John Green: We’re Not Merely a Catastrophe

Summary

Podcast Summary: Humans with Hank Green

Episode: John Green – We’re Not Merely a Catastrophe

Date: June 4, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In the premiere episode of "Humans," host Hank Green sits down with his brother John Green—novelist, essayist, YouTuber, and podcaster—to deeply examine what it means to be human. Their conversation explores humanity’s complexity, collective value and progress, the pitfalls and contradictions of fame and ambition, the double-edged sword of the Internet, and the balancing act between public and private life. The episode weaves together philosophical, historical, personal, and societal perspectives on why being "broadly in favor of humans" can feel radical and why the complexities of empathy, hope, and meaning endure.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Ethics of Being “Broadly in Favor of Humans”

• Hank introduces the podcast as a space to examine humanity and starts with John, someone who has helped shape his worldview.
• John describes Hank’s project as “relentless” and “curious”—driven by a need for usefulness, hope, and cultural advocacy for humankind:

  “You’ve been trying to make the case for decades that humanity is worth it... Maybe we aren’t good news now, but we might be good news.” (02:28)

• Both reflect on the shift from optimism about humanity to a countercultural sense of “doom” and critique how easy it has become to lose faith in people as stewards of our planet rather than villains (03:08–04:04).
• John: “We’re not merely a catastrophe... Of course we’re catastrophic. We’ve always been catastrophic... But there will be nobody left who knows what’s keeping the stars apart.” (04:04)

2. The Stickiness of the “Fallen” Narrative

• They discuss the persistence of “fallen” humanity stories across cultures, religions, and histories (06:25–08:58).
• Even with expanding empathy circles, humanity falls short—but the job is never finished:

  “Maybe ‘fallen’ is the wrong word… Instead, we are still very, very far from the top of the mountain.” (09:22)

3. Information Overload and Empathy Limits

• With more access to the world’s problems, negativity floods our attention, overshadowing collective progress:

  “There is no way to emphasize the good stuff… We’ve made an unprecedented amount of progress and… failed on such an epic scale. They’re both true.” (10:21–11:42)

  • John: reduction in child mortality, increased life expectancy; but still: “almost all of them are going to die needlessly... because of failures of human-built systems.” (11:15)

4. Optimism Versus Being “In Favor of Humans”

• The difference between optimism, realism, and value judgments:

  “There’s something fundamental about a raccoon that is better than an amoeba. And there is something about an amoeba that is better than a rock.” (12:11, John)

• John: “I’m optimistic in the sense that complexity is good…. but I don’t think we’re in the first half of this game.” (13:18)
• The existential question: Are we closer to extinction or persistence? Both agree the outcome is uncertain. (14:02–15:53)

5. The Internet: Hopes, Disappointments, and Responsibility

• Hank and John reflect on early Internet optimism versus current realities.
• John: "I feel bad about having been a part of the Internet... I feel like I've participated in a lot of evil systems... I don't know that you can participate in an attention-based, advertising-funded Internet in a way that's morally clean." (16:40–17:33)
• Navigating the sense of citizenship in digital spaces and the privilege it can entail.

6. Ambition, Fame, and Their Contradictions

• John unpacking his drive for recognition and the outcomes of fame—chasing affirmation, dealing with the “mixed bag” of notoriety, and the difference between real-life and online treatment (18:25–23:39).

  “I wanted people to think I was cool. I wanted strangers to like me… There are aspects to fame that are very intoxicating, but like a lot of intoxicants, it’s a mixed bag.” (18:32)

• The paradox of increased author accessibility and its impact on reader expectations and narrative purity.

7. Earnestness vs. Sentimentality

• John distinguishes sincere, unironic earnestness from dishonest sentimentality:

  “I want to be that [earnest] in my work. I want to be that in my life. I don't want to use the armor of irony or cynicism to protect me against real feeling... But I don't want to be sappy.” (25:31–26:13)

• Sentimentality, to John, is a kind of self-soothing lie.

  “To me, sentimentality is a little bit of a lie. It's the kind of lie… that everything happens for a reason.” (27:16)

8. Faith, Evangelism, and Religion’s Dual Role

• John explains his adult-formed, non-evangelical Christianity; faith as a source of action, community, and also potential harm (28:13–34:15).

  “I don't feel like it's my place to say to somebody who's hugely religiously traumatized 'Come back.'” (31:59)

• The danger and power of in-groups and out-groups in religion (32:20–33:39):

9. Leadership, Audience, and “Preaching”

• They credit their Vlogbrothers audience longevity to evolving with their viewers and an undercurrent of “preaching” values (36:51–39:07).

  “We've been preaching the whole time... It's trying to talk to each other and an audience about the big stuff at the center of human life…” (38:04)

10. Public Intellectualism and Its Bounds

• Influence of Mark Twain as a model, challenges of engaging with politics online (39:31–43:44)

  “I don't really know how to change minds on the Internet... All I do is make people retrench more in their existing worldviews than challenge them.” (42:53)

11. Privacy, Storytelling, and Vulnerability

• John on withholding parts of his life, trading stories for attention, and the loss of ownership over personal struggles:

  “Once you share something, it isn't yours anymore... you lose control over that story.” (46:44–48:35)

• The double-edged sword of openness, specifically about mental health (OCD).

12. Mentorship, Meaning, and Human Progress

• Importance of mentors in John’s life and the satisfaction of helping others succeed (53:26–56:25).

  “Rooting for people is one of the great joys of being a person.” (56:31)

• Advocacy for global health, the quiet power of organized collective action (57:20–59:13)

13. Compassion, Forgiveness, and the Challenge of Living Equally

• John:

  “Almost everything that's wrong with the world is wrong with the world because we fail to acknowledge that all human lives have equal value.” (60:06)

• Radical ideas of compassion (e.g. seeing God in prisoners), and the non-intuitive, difficult work of living those values (60:18–62:22).

14. The Internet & AI: New Forms of Meaning, Threats to Humanity

• Fears about the power of AI, surrogates for human thriving, and the potential decoupling of economic progress from human wellbeing (69:57–74:54).
• Anticipating a future where humanity’s claim to meaning is challenged by artificial “minds”:

  “In a way... maybe we're the ones who do define what matters... because we're the ones who are actually the source of the universe having meaning.” (75:11)

15. Personal Growth and Changing Ambition

• John discusses evolving ambitions, the necessity of growing along with adulthood, openness to change despite past cringe-worthy selves (78:37–80:32):

  “Continuing to grow is kind of the coolest thing about adulthood... I hope that I look back on the age of 48 with the same level of growth cringe that I look back on the age of 26.” (80:32)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• John Green:

  “We’re not merely a catastrophe.” (05:04)

• Hank Green:

  “This is basically the title of a book that we will never write together: ‘Broadly In Favor of Humans’.” (03:08)

• John Green:

  "No review of humanity that fits on a bumper sticker is accurate." (05:14)

• On progress:

  “We've made an unprecedented amount of progress and… failed on such an epic scale. They're both true.” (12:04)

• On earnestness:

  “I don’t want to use the armor of irony or cynicism to protect me against real feeling. I want to feel all that there is to feel while I’m here.” (25:31)

• On the roles of religion:

  “Humans need better third places than the Internet.” (35:38)

• On the Internet’s drawbacks and benefits:

  “I've participated in a lot of evil systems, and when you participate and benefit from a lot of evil systems, it's hard to say you did a good job.” (16:56)

• On storytelling vulnerability:

  “Once you share something, it isn’t yours anymore.” (46:44)

• On meaning and AI:

  “We may not be the only source of strength... but maybe we’re the ones who do define what matters and what problems matter and what problems get solved, because we’re the ones who are actually the source of the universe having meaning.” (75:11)

• On empathy as progress:

  “If we can continue to expand our empathy circles, we are going to make progress. And if we can't, we're pretty hosed.” (77:36)

---

Timestamps by Segment

• 00:04–03:08 — Introduction: Framing the topic, brothers’ shared past, and show purpose
• 03:08–05:14 — "Broadly in favor of humans" and humanity’s cultural reputation
• 05:14–09:40 — Humanity as complex, catastrophic, but not only villainous
• 10:21–11:42 — Empathy, information, and the paradox of progress vs. failure
• 12:11–15:53 — Optimism, complexity as a value, the uncertainties of human fate
• 16:02–18:11 — The Internet: lost dreams, moral discomfort, and accidental citizenship
• 18:25–23:39 — Ambition, fame, and the cost of transparency
• 24:28–27:38 — Earnestness, sentimentality, and the ethics of storytelling
• 28:13–34:15 — Religion, evangelism, dangerous power, and in/out-groups
• 36:51–39:07 — Audience-building, evolving with a community, and the influence of “preaching”
• 39:31–43:44 — Public intellectuals, online politics, and the limits of Internet discourse
• 46:44–48:35 — Vulnerability, the cost of openness, and agency in sharing
• 53:26–56:25 — Mentorship, seeing others succeed, and “rooting for people”
• 57:20–59:13 — Advocacy behind the scenes: TB Fighters, influence without limelight
• 60:06–62:22 — Compassion, forgiveness, and radical ideas from religion
• 69:57–75:38 — AI threats, surrogate metrics for thriving, and the philosophical meaning generated by humans
• 78:37–80:32 — Adulthood as ongoing change and the value of personal evolution

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is deeply reflective, honest, and infused with gentle humor and brotherly affection. Both challenge and affirm each other, balancing philosophical musing with practical examples and personal stories. Earnestness and skepticism coexist; neither shies away from exploring contradiction or vulnerability.

---

Conclusion

This episode is a rich conversation between two of the Internet's most thoughtful creators about what it means to care for, question, and celebrate humanity. Their exchanges are full of nuance and complexity, asking listeners to accept that being “broadly in favor of humans” is not naïve, but courageous—and, perhaps now more than ever, necessary.

Transcript

[A]

This is Humans.

[B]

Humans. Humans. Humans.

[A]

Humans. Humans. I'm Hank Green. My guest today is John Green, which on the one hand is maybe a strange way to begin this podcast, because John Green is my brother. We have already spent a pretty significant portion of our lives talking to each other in public. We've made videos together for almost 20 years. We have a podcast together. We have built a lot of my life and a lot of his life in conversation with each other. But also, like, that is exactly why I wanted to start here, because this show is called Humans. And before I started going around asking other people who they are and what they think people are for and why it's so weird to be the thing that we are and how they make sense of being a person, I wanted to start with someone who has shaped how I think about all of that for literally my whole life. And also I wanted to do this because we don't actually talk like this very often. We talk publicly a lot, but usually in ways where each of us brings our own thing. We answer questions, we tell stories, we do bits, we update each other on our lives. Someone once wrote about us that our YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, was less a conversation than an extended form of parallel play. So this is a little different. This is me trying kinda for the first time in quite this way to sit down with John and really get into it. So for the first episode of Humans, I thought I should start with one of the people who helped make me into a human. John Green is a novelist and essayist and YouTuber and podcaster, and to me, one of the most thoughtful people I know about topics like hope, attention, suffering, ambition, art, and what we owe each other. He's also one of the people whose opinion matters to me the most. So part of this is me interviewing John Green, but part of it is also me asking my brother to help me understand what exactly I'm trying to do here. John Green, welcome. What do you think I'm trying to do here?

[B]

Well, first off, you don't have my blessing to start this podcast, so I want to be clear about that. You don't have my blessing to start any new projects, especially open ended ones. You have my blessing a little bit to start like an eight episode arc of something, but you do not have my my blessing to start an open ended podcast. So I disapprove of this project entirely. But I'm happy to be here.

[A]

And so you know that I shouldn't be doing this. Why do you think I am?

[B]

Well, first off, you are relentless. You have a huge amount of your identity wrapped up in the work that you do, and you want to make stuff that's useful to people in as large a way as possible, as much as possible, as long as possible. I think part of it is that you're genuinely curious about what people think about humanity. And I think part of it is that you've been trying to make the case for decades that humanity is worth it, that maybe we aren't good news now, but we might be good news, might be good news to each other, might be good news to the world. It used to be that lots of people really believe that, but now it's a little bit countercultural to be in favor of humanity.

[A]

This is the thing that we say to each other and also in public now, like, we should imagine things complexly. And then I remember being in your house and being like, this will be the theme of 2009 vlogbrothers. We're going to have the theme be, we should imagine each other complexly. It turns out that that's the theme for the whole time. But another one is broadly in favor of humans. This is basically the title of a book that we will never write together. What's buried in broadly in favor of humans is the fact that that is a little bit countercultural. It seems like a weird thing to have happened. People tend to be in favor of themselves. You know, we're the hero of our own story, but a lot of folks have lost touch with, like, humans being the hero of the Earth story and definitely don't feel that way anymore.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We seem like the villains of the Earth story.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, we certainly treat ourselves as the main character of the Earth story.

[A]

We're definitely not a peripheral character. We're either the hero or the villain,

[B]

which I think actually overstates our role a little bit. Like, after we're gone, Earth is going to be fine. Earth is going to retain complex life, and complex life will continue to evolve. But there will be nobody left to listen to Billie Holiday records. And that's a bummer for me. Not just that there will be nobody left to listen to Billie Holiday records. There will be nobody left who knows what's keeping the stars apart. And nobody left who knows knows that we're in a vast universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies. You know, all of that will be lost. And that's tragic. And what we have been able to accomplish together over the last 300,000 years is really worth celebrating to me. And I get a little frustrated with the relentless doomerism that claims that humanity is merely bad news. Of course we're catastrophic. We've always been catastrophic. Right. I mean, we've been hunting large, complex species to extinction for tens of thousands of years. But we're not merely a catastrophe.

[A]

And I will say trees did it too. You know, trees showed up on Earth, huge mass extinction, and nobody ever blames them. And I get that. We actually do know what we're doing. And that makes it worse.

[B]

That makes it worse, but it also makes it better. It also makes it better in the sense that we can actually make choices away from that mass extinction, but our unwillingness to make those choices. I understand why people get built bummed out about that and why people are concerned about that. I'm also concerned about it. Like I said, we're a catastrophe. I just don't think that. Look, no review of humanity that fits on a bumper sticker is accurate. And so you can't say that we're great and you can't say that we're terrible because we're way more complicated than that.

[A]

And I think that complicated is, on its own, almost a thing to celebrate this emergence of complexity. It's very strange and unusual, and it may have required four straight billion years of relative stability on this planet and relative stability from the sun to get to it, which is a long time and some sizable portion of the life of the whole universe. You're not a historian, but you know a whole lot more about history than me, which is one reason I think we're a good team. Is this unusual that people will be so down on themselves? Has this been going on for a long time? I know that we're always thinking about the Apocalypse.

[B]

Yeah. But we're also always thinking about fallen man. Yeah. You know that we were in a state of glory and then we fell to a state of sin and debasement. So there is nothing new about that that goes back to our very earliest stories that we have about ourselves. You know, there was this moment before the flood, before the expulsion from Eden, before whatever, where humanity was doing okay and then humanity had to rebuild itself in a post Edenic state.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You see those stories not just in Christian history, which I'm most familiar with, but also in Hindu eschatology, which portrays life as existing in these sort of billions of years cycles of rebirth, growth, and then collapse. You see it in Chinese history where, you know, the dynasties would rise and then the mandate of heaven would abandon them and they would fall and there would be a state of collapse. I do think that we're in a moment of secular imagining of these things that I don't have a great understanding of. Sure. I don't really know why we've come to be so opposed to humanity or think that humanity is. Is such bad news. I think some of it is. Is the climate. Some of it is that we've become so powerful that we are literally reshaping the climate, reshaping biodiversity on a really profound scale, reshaping fundamental nature of what it means to live in a world like, that's some pretty powerful stuff that we couldn't do 200 years ago. We've had the power to extinguish humanity from the planet for, what, 80 years?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Out of 300,000.

[A]

And, like, at the same time, we've also had the knowledge that we are in one of many galaxies for, like, a hundred.

[B]

Right.

[A]

There's also this, like, giant upheaval that is secular of our understanding of our place in the universe, which is like, if we're not God's chosen ones and we're just a bunch of animals doing a crazy thing on the planet, we don't even imagine ourselves as animals. We are this other thing that. That has emerged and is just causing a whole lot of problems. Maybe not the greatest thing. So first, do you think that that idea that we are in a fallen state is just, like, really sticky? That story is in some way not attractive to people, but, like, it attracts the attention of people?

[B]

Well, I do think it's sticky, Hank. I also think it's true.

[A]

You think we're in a fallen state?

[B]

Little bit. Little bit. A little bit of. Little bit of a fallen state.

[A]

You don't think that our circles of empathy are wider than they once were?

[B]

Our circles of empathy are wider than they once were, but they're lower than they were when. I mean, I guess what I'd say is our circles of empathy are definitely wider than they used to be, which is good. They are not nearly wide enough. Sure. Yeah.

[A]

No, I agree.

[B]

That doesn't mean that there was a time when they were wide enough, but you can imagine a time when they were wide enough. That's the sense in which I think we're fallen. Maybe fallen is the wrong word, because that implies that we were once atop the mountain. Instead, we are still very, very far from the top of the mountain.

[A]

So this gets to the other thing that I think about this, which is that it's a matter of the field of information. And so, like, if you are presented with, like, a small amount of information, you're going to pay attention to the worst stuff and you're going to have some leftover for the good stuff. But if you're presented with every piece of information in the world, you're going to pay attention to the worst stuff. And after you have saturated your ability to pay attention to anything, you still have a lot of worst stuff to get to that you will not get to before you end up getting to the good stuff. It feels a little bit like that. And that's the way in which I do kind of feel fallen, where I'm like, we have so much access to the terrors and yet we can do nothing about it. Well, and this feels very bad.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, part of what I think is really challenging about living in our moment is that information landscape being so relentlessly negative. Because it's true, there is that much bad stuff happening. That's not an illusion created by the Internet. It's just that to your point, there is no way to emphasize the good stuff that's happening. So the 21st century, I mean, people are tired of me saying this, but I think it's really important to emphasize has been by far the best century in human history. We reduced the number of kids who die under the age of 5 from over 12 million to fewer than 5 million in 25 years. It's the fastest reduction in child mortality in human history. We've increased life expectancy, poverty has decreased not nearly as much as it should have. And it should be emphasized that of the 5 million kids who are going to die this year, almost all of them are going to die needlessly. They're going to die because of failures of human built systems, not because we lack the technology to save them. And so I think that's part of what we get so frustrated by. It used to be that half of all kids died before the age of five and there was nothing we could do about it. And that was frustrating in a way, but also it was not within our power. Now it is within our power and we don't use that power, which is pretty horrifying and a pretty damning indictment of humanity. That's where there's a tension because we have to hold these difficult competing ideas in our mind at the same time that we've made an unprecedented amount of progress and that we have failed on such an epic scale. They're both true.

[A]

Do you think that being in favor of humans is the same thing as optimism?

[B]

Well, I mean, the thing that you and I both agree on in the broadest sense, and we don't you know, we have different worldviews when it comes to religion and stuff, but the thing we agree upon that is borderline metaphysical is that something is better than nothing. That there's something fundamental about a raccoon that is better than an amoeba. And there is something about an amoeba that is better than a rock.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And there is something about a rock that is better than a void. That's not really true. Right. There's nothing objectively better about a rock than a void. But we have decided that as our ground of being, as a principle of our fundamental tenets or whatever.

[A]

Yeah. I cannot accept that nothing has equal weight to something Right.

[B]

Now. That's not to say that it's a narrow pyramid with amoebas at the bottom and humans at the top.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't think it's nearly that simple. I think it's much more like a web.

[A]

This is an interesting answer to the question about optimism.

[B]

I'm getting there.

[A]

So excited to see how you get there.

[B]

I'm getting there. So I'm optimistic in the sense that we can create complexity, and I think complexity is good. That's an optimistic part of me.

[A]

Interesting. Like, being in favor of humans is optimistic purely from the perspective of. I'm in favor of this thing that is good, and we are creating this good by virtue of existing.

[B]

We are creating some good by virtue of existing and following our curiosity and answering to those kind of higher selves that would have us be focused on mutual generosity and understanding. Okay. I'm not optimistic in the sense that, like, I don't think that we're very. I don't think we're in the first half of this game, you know, like,

[A]

so you think we've been around for 200,000 years and that we won't have another 200,000.

[B]

I think it's 300,000, and I think it's going to be rough. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet on the over for 300,000 years. And I'm not optimistic in the sense that I don't think that. I guess I try not to be Pollyanna ish about it. I try not to think like, oh, humanity is such good news and such a wonderful development. I think it's a really interesting development. I think it's the most interesting thing that ever happened in the history of life on the planet by a wide margin. But I don't think it's good news or bad news, really. I just think it's news I could

[A]

See us making it.

[B]

I know you could, but you're a very optimistic person. I could see us making it, too, by the way. I'm not saying that it's impossible. If someone's listening to this in 300, 1000 years and they're like, oh, that guy was, you know, thought we had no chance. No, I think you have a chance. I just think the odds are kind of a little bit stacked against you.

[A]

I mean, the thing that stacks the odds against so much to me, is the rate at which our societies change. It's just. It's just crazy. You know, I was just telling you the other day that there are more chickens than there have ever been birds.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So right now there are more chickens on Earth than at any point before humans. There were birds on Earth.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, there are way more vertebrates on Earth now than there have ever been, but only because of chickens. And that's really weird. That's a strange circumstance to find ourselves in that actually may not be true because of the oceans. On land, we are just very impactful, you know, like, the thing that we add up into is really weird. And so I get being like, this is super up in the air. I feel super up in the air about it.

[B]

Yeah, I think we're too powerful.

[A]

Yeah. Having experienced the Internet from its birth, I feel very uncomfortable thinking I know how something's going to go.

[B]

Right. I mean, when we were kids, we really thought that the Internet was going to destroy fascism and that free and open access to information would lead to a global response where people had a say in their own governance and yada, yada, yada. And like, all of that was so naive. That optimism was naive. I think something we miss sometimes is that mere pessimism is also often naive. Of course, it's just naive in a different way.

[A]

Do you feel bad about having been a part of the Internet?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I regret my role in. I mean, it's a small role. The Internet would have happened anyway, Hank. It's not like I was a critical contributor to it. I'm not Tim Berners Lee. But yeah, I feel bad about it. I do.

[A]

Do you feel like you did a good job?

[B]

No, not particularly. I feel like I've participated in a lot of evil systems, and when you participate and benefit from a lot of evil systems, it's hard to say that you did a good job. I do think that we have tried. We really have tried. I don't know the extent to which we've succeeded, but I think we've both tried. Really hard to participate in the Internet in a way that's aligned with our values. I just don't know that you can participate in an attention based, advertising funded Internet in a way that's morally clean.

[A]

Hmm. I always feel, I don't know, feel

[B]

free to push back on that if you disagree.

[A]

In a way, I feel like it's like asking, how do you feel about participating in America where it's just like. Right, that's just where I live. You know, I almost don't feel like I had a choice. I have many times in my life felt much more a citizen of the Internet than of any particular place.

[B]

That's a privilege though.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

You know, it's a privilege to be able to be a citizen of the Internet and be able to escape place based.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Experience or control.

[A]

So I want to talk a little bit about John Green. You feel like you've got some tensions in you, one of them being that you definitely wanted to be successful and famous and then you were and then you didn't anymore.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that an accurate read?

[B]

That's pretty accurate.

[A]

What was it about the first part? Why was that happening?

[B]

I think I wanted to be successful and famous. I mean, I wanted financial security. That was part of it. But I think if I really wanted financial security, I would have gone into finance, not writing young adult novels. So there was something else happening. I mean, motivation is very complex. I wanted outside affirmation. I wanted people to think I was cool. I wanted people to like me. I wanted strangers to like me. I don't know why I've always wanted that, but I always have. Some of it probably goes back to childhood and not feeling liked or feeling popular and being bullied and stuff like that. But I also wanted to be successful because I'm a pretty ambitious person and I wanted to make it to the top, whatever that was. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about why I wanted what I wanted because I was so busy wanting it. And then you get it and you start to think, well, why exactly did I want that? What about that? That I think was going to be fun or attractive? There are aspects to fame that are very intoxicating, but like a lot of intoxicants, it's a mixed bag.

[A]

What's the best part?

[B]

I don't know, like meeting cool people. Like, I remember at the Fault in Our Stars movie premiere, the kid who won the national spelling bee was there. That was pretty cool. Like, man, you've got a whole different set of talents than I have.

[A]

How does that happen?

[B]

I have no idea. The Jenner sisters were also there. I just didn't feel as excited about that. Nothing against them, they seem like nice kids. I don't actually know enough about them to have an opinion one way or the other, to be honest with you.

[A]

John has been taught by the Internet to hedge.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. The moment I came down in favor, I realized that actually I have to hedge. Like, who knows what they've done? I don't know.

[A]

I feel like we have to head off in that direction suddenly. Now you've also been treated by the Internet in ways as far as the bad parts of fame. I think that there was a time when you could kind of be Judy Blume, and that was just great. And nobody knew much about Judy Blume except what the little paragraph at the back of the book said.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That became very much not the case. And you were like a pioneer in that.

[B]

Yeah, I was of the first generation of authors who you know more about than what's on the back of the book. For sure. When I was a kid, I wanted to know JD Salinger and Walter Dean Myers much better than I knew them, much better than I could know them. And I thought it would be so cool to get a letter from them or have some kind of interaction with them. I eventually did have an interaction with Walter Dean Myers. We sat next to each other on a plane. But by then I was in my 30s.

[A]

Just like by chance.

[B]

Yeah, by chance. We were seated in row like 27 together. And he was like six, six. So it was a real challenge for him. He was editing this beautiful book about Toussaint l'. Ouverture. And I was like, I'm pretty sure that's Walter Dean Myers. Not least because he's editing a book which is not that common of a hobby.

[A]

So you figured it out after you sat down?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I figured it out. And then eventually, like three hours into the flight, I was finally like, I'm a huge fan. And he was very nice.

[A]

Which is probably fine for Walter Dean Myers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And a 30 year old fan.

[B]

Oh, yeah, I think it was fine. Listen, it's never ideal when somebody sitting next to you on an airplane tells you they're a huge fan. I think probably Walter Dean Myers would have rather had just the silent airplane flight to edit his book. But you know, it could be worse. It could be worse.

[A]

Was that cool?

[B]

I wanted to know more about those people.

[A]

I asked you a question. Was that cool?

[B]

Was what cool?

[A]

Walter Dean Myers.

[B]

Oh, yeah, it was totally cool. And, like, it was cool in part because I was also an author and he knew who I was, and, like, you know, so that's one way in which success is really nice, you know, People tend to be nice to you. Not always, but they tend to be, at least in real life, on the Internet. It's maybe a more complicated story. Yeah. But I think that I really wanted to offer a more full picture, partly because I wanted to spread the idea that, you know, people who write books are normal people, people just like you who just happened to be able to do this job they love. But also because I just remembered how much it would mean to me to be able to know something about writers. Now it turns out that's a lot more complex than I thought, because sometimes you learn things about writers, and it's a real bummer. Sometimes writers are super disappointing in real life, in fact. So there's this writer I love, Colson Whitehead. If any American writer should get the Nobel Prize, I think it's Colson Whitehead. I just love his book so much. I remember, like, he got on Twitter at some point, and it wasn't anything offensive. It wasn't like he was being problematic. He was just, like, talking about a sandwich that he liked or something, and

[A]

I was like, yeah.

[B]

Oh, it's devastating to know that geniuses like sandwiches.

[A]

Yeah. Boring sandwiches.

[B]

I don't want to know that.

[A]

Or are, like, mad about Delta.

[B]

This is what.

[A]

Yeah. This is the worst. When you see somebody who's, like, really amazing being mad about customer support at an airline, and I'm just like anybody else.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But, like, I've got an idea of you in my head that's very good, and you don't want to ruin it,

[B]

and you're ruining it just by being a human. You kind of ruin it a little bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think that's a lot of what I was up against when I had really negative experiences on the Internet, which I still have to some extent, but I used to have more. Ten years ago, it was worse than it is now. And to some extent, I was up against that thing where people were like, I don't understand why you have to be such a person. It's really ruining the reading experience. And I get that. I get that, like, a lot of things that I thought were gonna be narrowly good news. It turns out to be a little more complex.

[A]

Yes. Another contradiction of John Green. I hear you talk a lot about. In favorable ways, like, things lacking sentimentality, like, you wanted to write an unsentimental cancer book.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You talk about Amy Cross Rosenthal's unsentimental last piece.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which I think is titled, you May want to Marry my husband.

[B]

Right. She knew she was dying, and she was talking about how it was sort of a personal ad for her husband. It was very sweet and moving and very Amy.

[A]

Very Amy. But you're also very earnest.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And these two words sound like the same thing. Sentimental and earnest. I know that they're not, but that does seem like a contradiction. Like, you're one of the most earnest people I know. But at the same time, you are constantly, like, striving for a lack of sentimentality.

[B]

Yep. Achingly, achingly earnest. Cringingly earnest.

[A]

Sounds like someone's called you that.

[B]

So annoyingly earnest. It annoys me just to get out in front of it. Like, I also find it exhausting.

[A]

What does that word even mean to you?

[B]

It means, like, sincere, serious, unironic. Mostly it means unironic. And I want to be that in my work. I want to be that in my life. I don't want to use the armor of irony or cynicism to protect me against real feeling. I want to feel all that there is to feel while I'm here. I think that other approaches to life are a waste of time. But I don't want to be sappy about. Is a very fine line, Hank.

[A]

You're right.

[B]

And I'm not always on the right side of the line.

[A]

Well, but you know about it. You know about that line.

[B]

I know about the line.

[A]

It's bright to you.

[B]

I'm aware of the line in most of the book version of the Fault in Our Stars. I found it. I tried to anyway.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I'm not always on the right side of it. Like, if you're gonna err on the side of being cheesy or on the side of being cold and distant, I'm always gonna err on the side of being cheesy. And so I'm aware of the line, but I don't always walk it perfectly. But I think that the cold, distant, merely intellectual approach to life and art leaves a lot on the table. It leaves a lot of human feeling on the table that's really at the center of what it is to be a person.

[A]

This is why I want to ask this question, because, like, you don't have anything against being earnest. I'm there with you, and I've been brought there by you. But what is sentimentality? What is on the other side of that line? Is it just like people's perception of the earnestness or is it actually a different thing?

[B]

I think it's a different thing. To me, sentimentality is a little bit of a lie. It's the kind of lie that we tell ourselves in retrospect, looking back at the past. It's the lie that everything happens for a reason. It's the lie that, you know, those sort of cursive encouragements that are posted at IKEA tell us. That, to me, is sentimentality.

[A]

We're creating these cute little nice things to tell ourselves about the horrors that aren't really real.

[B]

Right. Like, I don't want to crap on anyone's worldview, but I think it's very, very, very difficult to argue that everything happens for a reason in a world of such profound human built injustice.

[A]

Do you think that that is. I mean, I know that we have different worldviews here. Has that changed how you feel about religion, about God?

[B]

No, not really. Because I've never believed in a God who intercedes some of the time, but not all of the time. I've never believed in a best of all possible worlds sort of theology. I've always believed in a God who acts on humanity, primarily through humanity.

[A]

Always is a long time. Yeah, that feels like a more complex theology than probably was taught to a 13 year old.

[B]

I didn't really grow up believing in God, so, like, I was able to conceptualize God when I was in my 20s or 19. You know, like, I was able to form a theology without a ton of baggage. Like, I feel really bad, actually for people who grow up so religiously traumatized by the fear of hell or by these religious tenants that would tell people that they're not full people or that they're somehow removed from God's love for being themselves. You see that a lot with people in the LGBTQ community. You see it a lot with people who grow up being told that their desires or their way of being in the world is itself somehow terrible or worse than other ways of being in the world. I didn't grow up with any of that. We grew up going to church occasionally, but it wasn't a big deal. And so by the time I came to Christianity, and I really came to Christianity because I'd grown up a Christian, I think if I'd grown up a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu, I would have gone to those faiths, but I went to Christianity and, you know, was able to find enough there for me for it to feel productive.

[A]

This is fascinating. I had always assumed that it was kind of a continuousness, even though of course, like our parents. And you go to different churches.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, you're Episcopalian, they're Methodist.

[B]

I mean, nominally. Mom and dad don't go to church.

[A]

So I assume that you had sort of just like carried it through. You got confirmed just like I did. And you were just paying more attention in church and in Sunday school than I was.

[B]

No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I didn't really read the Gospels until I was in college.

[A]

Oh, I think that's probably true of most middle school students. They're not out there reading the Gospels,

[B]

but I don't know, maybe. As far as I can tell, nobody's out there reading them.

[A]

A whole lot of people who say a whole lot about Jesus not doing a lot of gospel reading. But is one of the reasons you don't talk that much about your faith, that you are sensitive to people who have been traumatized?

[B]

Yeah, for sure. And I don't labor under the delusion that it's right either. And so I don't have the same. I mean, there's a lot of talk about evangelism.

[A]

It really feels like that's one of the things about faith, is that you're supposed to believe it's right. That's what faith, that's what that word means.

[B]

You're supposed to believe that it's a right. Okay, I'm not sure you're supposed to believe that it's the right. But there's a lot of emphasis on evangelism in Christian history and in Christian literature on the idea that you should go out and preach the good news, that you can be forgiven and yada, yada, yada of radical hope, that hope is available to all people at all times, even unto death and all that stuff. And I mean, first off, like, as a Midwesterner, I'm congenitally incapable of that kind of evangelism. But secondly, I just don't feel like it's my way or my place. I don't feel like it's my place to say to somebody who's hugely religiously traumatized. Oh, but like, come back. If you just were at this church instead of that church, it would have been better.

[A]

It's interesting because sometimes when I talk about how I like, I'm a little bit jealous of religious people that like having this built in community, having a worldview that you can sort of fall back on, having, you know, some amount of comfort about the everlasting nature of the soul. You've tempered me in those moments and you've been like now, Hank, not all puppy dogs over here.

[B]

It's not all puppy dogs. And a lot of times to create an in group, people create an out group. And that's very dangerous, especially when it comes to something that's as important as religion, where you're talking about fundamental truths. If you're talking about a group of people who can't access fundamental truths or who are removed from the deepest love that is available to us as humans, like that can be very, very dangerous. I remember once I went to a Pentecostal church, a pew jumping church, as the pastor described it. It was called Church o the Woods.

[A]

Did you jump any pews?

[B]

I did not jump any pews, but I felt it. I felt it. I felt my hands going up. I felt the magic. The thing happened. So I was like, what the hell is happening? The thing is happening. I am moved. I am transcended. I am not jumping over pews, but I am about to. And then during the prayers, the pastor started railing against the Pentecostal Church across the street and how they were doomed and fallen. And I was like, oh, man, that's a bummer.

[A]

Did you need that part? You just transcended me, man. We don't need to go here.

[B]

Can't we just sing and dance? Do we have to go there? It was like, pray for our fallen brethren across the way at Church of the woods,

[A]

man. Church of the woods sounds amazing. It sounds like you actually just go into the woods and transcend.

[B]

Pretty good church, man. It was pretty good church.

[A]

I was looking at a bunch of interviews with John Green because I was going to do this. And also I'm trying to learn from good interviewers and how they do their thing because it's not particularly easy. You kind of use your brain in a lot of ways. And you did a Wild Card with Rachel Martin on npr. And I was scrolling through the comments because that's what I do. I wonder how you feel about this. Number one comment, first comment with a thousand likes. I think John Green is my pastor.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that's nice to hear.

[A]

You're going to get people to jump some pews.

[B]

I don't think I'm going to get anybody to jump over pews. And indeed I don't want to because that stuff is so powerful that it's tricky. I don't want to have that kind of power over people. I don't think anybody should want to have that kind of power over people. I'm suspicious of people who want that. I think I used to want that when I was in my 20s. But that's a byproduct of being in your 20s. You're not allowed to want it in your 40s.

[A]

You wanted to be a pastor that would get people to jump over abuse.

[B]

Well, I wanted to be a pastor who would get people pretty enthusiastic. I was never going to be a pew jumping church guy.

[A]

But you wanted to have that power.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I literally wanted to be a pastor. And I wanted to be a pastor partly because I wanted to, you know, shepherd a flock. Yeah.

[A]

Make people feel those big feelings and

[B]

help people through the biggest, most difficult parts of their lives. Sure.

[A]

But I'm trying to get to the thing that you were saying just then, which is like the difference about how you were feeling about it in your 20s. Like you wanted to be like, the leader of this group in a really powerful way.

[B]

Yeah, the leader of the group, for sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't think that's universal among pastors, by the way. I think lots of pastors go into it for primarily service related reasons. I'm not sure that I was one of those people. Yeah.

[A]

And you probably would have ended up there.

[B]

I would have gotten there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I would have gotten there, but it would have been a journey. How do I feel about somebody saying that and lots of people upvoting it? I feel grateful. But I also feel like humans need better third places than the Internet. Yeah. And they deserve better third places than the Internet. And so I worry about them if I'm their pastor because I worry that the place where I do that work is not suited to that work.

[A]

We did it anyway.

[B]

Yep. Yeah. And look, I've always been conscious of that, Hank. Like, even in 2007 when we had like 400 YouTube subscribers, I was very conscious of the fact that people were taking us seriously. And as a result, we needed to take the privilege of being in their lives seriously. As a writer, you know, I try to remember that young people are giving me. Usually young people are giving me a seat at the table in their lives when they're forming their values, which is very serious business. And I should try not to mess that up if I can, Both in the way that I write and in the way that I talk in public or live in public.

[A]

So one of the weird things about you and I is that we've been making vlogbrothers videos for 20 years. There's not a lot of people who are still at it. And of the ones who are, they don't have a steady sized audience. The way that we have. We basically have the same number of viewers now that we had in, like, 2012.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And we've had peaks and we've had valleys, but, like, we've never dropped down to a place where it feels like it's really worth doing it anymore. I can't really figure out why. I think that some of it is the quality of the audience that we got from the beginning. It was just like the kinds of folks that we were reaching. Some of it is that we are trying in those valleys. We're like, okay, this is starting to look worrying. What should we do about this?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We start to do a little clickbait. We're not above it.

[A]

Certainly not. But I wonder to what extent. Like, I've never thought about this before, but, like, your. Both desire and a little bit of training in having a flock might be a part of that.

[B]

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it might be a part of it. I think that the biggest thing is that we have changed with our audience. We've grown with our audience, and there's a lot of luck involved in that. At the end of his life, Mark Twain was asked, what's the difference between you and Bret Hart, this other kind of comedian from the west who is a beloved comic writer who never really ascended into the, you know, the literary pantheon the way Twain did? And Twain said it was like, what's the difference between you and Bret Hart and these other guys? And Twain said, they were kidding. I was preaching, and I do think on some level, we've been preaching the whole time now, you know, it's not religious preaching, but it's preaching. It's trying to talk to each other and an audience about the big stuff at the center of human life, whether that's grief or love or astronomy.

[A]

I'd say you talk a fair amount about religion, but I actually hear you talk less about Twain, and I know that he was also a subject of study for you in school.

[B]

Yeah, it's true. It's true. I double majored in English and religion. You're asking me a lot of questions about religion. You're not asking me any questions about Twain. Well, I don't.

[A]

I feel like people.

[B]

Nobody ever does. Rachel Martin didn't ask me any questions about Mark Twain.

[A]

So I have a couple of Mark Twain questions that I suddenly want to ask you that are not written down. One of them is, mark Twain did this thing where he wrote a thing, and he said, I want you to release this, like, a hundred years after my Death.

[B]

Is that right? Yep. Yeah.

[A]

And then it came out and it was like, mark Twain's final thing is out, everybody. And it didn't make much of a splash.

[B]

It was hugely disappointing.

[A]

Oh, was it just not very good?

[B]

It's not very good. And it's settling a lot of 100-year-old scores that nobody cares about, you know? Oh, yeah.

[A]

I mean, that's interesting. When you, like, research any scientist who's famous for some science thing and you look at what they spent their days doing, it's almost always politics. They're, like, mad that they're not, like, updating the bridge in town.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Which is a big deal. And then eventually they do. And everybody benefits from that bridge. But nobody thinks about the bridge.

[B]

Nobody thinks about which presidential candidates Mark Twain supported. Right. But at the time, his politics were very important, and he was in an interesting position as sort of, you know, I think more recent scholarship has sort of pooh, poohed this a little bit. But when I was in college, he was very much seen as two people. There was Sam Clemens, the guy from, you know, Missouri, who became a riverboat pilot, who was very critical of institutions, and there was Mark Twain, who loved all that stuff, got invited to the fancy parties, would spend three months in Paris at the finest of hotels and all that stuff. And I have often thought about Twain because some of those same contradictions exist in my own life, where I am highly critical of certain things and also a participant in them.

[A]

Sure. There was also a lot of. And this is often the case with influential people in their time, that a lot of what they spent time on was the politics of the day. We spend time on the politics of the day. I think I do more than you do, but we both do.

[B]

I spend a lot of time in my private life on the politics of the day. I don't feel like the Internet is a great place to have those conversations a lot of times. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's the only place to have them. But I don't feel like these places that are owned by huge corporations controlled by five guys that are controlled by five guys are necessarily the way to have those conversations.

[A]

Yeah, no, this is a very difficult thing for me. We have this conversation privately a lot. I feel as if it is necessary to have them in this place because the Internet is very influential in how a lot of powerful people think about what we will talk about and what we must talk about.

[B]

Yeah. And I don't think you're wrong about that. It's just that I don't think I can move the needle much, actually.

[A]

It's dangerous for us to move the needle a little bit where if we're really sticking our necks out, then we've got a lot of complexity in Crash Course and scishow and all the stuff that we've built Good store. Like, we don't want collateral damage shed upon those things.

[B]

On the one hand, I don't want complexly to suffer Crash Course to suffer because I'm alienating our current administration. On the other hand, I've seen a lot of bad in history come from that kind of thinking.

[A]

Right. There's also a piece of me that's like, I don't want to ruin myself for certain people. Like, I want to have values, but I don't want to be attacking people who I might otherwise reach.

[B]

You know, that's the other thing is that I don't really know how to change minds on the Internet. And so, yeah, it's not a good place for that. If I knew how to change minds, I would be trying to do it all the time. But I feel like actually all I do is make people retrench more in their existing worldviews than challenge them. And I really struggle with that. So when I feel like I can challenge someone's worldview, especially when it's not super settled on an issue like global health or global health equity or tuberculosis or whatever, then I really want to push. It's hard for me to. Just as you do, you do a good job. Usually, not always, but you do a good job in general of participating in the discourse. I find that really, really hard. Almost every time I participate in the discourse, within 30 seconds or a minute, I desperately want to delete what I just said.

[A]

And then you do, and then I

[B]

do, and it feels great.

[A]

Do you think that Mark Twain may have had something to do with our success? Like you understanding his life?

[B]

I'm already uncomfortable with the extent to which I've compared myself to America's greatest writer.

[A]

I'm not asking for comparison. I'm asking you understood this guy's life better than 99.999% of Americans. He was a public intellectual. He was a humorist. He was a writer. And so you can definitely be a shadow of Mark Twain. But is part of the reason I have such a cool life that you studied Mark Twain in college?

[B]

Probably. That's awesome. Yeah. I think more about Mark Twain in the context of making stuff online and being sort of public figure as well as a writer than I do about Anybody else, for sure.

[A]

You got to make more Mark Twain content, John.

[B]

No, I don't. You know, Hank, this is going to sound radical to you, but there are actually things that you can think and not share.

[A]

Jerk.

[B]

It's true, man. You should try it sometime. It's quite rewarding, actually. Okay,

[A]

and you've brought it up. What are things that you don't share?

[B]

Oh, there's a lot I don't share. Most of my day to day thoughts, I don't share almost anything about my kids.

[A]

Sure, sure. Yeah.

[B]

I feel like that's off limits.

[A]

Orin's like seven and I was like, oh, he's a person now. Like when he was like four or like two stories about Orin were like stories about any four year old or any two year old at seven. These are stories about Orin.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And so I don't want to tell those stories. And if, like a magazine wants to come and photograph me in my home with my kids, like, that's not going to happen. Yikes. And then there's stuff from my past I don't share because it feels personal to me, because I don't want to. There's that old line that we share our scars, not our wounds.

[A]

Ooh.

[B]

You know, we share the stuff that's healed over, not the stuff that's still raw.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But for me, a lot of the stuff is still raw.

[A]

Yeah. Interesting. You know, you're a great storyteller. I remember, like, you coming back from school and like, for those who don't know, John went to boarding school when you were 14. Yeah, and I was 11. And so John was not part of my teen years, except for during the summers. And you, like, come back from school and you have these stories that would be story shaped and they'd be long and they'd have parts. Looking back on it, of course, I'm like, wow, what a pretentious little dweeb.

[B]

I'm sure those stories were unbearable.

[A]

But I was wrapped, you know, sitting on the ottoman with my chin in my hands, you know. But you love telling a story. Are there moments where you're like, God, this would be a great story, but I just don't want. I don't like the lesson and I don't like the size and shape of my wound here.

[B]

Yeah. The cost is quite high. Something we don't talk about much. But because, you know, now we trade so openly in our traumas and our experiences, we trade them for attention online. And I've done that too. And that can be really Helpful to people. Right? Like me. Talking about having OCD has been really helpful to a lot of people. You know, some people help them feel more comfortable being themselves. Help them feel like you can live a rich life and also have a serious mental illness, all that stuff. And so I don't want to sound like, oh, this is merely a terrible thing that we do. I think it's a really complex thing that we do. But the incentives online are always to share the terrible things that are happening to you because they get a lot of attention. And I don't want to do that a lot of times because I've seen the cost of it. The cost of it being that once you share something, it isn't yours anymore. And that can be really good. That can be really liberating. That can be really freeing. But also, you lose control over that story. You lose the ability to decide when you tell it. One thing I've noticed, and I write about this in my new book that's coming out this fall, but one thing I've noticed is that interviewers, when they bring up something that they know you don't want to talk about, or they know it's kind of inappropriate to ask about, they say, you've been very public about the fact that you have ocd, or you've been very public about this, or you've been very public about that. And that's their way of saying, like, I don't have to apologize for asking this inappropriate question that's deeply personal to you because you've been very public about it. But with ocd, like, I've only chosen to be public about it in ways that I have total control over, like making a Vlogbrothers video.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then I lose complete control because, quote, unquote, I've been very public about it.

[A]

Wow. I will never be able to not hear that, because I hear it all the time.

[B]

Yeah, people use it all the time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Niche.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

I should say the name of my book. Yeah, it's called Hollywood Ending. It comes out September 22, I guess.

[A]

Tell me a little bit about Hollywood Ending.

[B]

It's a Hollywood novel. It's about two young people who are.

[A]

Is that a category of novels?

[B]

Yeah, you know, a little bit. Like cancer book. It's a surprisingly robust genre. Maybe I shouldn't call it a Hollywood novel since it's mostly about what happens after the movie is filmed, but it's a book about two young people who are in a movie, and the movie's kind of blowing up. The movie's about the last year of Andy Warhol's life. It's called Andy Warhol Never Gets Old and It's starting to blow Up. And as a result, their lives are blowing up too, in ways that are exciting and intoxicating, but also in ways that are really damaging and destabilizing.

[A]

You're writing about young people in fame. I know that. I did that.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, I am writing about people in their 20s and fame. In that sense, it's more of a Hank Green novel. Ha ha.

[A]

On your website's Frequently Asked Questions section, which I'm sure you think a lot about.

[B]

Oh, yeah, you know me, I rewrite it weekly.

[A]

It says, is there a reason why the majority of your main characters in your books don't have siblings? And you say. I think of it as a very subtle way of being able to torture my brother. Do your new characters in the Hollywood ending have siblings?

[B]

They do. They do. They both have one sibling. The siblings are not very important, I have to say. They serve a purpose. I mean, the truth of why I've never had siblings is that I didn't need them. You know, they didn't serve a purpose. Like Margot has a sister in Paper Towns because she needed a sister. But usually if you don't need somebody, you don't include them. Especially for me, Like, I paint on a very small canvas. Like, I tend to have very small casts of characters and stuff. This book has by far the largest cast of characters of anything I've ever written. But it's also my first book for adults, so it feels like that's okay.

[A]

Right? What's the difference there? Is this mostly a marketing choice or is it actually a writing difference?

[B]

There's a little bit of a writing difference. I mean, you know, when I'm writing for and about teenagers, I focus on firsts. I focus on first love, first time grappling with grief, first time doing this, first time doing that. In this story, it's not her first time falling in love. She's in her early 20s, but she's pretty wizened and worldly for a 22 year old. So there is a difference. And there's a difference in the writing, but it's also a marketing choice for sure. It's ultimately, I mean, the kids, I call them kids. I shouldn't. They're adults. But like, the kids in the story are old enough that it's hard to market it as a YA book.

[A]

I mean, earlier in this interview, you referred to us as kids when we were like 27.

[B]

So yeah, well, I do think that. I think you kind of are a kid until you're about 29. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, well, we're just gonna keep pushing that out.

[B]

Right. When I'm 70, I'm sure I'll think of my current self as being a kid.

[A]

So in that Wild Card interview, I'm sure that Rachel Martin said that you've been very public about your ocd, because you did talk about it, and then you talk about, is there anything positive about it? And you're like, no. People say this about my cancer. Like, good, come out of your cancer. And I'm like, you know, there are things, and they're like, is it, in a way good that it happened to you? And I'm like, no, no, I'm so much worse now.

[B]

Yeah, no, my chance of dying has literally gone up. So thank you for asking.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's up for the rest of my life. And then in addition to that, I have a great deal of psychological trauma that I previously didn't have. But Rachel Martin says it is who you are.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. That was really lovely. She said, if there's an upside to it, maybe it's that it is who you are. And when she said that, I'd never really thought about that before. And that was one of those interviews where you take a lot away from the interviewer. Like, you take more away from the interviewer than you give to them, even. And that's very rare. But I do feel that way. I feel like it's at least part of who I am. It's interesting because my OCD has been really well controlled for the last couple years. I mean, I've still had issues with depression and anxiety. The OCD part of things has been really, really under control for the last at least year and a half. And it's so fascinating to live without because I've spent my whole life living with it, and I can confirm that there are no upsides. It's so much easier to live without the daily cycling, spiraling thoughts and the compulsive behaviors and everything. It's just. It's so liberating. It's so freeing.

[A]

So I know you talk a good bit about this, and it's something that I'm, like, a little jealous of. You talk a good bit about mentors in your life and how important those folks have been.

[B]

Yeah, I've had great mentors.

[A]

I think that I have had you, and I have had mom and dad. Great set, pretty good set. And then Catherine, obviously not really a mentor very much A peer. But. But my work life didn't provide me with that. And maybe I had opportunities for it and I didn't take advantage. But how did that happen for you? Do you feel like it was. Did you have agency in finding those people?

[B]

Some. But I also think there's something about me where smart older people, especially when I was in my twenties, where smart older people were like, oh, we should take this kid under our wing, otherwise he's going to die. I think that might be literally true. I think if Amy Krauss Rosenthal and Eileen Cooper hadn't taken care of me, I don't know that I would have been okay. I remember one of my mentors at Booklist, Stephanie Zveren, she came to me one day and she was like, hey, HR says you're cashing all your checks at the grocery store. And I was like, yeah, how else are you going to do it? And she was like, you need a bank account, buddy? And I was like, don't know how to do that. And so she walked me in our lunch break, she walked me to the bank and helped me set up a bank account. And that was my level of functioning in my early 20s. I think there was a lot of luck involved. If there was a smart play involved, it was getting close to people who were doing cool work. When Amy Krauss Rosenthal emailed me, I had enough good taste to say, Amy Krous Rosenthal, you are an amazing writer in person and I am a huge fan, fan of yours. And that's always nice to hear, especially if, as Amy was at that time, you're not super famous. Right? So Amy didn't hear that every day. And I think that probably made a difference. But I think a lot of it was luck too.

[A]

I have started to do that some with people being like, hey, I like what you do and how you're doing it. I'm open. That feels. It feels like the best thing I do.

[B]

I find that too. I find it really rewarding. And our dad is a great mentor, not just to us, but also to other people. And I think I learned that from him. Mom's a great mentor too. I mean, think about all those high school kids that mom helped when we were in college and stuff.

[A]

Oh, yeah. There's something about watching someone you've helped succeed that is so much more pure than succeeding yourself.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

Because I'm so like in it and self critical and impulsive, imposter syndrome, et cetera, et cetera. But when I watch someone who I've even given a little bit of advice to. I'm just on their team, you know?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then, like, something cool happens to them. It feels good in a really pure way.

[B]

Well, rooting for people is one of the great joys of being a person, getting to root for people. And, you know, I feel that way about a lot of the young people who were in the movie adaptations of my books or young people I know online or whatever. I feel like getting to root for them is such a pleasure. It's like, yeah, really, really fun to see them succeed. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I was on Capitol Hill recently to do tuberculosis advocacy, and a lot of Capitol Hill staffers came up and wanted pictures with me. And I was thinking, you know, it's really lovely that these people have given me a place in their lives because now they're doing this really important work. And that felt pretty good.

[A]

So tuberculosis, Hilde, specifically, is what. What is this?

[B]

This is where hundreds of people from around the country. I mean, it used to be much smaller. It used to be like 35 people from around the country, but now it's hundreds of people from around the country from every state come to Capitol Hill, usually flying at their own expense or driving at their own expense. They come to Capitol Hill and they meet with their senators and congresspeople and their offices to talk about the importance of global health funding. And it's been remarkably successful, kind of behind the scenes, off the headlines. A lot of the initial cuts have been clawed back. And in fact, next year, probably tuberculosis spending will be fairly flat in the US budget from what it was in the Biden years, which is a real. That's a real win. It feels like a bit of a loss, but it's a real win. And that happens because of advocacy. And so there's a group of hugely dedicated people called TB Fighters that's just this really, really productive community that does an amazing job of advocacy and activism. And they're partly responsible for the lowering of prices for drugs and diagnostics, but they're also quietly doing this work that involves hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

[A]

So much gets done this way.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And of course, no one would ever write a front page news story about it.

[B]

Nor should they, because if they did, a lot of the Republicans who support. Who quietly support global health spending would have to publicly support it, and then there would be a problem.

[A]

God, what a thing.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

What a thing. It's so interesting how that is the right way to do so much, is just get powerful people aligned. And like the most Good gets done outside of the fights.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And so you don't want things to become fights. Like that's the big thing you don't want. But at the same time, if you want to get elected, you have to create fights. Not that there aren't good fights to be having right now.

[B]

I was going to say. The thing is, a lot of those fights are really important and I do think that things get done in the fights, but a lot happens away from them. For sure.

[A]

It's so good for people to have the opportunity to actually engage in the system and see it working, even if it's not working like the way it should or working well, but to actually feel their impact in the world.

[B]

Yeah. And you can go and meet with your congressional offices. They work for you. You can get a few hundred people from around the country organized. It can be a pretty effective strategy.

[A]

You also talked in your wild card interview about settled law, and the one that you gave was a version of, I think, Paul Farmer's quote.

[B]

Almost everything that's wrong with the world is wrong with the world because we fail to acknowledge that all human lives have equal value.

[A]

Is there anything else that you've taken from your relationships with mentors that has become settled law for you?

[B]

Perhaps that we are all also worthy of compassion and forgiveness? I don't know if that's quite the same thing as love, but I think it's related.

[A]

Yeah, it's a pretty big idea.

[B]

Hard to implement.

[A]

Hard to implement and also hard to. Actually, it's one of those things that it feels that we are called to do but can never do.

[B]

I mean, I think a lot about the fact that tuberculosis spreads especially well in prisons. And a lot of people in prisons did terrible things, unconscionable things. Not everyone, certainly, but a lot of people. And yet, like in my faith tradition, I am specifically called. I am specifically told that wherever I see a prisoner, I see God. I see the light and love of God himself or itself or whatever. I am told that. And I have to bring that about, that these people are also worthy of love and care and forgiveness in the world. And what they did or didn't do is irrelevant to the question of that worthiness.

[A]

There's just like crazy ideas in Christianity. I'm sure that this is true of all faith traditions.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's radical ideas. There's radical ideas.

[A]

It's radical and like, it is non intuitive. You know, like what we feel called to do is to punish.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Not to love. What we feel called to do is to be afraid, not to welcome. And like, obviously, because we keep doing it even though we've been told so strongly in no uncertain terms to not do those things. And I think that that's like, like I, I obviously think of religion as a tool that people use to orient their lives and to orient communities and to build societies together.

[B]

It's also a tool of power.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's also a tool of God sponsored power over people. And I think that's important to remember. Now I'm the one being critical of religion and you're the one who's celebrating it again.

[A]

Well, you always are.

[B]

Well, I think it's important. I think it's important to acknowledge that like this stuff is dangerous because it's so powerful.

[A]

Yeah. But it is interesting to me that like, which stories work and sometimes they can be, of course that like this is about us and our story should be the one that spreads everywhere. But then there's also an element of like, you know, the worst person, you know, like the person in your community that's done the worst thing, you should look at them and see God.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's not like that one didn't end up being a successful religion. That one works.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it kind of works in spite of that stuff, I think. But yeah, I think that's true for Islam too. I think it's true for Buddhism. I don't know much about Hinduism or Judaism, but I'm sure it's true for them as well. I think that's pretty universally true. There's a mix of how these religions come to succeed, but one of the ways is by, I think by really asking people to closely consider their ethical choices.

[A]

So the thing that we have been talking about, you and I, is my desire to keep doing this and do more. Yeah, your desire to be maybe a little less famous as time goes on. I've watched you go through it and you might think that it would be kind of a scared straight story for me where I'd be like, yep, that's not the thing to do. But I'm still at it. Do you think I'm making a huge mistake?

[B]

No, because I think that you're making a gift for people. I think that sometimes you make it for selfish reasons. But I think you're making a gift for people and I think people really benefit from hearing from you. You're very careful, you're very thoughtful in the way that you construct your opinions and with what you share. Not always, but usually. And I think it's a net benefit for the world. My concern has never been whether it's a net benefit for the world. It's always been whether it's a net benefit for you and your family.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I'm still concerned about that. I was talking to my therapist about it, actually, and she was like, yeah, but that's who he is. That's what drives him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And who am I to say that you're doing it wrong? I mean, it's a lot of what drove me, too. It's just less of what drives me now. But it's still there, Hank. It's not like I've transcended above needing fame or needing outside affirmation. I need it as much as I always did. I just had enough negative feedback that I got a little burnt out on the whole enterprise.

[A]

Do you think you're still ambitious?

[B]

Yeah, but in different ways. I'm not trying to take over the world anymore or sell the most books or win the most prizes or anything like that. I think now I want to do this thing that I'm incredibly lucky to be able to do, which is follow my actual creative curiosity and passion.

[A]

That's pretty great.

[B]

Almost nobody gets this opportunity, and so I shouldn't be passing it up in the name of trying to hold on to some abstract idea of what success looks like.

[A]

So you've got that opportunity. You've got public health and tuberculosis and advocacy. You've got the mentorship that you can do, but only can do. So much of. You've got a private life and all of what comes with it. You've got taking care of yourself. It's a lot. How are you figuring out how to balance those things? Do you. This is a hankering question. Do you feel like much of yourself is for yourself or are you mostly for the work?

[B]

I don't know that I need a lot of myself to be for myself. I don't know that that actually benefits me much. I think the more time I spend gazing at my navel, the worse my life get. Gets so.

[A]

Well, doesn't have to be all navel gazing. It could be taking walks in the woods.

[B]

Yeah. I wish I had more time to take walks in the woods, but that stuff will come. I really like working. I don't like it as much as you do, but I like it a lot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I like having something to do in the world.

[A]

Yeah. It's pretty great to be able to do, but it's almost, you know, you still have to figure out which bits to do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I almost feel like all of the time that I'm not spending mentoring is a little bit misplaced because I'd rather other people have the opportunities I have. Like, the extent to which. And you know, this is very hard to do because I enjoy the work so much, but I want other people to be able to have this.

[B]

But there's a balance between what's the most productive use of your time in terms of the social order and what you're passionate about and enjoy and like following. And I think for you, it's that you can't do only one thing. You just don't find any. You don't find enough fulfillment in it. You need to be doing more than one thing.

[A]

How do you think you would have been if you were a teenager these days? Like, if you'd been raised with the current set of social structures and tools?

[B]

I would have been so different. It's hard to imagine because the Internet is such a radical, disruptive change in the nature of being a teenager. I think that I would have thrived on websites like Tumblr and Twitter and Reddit because I liked to write, I liked to express myself through typing, and they're perfect for that.

[A]

Thrive is an interesting word, though.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I would have done well on those platforms, but probably to my overall detriment. I think that I would probably be fairly radicalized politically. I think that I would be even more strongly opposed to the existence of billionaires than I currently am, for instance. But I hope that I would still have a lot of real life relationships because I think that's so much of the value of being young or being alive in general. I hope that I would still pursue those, but I worry that I might not.

[A]

I feel like it was pulling teeth to get me to do things with

[B]

other people even when the Internet sucked,

[A]

when I didn't have alternatives. Yeah. When the alternative was like making a website, hand coding HTML.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And by hand coding HTML, I mean copying it and pasting it from another website.

[B]

Yep, yep. And then sort of like editing it a little bit to make the GIF spin. Yeah, well, yeah.

[A]

Making the background a different color. And I just think I would have been so lonely.

[B]

Yeah, for sure.

[A]

Do you think we're gonna get through this? By which I mean, there have been many times in the past when we've had these revolutions in how we communicate with each other. And then we eventually build social structures that, like, it becomes cringe to use them in manipulative ways. It becomes cringe to be manipulated by them. People Start to see the strings that are pulling them.

[B]

Yeah. It becomes cringe or it becomes illegal.

[A]

Yeah. Actually, with radio, that is what happened.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Harder to do that with the Internet.

[B]

Do I think that we will get through it? Yes. Do I think that it is at its nadir? No. I think that things will get much worse. I actually think that things are much more stable than you'd expect them to be, given the size of the revolution that we're undergoing, the technological revolution that we're undergoing. And I think that things will probably become less stable, unfortunately.

[A]

I think that in terms of the impact of the recommendation algorithms, we're getting a little bit better at it. Not equally among every person. People are actually spending less. Young people are spending less time on the Internet this year than the year before, though, from a very high peak.

[B]

Yeah. From 12 hours of screen time to 11 and a half. I worry more about the waves of innovation cresting over each other.

[A]

This is very worrying. Yeah.

[B]

I worry about AI and I worry about our ability to distinguish among what's real and what's fake and what's somewhere in between.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I worry about the size of the disruption caused by potential shifts in the economy. I worry about the size of the disruption caused by five people controlling what we say and who we say it to and what we think about on some level.

[A]

And AI makes that worse.

[B]

AI makes that worse.

[A]

Now we've got like three chat models, and it's like, okay, which world do you live in? Do you live in the Claude World? The ChatGPT World, the Grok world?

[B]

Right. Yeah. And those are different worlds.

[A]

They're different.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, like, who decided that? Who's in charge of that? And that is really, like a reality defining event.

[B]

Yeah. And we're still at the very beginning of this. I mean, 96% of people don't use AI.

[A]

And I see people talking now about, like. I feel like we're on the edge of, like, people will talk about these surrogate numbers we have for thriving, whether that's like GDP or whatever. Like, these are obviously surrogate numbers. They may do a fairly good job under certain circumstances. Average income, infant mortality is a good one. But I'm starting to see people finding the surrogate number going up, being the same thing as human thriving, increasing. And, like, those things do eventually decouple, obviously, and we're headed into a world very specifically where they may decouple. Like, if all of the work is done by the computers, what are the humans for? And you can see them struggling with this because they aren't necessarily thinking about it. You know those moments where you say to a billionaire, like, but you're like, in favor of humans existing? And they're like, yeah, I hadn't really thought about it. Maybe not.

[B]

Yeah. Or no, they don't even say, I haven't thought about it.

[A]

They're like, like, what's the.

[B]

You know, what's the marginal utility of human.

[A]

Yeah, what's that exactly? And I just. I think, entitling this podcast humans, I'm a little bit saying, like, that this is a conversation that is going to be about us no longer being the only thinking entity on the planet. People will come at me for that phrasing, and I will work on it and try and do a better job of it in the future.

[B]

But, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna come at you for it, actually.

[A]

Which I expected. But eventually.

[B]

Eventually, we might not be the only thinking entity on the planet.

[A]

Yeah, it does feel like we're ushering in a new form of evolving intelligence. Whether or not that intelligence thinks, it definitely is not programmed. It is grown. And that's very weird. And in that world, I still think that we're, like, the thing. And in a way. Let me hit you with this. I've never said this out loud. So, like, there was a time when all of human labor was done by human muscles.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And then we outsourced that. And, like, we still care about our muscles, and they're still a very important part of our health. But, like, if you would like to move a steel beam, you're not gonna use a man, you're gonna use a horse. You're gonna use a horse, and then you're gonna use a machine, et cetera. So we've outsourced that. It may be that we outsource this thing that we think that is, like, the most important part of humans, which is intelligence. And I don't think that it is. I think that it's an important part, But I think that we're only anchoring on it because we're like, oh, we've got it and nobody else does. But maybe there's another thing that's more important, which is, one, the working together to decide what the problems are. And two, what that rests on is, like, what creates value.

[B]

Right. Well, that takes us back to the question of whether a raccoon is better than an amoeba. Would we rather live in a universe with raccoons or a universe with only amoebas?

[A]

Yeah. And I think that the only reason a rock is better than A void is because I say so.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And so I think that we have to maybe be in touch with that. We may not be the only source of strength and we may not be the only source of intelligence in the long run, but maybe we're the ones who do define what matters and what problems matter and what problems get solved, because we're the ones who are actually the source of the universe having meaning.

[B]

I like the idea that we're the source of the universe having meaning. I mean, whether you construct it as you do, like you believe in constructed meaning and I believe in derived meaning. But what we agree on is that there is meaning and the meaning is inextricably wrapped up in humans. To go back to the Billie Holiday record, a tree falling in the wood makes a sound regardless of whether there's someone to hear it. But actually there literally is no Billie Holiday record if there's nobody left to hear it. And I can imagine a world where non human entities experience something from listening to a Billie Holiday record. I can't imagine a world where they get to experience what I experience.

[A]

John Green, I'm going to ask you our last question now.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

What's something that you've learned from your work that you wish everyone on earth knew?

[B]

I think the biggest thing I've learned from my work is something that we all do know, which is that all human lives have equal value. The issue is that we, and I include myself in this, don't live out that knowledge. We don't enact that knowledge as policy, as systems, as law. Instead, we allow ourselves, because of the limits of our empathy, to imagine that the lives of people who feel distant are different from ours, are somehow less caught up in ours. And as long as we're doing that, we're going to really struggle to make progress. And I think the story of human history, like the glory of human history, if you look at it, is what you cited earlier, the expanding empathy circles. And if we can continue to expand our empathy circles, we are going to make progress. And if we can't, we're pretty hosed.

[A]

I think that there are people who not just haven't heard that, but who don't believe it.

[B]

Yeah, there are people who don't believe it, but I think they are denying something that is inside of them that they know is true. And maybe that's like a little bit metaphysical of me, but I think that there are people who don't think all human lives have equal value for sure. And there, I mean, obviously throughout history there have been right because we've enslaved people. We've known that people were people and chosen to enslave them, which is an indication of failing to value human lives appropriately. I believe that there is something within us that tells us that human lives are equally valuable. And I believe that is like a capital T, truth. That is a settled law, if you will. And so I think we have to enact that world. We have to come together to enact that world.

[A]

John, one thing I know about you is that you're old now. Yeah, 48. That means I'm going to be 48 in three years.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And I also have like watched you go through it like close up. And I keep seeing you change and do things differently and decide to prioritize new things, which is really admirable and not easy. Maybe it is. I don't know. How do you stay open to that? How do you stay open to like always evolving and like being on a different mission or working on a different set of problems or, you know, using a different set of tools?

[B]

When I was a kid, I thought that adulthood was this single thing. You know, like childhood was the train journey and then you got to the train station, that was adulthood. And you stayed there until you died. And it turns out that that's not the case. Of course, like adulthood is every bit as interesting and challenging and full of change as childhood was. Like you're feet stop growing, but you don't.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, there is a certain amount of like, I guess tonight is figuring out what to do about dinner again.

[B]

There is some repetition for sure. A lot of conversations about how minivans handle surprisingly well and homeowners association meetings and so on. But like, I find that, you know, it's actually quite easy to grow and change in adulthood as long as you have the support of people around you, as long as you're growing and changing with others. Like Sarah and I talk a lot about the fact that both of us find our 20 something selves extremely cringy. And I can't believe that 24 year old Sarah fell in love with me. But of course she wasn't her then. She was a much younger person and I was a much younger person. And so I just think continuing to grow is kind of the coolest thing about adulthood. So I hope that I continue to change and I hope that I look back on the age of 48 with the same level of growth cringe that I look back on the age of 26.

[A]

Thanks to all the humans who helped make this episode. Morgan Levy is the show's supervising producer, and Greg Rippon is our engineer. Peyton Mitchell manages our social media. Andrew Huang composed the music, and James Barnard designed the artwork. You can and should follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's do it one more time.