Hello, hello welcome to Pizzamas live.

The live stream of Pizzamas. I was supposed to live stream every day of Pizzamas but I didn’t.

I would say I didn’t crush it. I had some hardships along the way, difficult times, but. It’s going to be OK.

On the upside AFC Wimbledon are second in the league two table. At least until tomorrow which is pretty special and we’re not often gonna— AFC Wimbledon not often going to reach the, reach the heights of second place. 12 places above the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes. That's a nice turn of events.

Sarah's still working, but that's ok. So AFC Wimbledon news, more AFC Wimbledon news is coming on my last Pizzamas video, so don't you worry about that. I'm gonna be discussing all of our hit players this year.

Most especially my two favorite players-- well, I have three, at least three favorite players. Ali Al-Hamadi, our Iraqi Liverpudlian, who is just an absolute superstar. Jack Currie, our left back who's played for us since he was 10.

And whose parents are big fans of AFC Wimbledon. And of course, Joe Lewis, the man with the shortest shorts in the game. Joe Lewis rolls his shorts up so short that it's like he's wearing a Speedo all the time on the pitch.

He's the only player in professional soccer who does this, and I'll tell you what, it's glorious. If I had his thighs, I would also roll my shorts all the way up. The pod's coming back, things are opening up, things are getting a little easier in our world right now, with Hank's recovery and everything, so yeah.

Pizzamas.com is where you go to get your Pizzamas stuff. Pizzamas.com. I'm gonna put the link in the chat.

Pizzamas.com, Pizzamas.com, that's where you go to get your Pizzamas stuff. We've had a couple orders here in the last couple minutes. Felix and Miriam and Heely and Christopher all bought stuff in the last 5 minutes, so.

This has been the biggest Pizzamas ever, we've officially crossed over to it being the biggest Pizzamas of all time, which is a real big surprise because... Well I think it just speaks to one, how great a job the DFTBA team has done, under LJ's leadership, our new CEO. But also the team is just amazing.

And two, I think it speaks to how great the designs are this year. So uh the biggest Pizzamas before this one was 2021, and then we had a dip in 2022, and kind of expected it to trend down a bit. But in fact, it has gone up, and we've had the best Pizzamas ever at least in terms of shirt sales and other sales.

So that's been amazing. What's left? Well, some things are sold out, but a lot is left.

And I would like to maybe actually don't buy anything at Pizzamas right now, because I would like to offer you a discount. A secret livestream discount that no one at DFTBA can find out about, but I have access-- ooh, there's a cutie John bundle. That's HALF OFF the cutie John bundle.

You get a "He's just John" shirt, plus the Pizza John with silver earring. Look how-- look how cute! I'm gonna link to think in the chat.

This is my favorite bundle yet. We've got a bunch of good bundles out there, where you can get -- so some things are on sale, and some things are on bundle sale. So basically, if you get the earrings plus the Pizza John t shirt that's like me as a cowgirl, which is the only way I can describe it, it's cowgirl me, Elon Musk takes a photo op at the border me, but pink?

And these beautiful earrings that Alice is very excited about. Alice's ears are pierced, but she hasn't had her earrings in long enough to start switching out earrings, so she's still really scared to switch out earrings, but she's like, the first earrings I'm gonna wear when I switch out my earrings are the Pizza John earrings. And they are very cool sterling silver earrings.

So. If you're an earring person, there you go, get the Cutie John bundle for just $65, what a deal! Alright, here's the thing.

I'm gonna try to set up an unofficial discount. Gotta remember how to do this. Marketing?

Is that where it is? No. Finances?

No. Products?  Gift cards, collections, orders, no? Discounts.

It's under Discounts. That's where discounts are, they're under Discounts. If I wanted to make a new discount, how would I do that?

Create Discount. That's probably the way. Alright.

I'm gonna go with "Amount Off Order." No, I'm gonna go "Amount Off Products." Ok. And it's gonna be a discount code. What should the code be?

What should the code be? Help me think of a code. Alright, we'll try to think of a code in the next...

I thought about a 3.1... ah that's a pretty good idea. A 3.14% discount is a pretty good idea. That's a pretty good idea.

Instead of amount off products, just do a 3.14% discount. That's a good idea. Alright I'm doing it.

I'm doing it, you talked me into it. And it's gonna be um, ok. I'm doing it.

Whoever had that idea, it worked. Alright so. Amount off order... it's gonna be, the discount code is gonna be um, PI-ZZAMAS... oh wait that's just the word Pizzamas.

JOHNPI... pi... pi? Mm. Pi... mm...

I'm struggling here. PizzaPi! PizzaPi with no E.

Thank you to whoever suggested that. Why was that so hard for me. PIZZAPI with no E.

PIZZAPI as in pizza with a pie. And it's going to be a percentage, 3.1... oh wait no I can't do point-1? I can't do point percentages??

Alright, we're gonna be like the... We're gonna be like the ancient Sumerians and we're gonna round it down to 3. We're gonna round it down to 3.

No minimum requirements, all customers. I'm not limited the number of times it can be used. It can be combined with product discounts.

Um. Ok. Alright.

Um. Ok. wait, did I do it? Did I do everything right?

Alright we're rounding it down to 3. Let's see if it works. It was created successfully.

Alright, so I'm getting the shareable link. So if you order here, if you order from this link, hold on... I'm coming back to the stream.

If you order at this link, you should be able to get 3% off your order. Rounding it down. It's like, just make it 3.14 off, no I can't make it 3.14 off because then what if a bunch of people order bumper stickers and we lose money and LJ gets mad at me? 3% is too little?

What are you talking about? 3% is an incredible-- maybe I shoulda made it 4%. You know what, Taha, you just talked me into it. I'm gonna round up from pi, to 4%.

Great idea. That's a great idea. I did it.

I did it, Taha. I did it for you. It's 4%.

It's a 4% discount, which is what I would say, very generous of me. We're rounding up. It's still pi, but I'll tell you what, that is gonna be a wonky circle.

If you start calculating pi-- if you start calculating pi as the number 4, it's gonna be a little wonky, but you know what? We're rolling on ancient roads anyway. Back there in Sumeria.

So maybe it's ok. It's the pi+ discount. Again, it's-- the discount is PIZZAPI.

PIZZAPI i just put it in chat. PIZZAPI is the discount. We are rounding up to 4%.

Because-- oh Abby's in here. Abby's in here, she just saw me. Abby who works at DFTBA is inside of the shopify.

She just saw me do that. I hope she's not mad at me. Alright, let's see if anyone's used it.

It seems like it's working. We had 3 orders in the last minute from Kaz and Sparrow and Daniel and Suzanne. Let's see what Suzanne got.

Suzanne got a Pizza John Eras shirt. And the bumper sticker pack. You see what I'm saying?

You see what I'm saying? People get the bumper sticker pack and I charge-- and I let them get $3 off, then no money goes to tuberculosis at all. So.

John just announced, "Oh my god now I am going to get that damn rug." Alright, John. Now is the time to get that damn rug. Um, the rug is back by "popular demand." Which is to say that we had some left over.

From last year. But this is gonna be the last year for the rug. The rug is definitely.

I mean, I think it's gonna sell out this year, but even if it doesn't, I can't see us bringing it back. Skye just bought something and said, "Pizza Pie!" So thank you Skye. But yeah now it's never been a better time to get the rug.

Get 4% off that rug, man. I think. I think I did my job.

Hopefully I did my job, I'm a brilliant marketer. Mega says, why don't you sell pizza? What?

Yes, Renee, the code will expire at the end of this livestream. I'm not trying to get in trouble. You know, I'm trying to get Not-Trouble.

How long is this stream? It'll probably last until 6. I'll let it last until 6, Stephanie.

Because I have a meeting at 6, 6pm Eastern. Why don't you sell pizzas? Well a few reasons.

First off, it's really hard to sell food. It's um, if you're not experienced in the food world, it is hard to get into the food world. My mom and I know this because we made hot sauce, well, I don't want to brag, but we make amazing hot sauce from peppers we grow ourselves from seeds, and then we grow it out in the garden.

The whole process is like, almost a full year, because you have to plant the seeds in, you have to start growing the seeds inside in about February, then you plant them in the ground in April or May, and then we're just harvesting them now, and then they gotta ferment for 2.5 months in order to really get that hot sauce-hot sauce that you want, and so um-- did I know that this? And so uh, we make this amazing hot sauce, and we'd love to be able to sell it to people, but we can't because it's too complicated and it's not worth the trouble. Somebody just told me that the shortest lived speaker of the house died of tuberculosis, which makes sense.

About a third of people did. So. You know.

This was one of the big misconceptions about tuberculosis, actually, was that people thought like, "oh it's something that affects writers and artists and everything." But actually it's just that it affected a third of all people, and writer and artists were among that third, you know? So. Hot peppers aren't native to Asia.

No, no no, they're American. So chilies and peppers are American. So many foods that we think of as like, integral to certain cuisines are not actually native to that country.

So before 1500, there was no cassava in Nigeria, there were no tomatoes in Italy, so there couldn't be pizza or indeed tomato sauce. There were no horses in the Americas, there were no... yeah, there's so much that moved ... it's wild. That's why the Columbian Exchange was probably the biggest event in history.

So yeah. Yeah. I just donated a couple of your books to my local library.

That's very generous thing to do! Thanks very much. I hope they are read by lots of folks, that would make me really happy.

Yeah I spoke at my local library yesterday. The Indianapolis Public Library, and it was lovely. It was just a great opportunity to be with people, talk about banned books, and yeah, really enjoy time together.

And one of my favorite people, Andrea Huntley, state senator here in my hometown of Indianapolis, she like lead the discussing. She's so good. Alright, we've had 10 orders in the last minute.

So obviously this sweet, sweet discount code of 4% is working. Elizabeth, Anna, Dana, John, Elise, Mallory, Ricard... or Rickerd? I've never known how to say your name, Ricard.

Or Rickerd. Brittany, Kelly, Lily, Elizabeth, Brian, Owen, and Sean, thank you very much. Let's see what someone got.

What did Mallory get? Mallory got the Pizza John neon sign and some hot sauce. I believe that is, yeah that sounds delicious to me.

Hot sauce and a neon sign. So I can't sell my hot sauce, because my mom and I can't sell it legally, but we think this Pizza John hot sauce tastes kinda like it. We feel pretty good about the Pizza John hot sauce being for sale, even though ours can't be because we don't have the ability to sell it legally.

LEGAL ISSUES. Okay, yeah. So don't be afraid of-- what's the point of the mobile app?

Georgie? What's the point of the mobile app? How else are you going to get your daily Pizzamas joke texted directly to you, except via the mobile app?

If you don't have the mobile app, there is no way... and also look you can watch all the Pizzamas videos. Um. Well not all of them.

Because it hasn't been updated. You should be able to watch all of them. But also you can shop.

You can shop for your Pizzamas stuff. You can watch Pizzamas videos. And you can get your daily Hank joke.

I mean, look, look at all these jokes. Hank's joke today was "People always ask me what I want on my pizza, but personally I think nothing tops a plan pizza." Nothing tops a plain pizza. It's a pun.

And his joke yesterday was, "John wanted to know if anyone wanted a plate for their pizza. He shouted, 'Speak now or forever hold your piece.'" Jesus Christ that's terrible. But if you didn't have the free Pizzamas app, how could you get those sweet, sweet jokes.

What is the point of the app? I mean, what is the point of any of this. Pizzamas is....

Pizzamas is a funny thing because it started out as just pure irony. It was purely a bit. But then it kinda became real.

This happens a lot, actually. Right? Like things start out as bits and then they sort of like over time become more and more real.

And now I kind of enjoy Pizzamas. Like it's a very busy time, it's kind of hard to make a video every other day, and that part of it is kinda stressful, but it does remind me of 2007. Mostly because it reminds me of a time when I had far fewer responsibilities and obligations, and I could just make videos and write books and do nothing else.

But um, but also it reminds me of 2007 in the sense that like, the community is really engaged, and we're kind of talking every day, instead of talking twice a week, and we're interacting on live streams and stuff. So I don't know what the point of the app is, but I also don't know what the point of Pizzamas is. But I also don't know what the point of life is.

If we're being completely honest. I feel like my point of life and your point of life might be different, and the only thing we share in common is pizza. It's Pizzamas.

That's what we share, that's who we are together. We are Pizzamas. So uh, Pizzamas.com is where you go to get your Pizzamas stuff.

Happy to answer any of your questions on the livestream. Where can I find out about the history of Pizzamas? Well as it happens, I think Hank has made a video about the history of Pizzamas.

Maybe somebody can link to it in the chat. But John, uh, pizza is always overpriced. Is it?

I feel like in America you can get pizza for like $7. I think it's a pretty good deal actually. Is this a cult?

Great question, Carlos. Um, no? I don't think so.

Maybe? I don't know, what's a cult, Carlos? Um, we don't discourage people from leaving.

But uh, I dunno. We are pretty tight-knit community. You know who thinks we're a cult, Carlos?

Danaher. And Johnson&Johnson. (chuckles). They think we're a cult.

Yeah, but sorry Carlos, you're in the club now, you can't get out. There's a real Hotel California kinda situation. Oh hi from Canada, John, it's Darius!

Darius. Darius, who covered the Danaher issue on the CDC. Which was a great help to us, but also just a great coverage.

Great piece that he wrote. So good to see you bud. PumpkinsAndPenguins says "Cult minus the bad parts" but of course, every cult thinks that it's a cult minus the bad parts.

Right? That's like, the definition of a cult, like they'll joke, "We're a cult minus the bad parts." But I actually hope we are minus the bad parts. We really do not want to do the bad parts.

The bad parts are real real bad. Grace asks, "Did you get tickets to the Eras tour?" Not yet, Grace. I got wait-listed.

Everybody I know got wait-listed. But I'm holding out hope. I'm holding out hope that I can find a way to get a ticket.

I don't know exactly what it's gonna be, and uh... but I'm holding out hope. Because my wife really wants to go. And my daughter really really wants to go.

So. Have I tried asking Taylor? That feels rude.

I feel like Taylor's busy, and uh, I feel like a lot of people asked her for tickets. But if it comes to that it will come to that. But yeah, I mostly just want to give Sarah and Alice the opportunity to go to see it, you know?

Her parents are very, very nice. Again, I will not ask Ryan Reynolds. That's not an appropriate use of our friendship.

And in turn, if he asked me for that kind of favor, I would be a little annoyed. You know. But that said, you do things for your kids that you wouldn't do for yourself, that's for sure.

But we'll see. I feel good. Has Alice seen Taylor before?

Yes, she saw her once. I've seen her three or four-- four times? I think four times.

I've been very fortunate to see a bunch of Taylor Swift concerts. They're always amazing. What brand are your glasses?

They're from Warby Parker. They're nothing fancy. I don't try to stand on ceremony when it comes to that stuff.

I try to just like, buy what there is to buy. Don't apologize, Kari just apologized for not being able to buy more right now. But you shouldn't.

You shouldn't buy more, don't buy Pizzamas stuff you can't afford. Pizzamas is a luxury. It's a pure luxury.

You know who just bought some shirts is Isabel. Long time nerdfighter Isabel S. Hello, nice to see you!

Thank you for getting the mustache meme sticker. Now, see, if I'd given $3.14 off that mustache meme sticker would have been like, we would have lost money every time we sold one. We can't do that because it's not about us, it's about TB.

Z just ordered something, as did Natalie and Melissa. And Daniëlle who I think must be from the Netherlands, just judging from their name. I got it right.

They are from the Netherlands. Nailed it. And uh, that's like uh that's me having been in the Netherlands for you.

And Theresa just ordered, what did Theresa get? Theresa got the teamwork Pizza John shirt, and the Pizza John hot sauce. Man, that hot sauce is just flying off the shelves.

The main thing that I.. If I could just highlight a couple Pizzamas items, like it's the Project For Awesome. The ones that I would highlight are the ones that we still have plenty of.

Cuz like, we're almost out of all the holiday shirts, so that's not gonna work. But I'll tell you what we do have. Plenty of.

I think we're gonna sell out of the blankets, I think we're probably gonna sell out of the blankets, but not until like Thursday or Friday. We're definitely gonna sell out of the color-changing mugs, because they're part of the Comfy Pack, which is a big discount. And the blankets are always so good, and the mug is really cool this year.

So I think we're gonna sell out of that. I don't think we're going to sell out of -- we might sell out of the hot sauce, actually, just given how fast those are going. The two things I don't think we're going to sell out of, are the Chizza John, which I just don't understand why we aren't selling out of.

Like, I think it's because it's so good, it's a terracotta planter that you can either turn into a chia pet like thing, or else just use it as a planter and just grow something out of my head. I don't think we're going to sell out of that, and I don't think we're going to sell out of the oven mitt. But other than that, I think we're gonna sell out  of everything.

We already sold out of the bath bomb, and we're pretty much sold out of the Pizza holiday sweater, and we sold out of the scrunchie packs. Which is a real shame, because Alice was really wanting to buy them, and now she's mad at me for not ordering them earlier in the week. So.

You know. That's the thing. Can I order more scrunchies?

No, I can't, Laura, I'm sorry. I wish I could, but um. We have to do like-- one of the weird things about Pizzamas this year, like the most surreal thing-- Hank's cancer thing has been really surreal in general, and really hard.

And obviously like scary and stressful and all that. But the most surreal thing is like I was sitting in this chair in I don't know, April? March?

Whenever I got back from Sierra Leone, and found out that Hank had cancer, or like, found out that there was concern that Hank had cancer. On the way home from Sierra Leone. Which was tough.

And then, um, and then, uh, was talking to him in this chair, and he was like, it is cancer but they don't know what kind. And that was brutal. And then like, while we were waiting to find out, we were having conversations about like what do you wanna do?

Do you wanna do this in public? Do you wanna do this in private and take a hiatus and ask for privacy? Which just makes people wonder what's going on with you.

One thing I never thought in 2007 is like if you stay on YouTube long enough, you're going to have to go through these big difficult parts of your life in public, or else in a private way that makes a lot of people wonder and worry. And then it became clear that I was going  to become CEO for a little while of these two companies, and we were already in the process of hiring a CEO for DFTBA. So I had to like, call her and be like, update, which was hard.

And then Hank and I had a call like, just like I think it was a day before we found out what kind of cancer it was, where we were like. I was like I talked to the DFTBA people, and they've ordered stuff for Pizzamas. Cause you have to order it so far in advance.

And for some of it, I was like what the fuck do we do? Do we cancel Pizzamas now? Do we -- what do we do?

He was just like, "I think we just keep going as if it's going to happen, and then if we have to not do it, we just be like, Hey we have a lot of Pizzamas stuff to make people order even though we're not doing Pizzamas this year." And I was like alright, I guess this'll work. And that was you know just at the lowest point, I guess, or at least the lowest point for me. Probably the lowest point for Hank was actually the horrifically shitty treatment.

But to go from there to just 5 months later, or 6 months later, however long it is, Hank in remission and able to do 100% of Pizzamas, and in fact, barely miss any of his Friday videos along the way. I missed more videos during Hank's treatment than Hank did. Cause I was super stressed out about work.

I was really overwhelmed being the temporary CEO for those two companies, which Hank had done for two years. It's just amazing, it's just astonishing, and like of course it could have gone the other way, we could have found out he had a much more serious form of-- I mean, Hodgkin's lymphoma is quite serious, I don't want to minimize it. We could have found it was a much more... much less treatable cancer.

And yeah. I don't know. There's a lot to be-- it's just mostly -- I feel grateful, but I also just feel like totally disoriented.

I still feel a little lost in space. So it's been lovely. At any rate, it's been lovely to have Pizzamas this year because it's just been like a moment of normality I guess.

Or just loveliness. For me anyway. And getting to make a video every other day like, there was one point where I was pretty frustrated about it.

You know. Like, I was frustrated about it, when was it. I'm gonna be travelling...

I'm actually not making a Tuesday video because I'm travelling with my family next week, and um, I didn't have any ideas for my video on Monday morning, and usually I have an idea by Monday morning, so I was kind of frustrated about that, and then I tried to write something else, and I couldn't write it, and then eventually I just like, walking in the woods video. And that was, it turned out to be fun. Sometimes when I'm really frustrated with writing, it's just right before I make the inside I need to make to get through the writing process.

So like, I got really really frustrated right before I wrote that thing about how fun it would be to explain leaves falling to aliens. And then once I wrote that, I was like ah this is great. I like this job again.

So funny that way. Anyway. 4 minute videos are... I mean I like making longer than 4 minute videos, and I think I will continue to make them, especially for stuff like, if you're gonna like explain why Johnson&Johnson's you know, abandonment of a patent is a big deal, sometimes you need more than 4 minutes.

But it's a great rule because it helps us stay concise. So I had fun today making exactly a 4 minute video. It reminded me of the good old days 6 months ago, when we had to make exactly 4 minute videos.

But yeah. I'm a big fan of leaves, and I enjoyed making today's video a lot. Plus I got to go on a 3.5 mile walk this morning, which was lovely.

The vast majority of it I wasn't recording. I did see a bald eagle this morning, which is usually good luck, but then actually I've had a rough day. So maybe the bald eagle... maybe, actually, seeing a bald eagle isn't good luck or bad luck, it's just random.

It's just random. But that would challenge my whole worldview, which is that I have to be superstitious all the time, about everything. (chuckles) John, tell Hank to shave the mustache. I feel like I have, TrueHope.

I feel like I've told him repeatedly, including in vlogbrothers videos. I think it's fine to keep it through Pizzamas, but then it has to go. It has to go immediately.

It cannot wait. Christopher just made a huge order of a bunch of t-shirts plus a mug, plus a blanket. Thank you Christopher.

I hope you enjoy all your Pizzamas stuff this year, and I hope Benjamin and Kathleen and Harper do too. Harper's such a great name. Benjamin got the floor rug.

Benjamin, you hero. It takes a certain kind of commitment to purchase a Pizza John floor rug. We have one ... we have a Pizza John floor rug in our uh, mudroom.

And Sarah hates it. Hates it. Like, it's not in our entryway exactly, but it's in our you know, it's when you walk in from the garage, which is functionally the entry way.

For us. And she's just, like, every time she's just like, she's like Ah! I love it, I think it's hilarious.

I'm a massive fan of it. Imagine a guest room but it's all Pizza John. That's a great idea, Izzy.

I'm sure that wouldn't be at all weird or upsetting for your guests. To sleep in a room where various forms of Pizza John are just staring at them from every direction. You know, like, and there's like the neon sign in the corner, just like lighting the room in an eerie green and red, while they drink from their Pizza John mug and have their Pizza John posters and their Pizza John baseball pennant, and their Pizza John everything just kinda staring down at them.

I think that sounds magnificent. Who knows what we'll do next year? I actually-- one of the fun things about Pizzamas is that I have no idea what they're gonna do.

Oh, here is the link to get 4% off. I think it's that link. It's the discount code to get 4% off all your Pizzamas, it's PIZZAPI, but without the E.

Because it's 4% because we're rounding up from pi. We can't do 3.14% off, I was gonna do 3% off, because that's what the ancients used to calculate pi, but then someone got mad at me, said it wasn't a big enough discount, so we're goin with the 4% discount. Which is good.

That is good value for money, at 4% discount. That's a good value. Oh, I can pin a message?

Oh, I'm pinning that message. Somebody wants Pizza John-- oh look at that, I pinned a message! God, I'm so good at marketing.

I can't believe I didn't figure out how to pin a message until just down. Look at that pinned message. Dang!

No, pin mine, mine's better. I'm not pinning yours, I'm pinning mine. That way I can get new subscribers too.

I really want subscribers. Hank and I have been between 3 and 4 million subscribers for I think, 10 years? Since like 2014.

And I thought we were... which is by the way a huge accomplishment. At our age, 16-17 years into making YouTube videos, not to lose millions of subscribers is an amazing accomplishment. I am super proud.

I would be super proud , I was super proud of all the years of stagnation. But now, we are creeping-- and you can only comment, by the way, if you're subscribed. So don't be afraid to subscribe so you can comment.

We are creeping creeping toward 4 million subscribers. We're at 3.76 million, and like. I -- it would be a much bigger accomplishment than like 1 or 2 or 3 million was, because it was 10 years in the making, and also it like says something about our longevity, which matters a lot.

You know, Hank and I have never been in the top 100 YouTubers, or whatever, but we've also managed to like, in my opinion anyway, punch above our weight by hanging around for a long time, and also having a community that's unusually like, well-organized and productive. Like I think Nerdfighteria is able to-- I mean Nerdfighteria has raised over $40 million to build the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone's Kono district. You know?

I mean, that's not something that other online communities are able to match, really. But in addition to the fundraising, I would argue that like, the organization and the community that pushed Danaher to lower their drug prices that'll probably save-- it'll buy 5 million extra tests a year. Which is huge.

I mean, that's huge. It's hard to express how big that is. But it'll probably save $200M.

From -- for poor countries and organizations like the Global Fund when it comes to how much they have to pay for diagnostics per test. That's pretty incredible. So even when it's not about raising and donating money, it's about pressure campaigns or whatever, being able to test 5 million more people for tuberculosis, being able to give a couple million more people over the next couple years bedaquiline, which will save their lives and be a far less toxic treatment for drug-resistant TB, those are big big deals.

And that's just what we've done this year. Or in the last couple years, anyway. You know we've done a lot over the last 17 years, and it's not because Nerdfighteria is big, it's because Nerdfighteria is strong.

And actually, part of us being strong is NOT being that big. Because when Nerdfighteria was at its biggest, when it was like The Fault In Our Stars stuff was happening, and like everybody, we were near the center of pop culture, and Saturday Night Live was making sketches about me and stuff, like, that ironically, that period when everyone said that we were you know at our maximum level of success, our experience of it was like "This isn't actually what success looks like for us." Success for us, doesn't look like getting a million views a video, success for us looks like being able to have really successful Project For Awesomes, being able to organize the community to do fun projects together, and a lot of that stuff got harder, actually. The P4A those years like weren't particularly outstanding, and the ability to organize and work together in the community was actually more complicated.

So Yeah. I feel like you always, you know, one of the weird things about Nerfighteria is that in life, I've always thought that like, the golden age, I just missed the golden age. You know, I just missed the Golden Age of this, I just missed the Golden Age of that.

But I actually think I lived the Golden Age of Nerdfighteria every year. That's how it feels to me anyway. which is pretty amazing. And I feel like I've gotten to experience a few Golden Ages in my career, actually.

Like I definitely experienced the Golden Age of $12M movies. Like these days, you cannot make a $12M movie and have it come out in theaters and have it do really well unless it's a horror movie. The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns were definitely.. they definitely came at the right time.

Right time for me. Yeah so. I think our golden age continues, as WhiteLime just put it.

So um, yeah. I'm glad that I've -- so now that I've been able to pin that comment, there's a lot more people at Pizzamas.com, because they're clicking on the pinned comment, because why wouldn't they? Like Greg and Kevin and William and Nick and Amy, who all just bought stuff in the last minute.

Incredible. This is so good. This is so lovely.

I did not expect to have like a good Pizzamas hour, but instead we're having a great one. Our secret goal for Pizzamas this year is that we've never done a million dollars in sales. We've never quite gotten there.

We've gotten close a couple of times, we've never actually gotten that close. We've gotten... to 750. But yeah that's kind of our goal this year.

Is to beat the previous Pizzamas goals by a lot. But also it doesn't really matter that much-- I mean it matters because this is a potentially big boost for our TB -- for the work that PIH and others are doing around TB and like, I am starting to dream of... Can I just pitch you an idea?

If that's ok? So in the 1990s, Partners In Health changed the world dramatically. Dr.

Carole Mitnick and other folks working on tuberculosis went to Peru, and they secured very expensive-- everyone said this is not cost effective. This is something you hear a lot in global health. People talk about how many lives can you save per dollar, and if that math doesn't work out, we shouldn't do it.

And I understand wanting to be efficient with resources, absolutely. But one thing I would never say to my family is, "I'm sorry but if the math doesn't work out, I can't get you treatment." Anyway. This was very expensive to do, to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru, it was expensive primarily because the drugs were very expensive.

And because they were seen as being permanently expensive. And so there was this sort of catch 22, where everyone agreed that treating multi-drug-- or lots of people felt that treating multi-drug resistant tuberculosis was too complicated, and too expensive, because at the time, it required like 12-18 months of daily antibiotic treatment. Like we talked-- some of you may have heard our conversation with TB survivor Phumeza Tisile, who told me that she took between 20 and 30 THOUSAND pills while she was being treated for tuberculosis.

It's very common for people to take between 20-30 pills a day, and she took those pills for over a thousand days. And so it was-- it is really hard to -- it's easier now, but back then, it was really hard to cure multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. And it was very expensive.

But Partners In Health proved that it was possible, that in fact you could get the same cure rates in a really challenging circumstance with people who were living in absolute poverty as you could get at the finest hospitals in America, or other wealthy countries. That you could get essentially the same cure rate by using an accompaniment strategy, where you really accompanied people who were living with MDR TB through every step of their journey, made sure they had what they needed in order to get well. And the world really took note of that, and it helped change the standard of care of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

It also helped drive down prices for those drugs because both because of public pressure, government pressure, but also because the companies were like, "oh we can sell way more of these if we sell these to poor countries," which is where most of the multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is. Part of the reason we have so much drug resistant tuberculosis is because we had this long period where we just didn't treat it, and where the standard of care was basically "I'm sorry but go home and die." And so PIH really transformed that. And in the process transformed not just how tuberculosis care is delivered in Peru, but how it's delivered in the whole world.

Right now, the standard of care is to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Unfortunately, many people who still need treatment don't get it for a variety of reasons, including cost, including that they may live far away from a healthcare clinic, they may not be able to afford transportation to that clinic in order to get their drugs regularly. There's all kinds of barriers to access that still exist, I wanna be clear about that, but we have far more MDR TB treatment as a result of this.

So now we look at how do we bend the arc next? How do you create a world where, right now we're in a very similar spot. Right now, everyone agrees that we should end TB, just like everyone agreed that we should treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, but there's sort of two main arguments against it.

One, it's impossible. It's too hard. And the other is that it's too expensive.

And I think both of those are wrong. I think cost effectiveness is a moving target, I think we can drive down-- in fact we have driven down costs of curing tuberculosis. Just in the last few months.

Like Nerdfighteria has helped drive it down, alongside great partners like treatment action groups, and Doctors Without Borders and Partners In Health. So one, I think that it can become cost effective, because you can drive the price down. And two, I absolutely think we can end tuberculosis in every community on earth.

And I think that because we've done it over and over and over again. And it's infuriating to me to live in a world where people say well we can't get rid of tuberculosis because we can't get rid of it, and yet we have gotten rid of it, right? In Alaska, we went from exceptionally high rates of tuberculosis in the early 1940s to essentially 99% reductions in tuberculosis by 1960.

What did we do there? The same thing we need to do in every community in the world, which is we really aggressively sought out cases. We went into communities, we screened people, and then the great thing about that is when we screened people for TB, you can also screen them for other chronic health conditions, like diabetes, you can screen them for high blood pressure.

And so we screened people and then when we identified cases of tuberculosis, we treated those people. We got them on the treatment they needed to be cured from their disease, and then we offered a ring of preventative therapy to their close contacts. So let's say I get tuberculosis.

And I get sick. Well, if my kids and my spouse get one month of preventative treatment, they basically have no chance of getting TB. They basically will not get tuberculosis.

And I will not give them tuberculosis because after I've been on treatment for 2 weeks, I can no longer spread the disease. So you find the cases, you treat them, and then you offer them preventative therapy to the people in the household of the person who's sick. With those three things, you can drive down rates of tuberculosis.

Tremendously. You can't get rid of TB. It's been with us for 3 million years since before modern humans existed, but you can dramatically reduce the burden of TB so that it's no longer a public health problem on the scale that it is today.

Think about leprosy. For example, 200,000 people get leprosy every year, leprosy still exists, it probably will exist for a long time, but 1, we have fairly good treatments for it, and 2, it's much less of a public health problem than it was 300 or 500 years ago. Or 2,000 years ago, to go back to Jesus.

So that's we should do and can do with TB. What I dream of is-- and by the way, this is starting to happen. So USAID just announced a big program where 2 countries will receive long term funding to do this in two different communities, whether that's like a state or a region or a large city or whatever, to prove that it's possible.

And to like make a blueprint for other communities to follow. And I really wanna be part of that. I want to find a way for our community to be part of that, because I think one thing we've proven that we're good at, is raising money and paying attention to long term crises.

Like, it's relatively straightforward to raise money as a disaster response. You see horrible flooding, you see terrible flooding, you see natural disasters, you see earthquakes, it's awful, and it's relatively straightforward-- or the ebola crisis, right? Like during the ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, money poured into Sierra Leone to build up the healthcare system.

But then the moment the ebola crisis ended, the money got sucked out and it went on to the next crisis. And the problem with that is that Sierra Leone's healthcare system was weaker than it ever had been. 10% of Sierra Leonean healthcare workers had died of ebola. And there were no healthcare workers to replace them, and you know, once the money that poured in had dealt with ebola, the money left, and the Ebola was no longer an issue, which was a huge blessing of course, but you know.

Malaria, tuberculosis, cancer, liver disease. All of these things, diabetes, all of these things were still very much issues. But now there was a weaker healthcare system to confront those issues.

So one thing I think we've proven we're pretty good at is paying attention to a story long term. Like, we've been paying attention to the reduction in maternal mortality in Sierra Leone for four years, which is an eternity for the world of this stuff. Like 4 years after the Haitian earthquake, or 4 years after the Ebola crisis, the world had very much moved on.

But one thing that I think we're good at, and that I really value about our community, is that ability to pay long term attention, and to understand that long term problems demand long term responses. And so I think we could also do that with TB over the next 5 years. I think we could watch as these dramatic reductions happen, and I think we could also encourage them to happen, accelerate the pace at which they happen.

Not just raising money, but also like, reducing price. How do you reduce price? Well, we've shown that we're really good at it.

Right? Like we reduced the overall cost of TB diagnostics and treatments by several hundred million dollars in the last few months. Again, we didn't do that anywhere close to alone, so maybe I shouldn't say "we" did it, but like we in the broadest sense did it.

We all of our partners, bunch of people working together, thousands of people working across decades, across time and space. But our community has been part of that. And so I think that it's a good match for what we're good at.

So yeah. So that's what I would -- that's what I'm thinking about. How can we participate in that reduction?

Former PIH employee here. How well do you think higher-ups at PIH understand vlogbrothers, and especially Pizzamas? Um, higher-ups at PIH definitely understand vlogbrothers really well.

Like the chief medical officer is a frequent guest on vlogbrothers and watches a ton of vlogbrothers videos, so does the CEO. Pizzamas, I mean, do any of us understand Pizzamas? You know?

First name- buncha numbers? I don't understand Pizzamas. I did get an email from my friend at PIH, Gabi Palmi, a couple days ago that said Happy Pizzamas.

And I was like, Oh god, she knows about it? (chuckles) That's not good news. So. Yeah.

What TF is Pizzamas? I don't know. Nobody knows.

It's just happened. It's celebrating brotherhood shenanigans and e-commerce, Jen says. That's good.

Brotherhood shenanigans and e-commerce. I should have been celebrating shenanigans and e-commerce instead of lecturing you guys about tuberculosis. I'm sorry, I just can't stop myself sometimes.

But I do think we have a real-- I think our community just has a real real opportunity. I think we do. I think we have a real opportunity.

Somebody mentioned TB vaccination. So you can get vaccinated against -- there is a vaccine against TB, it's called VCG vaccine, it's 102 years old, and it's um, it's a really important tool in fighting tuberculosis, because it can -- in high burden TB countries, it can prevent severe illness and death among young children, which is important. Young children are vulnerable to TB, and the vaccine really does reduce the rate at which young children get sick.

It does not reduce the risk for adolescents or adults. So it is not effective at preventing severe illness or death in adolescents or adults. There are better TB vaccines coming, we think and we hope.

The Gates foundation has just funded a Phase 3 trial for a tuberculosis vaccine. It would not be hard to be a better vaccine than VCG, but it all depends on how good the vaccine is. But there is real hope for the first time in a long time, that a better vaccine could be on the way.

Because like I said, there are great things about VCG, kids not getting you know, kids being much less likely to get sick or die of TB is really important, but for adults, the protection is pretty minimal. Also, there's some weird things about it that we don't fully understand. Like it gets less effective near the equator.

Which is a very weird fact. That I certainly don't understand. But yeah I think better vaccines will be a very important tool.

And we already have better -- and we have better drugs in the pipeline, not magic bullet drugs. But we have better ones. Bedaquiline is a really good drug.

TheRunRunner suggests sunlight. Now, sunlight was the treatment for tuberculosis for over 100 years. There was a belief-- or well, fresh air-- there was some confusion about whether -- some disagreement about whether it was the light or the air that healed TB.

It turns out that it probably was, at least to some extent, isn't either. It's mostly the like, in the United States, for example, this is hard to imagine. 80 years ago, so if you had an 80 grandparent. When they were born, there were about 885,000 hospital beds reserved exclusively for tuberculosis patients around the United States in these huge sprawling complexes called sanitaria,  or sanitaria, depending on your pronunciation.

And these were in many ways, they were the centerpiece of the American healthcare system 100-- you know, between 1880 and 1940. 1946? Depending on how you construct it. They were really like, there were more tuberculosis beds than there were all other hospital beds combined.

By a pretty wide margin. And because TB was overwhelmingly the biggest healthcare problem. Certainly the biggest healthcare problem that needed to be treated in any kind of in-patient way.

So all these people would be sent to sanitaria. The other advantage of the sanitaria, from the perspective of like governments and stuff, was that it removed people with TB from the community and like put them under extremely tight control. This is a theme we see throughout history, where tuberculosis patients are often heavily stigmatized and heavily controlled by the state.

Even beyond what's rational or reasonable. Way beyond it. So anyway, that was the situation until pretty recently, and all those people in general spent a lot of time outside.

Like the Adirondack chair was invented for them so that they could like sit but lie. They spent a lot of time outside, sometimes in the sun, sometimes not, always in the fresh air, with the idea that fresh air would heal the lungs. (clears throat) But what really helped (coughs) Sympathy cough. What really helped was rest.

Rest and nutrition are really important for healing TB if you don't have access to drugs. Still, a huge percentage of those patients died. So.

You know there was no... rest and nutrition helps, but there was still no real good strategy. So I think about-- it's hard to know exactly because sanitaria obviously didn't brag about their death rates. That wasn't a good way to get new patients in the door.

But you know, most people who get active disease and don't seek treatment eventually die. Sometimes it takes you know, 10 or 20 years because TB moves so slowly. Usually moves so slowly.

Grows so slowly. But yeah. That's a brutal disease.

It shouldn't be in our world, we shouldn't be living with it. So anyway. Sorry to rant about tuberculosis.

I'm sure that you've heard all of that before from me some other time. Thank you to Hannah and Jessica and Bailey and Karen and Compton and Rebecca and Sol and Lidia and Natalie, who just ordered stuff from Pizzamas.com. Emily just got something too, Emily just got the Pizza John blanket!

Emily, you're gonna love your blanket. You're gonna love it. I don't wanna over-promise, but I love my-- I love my blanket already.

And my blanket that's already like 3 years old or 2 years old, whenever we did the previous Pizza John blanket, it's like, because it's been washed a few times and everything, it is the softest most wonderful throw blanket I have ever owned. And Sarah, even though Sarah is not crazy about Pizza John stuff and doesn't want our house to be obviously festooned primarily in stuff that features her husband's mustachioed face, she loves those Pizza John blankets. So that's how much she loves them.

So much that yeah. Oh Nicki's here. Nicki Wa, who was our headed up our work with Partners In Health for a long time and is an amazing person who's now in law school.

Hi Nicki. Thanks for being here. Alright, I gotta go in a minute, because I gotta go to this meeting.

But I just wanted to say again, a huge thank you for what's been the best Pizzamas ever, and just a ton of fun. Independent of everything else. I've just had a great time this Pizzamas.

I hope you have had too. There's still 3 videos to go, and I'm gonna do a livestream tomorrow. And then I'm gonna try to do a livestream on Thursday, but it's gonna be hard because I have to fly across the world.

So I'm gonna be spending most of the day flying across the world and I dunno if you've ever tried to use the internet on American Airlines, but I wouldn't call it "livestream quality." So that may not work, but I'll try my best. Maybe when I get to the hotel, if I get to the hotel in time. But I'll definitely be here tomorrow, ready to help you out and um, and help you out?

Ready to chat with you more about the thrilling world of Pizzamas. Do an early one, people in Europe wanna say hi too. Alright, maybe I-- but early in this case would be 6 o clock in the morning.

But I guess that like yeah I dunno. Europe's awake then. Alright.

Thanks for being here with us. DFTBA and I will see you tomorrow.