How John Green Turned Celebrity into Obsessive Optimism

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: How John Green Turned Celebrity into Obsessive Optimism

Host: Pablo Torre
Guest: John Green
Date: March 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this deeply engaging episode, Pablo Torre embarks on a wide-ranging conversation with best-selling author and YouTube luminary John Green about how he leverages celebrity and internet influence for obsessively optimistic, real-world change. From the underdog story of AFC Wimbledon to the global fight against tuberculosis (TB), Green discusses his unique choice of passions, his community-driven projects, and how his personal challenges have inspired fervent action. The discussion weaves between sports, philanthropy, personal vulnerability, and the unexpected intersections that define Green's crusades.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. John Green, AFC Wimbledon, and the Power of Fandom

• AFC Wimbledon’s Underdog Story
  • Green retells how the fourth-tier English soccer team was resurrected by betrayed fans after its original incarnation was moved—paralleling the Baltimore Colts situation in the U.S. (01:05–02:54).
  • “They started out in the ninth tier of English football. They moved up... rung by rung, until finally by 2011, they were one step away from being a full-time professional team again.” —John Green (01:33)
• Financial Support via YouTube and Nerdfighteria
  • Rather than “book money,” Green has sponsored AFC Wimbledon using proceeds from his early (pre-ad revenue) YouTube channel with his brother Hank and their fandom, Nerdfighteria (03:55–05:52).
  • Green describes the delight of seeing his community’s slogan, “Don’t Forget to Be Awesome (DFTBA),” on players’ shorts:
    “Why be on the front of the shirt when you can be on the back of the shorts?” —John Green (06:38)

2. Internet Influence, Community, and Unusual Acts of Generosity

• Livestreams Funding Real Soccer
  • Green uses FIFA video game streams to raise money for actual player transfers, contributing to the recent acquisition of Marcus Brown, which ESPN dubbed “the most unusual transfer in this year’s soccer transfer window” (07:01–07:34).
• Reflecting on Impact:
  • “What one does with such an audience and with such influence...is once again absurd and also in this case, profound.” —Pablo Torre (07:36)

3. From Fiction Novelist to Global Health Advocate

• The TB Rabbit Hole
  • Green spent five years crafting Everything is Tuberculosis after a life-changing visit to a TB hospital in Sierra Leone tied emotionally to a patient, Henry, who shared a name and resemblance to Green’s own son (10:32–12:04).
• Obsession and Mental Health
  • “I fall pretty far down rabbit holes in general, and a lot of people will fall down a rabbit hole and emerge... but with TB especially, I...don’t expect to ever emerge.” —John Green (09:23)

4. Personal Experience, OCD, and the “Detective Story” Myth

• On OCD’s Role in His Activism
  • Green resists glamorizing OCD, relating it more to anxiety and hyper-focus than ‘superpower detective’ tropes:
    “Does it, like, make you a good detective? ...My experience at all, man. I’m a really bad detective when I’m sick.” (12:28–13:38)

5. Tuberculosis: History, Stigma, and Marketing Failure

• Historic Branding and Stigma
  • TB’s perception shifted from romanticized “consumptive chic” (19th-century poets and artists) to a deeply stigmatized marker of poverty, colonization, and industrialization (15:07–19:08).
  • “TB used to have great branding. I mean, the best brand.” —John Green (15:35)
• Class, Colonialism, and TB’s Geography
  • “TB was very much racialized...seen as a disease of civilization by white doctors...catastrophic ever since.” —John Green (18:18)
  • Modern prevalence follows historic lines of poverty and under-investment (19:23–19:52).

6. TB’s Modern Relevance and Global Health Policy

• TB as a Preventable Tragedy
  • Despite a known cure since the 1950s, TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease due to systemic failures in drug accessibility (13:42–14:16).
• Numbers and Urgency
  • “TB regained its status as the world’s deadliest infectious disease in 2023, taking Covid-19’s place.” —Pablo Torre (14:28)
  • “Almost all of human history, TB has been our deadliest infection.” —John Green (14:54)
• Societal Responsibility
  • “We can’t say it’s caused by this bacterium. We know how to kill...We have to acknowledge that it’s caused by us. Our systems that distribute resources...” —John Green (26:40)
  • “To imagine that disease understands political borders is a fundamental misimagining.” —John Green (32:01)

7. Human Stories: Henry, Shreya, Thiago Silva, and Others

• Henry’s Journey
  • Once a severely ill TB patient, Henry is now thriving, attending university and sharing his story globally (35:29–37:29).
  • “Henry was cured...and now he takes care of his mother. He’s a junior at the University of Sierra Leone...I’m so proud to be his friend.” —John Green (35:29)
• Shreya Tripathi’s Legacy
  • Shreya, a young Indian TB patient and Fault in Our Stars fan, sued for access to life-saving drugs. Though she won, treatment arrived too late to save her (27:21–28:48).
• Unexpected Intersections
  • TB’s role in world history reaches far: John B. Stetson’s cowboy hat, George Orwell’s death, Ringo Starr’s music career, and soccer star Thiago Silva’s comeback (24:05–26:15).

8. Influence, Megaphones, and the “Marco Polo” Dynamic

• How Influence Feels
  • Green likens content creation to shouting “Marco” and waiting to hear a “Polo” back from the world; it’s call-and-response, connecting otherwise isolated stories (29:18–30:32).
• Ethical Use of the Megaphone
  • Reflecting on hearing—not missing—voices like Shreya’s:
    “How am I using the megaphone that I’ve been given? And what voices am I not hearing?” —John Green (28:48)

9. Policy, Cost, and Opportunity

• Defunding Global Health Programs
  • Green discusses catastrophic effects of U.S. funding cuts on TB treatment globally and the stunning economic case for investment (31:00–34:02).
  • “Every dollar invested in TB yields 46 US dollars in benefits.” —Pablo Torre (34:02)

10. Community, the Internet, and “Flying Toward the Light”

• Caution for Internet Creators
  • Green’s closing story about a moth “flying to the light” warns about aimless pursuit of money/influence and argues for more intentional, interesting goals (38:38–40:22).
  • “I would just encourage those folks to try to think about what are the interesting lights to fly toward instead of just the standard lights.” —John Green (40:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Why be on the front of the shirt when you can be on the back of the shorts?” —John Green (00:06/06:38)
• “There’s no difference between enough and more than enough. Like, they’re both the same to me.” —John Green (08:06)
• “I don’t really like non fiction where the author doesn’t acknowledge their place in it… I wanted to kind of explore that a little bit.” —John Green (13:10)
• “All of human history, TB has been our deadliest infection.” —John Green (14:54)
• “TB used to have great branding…In that sense, TB used to have great branding. I mean, the best brand.” —John Green (15:35)
• “How am I using the megaphone that I’ve been given? And what voices am I not hearing?” —John Green (28:48)
• “To imagine that disease understands political borders is a fundamental misimagining of disease.” —John Green (32:01)
• “Every dollar invested in TB yields 46 US dollars in benefits.” —Pablo Torre (34:02)
• “My favorite things in life are where I think…you know, it would be a more interesting light to fly to…think about what are the interesting lights to fly toward instead of just the standard lights.” —John Green (40:10)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• AFC Wimbledon’s Story & Fan Ownership: 01:05–03:15
• Origins of Nerdfighteria & YouTube Funding: 04:13–06:36
• FIFA Streams and Real Player Transfer: 07:01–07:34
• TB in Sierra Leone – Meeting Henry: 10:32–12:04
• How OCD Intersects with Activism: 12:28–13:38
• TB’s Historical Branding Evolution: 15:07–19:08
• TB, Industrialization & Colonialism: 19:23–19:52
• Henry’s Poetry & Personal Impact: 19:57–20:34
• Modern Barriers to TB Care & Shreya’s Story: 27:21–28:48
• Green’s “Marco Polo” Content Creation Analogy: 29:18–30:35
• Policy & Economics of TB Funding: 31:00–34:02
• Henry’s Recovery, University Life, and YouTube: 35:29–37:29
• “Flying to the Light” and Online Influence: 38:38–40:22

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Closing Thoughts

Through stories of obsessive optimism, John Green illustrates how internet-powered communities, personal vulnerability, and creative engagement can be harnessed to tackle global issues in deeply human ways—from saving a beloved sports team to advocating for treatable diseases that persist through neglect and inequity.

Above all, the episode is a plea to use audience, attention, and resources with intentionality: to “fly to interesting lights,” listen to unheard voices, and not just run toward the glow of fame or money.

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Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[John Green]

I'm on the back of the shorts. The liminal space between left thigh and buttock. That's my. That's my chosen area. Why be on the front of the shirt when you can be on the back of the shorts?

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad, you're listening to Giraffe Kings. I love this book, by the way.

[John Green]

Thank you.

[Pablo Torre]

I read it. I always have to just like dangle all of the dog ears and the ink. It's burrowed into my head in a way that I want to get to. And by the way, thank you for being here.

[John Green]

Oh my God, this is so cool.

[Pablo Torre]

I do feel obligated though, because we are a technically sports show.

[John Green]

Yeah, we got to talk about sports.

[Pablo Torre]

I want to talk about how you are one of the most absurd characters in professional soccer.

[John Green]

Thank you. That's how I. That's how I prefer to think of myself.

[Pablo Torre]

The whole idea of you and English soccer and how do you tell that story for people who don't know the lore of John Green?

[John Green]

I fell in love with a fourth tier English soccer team called AFC Wimbledon. They had their team taken away from them like the Baltimore Colts were moved to Indianapolis. That had never happened before in English soccer.

[Pablo Torre]

On May 28, 2002, the FAA approved.

[John Green]

A plan to move Wimbledon FC 60.

[Pablo Torre]

Miles north to Milton Keynes.

[John Green]

Thousands of fans felt betrayed. This is the death of Wimbledon as far as I'm concerned. We did say originally that it wasn't going to be over until a ball was kicked in Milton Keynes or at Plough Lane. But it still doesn't feel quite over until today. It's a very sad day for English football, I think. And so the fans had to restart the club and they started out with literal tryouts in a public park. They started out in the ninth tier of English football. And because in England and European football you can get promoted or relegated, you can move up and down the ladder. They moved up the ladder, rung by rung, until finally by 2011, they were one step away from being a full time professional team again.

[Sports Commentator]

To the Wimbledon fans to give Luton the lead. Fast blood to Wimbledon, courtesy of goalkeeper Seb Brown.

[John Green]

And they, they made it all the way to the playoff final in a penalty shootout with a 19 year old kid who works part time at a rental car place.

[Sports Commentator]

He scored now. No, he's been denied by Seva. It looked as though that was going to cross the line. Brilliant save by the Wimbledon Goalkeeper saving.

[John Green]

The two penalties, man. An incredible story. I think the greatest underdog story in the history of sports.

[Sports Commentator]

And Wimbledon are down to one penalty kick to take them into the football. The fairy tale is complete.

[John Green]

And now they've been a professional team for, you know, about 15 years. And they're doing great. They're owned by their fans. So there's no rich guy to fund the team or anything. It's just a regular bunch of people. And everybody pitches in the way that they can pitch in. And one of the ways I can pitch in is financially.

[Narrator]

And the source of the money John Green was pitching in is just another.

[Pablo Torre]

Layer of the obsession, absurdity of this.

[Narrator]

Larger story we're about to tell you. Because John Green, in case you did not know, happens to be the same John Green who published his fifth novel in 2012, a YA love story called the Fault in Our Stars. You know, that book that spent 78 straight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and also then became a blockbuster hit movie in 2014. And so we're gonna get to John's new book, which is staggering and timely and nonfiction in just a.

[Pablo Torre]

But it is important for me to.

[Narrator]

Note that John Green wasn't using his book money, his Fault in Our Stars money, when he was supporting AFC Wimbledon. John was actually using the money he made from his other career, which started way back in 2007 on YouTube.

[John Green]

Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I recently found myself at an airport, as I often do, sitting at the gate, waiting for my flight to board. And I couldn't stop thinking about how everyone in the airport would within a century or so be dead. Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. So something you might not know from having watched my last couple videos is that this has been the most stressful two week period I have experienced in a while. Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I have to tell you about a profound mortification I recently experienced. But first, it's time to manifest. Second, shot in arm. Let's go get vaccinated.

[Narrator]

John and his brother Hank have been posting these weekly vlogs every single week for the last 18 years now, building up a channel that's almost up to 4 million subscribers. But to John, who got into YouTube long before there was any advertising revenue in it, his subscribers aren't subscribers. They're members of this community known as nerdfighteria.

[John Green]

What is a nerdfighter? A nerdfighter is a person who, instead of being made out of, like, bones and skin and tissue, is made entirely of awesome. So you're saying that nerdfighters don't fight nerds? No, we're clearly pro nerds.

[Narrator]

And nerdfighteria, whose stated mission is to decrease world suck, has become bonded by inside jokes and live streamed FIFA sessions. And these acronyms like dtfba, don't forget to be awesome, which is a slogan that has since become a logo. A logo for a very real and very cash strapped English soccer team in real life.

[John Green]

So I started out playing FIFA the video game. And I would live stream it or upload the videos or whatever. Hello and welcome to Kings Meadow where we're taking on Excelsior from the Netherlands. And then I'd use all the advertising revenue to pay for an actual sponsorship so then I could see my own logo. When I played the video game, I could see my own logo on the player's shorts. I will say this, there are lots of professional FIFA players and semi professional FIFA players out there. But among them, do you know any other than me who has successfully gotten DFTBA nerdfighteria written on the shorts of a professional football team? So I've got that going for me. I'm on the back of the shorts, the liminal space between left thigh and buttock. That's my, that's my chosen area.

[Pablo Torre]

That is the finest real estate.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

No, people say that. Why be on the front of the shirt when you can be on the back of the shorts? You know.

[Pablo Torre]

By the way, I have seen, I have seen you play FIFA.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

FIFA's to me, the greatest sports video game of all time.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

And as I'm sure you noted, I'm not very good at it.

[Pablo Torre]

You are trash.

[John Green]

I am.

[Pablo Torre]

Many, many are saying, John Green, trash at this thing that generated income that affected soccer in real life.

[John Green]

They're third in the league this season. They've got a real chance to get promoted up to the third tier. And I couldn't be prouder. Every year I use some of the money I make from live streaming to try to help them buy a player. And this year we bought an abs, a player who's absolute mustard. His name's Marcus Brown. And that kid, that kid's got amazing, amazing feet.

[Pablo Torre]

ESPN called this transfer, quote, the most unusual transfer in this year's soccer transfer window.

[John Green]

I think that's true.

[Pablo Torre]

The acquisition of Marcus Brown, 25 year old attacking midfielder, funded by your general enterprise.

[John Green]

Yeah, that is correct.

[Pablo Torre]

I say all of that to say that what one does with such an audience and with such influence is a question that lots of people across the Internet, they dream of that question.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And how you've answered that question is once again absurd and also in this case, profound. When it comes to the other thing you've devoted now, what is it, a half decade?

[John Green]

Yeah, about five years. I do have a weird job, but, you know, that's the privilege that the Fault in Our Stars. The success of that book and movie gave me was the privilege to really follow my dreams. And you can have really uninteresting dreams. Like, I feel like a lot of people who are in this position, like, just dream of having more and like more than enough is not interesting to me. There's no difference between enough and more than enough. Like, they're both the same to me. And so I've been really incredibly lucky to be able to follow my passions. And My passion is 4th tier English soccer and tuberculosis. Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday, so later this week I will be on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to discuss tuberculosis with congresspeople, senators and their aides. In related news, there will be a major announcement on Thursday about our family's efforts to fight tuberculosis, which remains the world's deadliest infectious disease, even though we know how to end it. And so I've gotten to, you know, follow down those two rabbit holes and find so much community in that one.

[Pablo Torre]

Through line, though, in those two topics. Seems to be your obsession. Yeah, like obsession. I mean that, I suppose in some ways clinically, but also actually when it comes to your passion for being consumed by a subject.

[John Green]

Yeah, I fall pretty far down rabbit holes in general and a lot of people will fall down a rabbit hole and emerge like a couple weeks later. But with TB especially, I fell down the rabbit hole and haven't emerged and don't expect to ever emerge. And the same thing with AFC Wimbledon. You know, like I fell in love and you know, they actually, at Wimbledon games they sing that song, Wise men say only fools rush in But I can't help falling in love with you Falling in love with you and that's how I feel Like I couldn't help falling in love I couldn't help falling in love with my wife Couldn't help falling in love with AFC Wimbledon and I can't help falling in hate with Tub.

[Pablo Torre]

I do want to get to how it is that a best selling novelist ends up devoting five years to a book entitled Everything is Tuberculosis. So how did you fall for this subject?

[John Green]

Well, in 2019, I visited a TB hospital in Sierra Leone. We were actually there to learn about maternal health. My wife and I have supported A maternal hospital in Sierra Leone for a long time. But while we were there, on the last day, the doctors we were with asked to visit a tuberculosis hospital. And I had no idea that tuberculosis was still a thing. I thought it was like what killed John Keats, you know, like a disease of the distant past. And I was like, there's tuberculosis hospitals. That's wild. And when we got there, the doctor started talking about, you know, doctor stuff. And I was grabbed by this little kid who had the same name as my son Henry, and looked to be about the same age as my son, who was 9 at the time. And Henry just started walking me around the hospital. He took me to the laboratory, took me to the wards, and introduced me to a couple patients. And everywhere he went, he was like the mayor of that place. Like, everybody would rub his head and joke with him and pick him up and hug him. And I figured he was someone's kid, like one of the doctor's kids or one of the kitchen workers kids. And finally we made our way back to the doctors and they sort of shooed him away. And I said, whose kid is that? And they said, he's not anybody's kid here. He's a patient. And he's one of the patients we're really, really concerned about. Because it turns out Henry had a complicated case of drug resistant tuberculosis. And he wasn't nine like I had imagined. He was 17. He'd just been so stunted by malnutrition and then by TB that he looked much younger. And you know, what happened to Henry over the next few years as he tried to survive his form of drug resistant tuberculosis, which you or I would be cured of. No problem, is really what. What inspired my obsession with tb.

[Pablo Torre]

When you describe how your brain personally processes the idea of bacteria, it gives me a window into how it is maybe that you feel that call particularly acutely.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Could you explain how OCD and how your own reckoning with yourself fits into how it is that you spent all of this time immersed in this?

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

So, I mean, I want to be careful to not state that there are upsides to ocd, because in my experience, it's mostly downsides. A lot of downsides.

[Pablo Torre]

Doesn't make you better at FIFA.

[John Green]

That's. That's an incredible joke. That's so true. It doesn't make you better at FIFA, that's for sure. But also, does it, like, make you a good detective? Like that show Monk where he's got ocd, but he's a really good detective. That's not my experience at all, man. I'm a really bad detective when I'm sick. I can't pay attention to anything but my worries.

[Pablo Torre]

Tony Shalhoub, you goddamn liar.

[John Green]

Yeah, yeah, Tony Shalhoub, you sold me a bill of goods. Great show. But, yeah, I don't buy it all the way. So I don't think there's any upsides to ocd. I have spent a lot of my life, though, thinking about microbes and worrying about contamination and having a fear of that. And so I'm sure that fits into my life in ways that I don't fully understand. But I wanted to write about that a little bit in the book because I wanted, you know, I don't really like non fiction where the author doesn't acknowledge their place in it, you know, or like, what are the possible reasons why you might be focusing on this? And so I wanted to kind of explore that a little bit.

[Pablo Torre]

But just that basic question of, wasn't tuberculosis cured?

[John Green]

Yeah, no, it was. It was cured in the 1950s. And, you know, in sanatoriums around the United States, people essentially got up off of their deathbeds and went to live long and healthy and productive lives. But as the Ugandan doctor Peter Mujeni said of hiv, where are the drugs? The drugs are where the disease is not. And where is the disease? The disease is where the drugs are not. And that's still the case with tuberculosis. I mean, this is a disease. Disease that we've known how to cure since the 1950s, and since it became curable, we've let 150 million people die of it.

[Pablo Torre]

So this is where, as I'm reading your book and I'm like, underlining stuff. I'm like, okay, I'm going to underline a lot here. I should probably just come up with a new strategy for note taking because some of this stuff reads like crazy sports statistics.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, TB regained its status as the world's deadliest infectious disease in 2023, taking.

[John Green]

Covid 19's place as a leading cause of death from those diseases is tuberculosis, better known as TB. According to the World Health Organization, more than 8 million people worldwide were diagnosed with TB last year, which is.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

After Covid had briefly took over the number one spot. You know, the top seed from 2020 to 2023.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Right.

[John Green]

Yeah, I know. I mean, almost all of human history, TB has been our deadliest infection.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, before people get worried, man, you guys are going to go really into like, the darkest statistics in this book. I also want to point out that this is a story also about branding.

[John Green]

Totally about branding.

[Pablo Torre]

About the marketing of a disease.

[John Green]

Done a terrible job of marketing tuberculosis. It's got terrible branding.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, I mean, the idea that I'm going to. I'm going to quote you here what you write in the book. When TB rates declined in the US toward the end of the 19th century, some physicians worried it would harm the quality of American literature.

[John Green]

Oh, yeah, no.

[Pablo Torre]

With one writing quote, by way of compensation for good health, we may lack certain cultural joys.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

In that sense, TB used to have great branding. I mean, the best brand.

[Pablo Torre]

I didn't know anything about how tuberculosis was enshrined and in some ways fetishized.

[John Green]

Yeah, it was really heavily romanticized in the 19th century. At the time, it was understood to be an inherited disease, so there was nothing you could do to catch it. And so people weren't as worried about it in terms of catching it. And they thought that alongside inheriting tb, you also inherited other traits, like a really sensitive personality. And also you were super hot. You were really beautiful. You had very pale skin and rosy cheeks and wide, sunken eyes. You looked a little bit like an Edgar Allan Poe character. It's no, you know, hot. Yeah, well, I mean, that was considered hot at the time.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, no. Look at some of the paintings you provide in this. I can see it.

[John Green]

You can see it. You get the vibe. And this was a time when, you know, tuberculosis couldn't be stigmatized away because too many people had it. I mean, at the height of the frightful tuberculization of humanity, as one writer called it, I think in London, one in three people were dying of tuberculosis. And so everyone had tb, which at the time was called consumption. So what were you going to do about consumption other than romanticize it? So it became this disease of beauty and refinement and intellectualism. Like, of course, the great English poet John Keats died of tuberculosis, and when he was dying, his buddy Percy Shelley wrote him and said, you know, this tv, it does tend to strike people who write great verses as you have done, which I've always thought is hilarious, because Percy Shelley also had tuberculosis, and he knew that he had it. And so he was also kind of saying, like, and I have done. You know, I think we both know that we're both great poets, hence the tv.

[Pablo Torre]

This sort of, like, euphemism that was a consumptive chic.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Describing the women also applied to what it meant to be a great artist.

[John Green]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think Lord Byron said that he would like to die of consumption because the women would say, how beautiful and interesting Byron looks in dying. And it was seen to be a disease that made you a very good poet or a very good writer. It made you sensitive. It made you open to the suffering of the world. And what's so heartbreaking to me is that, you know, my friend Henry in Sierra Leone, who had tuberculosis, is also a poet and is a beautiful writer, and yet was not viewed that way because of the way that we imagine tuberculosis changing so drastically from being a romantic disease to being a stigmatized disease, from being a disease that, as Charles Dickens put it, wealth never warded off to being a disease that wealth pretty much entirely wards off.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. There is an American doctor, you quote in the book who had called it a disease of the master race. Yes, that was the before.

[John Green]

That was the before. So TB was very much racialized, and it was seen as a disease of civilization by white doctors, to be clear. Not. Not entirely, but it was seen as a disease of civilization, a disease of whiteness. And catastrophically, people who were colonialists believed that people in colonized regions couldn't get tb. So whether it was the Philippines or India or Sierra Leone, it was believed that those people couldn't get tb. And that has been catastrophic ever since. Because TB was allowed, consumption was allowed to spread completely unchecked in those in those communities which often had impoverished healthcare systems. And often there was very little to no investment in those healthcare systems. And so even today, you see where are the highest rates of tb? They're always in formerly colonized regions.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I mean, it seems like if you're going to track the end of the romance, the romantic era of TB and it then becoming something that is afflicting, infamously, the underclass.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

You're talking about following money.

[John Green]

You're talking about following money.

[Pablo Torre]

Industrialization.

[John Green]

Industrialization is the story of. Of how TB spread and the story of. Of why TB ended up where it ended up. And we've seen that in outbreak after outbreak. We don't just see it in London in the 18th and 19th centuries or in New York, in Baltimore in the 18th and 19th Centuries. We see it in Delhi, we see it in Lagos, we see it in Freetown, we see it in Manila. We see it everywhere. Where there is industrialization and poverty, we see tuberculosis.

[Pablo Torre]

You quote in the book. I wonder if you could just read some of Henry's poetry.

[John Green]

Yeah, I'd love to.

[Pablo Torre]

There's just this part.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

This is a poem that Henry wrote about his mom. Mom, you are Special and beautiful. You stand closer when everyone ran away, especially my cousin ran away, but you stood firm. And I love that poem because there's a tense change between. You stand closer when everyone ran away. As if the. The present tense of his mom. Like, she stays. She stands.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[John Green]

And everyone else ran past tense away. And that one's always struck me. I mean, Henry's a beautiful poet, but that one, that one in particular has always stuck with me.

[Pablo Torre]

Just the idea that this went from something that was worthy of bragging about by some of the great authors of our time to then being a thing to truly lament and mourn. Because it made Henry deeply lonely, let alone, you know, at risk.

[John Green]

It made him an outcast. And that's, unfortunately the case for many tuberculosis survivors. The healthcare workers have described to me that one of the greatest heartbreaks of working in a TB hospital is that a lot of times nobody feels like they can go to a funeral. And so family members don't go to the funerals. And so healthcare workers who cared for their patients are often the only people at those funerals. And it's just a hugely stigmatized disease. But it's important to understand that the reason it's stigmatized is because we don't do a good job of getting the cure to the people who need it. And so it's stigmatized in part because it's seen as dangerous. Right. We don't stigmatize strep throat. And the reason we don't stigmatize strep throat is that it's not a big deal anymore. Tuberculosis shouldn't be a big deal anymore. It should be a rare disease if it exists at all. And so it's our failure to get the cure to the people who need it that really results in stigma.

[Pablo Torre]

The part of what I'm sensing as the through line between, again, AFC Wimbledon to Henry and Sierra Leone is that this is also a story about class, obviously, and money and power.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And okay, who are we listening to when it comes to people who are saying this is happening to us and it's up?

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

Are we going to listen to the. To the fans or are we going to listen to the powers that be? Are we going to listen to the. The people who are suffering from tuberculosis or are we going to listen to the pharmaceutical companies that say it's impossible to provide cost effective care to those people?

[Pablo Torre]

Part of the branding problem as we now turn to the guy who put his logo again between the thigh and left buttock.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

Right where it belongs on a Soccer.

[Pablo Torre]

On a soccer short. Part of the branding problem of TV is that it's actually deeply fascinating once you realize how ubiquitous it has been in all of the sort of, like, movie scenes throughout human history.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

How do you sort of give the elevator pitch for its omnipresence?

[John Green]

I always say that tuberculosis is everything from geography to history. So it's geography in the sense that towns like Pasadena, California, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, only exist because they were essentially founded as tuberculosis colonies. It's history in the sense that World War I was started by two boys who were dying of tuberculosis and knew they were dying and so assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand together. Very tragic, obviously, but also quite farcical. As I write about in the book, it was, I mean, you know, a bunch of teenagers who were not particularly well, well organized or well equipped. And then combined with the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's utterly, unbelievably incompetent support staff.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. I mean, just briefly, the story I recall from the book is that there was some quote like, look, we're not going to have another attempted assassination.

[John Green]

That's exactly right. They had. Somebody said, like, what do you think? Sarajevo is full of assassins. And of course, Sarajevo was in fact, full of assassins. Narrator comes in and says, like, there were more assassins.

[Pablo Torre]

The cowboy hat.

[John Green]

The cowboy hat, yeah. There was a hat maker in New Jersey who got tuberculosis, and like so many TB survivors was told the only way he could survive was to go west and get some of that clean air, get out of the city, get out of New York and New Jersey and go get some clean air and see if he could dry his lungs out. This fella goes out to Missouri and he recovers. And for reasons we don't really understand, about 25% of people who develop active tuberculosis end up surviving and recovering. And I wish we understood that better, but we still don't really understand it that well. But he got better. And as he got better, he noticed that the hats out west kind of sucked. There were the coonskin caps that were literally bug infested. And then folks from Mexico and Tex had brought up straw hats that didn't work well in that Missouri reign. And so John B. Stetson, which was his name, developed the Stetson.

[Pablo Torre]

John Stetson. Sounds like a very fake name. You would make up for the guy.

[John Green]

Who invented that hat, the cowboy hat. It does. It does.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

He was fated for it.

[Pablo Torre]

Other names, though. George Orwell.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

George Orwell died of tb.

[Pablo Torre]

Ringo Starr.

[John Green]

Ringo Starr only became a Beatle because he learned how to drum in A sanatorium.

[Pablo Torre]

Thomas Wolfe.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

Thiago Silva.

[John Green]

Thiago Silva. Let's talk about Thiago Silva for a minute.

[Pablo Torre]

That one's not in your book.

[John Green]

It's not in my book, but I think about Thiago Silva a lot because people are like, can you connect football to tb? And I'm like, yeah, I don't even have to go back to like the 19th century or whatever. Like soccer and TB connect in the life of Thiago Silva. He started out in Brazil and then eventually made his way to Europe and ended up at Moscow. And that's when he developed a life threatening case of tb. Now, he'd probably had a TB infection for a long time, but for whatever reason, his disease became active when he was in Moscow and he almost died. He was really, really sick and had to leave the game for a while, but then made his way back into the game and became one of the greatest players of his generation. He won a Champions League like he. He became an amazing, amazing player. Chelsea champions.

[Sports Commentator]

The Blues.

[John Green]

And he's also a tuberculosis survivor.

[Pablo Torre]

But just some more context for the sportsy statistical parts of TB here. Right. So when you talk about TB being the number one deadliest infectious disease, the top seed in the March Madness bracket of illness, it's more than malaria, typhoid and war combined. Combined. But you also argue that it's not really caused by the bacteria as much as that is scientifically the answer to that question.

[John Green]

Yeah. Biomedically, tuberculosis is caused by a bacteria. But I don't think that's the only way we should imagine tuberculosis in the 21st century. You can't really say it's caused by a bacteria because we know how to kill the bacteria. We decrease tuberculosis rates by 99% in the United States. So we can't say it's caused by this bacterium. We know how to kill. We have to acknowledge that it's caused by us. Our systems that distribute resources the way that they distribute them. Our choices about whether or not we're going to distribute cures to the places where they're most needed. Those, those are the real causes of tuberculosis today.

[Pablo Torre]

There is a woman you write about in your book on that note, who was in India.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

How do you pronounce her name?

[John Green]

Shreya Tripathi. She sued her government of India to try to get access to bedaquilin, this really critical drug for treating drug resistant tuberculosis. It's incredibly powerful.

[YouTube Clip Speaker]

Now an even more extreme strain of TB is causing concern in India. An untreatable form resistant to all the drugs normally used, deadly and infectious. It's shown up in cities across the country. Doctors warn if it's not curtailed now, the spread will be devastating.

[John Green]

She eventually won that court case, but it took a long time and in the intervening time, her lungs just became too damaged for her to survive. And so even though the bedacolin was able to clear the infection, there was no way to save her life. And she died. I believe she was 19 years old. And I think about Shreya a lot because she cared about my work. Shreya loved the Fault in Our Stars and also was reading it, rereading it in the days before her death. And she was doing this heroic, heroic work to get not only for herself, but for all people living with drug resistant TB to increase access to Bedaquilin. And I didn't hear her call in time, you know, I didn't hear about the work that she was doing in. In time to be able to lend my little voice to that. And that's something I think about a lot. Like, how am I using the megaphone that I've been given? And what voices am I not hearing? I'm not. Why am I not hearing voices like Shreya's?

[Pablo Torre]

There's this way that you describe the power of the megaphone that you have, which is, by the way, not a small voice, but quite a large one. In as much as we all live in a deeply fragmented world where no.

[John Green]

One, no one has that large of a voice. Except for Beyonce.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right. And if Beyonce is listening to this.

[John Green]

Program, she's a friend of the pod.

[Pablo Torre]

We got some shorts that you might be interested in. But you use this analogy to playing Marco Polo.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

For content creation. And as somebody who is also in this, like, crazy making game of making content, it just spoke to me in a way that I had been trying to articulate. Could you explain the Marco Polo thing?

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[John Green]

So there's this children's pool game, Marco Polo, where one person closes their eyes and says, Marco, Marco, Marco. And then everybody else has to say Polo. And then that's how the person who's got their eyes closed finds somebody to tag and then they become the Marco person. In this game, it's kind of just a call and response of one person saying Marco and everybody else responding Polo. And that's how I feel about writing and content creation in general is that I'm saying, Marco, Marco. I'm in my basement for five years writing this book, saying, Marco, Marco, Marco. And then the book comes out and for the first time, I hear someone say Polo. And that's a magical, magical thing for me, whether it's a YouTube video, a crash course video, or, or a book, to hear that person say Polo is magical. But I also think, you know, it goes, it goes both ways. Like, I hear Shreya and, and other people who've died of TB telling, telling me, Marco, Marco. Marco. And asking me to respond. And this is, is this book is my attempt to respond, you know, part.

[Pablo Torre]

Of, I guess the helpful news bump, but also cruelty of this book.

[John Green]

Would have loved for this book to be a little less timely, man.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, you emerge after five years of obsession over this subject to discover that this is newsy this morning. Health officials in Kansas are dealing with the largest documented outbreak of tuberculosis in US history.

[John Green]

There's TB outbreaks on some level in the US every year. We have about 10,000 cases of active TB a year. So it's certainly not something that's eliminated from the United States by any stretch of the imagination. But also, I mean, I think that the biggest news story, and the most devastating one from the perspective of people who care about tb, is the defunding of USAID has had really profound consequences for people living with tuberculosis. The uncertainty around the Trump administration's sweeping funding freeze is also alarming many in the world of global health, since it could affect key programs overseen by the U.S. agency for International Development, or USAID.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, there is this larger argument that's going on right now in which you can point out, hey, we are killing children.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

By not supporting programs that have already paid for the things that would keep them alive.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And the counterargument is we need to worry about ourselves.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

How do you process that argument?

[John Green]

Well, the first thing I'd say about that is that a large measure of America's power over the last 50 years has come from its generosity. The second thing I'd say is that this is not only a problem in impoverished countries. To imagine that disease understands political borders is a fundamental misimagining of disease. Right. We know this from COVID We know it from hiv. We know it from every pandemic we've ever experienced. And by chaotically and without any warning discontinuing the treatment of hundreds of thousands of people living with tuberculosis. We know that when your treatment gets interrupted in the middle of your course of antibiotics, you are vastly more likely to develop drug resistance. That's a catastrophe, personally, for the person who's affected that way. But it's also societally an issue because it means that there's more drug resistant, more complicated drug resistant TB floating around in communities. People are acquiring more complicated drug resistant tb. All of that is, I mean, that should scare all of us, regardless of where we live, because a totally resistant form of tuberculosis that we have no tools to treat is. Isn't. Is truly a nightmare.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I mean, look, there's. They're just like levels to which there is relevance in your book. One of them, of course, has to do with, like, how our health and human services are currently going.

[John Green]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

The very premise of inoculation.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Right.

[John Green]

I mean, I think people are beginning to question the idea of inoculation itself, the idea of scientifically proven treatments itself. And a lot of those people have a lot of power right now. And that, that worries me.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I say all of that just to set up this notion that you quote from the Journal of Cost Benefit Analysis.

[John Green]

I do, yes. I'm not afraid to quote a journal of Cost Benefit Analysis. There's a journal for literally everything, man.

[Pablo Torre]

What I mean, again, just talk about consumptive chic. The Journal of Cost Benefit Analysis, they found that every dollar. This is a 2023 paper. Every dollar invested in TB yields 46 US dollars in benefits.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

On top of the fact that you would save, you know, almost 1 million deaths per year. But forgot about the deaths.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Right.

[John Green]

I mean, just from a financial perspective, think about how much money we. We used to spend on tuberculosis in the United States. I mean, at the height of the TB crisis in America in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, there were almost as many beds to treat people with tuberculosis as there were beds in hospitals for all other conditions combined. We spent a tremendous amount of resources trying to address the TB crisis in that period of American history. And now we spend far, far less because this is a curable disease that's infectious. And so we can just stop chains of infection and lower the burden of the disease. Which in turn means that we have to spend less money on the disease in the future.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. And as a byproduct of that, we should also point out that a kid in Sierra Leone, a kid like Henry, is over 100 times as likely to die of tuberculosis than a child born in the United States.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And so when it comes to how Henry is doing and how he became himself a case study.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

In modern medicine, that we should acknowledge here. What's the state of that union?

[John Green]

So Henry eventually, after failing a second line of antibiotics and, and being hospitalized for almost two years straight, losing the opportunity go to high School, losing countless opportunities. He was eventually, thanks to the incredible efforts of his doctor, Dr. Jerome Taffera, and the Sierra Leonean government and this organization, Partners in Health, all those folks came together to provide Henry with the kind of personalized, tailored response to his particular infection that you or I would have gotten on day one. And as a result, Henry was cured. He essentially got up off of his deathbed and lived. And now he takes care of his mother. He's a junior at the University of Sierra Leone. He's studying human resources and management. I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud to be his friend. And in writing this story, Henry was so generous in sharing his story with me and asking me to share his story more broadly, asking me to use that megaphone that you referred to to share his story. That's a big part of the reason why I wrote the book, was because Henry wanted me to.

[Pablo Torre]

And I fear now that you've buried the lead, because Henry is not merely someone who survived years of struggle and pain in that hospital alone. He's a goddamn YouTuber.

[John Green]

He's a YouTuber. He's such a good YouTuber too.

[YouTube Clip Speaker]

Guys, today we are going to talk.

[John Green]

About an important topic that is affecting.

[Pablo Torre]

Million of people worldwide.

[John Green]

Now, guys, the topic is TB or tb. He makes like firstperson content about. About life, daily life in Sierra Leone, about the challenges of gathering water, about what different neighborhoods in his community look like. You should Google Henry Ryder YouTube and make sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel every time we. We talk or every time he like talks to a group of people. He always. He's such a good YouTuber in this way. This is a critical. This is something we were talking about YouTube strategy before we went on the air.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[John Green]

This is something that I would tell you, please. Every single time Henry talks to an audience, he says, make sure you support Henry.

[Pablo Torre]

Make sure you subscribe and share.

[John Green]

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Don't be afraid to make the ask. All right, so he's not afraid to make the ask. Don't be afraid to make the ask. And I'll make the ask on his behalf. Google Henry Rider YouTube and check out his YouTube channel.

[Pablo Torre]

Your coaching tree grows, John.

[John Green]

I'm a regular Bill Belichick.

[Pablo Torre]

When I think about what I found out here at the end of the show, I am generally deeply concerned that the incentive structure we've set up on the Internet has led to not what you have described here, but the opposite. People who are using their megaphone for Genuine. And again, I get it. But just genuine enrichment via supplement. Promo codes.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Right?

[Pablo Torre]

And. And everything in that tree over there.

[John Green]

Yeah, yeah, that worries me, too. I mean, can I tell you my favorite joke? It's a Norm MacDonald joke. I mean, he heard it from someone else, but Norm MacDonald used to tell this joke about a moth that walks into a podiatrist's office. And podiatrist says, what seems to be the problem, moth? The moth says, oh, my God, Doc, if only there was just one problem. My wife doesn't love me anymore, and I don't blame her. I look in the mirror every day and I look at myself and I think, like, look at this lump of flesh. Look what I've become. My children, their failures. My son married a woman I hate, and my daughter, she has nothing to give me. I just hate life, Doc. I don't know if I can go on. And the podiatrist says, yeah, those are really serious problems, moth. I'm super sorry to hear that. But, you know, this is a podiatrist office. What brought you here today? And the moth says, oh, the light was on. That's my favorite joke. It's my favorite joke because, like, a huge percentage of the time as humans, we're just flying to the light. Yes. We don't even know why. We're just flying to the light of power, we're flying to the light of money, we're flying to the light of more, and we don't even think about why. And I'm certainly guilty of that myself. But my favorite things in life are where I think, like, you know, it would be a more interesting light to fly to or a more fun light to fly to would be something else. I think it's really hard when you're. I really feel for these young YouTubers who get successful when they're really young. I mean, I got. I got successful when I was married and, like an adult and I had kids and, like, my life was pretty set. 22, 23, 17, in some cases years old. It's a very different situation. And that's. That's really hard. But I would just encourage those folks to try to think about what are the interesting lights to fly toward instead of just the standard lights.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

John Green, thank you for shining a light on a subject that unfortunately now is also going to be a thing I tell lots of people about, whether they like it or not.

[John Green]

I love to hear that, man. I love to hear that.

[Pablo Torre]

As long as they subscribe to my channel.

[John Green]

That's right. There you go. Make the ask.

[Pablo Torre]

Thank you, John.

[John Green]

Thank you.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media Production and I'll talk to you next time.