Hello. Welcome to my first live show on the new community tab.

I'm very excited about this. I'm also a little nervous just because the comments are always coming -- are already coming a little fast, you know, considering my talents. Although now they have suddenly disappeared -- oh there they are!

And I don't know if I'll be able to like -- I don't know how easy it is gonna be for me to read the comments while also talking. I guess that's always been a problem with live shows though.

Anyway, very nice to be here. Really excited about the community tab, like I said. And also, just to reiterate, because people have been asking even though I mentioned it in the video, no I did not get paid to make that video. We don't ever do sponsored videos on Vlogbrothers. Hank won't let me. I would love to sell out but my brother won't let me. One time he even made me turn down a car. It was super annoying. But yeah.

So, no. This is genuinely how we feel about the community tab. I really am excited about it. 

And I'm also really excited about the new show that I'm going to be doing with my best friend Chris, called 100 days. It's gonna be really fun, and I hope I learn a lot about health and fitness.

Landscape, John, Landscape! Really? No, when I do this it says "rotate device", so I'm not going to landscape, I'm going this way. This is the future! It says -- see --When I do that, it says "rotate device" and then it just says -- there's a lock! So we don't wanna do that. 

So yeah, I just want to answer some of the questions that you might have about the new show that we're doing, starting January 1^st, called 100 days - a health and fitness show. My best friend Chris and I are gonna be learning about health and fitness while also doing it, you know, we're gonna work out. And we're gonna meditate because randomized control trials have shown that meditation is good for your health, for physical health and for your mental health. And then we're gonna test ourselves with these -- with lots of different things. 

One of the tests -- we're gonna choose different metrics. If you have any ideas for metrics, by the way, leave them in comments on the "100 days" video you can find on youtube.com/100days. You can also go there and subscribe. Thanks to everyone who subscribed already. 

But, you know, we're gonna use metrics other than weight loss. I think the obsession with this number on a scale... It's helpful for some people and it's healthy for some people. It is not healthy or helpful for me. 

And we sort of want to take a very different approach than for instance you might see with "The Biggest Loser", where success is narrowly defined as weight loss. So we wanna have metrics that do a better job of measuring actual health, whether that is concentration tests, so you see whether your ability to concentrate, focus, stay on a task, is getting better over time; or push-up contests, because I've always wanted to be able to do a lot of push-ups. And then there are other objective measures, you know, like blood pressure, stuff like that. 

Isabelle(?) asks "What are you gonna do with your Snickers bars?"

Great question, Isabelle(?)! So for those of you who don't know, the nice people at the Mars company sent me 378 Snickers bars and... I didn't get through all of them. In fact, I didn't eat very many(?) of them at all! I make a joke on the podcast - my brother and I have a podcast called "Dear Hank and John" - and I always make a joke on that podcast about how I'm eating all the Snickers bars but in fact almost all of the ones that have been eaten have been eaten by other people in our office. So I have maybe only eaten... Sixty? I mean, it's still a lot but not nearly as many as other people have eaten. 

Lots of people are complaining that this is a vertical video but you have to remember that most people are watching this on mobile, not on their desktop experiences. And on mobile... Yeah, I don't know why but it won't let me turn. It won't let me turn. So I will try to figure out what the deal is with not being able to turn my video.

I don't know if we can -- Natalie suggests pull-ups as a metric which is a nice suggestion except that I can't do any pull-ups. So I'm not sure that even at the end of 100 days I'd be able to do any pull-ups. 

Mindy asks "How exactly do you want nerdfighters to participate in 100 days?"

Well that's kind of up to you guys. We want to make it possible so that you can join in with us in the process. So every day we're gonna talk about -- you know, the videos won't be every day but -- every day we'll talk about what we did for exercise and the kind of stuff we ate. Probably what we ate. Which will give you an opportunity to maybe follow along with us but you also will have the flexibility to not follow along with us in exactly the same way if you don't want to. And I think it's really... I think it will be interesting... But hopefully sort of a community of people will build around the channel that will provide you with some structure and some accountability and you'll have sort of online buddies with whom you can do workouts.

You'll also be able to be my friend on like, you know, MyFitnessPal or FitBit or whatever. One of the shticks of this show is gonna be that I'm gonna be wearing like five wearable devices, which I'll review throughout the show. So you'll be able to be -- pretty much whatever wearable device company you use, you can be my friend on it. And that maybe will help you to keep up with it. 

Everybody keeps telling me not to do portrait but I literally don't have a choice. Unless there's a choice that I see. No, I don't see a choice. Oh, there it is(?)! Oh.. No, no, no, no, that just gives you a vision of a different thing.

You guys are gonna remember -- I did rotate it and when I rotate it it just says "rotate device", very angrily, as if I'm doing it wrong. So yeah, talk to the creators of YouTube Live about that.

God, so many people are mad at me about landscape but I've explained several times why I just cannot do it!

So... Somebody asked me a while back about my mile time. I have started, I mean, I have been exercising a lot this year. I mean, I broke my rib two and a half weeks ago, which is super annoying but I have been exercising a lot more this year. I ran -- just before I broke my rib I went on a long run, and on my long run day I did 10 miles. When I did 10 miles I started out at a pretty steady 9 minute 40 second pace and then slowed way down by the end to like 11 minutes and 40 seconds. But I can usually do like 5 or 6 miles at between a 9 minute 40 second and 10 minute per mile pace, so not fast but also not super slow. 

"We are such stuff"(?) asks "What are your goals for 100 days"

So I guess the biggest thing I wanna figure out is: almost everybody who tries to lose weight fails; almost everybody who tries to begin a regular exercise regimen also fails. And when I say "almost everybody" I mean like well over 90% of people. And that can make it feel like it's just not possible. You know, like it's basically impossible to do. That isn't true of course because lots of people -- if 90% of people don't succeed at something that means that 10% of people do, and 10% of people is a lot because, you know, there's a lot of people in the US who struggle with their fitness and, you know, diet choices and stuff like that.

So I wanna understand why it's so difficult and then I also wanna understand, is there a way, you know, like, can Chris and I find a way to break that so that it works, so that we can have a kind of sustainable change in our lives. I think one of the ways that you do that is by not having this extreme approach to athleticism or diet, where, you know, you have to make these radical changes that are forever. But instead, you know, making slightly better choices. "You have to change the autolock section that--to get the screen to rotate." I have no idea where the autolock-settings are. I mean my screen rotates just fine in real life. It's only inside of this YouTube-App that I'm having a problem. Um--So yeah I'm really--I'm really interested in that problem. And then the other thing that I want to figure out is what does work? One of the things I've learned just by talking to Dr. Aaron Carroll, for instance, is that we tend to think that you need these extreme levels of exercise to improve your health when in fact like walking three miles per hour 30 minutes per day --you get most/all of the survival benefit from exercise. Um--Christopher: "Can I define meditation?" Not yet. I can't define meditation yet because I haven't started actually doing this thing but I -- basically I'm going to do the kind of meditation that has been shown by randomized control trials to make um--to make your uh-- your health better. I'm just gonna do exactly what the trials showed worked um--because they work in the trials. Uh--and so basically we're only gonna do things-- or we're gonna try to focus on things that are shown by very rigorous science to have meaningful impact on your health. Um--I mean I also wanna get stronger you know, I wanna um--you know I wanna make it so that my body works better but um-- but that's the thing I'm most focused on.

Umm.  Let's see oh.

Court says "I'm tackling all 10 years of Vlogbrothers which is a very interesting thing." So also starting in January of next year which will be our 10 year anniversary on YouTube, one of the things that we wanna do with backstage is have a daily feature called 'This day in Vlogbrothers history' where Hank and/or I go back and watch like every January 1st video or every February 7th video that we have made in the last 10 years and kind of comment on each of them like sort of take a retrospective look at the last 10 years of us making stuff together and figure out, take like just you know, look at what we still like, what doesn't hold up for us etc. I'm very excited about doing that.  

"Will I be drinking exclusively water?" No.  No. Because there's no evidence that only drinking water is um, uh, is meaningfully better for your health than occasionally drinking a delicious Diet Dr. Pepper.  

I'm very behind on comments I'm sorry you guys are commenting a lot.  Probably somewhere down there is somebody who's told me how to make this on on horizontal instead of vertical video but I really don't think there is a way yet.  

"Do you think that we're too obsessed with the before and after pictures because we're uncomfortable with people who don't fit the ends of the spectrum?"  Oh yea.  No I definitely think that I think that a lot of the ways that we approach this health and fitness stuff is really unhelpful.  I think I lot of times it ends up you know holding up certain kinds of bodies when you know, if I learned anything from the Olympics it's that all kinds of bodies can be incredibly effective. You know what I mean?  And that's what I'm concerned about I'm really concerned about what our trainer calls functional fitness.  Her name is Laura and I'm you know

I'm interested in like getting by body to do the stuff I want it to do and being ya know generous with it so it will be generous with me. And also like you know, not dying.  Not dying ya know earlier than is absolutely necessary.

Abby asks "Will 100 days include mental health" Yea.  Yea I mean in the sense not in the sense that I'm going to be talking about like my daily medication regimen, I have OCD for those of you who don't know and I take medication for that as I would take medication for any chronic medical problem and I'm not gonna be talking about my daily medication regimen or like how often I have panic attacks or anything like that but it will involve mental health in the sense that 

a. There is no right line between physical and mental health 

b. one of the things that's shown to be very effective when it comes to both depression and anxiety disorders is exercise now you know the counter argument is that it's functionally impossible to exercise for a lot of people when they're depressed so it doesn't really matter that it's effective because it's one of those things that's effective but unavailable to lots of people 

And also that we'll be doing meditation which is something that has been shown to have big broad heath effects even though I think that I'm going to find it super annoying and I think that as annoying as I'm going to find working out every day I suspect that I will find meditating even more annoying but we'll see.

Ashley says "How about another brotherhood 2.0 experiment for a 10 year anniversary extravaganza.  I mean I gotta finish a new book before I can commit to making like 200 Vlogbrothers videos in a year.

Stephen asks "How do you handle intrusive thoughts?"  Not well.  I mean I don't know anybody who handles them that well but I try to I mean, many people probably don't know anything about OCD but one of the things that's very common with OCD is intrusive thoughts which are also often like inappropriate in some ways violent or

or like extremely violent. Like Maria Bamford, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the comedian Maria Bamford but she's amazing and she has this wonderful bit about this intrusive thought of like cutting up her parents and then like cooking their flesh and serving it in the Cobb salad to other members of her family.  It's very funny.  It doesn't sound funny when I say it, you need Maria Bamford to say it but anyway, those are very common with OCD like thoughts that you can't control.  Everybody has intrusive thoughts to one degree or another I think like everybody sort of like sometimes you're standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and you think like "Oh what if I jumped into the Grand Canyon" or you're driving along and you think about swerving into traffic or whatever but people with OCD tend to have trouble, real trouble, controlling those intrusive thoughts, they tend to have trouble, well you just you can't not think them which is exhausting.  And it also, on some level like it makes you start to wonder well what is me.  If I cannot choose what I think about ya know it really it really sort of blows about that whole Rene Descartes cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am thing.  Because if your thoughts aren't yours or they don't feel like they're yours they don't feel like they're associated with the person that you you know experience yourself to be or want to experience yourself to be then it gets very ya know it starts the the steady level ground of consciousness starts to feel a little earthquake-y.  As for how I deal with them, I understand what's happening now which I didn't understand when I was younger which made it a lot more scary I think, I understand what's happening now and then you know, it's just something you live with like you live with any health problem.  But I'm not gonna pretend that I don't find it super annoying.  I do find it super annoying. 

Blake says "it's helpful to know that you're not responsible for whatever goes into your mind"  That's a great point I mean you're responsible for your actions but you're not really responsible for your thoughts.  Ya I mean it's still not that fun.  I've already answered, I've answered lots of people are curious oh 

"What happened to Aero Ace Fighters" asks Carmen.  So back, way back in 2007 Nerdfighteria and Nerdfighters got their name from this video game that I played in the Savannah, Georgia airport called Aerofighters but the Aero the A and the O in Aero looked kinda like an N and a D because of the font so I said Nerdfighters and then people who were watching our videos back then, were just a few hundred people started calling themselves Nerdfighters and that's where the kind of the community got it's name.  Many years later Hank got me that very video game the Aerofighters video game like the stand up arcade game machine, it was such a cool birthday present and over the next couple years some people in my office and myself who work on Crash Course, the Art Assignment, Mental Floss and stuff became the best Aerofighter players in the world.  I don't wanna brag but we are at least according to the current Guinness World Record's list the 4 best Aerofighter players in the world, I'm fourth.  We still play sometimes, the machine has been a little bit broken of late but we do still play sometimes.  I mean at some point you've achieved a level of mastery that is so far removed from everyone else on earth that you're really only competing against yourself and that becomes much less interesting.

Oh This Star Won't Go Out is here, hello This Star Won't Go Out. I was just wearing my team awesome shirt while I was beginning doing my first post rib-break workout yesterday.  I walked up hill for a mile and a half, did a little bit of brief jogging which didn't really work and and it was okay.  I didn't feel great but 

I don't know.  Okay I'm gonna look for questions.  Sorry there, one of the challenges here is that there are a lot of people in comments which is great.

"Why are you so unexcited about meditation" asks Elizabeth.  Well primarily because it means that I will be left alone with my own thoughts which is literally horrifying.  Like that's, for me that's like a horror movie subject but I am sure that it will be fine. 

George is watching from Iraq hello George. Thanks for watching.  Sorry about this being vertical video lots of people complaining about that, I don't