So it’s just like a parts video. But with some Project for Awesome
stuff in it. I can do that.
But I’m gonna use the format. Good morning Hank, it’s Tuesday.
So I recently came across this book from 1833 called The Infirmities of Genius
where it talks about authors having this specific personality that makes
them unusually susceptible to Tuberculosis.
And the books like, you know authors, with their
eccentricities of thought and action, their waywardness, peevishness,
irascibility, misanthropy, murky passions, and thousand indescribable idiosyncrasies,
and I took that kinda personally.
You know, like, how am i gonna respond to somebody’s accusations
of peevishness and irascibility except
with my trademark peevishness and irascibility.
Ok, I think it's time to check
on the weather. Yeah I don't know, it’s ok.
I mean, It’s a little windy. The weird thing about TV
in the 19th century is that some mental health conditions today,
it was both heavily stigmatized and heavily romanticized.
Like those concepts just aren’t opposites of each other.
You were told that you were like separate from the social order
and less than a full human being.
But at the same time,
you were told that like, you might be a genius.
Like your greatest affliction will also be your superpower.
Like, you have to have OCD but you can be a brilliant detective
like Sherlock Holmes.
There’s just one problem of course,
which is that OCD doesn't make you a brilliant detective,
and indeed Tuberculosis doesn’t make you a great writer.
Like authors weren’t extremely susceptible
to Tuberculosis because of their murky passions and irascibility.
They were extremely susceptible to Tuberculosis because at the time,
TB was causing about a third of all deaths in England.
It’s quite cold. It’s weird that you can see my body,
but you can’t like feel what's happening inside of it.
Like you can’t feel the cold that I feel.
Reminds me of something that Barbra Dudak wrote,
that pain is inside the body, so it leaves no trace for the historian.
Anyway, let's just uh, let’s go inside.
Oh hi! So the Project for Awesome
starts next Friday which is so soon. And you should make a
Project for Awesome video, making the case that a charity
you care about should get part of the money that we raise.
During the first half of the Project for Awesome
we’re raising money for Partners in Health and
Save the Children, and then in the second half,
we’ll be raising money for charities chosen by you.
And your Project for Awesome video could be the reason a charity you
care about gets tens of thousands of dollars.
But speaking of money, a group of Nerdfighters have
come together to raise over three-hundred thousand dollars
for a matching fund, so that everybody who donates
to the P4A during the P4A can get their donations matched.
If you want to join the matching fund by donating five hundred
dollars or more, there is a link in the dooblydoo.
So I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I’ve been reading a lot about
Tuberculosis recently and one of the things
I’ve learned is that the Inuit, Chinese, Arabic and English words for soul or spirit,
all derive on some level, from the word for breath.
Like, the word inspiration iterally means to breathe in.
To be inspired is to take in air and to be expired is to be unable
to take in air.
I just find our relationship with air to be exceptionally strange,
especially when you consider that for the longest time we didn’t
even know that air was made out of stuff.
It’s just so weird that everything is made out of stuff but we don’t
know why there is stuff in the universe.
Like, we know the exact speed of light. We know what the universe was
up to two minutes after the big bang started.
But we don’t know why there is matter.
Wha-what a metaphorical resonant situation to be in.
Sometimes I’ll notice there’s a high pitched omnipresent humming
sound somewhere in the house and then I’ll track the sound
to a particular light fixture and turn that light off and just feel
this huge wave of relief.
You don’t even know how loud the noise is until the noise goes away.
Which is another metaphorically resonant situation to be in.
Hank, Happy Project for Awesome! I’ll see you on Friday.