming up on Monday: it's World Tuberculosis Day. Over here at Keats & Co we’re celebrating by releasing four brand new blends of tea! We’ve got the classics, like pure peppermint and chamomile tea with a twist, plus some more experimental blends, a delightfully fruity botanical tea and warm honey black.
This is tea for TB. Join the fight and subscribe to your favorite blends. We donate 100% of the profit to fighting tuberculosis, and you get delicious tea in addition to making consistent and meaningful donations to the cause.
What is hope?
Last week, we ended the newsletter with a few questions about hope. Thanks to everyone who sent us their thoughts!
Every morning I try to watch the sunrise because that’s what gives me hope for the rest of my day.
Hope to me is believing I will be able to do the thing (a kind action, any action or a real smile) when I am not. It means believing the same for those I care about.
I feel the most hopeful when all the weather is rain and wind and cold and I still want to dance.
Hope is a necessary delusion. It is faith. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is certainty in the face of uncertainty. It is a compulsion. It is coyote time. It is a dream for the future. It makes me a better person, and I refuse to be without it.
I feel most hopeful when witnessing the accomplishments of humanity. We stand on the shoulders of giants so large that we often cannot see them. I have to look for them to perceive them as they are: human, just like me, just like us all.
Hope is standing outside, hands on hips, eyes closed and face towards the sun. My partner calls it my solar-paneling.
Hope means embracing wonder, joy, and whimsy—despite it all. Clinging onto all that is beautiful, and loving the world so much that we can't help but fight to make it better. Knowing that curiosity is contagious, and that love touches everything we do. Last week I got to reconnect with a favorite teacher over email, and the overwhelming joy that it brought both of us makes me hopeful. Hopeful that I will one day see Mr. K again, and hopeful that unexpected goodness always awaits.
Hope is a verb, not a noun. Hope is choosing to continue forward even if it appears bleak and dark (and it does right now, right?). I'm most hopeful when I'm doing something, no matter how small, to move things in the direction I'd like them to be. Calling Congress, helping my newly 18 year old students register to vote, etc.
Hope is showing up over-and-over to do the work and I feel hopeful when I see others doing the same.
To me, hope is listening to music in the rain, being outside on a sunny day, and being with the people I love. Hope is laughing so much your stomach hurts, playing an instrument, and reading a book. Hope is when you remember that for every dark moment, there is a moment of light to meet it. Hope is when the world seems to slow down, soften at the edges, and become kinder for just an instant. That instant helps you go on, build on, and learn on. Hope drives life, curiosity, and change. I think hope is everywhere we’re creative enough to find it.
The phrase “we’re here because we’re here” feels unhopeful at surface level, but I felt very hopeful just now when sitting in the baby giraffe livestream and the comments on the live were all “we’re here because.” It’s so interesting to me how that phrase has become a beacon of hope despite how I would have personally read it originally.
Hope to me, is the inevitability of human empathy. Humans are capable of being cruel and apathetic yes, but empathy is also something innate to us. No one has to care, but inevitably we do. To empathize and to care is natural instinct for us as human beings. So as much as the amount of harm in the world feels overwhelming, it's important to remember that we live in a world that enables apathy and destruction more often than it does care and kindness. So every act of empathy exists not because of circumstances but in spite them. And when you look at it that way you begin to see the abundant strength of humanity always pull through.
As someone who is deeply pessimistic, I find that hope tends to blindside me, even if it's in the everyday routine or something as simple as a passing act of kindness. Hope is in life and love and connection.
“'Hope' is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -”
-Emily Dickinson
Incidentally, the little birds coming back with the sunlight and warmer days brings me hope. As do all the silly little humans making art in the face of turmoil.
Never stop listening to the tune without words,
That’s all for now!
If you’re new here, the Nerdfighter catchphrase is DFTBA (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome).
We’d love for you to spell out DFTBA with something. You could make macaroni art, arrange fridge magnets, or even finger paint. The options are endless!
Send your DFTBA to [email protected].
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