Rainn Wilson’s Soul Pancake Gets Serious In ‘Stories From The Street’

Sometimes, Rainn Wilson is funny. Sometimes, he’s quirky. His Soul Pancake channel is an outlet that allows him to be both of those things. In a new series, however, Wilson isn’t funny or quirky, but instead conveys a heartfelt sentiment. The series is called Stories From The Street, and it showcases brief featurettes related to America’s homeless.

Stories From The Street is filmed in partial black and white with a high-quality camera, giving the series a certain artsy quality. In each episode, a homeless person tells his or her story, hitting the audience right in the feels with their tales of poverty, loss, or just plain bad luck. Check out the first episode (of the four already released), featuring a street performer named Dre:

Wilson isn’t the first celebrity to tackle homelessness on YouTube. Earlier this year, Kobe Bryant launched Mission, a series on TakePartTV that also attempted to showcase the unknown talents of the homeless. However, while Mission‘s focus was clearly about ending homelessness in LA’s Skid Row, Stories From The Street seems like more of a humanist production, attempting to reveal the positive characteristics of the nation’s homeless and better the world’s perception of them.

Still, Stories From The Street has a chance to make an impact with Soul Pancake’s 95,000+ subscribers and other viewers who happen to stumble upon it. I’m glad Wilson was able to put his YouTube Original Channel to good use instead of only spending his time calling his friends from an apocalyptic bunker.