Good morning, John.

So when you told me you were going to go to the United Nations, I was like, "Oh my God. That's a lotta travel right before Pizzamas." Like I was right, but not as much as I thought I was because I thought that the UN was in Europe. And finding out that you were actually in New York City where most of the organs of the UN are based, it was a surprise to me and made me realize that I don't know, uh, very much about what the UN is or what it does. And thus, I am definitely not qualified to tell people what the UN is or what it does, but that's not gonna stop me!

In 1945, the world had just shot guns at and dropped bombs on itself for quite a long time in a way that everyone hated. Everyone sane anyway, and people were like, "What if we like never do that again?" So a bunch of countries got together and they're like, "Let's unite the nations. We'll call it the United Nations except of course we will not unite the nations nor will we have it actually be a goal to unite the nations. We will just-it's like aim for the moon, you might hit the stars and the stars are not doing World War III. The nations will meet anyway. They'll come together in rooms and decide what's okay and not." And look, it has been a long time since we had a World War so good on 'er.

"So what will the United Nations do and how will it operate?" they asked. Well, first, we must have six organs and we'll call them organs 'cause that's gross. And I'm not gonna get used to calling them organs, but organ number one: the General Assembly, which has every member state in it but not every state is a member which is contentious. One of the things that the General Assembly does is it votes on which states can become members and you need a two-thirds vote for that to happen and there are some states that are like, "I would like to be recognized" and a lot of the world is like, "No. I don't think you-we will." So the General Assembly is when all the member states are, you know, generally assembled and they decide to do stuff like their main things that they do is vote on whether or not countries should be member states, they figure out the budget for the UN, how to spend the money and where the money's gonna come from, and they try to make peace happen. Just pay attention to the lines we've drawn on the map. If it's not on your side of the line, it's not yours and you shouldn't shoot people about it. So yeah important stuff has to pass with a two-thirds vote which is tricky. Uh, it makes it so that the UN moves pretty slowly and I think that's kind of by design because when you're dealing with like a whole planet, you don't wanna make any mistakes that are too big.

Second organ is the Security Council. It's like the beefiest organ. I didn't do this, they did this. It's not my fault. The Security Council has five permanent members that all have veto power and then ten other members that don't have veto power that are rotated in and out. And the five members with veto power are the ones who were the big ones that won World War II. They kinda put themselves in charge. It's what I like to call the Red White and Blue Flag Club plus China. Also the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China didn't even exist back then, so they weren't technically part of the Security Council, but they sort of inherited it because it's the same land, I guess. What it generally makes me feel is I'm glad I'm not in charge. This all sounds very complicated. And the Security Council's job is also to maintain peace to just have there not be war, uh, which is-gets a little tricky when one of the people with veto power is like, "But what if I like did some war? I can veto anything that you would try to do to stop me from doing the war that I'm doing now." I don't think anybody out there is claiming it's a perfect system. So check this out, laws aren't really laws unless you have a way to enforce the laws and when the general assembly says stuff, it passes what's called resolutions. And if a member state doesn't wanna do the resolution, they don't have to. Like the enforcement is basically being like, "Come on man. You said you would and now you aren't. That's not cool." which isn't nothing, like, peer pressure actually does kind of work in diplomacy. That's a lot of what diplomacy is. But what the Security Council says is actually international law, uh, and if you don't do it, you can get sanctioned, you can get blockaded, you can even have military intervention, So yeah, Security Council is a big deal.

Third organ: The Hague, which is the only one that is not headquartered in New York City. The Hague is headquartered in The Hague, which is the name of a city (which is a weird way to name a city with "The" first), but it's also in the Netherlands so I guess-that's I don't know. Is that how they do it there? It's actually not called The Hague. They call it The Hague because it's in The Hague, but it's the International Court of Justice and it settles legal disputes between countries. Also prosecutes international law. So like those very chill folks who did whole ass war crimes, they get tried at The Hague. The court has 15 judges, none of them can be from the same country as another one. They are appointed by, like, votes from the General Assembly and the Security Council and they have nine-year terms because having lifetime appointments for judges would be silly, right? Right!?

Fourth organ: The Secretariat, which is not a horse. It is a horse, but this is not a horse, it's an organ. And the Secretariat is the organ that like does stuff. Instead of just, like, talking in rooms and making the rules, it actually does things, like-you-like-the General Assembly says, "We should do this" and the Secretariat is like, "Okay, I will manage that with people who exist in the world and do things." They go and do international aid or they do peacekeeping missions.

The fifth and least important organ is the Trusteeship Council. And I can say that it's the least important organ because they did
it, they finished their job. And now it just does like-it's dissolved. It doesn't exist anymore. Great job!

The sixth organ, which is definitely not the least important organ, I didn't put these in any like order except what's useful for the narrative of the script, is the Economic and Social Council. This has kinda become like the catch-all place for doing things that need done from women's rights to naming geographical features, like they do a bunch of stuff. One of the things inside is UNESCO. They're the people who do the World Heritage Sites, so they're just like a people who decide which places are the most important, which does sound like kind of a fun job.

The UN from what I can tell, and I cannot tell very much, I'm not the guy to ask, uh, is a deliberative and important body. It does a lot of things. And like the different things it does are administered differently. Like the UNHCR—the High Commission on Refugees—is run by both the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council. Other things are just run by the General Assembly. Other things are run by organizations inside of organizations inside of the Economic and Social Council. They have funds and agencies and organs and bodies and those are all different things. And for clarity, lots of those things aren't based in New York City. Like the main organs, five of the six, are based in New York City, but there's-they're all over the place. It's like wildly complex and only really makes sense to people who spend a lot of time inside of it or have taken a lot of time to learn about. Like, I-you know, it seems like normal how we do it in the U.S., but it's not. It's also arcane and weird and complicated, but it has vital goals it does a lot of work. And its main goal of like, "Blud, please oh God please let's not do World War III" has so far been accomplished, which considering that the time between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War is less time than Beyoncé has been a solo performer is a pretty big win.

It's really amazing to me that you were on that stage and that you took your chance to say the thing that needed to be said, that the continued burden of tuberculosis is a choice that we are making. The good news is that we can make different choices and I know that because we have made different choices. Like here's a chart of deaths by age in the world from 1950 to today. Here's a chart of the burden of polio from 1980 to today. And here's the death rate from tuberculosis from 1990 to today, and I don't like this one as much as I like the others, but it also makes it clear that we're still in the middle of the story and we don't have to live with the world as it is.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.