Hello!
Greetings from Auxerre, France, where my family and I are celebrating my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. I've been thinking a lot about the relationships that carry us through—some of which are marriages, of course, but some of which are relationships with friends and family. In my own life, I've had the same best friends since 2007, the same partner since 2003, and the same brother since 1980. There's a lot of good fortune involved in that longevity, but also some work.
"One of the flaws in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance," Vonnegut famously wrote. I think that can be true not only for buildings and institutions but also for relationships. Maintaining them takes effort, sometimes unpleasant or uncomfortable effort, but I look to my parents as models for how to engage in that work with care and patience. So here's to Mike and Sydney Green, and to everyone out there who checks in on their friends or cleans up after their kids or does the other little work that in the end makes a life.
John
You can always email us at [email protected]
This Week in Stuff
A senior living community in Oklahoma is the home of a 6-time champion Wii bowling team. (Instagram)
Charlie James gives his dad a custom t-shirt each year for Father’s Day, featuring a photo of him in the prior year’s shirt. (TikTok)
Alveus Sanctuary built a splash pad for their rescue emu, Stompy. (YouTube)
A Reddit user shared footage of the angriest tufted titmouse ever taken by their video bird feeder. (Reddit)
Wernher Krutein is a film photographer and archivist (Instagram) with over 500,000 film slides from across the world, all available in an online library. (photovault.com)
Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]
A woman’s risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth varies hugely by country
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina
How likely is it that a 15-year-old girl will eventually die from a pregnancy-related cause?
Researchers at the UN and the World Bank combined available birth and mortality data with statistical models to answer this question. Their estimates assume that the country’s fertility and mortality rates remain constant throughout the teenager’s lifetime (an important assumption I’ll get to later). The chart shows their results.
In Chad, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria, the estimated lifetime risk is around 4%. This is dire: it means about 1 in 25 girls would eventually die from a pregnancy-related cause.
Women in many other African countries also face substantial risks, and much of Sub-Saharan Africa has a rate above 1%. By comparison, estimates in most other regions are considerably lower, and across Europe the risk is below 0.1%.
The very high risks for the countries on the left of the chart reflect two factors that compound: they have some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, and the average number of births per woman in these countries is also high. They face a high mortality risk per pregnancy, multiplied by five or six pregnancies over a lifetime.
Maternal mortality rates per pregnancy and fertility rates are falling in these countries. Both of these declines would substantially reduce the lifetime risks. The results in the chart assume they stay at current levels, but that doesn’t have to be the case.
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. Want to receive even more Data Insights like this from Our World in Data directly in your inbox every few days? Sign up for their newsletter!
2026 Vlogbothers Sponsorships
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This Week at Complexly
You’ve spent your entire life learning things: tying shoes, riding bikes, weird facts about giraffe sex on YouTube. But what does it actually mean to learn something? How do we know when we’ve learned something? What even counts as learning?
Introducing Study Hall: Learning to Learn, where we talk about what it means to learn and how to do it well!
In the first episode of Study Hall: Learning to Learn, we dig into how learning actually works: what’s happening when knowledge sticks, why some experiences change us, and others don’t, and how understanding the process can help you make the most of every learning opportunity that comes your way.
Because learning isn’t just something that happens to you, it’s something you do. Watch this series to learn more, better!
EONS: LIFE AND DEATH ON PANGEA is a sweeping, immersive miniseries premiering July 29 that explores the “Great Dying,” the most catastrophic mass extinction in our planet’s history, when more than 80 percent of Earth’s species vanished. Watch the trailer now!
Some Games to Play!
4×3 (by Hank Green)
Spellcheck (by Answer in Progress)
This Gubbins postcard was made by Sarah. Send yours to [email protected]
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Your Best Vacations
Last week, we asked for your best vacation memories. Thank you to everyone who shared their favorite travel stories with us!
Last year two old friends from the Netherlands drove all the way to Sweden to spend a week rock climbing with me! I'd had a pretty busy summer up until that point, and the week of slowing down, just us and the rocks, was amazing. We'd spend the day out in nature, climbing whatever we could and wanted, and return in the evening to a campground popular with climbers, so plenty of fun people to chat with. There were delicious dinners, chill mornings with breakfast in the gentle sunlight, afternoons alternating between climbing and spectating from a hammock, and an evening with all Swedish climbers crowded around the campground tv to watch the women's soccer world championship. I could've stayed in that place forever.
Last year my family went on a pretty generic Florida vacation, beach time, deep sea fishing, and a VRBO with a pool. The best night of the whole vacation was spent hanging out in the pool with my Mom and her husband, and me and my two grown adult "little" brothers. There was a blow up beach ball and we were just hitting it around in the pool for like an hour while the sun set. It was such a lovely time and now a really fond memory for all of us.
Any vacation where I got to ride a bike on a warm summer morning down a long path and forget about anything and everything.
In middle school I took a field trip/mini vacation of sorts to see the Great Big Thing (Green Bank Telescope) in West Virginia. I share the problem Hank faces with vacations and have more enjoyed trips like studying abroad or school trips where I have a purpose and a goal. The telescope is huge and we got to learn so much about radio telescopes. That weekend has stuck with me.
Ever since I read Murder on the Orient Express, I wanted to ride a sleeper train! Last summer, I took the cross-country train from Toronto to Vancouver, a journey of several nights. I spent this week on the train eating good food, meeting fascinating people, and reading The Count of Monte Cristo. (No one was murdered onboard the train.)
A couple years ago, my partner Chris and I spent a couple weeks in England. There was one magical day where we bopped around the seaside town of Margate. It was the least international touristy thing we did the whole time. That day, we experienced the best pubs. The best chippy. The best street market. The best windows into typical daily life. And we will both forever remember having a pint outside in the rain, staring out into the sea, and not producing anything except memories and joy.
Iceland, it was a short, solo trip, but nothing felt so freeing. Several days of sunshine, rain, hot springs, volcanoes, sheep, waterfalls, sand and sea. The best sights of my life and the best time of self reflection and exploration I think I've ever had.
I'm lucky enough to take my best vacation almost every year. My family has a small cabin out on a lakefront that was built by my grandparents. We spent two weeks there every summer when I was growing up and now I get to go with my own partner and family. There is no wifi, no TV, and no computers so we play board games, read books, swim, sunbathe, barbeque, go canoeing, and do a whole lot of glorious nothing. It's my favorite place in the world and I'm so grateful to have it!
Best vacation I've taken has been a youth maths and science camp. Completely isolated from everything outside that little lakeside in Estonia, surrounded by no one other than people with whom I spent a month doing activities specifically designed to help bring us closer. It always felt like another world going there each year.
I’m on vacation right now! My friend and I both celebrate our birthdays this month - we’re in our 30s and grew up loving High School Musical. So, now that we are older and have time and money, we booked a stay at the resort where they filmed High School Musical 2! We already recreated 16 bars of choreography by the pool, and tomorrow we’ll put on all black and skip around on the golf course like Zac Efron in Bet On It. Dreams really do come true.
Celebrate Iced Tea and Coffee Season
Stay cool this summer with your favorite Keats & Co iced tea or iced coffee. Now through June 28th, you can get 20% off all blends from Keats & Co! As always, 100% of all profit directly funds tuberculosis treatment programs in Lesotho. Use code SUMMER at checkout. Shop Keats & Co here.
What relationships help carry you through life? We’d love to learn a little bit about the people who make your life great, and what makes them so important to you.
Send your relationships to [email protected].
