ReThinking: John Green on fighting diseases of injustice

Summary

Podcast Summary: ReThinking – John Green on Fighting Diseases of Injustice

Podcast: ReThinking with Adam Grant (TED)
Episode: John Green on fighting diseases of injustice
Release Date: July 15, 2025
Host: Adam Grant
Guest: John Green

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Episode Overview

This episode of ReThinking dives into the intersection of health, justice, and creativity with bestselling author, educator, and activist John Green. The conversation centers around Green’s latest book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, which tackles the global injustice of tuberculosis (TB) and the systemic barriers to its eradication. Grant and Green explore themes of public health inequity, personal motivation, collaboration, creativity, mental health, book censorship, and the importance of finding meaning through human connection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

John's Motivation: Why Write About Tuberculosis?

• Highlight: John Green describes tuberculosis as the “exemplary disease of injustice” (04:21).
  • TB is the deadliest infectious disease globally, yet remains neglected and under-discussed.
  • Green’s personal connection: Meeting a young patient named Henry at a TB hospital in Sierra Leone, whose story highlighted the devastating personal cost of global health disparities (05:51).
  • Green: “To me, tuberculosis is the exemplary disease of injustice because... we know so little about it and we talk so little about it.” (04:21)

The Moral Outrage and Systemic Failures

• Injustice in Global Health: The tools to cure TB exist, but wealth and health resources are inequitably distributed.
  • Quote: “We have systems that don’t value all human lives equally.” – John Green (09:20)
  • Personal story: Green contrasts his brother’s expensive cancer treatment with the meager amount required to cure TB, noting the disparity in how lives are valued depending on context (08:01–09:31).
• Cost vs. Value: Green insists that eradicating TB is within our global means — $25 billion per year for ten years — but is stalled by a lack of political and financial will (09:43).
  • “As a species, we have those resources. We have those resources in abundance, frankly.” (09:43)

Advocating for Change: Pharma Pressure and Policy

• Pressure on Pharma: Green’s activism encourages pharmaceutical companies to lower TB drug prices.
  • Not all companies or workers are “evil,” but incentives are misaligned with public health need (10:35).
  • Success example: Johnson & Johnson relented on secondary patents for bedaquilin, slashing global prices after public and private pressure (11:08).
• The Public Sector’s Vital Role: Green underscores the irreplaceability of public investment, especially US foreign aid, in fighting TB. Cutting aid causes direct, deadly treatment interruptions (12:24).

  “Nothing can fill the gap that government leaves. But we have to try to fill some of these gaps…” (40:34)

Collaboration, Creativity, and Motivation

Working with Hank Green

• Deep sibling relationship is founded on “making things together”—whether for public consumption or as a private project (33:51).
  • “It's the joy of my life to be so tight with my brother and also to have somebody I can trust all the way down.” (33:21)

The Nature of Collaborative Action

• Effective pressure on corporations and policymakers often starts with private conversations, but sometimes public action becomes necessary (14:19).

Writing & Dealing with Writer’s Block

• Green advocates for “permission to be bad”; the key is starting, even if the initial output is poor (26:11).

  “Just start and be bad. You go back and watch the first videos that Hank and I made... they’re bad.” (26:11)

• The best writing apprenticeship is reading—especially learning from flawed works (27:52).

Motivation & Purpose

• Green loves motivational quotes — even the cheesy ones — and doesn’t shy from finding inspiration in them (34:20).
  • “The cheesier the better… I love that cheesy stuff because it’s true. It works on me.” (34:37)
• The real meaning and value, he claims, is in “being with each other, to be in community, and to carry each other through everything in life.” (41:12)

Dealing with Mental Health & Obsessive Thoughts

• Green is open about living with OCD and the misconception that mental illness is incompatible with success (20:02).
• Discusses how his obsession with disease (as a subject and a fear) ties into his writing and activism (18:53).

The ‘Marco Polo’ Metaphor for Creative Work

• Writing (and creative expression more broadly) is described as a game of Marco Polo: the creator calls out into the void, and only when someone answers (“Polo”) does the work fully exist (16:24).
  • “That’s how I think of writing… Eventually the book comes out and for the first time, I hear someone say back to me, ‘Polo’. And it’s the loveliest thing.” (16:24–16:57)
• Applies this to his regret about not hearing an early call for help from Shreya, a TB patient and fan (17:09).

Book Bans and Censorship

• Green’s books, while used in educational settings and widely celebrated, are also among those banned in schools. He describes this as “mostly just hurts my feelings” and more detrimental for librarians and teachers than for himself (24:10).
  • “It really has hurt the ability of my books to reach people… the vast majority [of banned titles] are LGBTQ authors or authors of color.” (24:10)

Combating Conspiracy Theories

• Discussion on how to reach those caught in conspiratorial mindsets: ask what sources they trust, and what would persuade them otherwise (23:39).

Quick Hits: Lightning Round

• Deletes tweets when they go beyond his intended audience: “The moment it escapes containment… I’m like, oh, no, I didn’t mean that for you.” (38:22)
• Views on AI in creative careers: “I don’t know. And I think anyone who says they know is not telling the truth.” (38:59)
• “Long live long form” (39:12).
• Favorite soda is Dr. Pepper, which he lauds as “the greatest achievement in human history” (39:30).

Inspiring Hope: Progress & Meaning

• To show aliens humanity is worth saving, Green would show the graph of under-5 mortality rates declining by 60% since the mid-1990s — not by accident, but by concerted, compassionate global effort (31:39).
• Closing definition of the meaning of life: “To be with each other, to be in community, and to carry each other through everything in life… and to pay attention.” (41:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On TB as injustice:

  “We have systems that don’t value all human lives equally.” – John Green (09:20)

• On intrinsic motivation:

  “You have to find some of that [validation] within you. Because if you’re only looking for external validation, my experience is, it will never be enough.” – John Green (29:24)

• On creative beginnings:

  “Just start and be bad.” – John Green (26:11)

• On motivation:

  “The cheesier the better... I love that cheesy stuff because it’s true. It works on me.” – John Green (34:37)

• On humanity’s worth:

  “We decreased child mortality by 60%... it happened because millions of people... came together and decided to prioritize the lives of children.” – John Green (31:39)

• On meaning:

  “The meaning of life is to be with each other, to be in community, and to carry each other through everything in life.” – John Green (41:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• John’s Path to Writing (College & Realism): 01:35–03:07
• Why TB? Personal Stories: 04:04–07:43
• Inequality in Treatment Access: 08:01–09:31
• Activism & Pharma Accountability: 10:35–12:24
• The ‘Marco Polo’ Metaphor and Shreya’s Story: 16:02–18:26
• Living with OCD & Disease Obsession: 18:34–19:52
• Combatting Book Bans: 24:10–26:03
• Writer’s Block & Writing Advice: 26:11–29:24
• Sibling Collaboration & Hank’s 2D Glasses: 29:53–31:26
• If Aliens Came—Graph of Child Mortality: 31:39–32:46
• How to Build Deep Collaborations: 33:51–34:06
• Motivational Quotes—Yay or Nay: 34:20–36:28
• Lightning Round: 38:02–39:30
• Action on TB & The Meaning of Life: 40:34–41:47

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Action Steps and Takeaways

1. Support organizations like Partners in Health working on TB eradication and equitable healthcare (40:34).
2. Advocate for public investment by contacting legislators and fighting for foreign aid funding for vital global health threats.
3. Find meaning in community and in “paying attention” — to issues, to loved ones, and to the world’s needs.

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Episode Tone and Character

The episode is energetic, personal, and earnest—balancing devastating realities with hope, humor, and practical advice. John Green is open, self-deprecating, and deeply committed to making invisible injustices visible and actionable. Adam Grant’s incisive, warm questioning keeps the conversation moving and layered with insight.

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For listeners: This conversation makes the global fight against diseases of injustice personal and actionable, while also providing rich guidance on pursuing meaningful creative work and nurturing collaboration.

Transcript

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[John Green]

Did I talk too much?

[Adam Grant]

Can't I just let it go?

[John Green]

I wish I would stop thinking so much. Take a breath.

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[John Green]

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[John Green]

When I got out of college I thought there were like three jobs Doctor, lawyer and other. And I knew I was gonna be an other.

[Podcast Host Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. John Green sees what's possible more than what seems impossible. John is one of my favorite writers, thinkers and humans. You might know him as the co creator of the wildly popular education series Crash Course or the co host of Vlogbrothers with his brother Hank. Or the best selling author of beloved books like the Fault in Our Stars.

[John Green]

I always loved writing, but it didn't seem like a realistic career option to me. It seemed like being an astronaut or something or being a professional athlete. Like not something that regular people could do.

[Podcast Host Adam Grant]

John has a new book out Everything Is Tuberculosis. I brought him to the Authors at Wharton series to talk live about solving big problems, building great collaborations, responding to book bans or clashing stances on motivational quotes, and finding motivation.

[John Green]

If there's one thing that you take from listening to me, I hope that it's, if that doofus can do it, why can't I? Hey, everybody.

[Adam Grant]

John Green, welcome to Penn.

[John Green]

Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be with all y'. All.

[Adam Grant]

You think that now, but we'll see how you feel in an hour.

[John Green]

I feel very confident that these people seem nice, and I bet they submitted great questions. I'm worried about you.

[Adam Grant]

What are you worried about?

[John Green]

Oh, I always worry a little bit when I get interviewed by you because you're a very good interviewer.

[Adam Grant]

Do you want me to be a bad interviewer?

[John Green]

No, no, no. I do prefer a good interview. But you are unusually good, for sure.

[Adam Grant]

That's a lot of pressure now. Thanks, John Green.

[John Green]

You're welcome.

[Adam Grant]

For lowering the stakes here. Okay, so I have to tell you, I was deeply ambivalent about this book when I saw it because I would not normally read a book about tuberculosis.

[John Green]

Right.

[Adam Grant]

But I would normally read a book by John Green.

[John Green]

That was my hope, is that I could force you into reading a book about tuberculosis.

[Adam Grant]

Well, it worked. And dare I say, it was a page turner.

[John Green]

Thank you. That was my hope.

[Adam Grant]

I was kind of shocked, but I thought it was beautifully written. Obviously, the topic could not be more important, although I didn't realize the importance of it until I read your words. But it was also arresting and motivating in a way that I think is really unusual for a book.

[John Green]

So why.

[Adam Grant]

Why did you force us to read about tuberculosis?

[John Green]

Well, to me, tuberculosis is the exemplary disease of injustice. I mean, I also could have written about malaria or HIV or diabetes or cancer. You know, if you look at a map of my hometown of Indianapolis and you look at the map of poverty and you look at the map of cancer rates, it's the same map. And so there are lots of diseases I could have written about, but to me, tuberculosis is the exemplary disease of injustice because we know so little about it and we talk so little about it. I mean, this is the deadliest infectious disease in the world, and yet I didn't know that. I think most people don't know that. And that speaks to tuberculosis. Long history of kind of being neglected.

[Adam Grant]

I had no idea, frankly, any of the history that you covered in the book. And it was sort of horrifying to learn. How many times do we have to go through figuring out that we can cure this before we actually make the cure available everywhere?

[John Green]

Apparently, we have to go through it at least one more time.

[Adam Grant]

Devastating. Tell me about what got you interested in tuberculosis? Because I think the personal connection to this story was really moving.

[John Green]

Yeah. So it's one thing to say 1.25 million people die of a disease every year, which is the case with tuberculosis, but if you don't know anyone with tuberculosis, then you're kind of multiplying 1.25 million by zero. And it's hard to understand what that means. But I'm able to multiply 1.25 million by several. And one of the reasons. Let me start that over. Adam. I don't like my answer.

[Adam Grant]

You can't self edit during a live interview.

[John Green]

I'm self editing the podcast. I'm self editing the live interview. It's happening right now. You're watching it occur. The short answer, which is how I'm going to answer the question. I met a kid at a tuberculosis hospital in Sierra Leone, and when I got to that tuberculosis hospital, I didn't even know there were tuberculosis hospitals. I thought tuberculosis hospitals were a phenomenon of the 1910s, you know? And so we visit this tuberculosis hospital, and there's this little kid, and his name is Henry, which is my son's name. And he looked to be about the same age as my son, who was 9 at the time. And he. Henry walked me all around this tuberculosis hospital, and he showed me the wards, and he showed me the laboratory, and he showed me the kitchen where they made food. And I figured he must be somebody's kid, like a doctor or a nurse or something. Finally, we made our way back to the doctors, who were kind of gathering together, talking about cases, and they sort of shooed Henry away in a very loving manner. He was sort of like the mayor of that hospital. Like, everywhere he went, people would greet him and say, like, oh, Henry, it's great to see you. And. And I said, whose kid is that? And they said, he's a patient. And he's one of the patients we're really concerned about because we know his tuberculosis is not responding well enough to the antibiotics. So even though he was relatively healthy and able to walk around, they could tell that his tuberculosis was inevitably going to come roaring back, and that when it did, they wouldn't have any tools in a country like Sierra Leone to help him. They also told me that Henry wasn't 9. He was 17. He'd just been so emaciated by. First by malnutrition and then by TB that he looked much younger. And it was really in following Henry's story and learning more about Henry, especially after I reunited with him in 2023 that I wanted to write this book.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I think you've given him a way to help a ton of people. One of the things that I felt was a tremendous amount of moral outrage reading this book because it just seems wrong that over a million people are going to die of this disease. And we know exactly what we need to do to save them. And it's not happening. Why not?

[John Green]

Well, this great Ugandan doctor, Dr. Peter Mujeni, said once of HIV AIDS drugs, 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 very much the case with tuberculosis. We have really good tools for curing tuberculosis. Now, it's not easy to cure. It's a bacterial infection, but it's not like getting strep throat or something. You have to take antibiotics, a combination of antibiotics every day for four or maybe six months. If you have drug resistant tuberculosis, that can be much longer, 12 or 18 months. My friend Henry took over 20,000 pills over the course of his treatment over many years while he was being treated for tuberculosis. So it's not an easy disease to cure, but it is very curable. And the reason is, is that it's seen as expensive is one reason it's viewed as expensive. But it's not expensive. Like my brother had cancer a couple years ago, as you know, Adam, and it cost about 150 times more to cure my brother's cancer than it cost to cure Henry's tuberculosis. And at no point did anyone say to my brother, I'm just not sure this is cost effective. Nobody said that to my brother. And so I think about that a lot in the context of tuberculosis survivors, because it's a similarly hard disease to cure in the sense that it takes months of treatment, just like my brother's cancer did. But it's very curable. And the short answer to why we don't cure it is that we simply have systems that don't value all human lives equally.

[Adam Grant]

So what do we do about that? I think you came down in two places on cost benefit analysis in this book. You gave us a very compelling benefits outweigh the cost calculation.

[John Green]

Benefits so outweigh the cost, y', all, it's incredible. I mean, look, it would cost $25 billion a year for about 10 years to eradicate tuberculosis, which is a lot of money, more than I have. Just looking at the faces in this room, I think very few of you probably have $25 billion. Although if you do, please contact Me, have I got a disease for you to eradicate? But as a species, we have those resources. We have those resources in abundance, frankly.

[Adam Grant]

And.

[John Green]

And so what drives me absolutely bonkers is knowing that we have the ability to confront this disease and that we choose not to.

[Adam Grant]

You have taken matters into your own hands. I've watched you taking on pharma using your megaphone. What have you learned?

[John Green]

Well, pharmaceutical companies aren't evil, and the people who work at them aren't evil. That's the first thing I've learned. Like, the people who work at them are nice people and good people who want to get new and better treatments to more people. But some of the systems that they work under really prioritize maximizing profit. Right. And so we end up in this very strange situation where coming up with a drug that lengthens your eyelashes is much more valuable than coming up with a drug that treats tuberculosis.

[Adam Grant]

I'm sorry, is that a drug?

[John Green]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It actually is a drug that.

[Adam Grant]

Why do you know this?

[John Green]

These people on this treatment would have these beautiful long lashes. And so they were like, we should totally repurpose this drug and make it incredibly profitable. And they did. So what I've learned is that because these systems require these companies to try to maximize profit, a lot of times there's a misalignment between the needs of human health and the needs of the market. And those are the places where we have to come in as groups of individuals and pressure those companies to at least make those drugs and. And those diagnostic tests and those tools available in impoverished communities at cost or near cost. And that isn't a huge inconvenience to those companies. I'll be frank with you. Johnson. And Johnson doesn't need bedaquin in order to be profitable. And so eventually, under pressure, they did abandon all of their secondary patents on bedaquilin. And so now this incredibly powerful TB drug has gone from being way too expensive to seeing its price drop by 55% in just two years, because now there's generic competition, okay?

[Adam Grant]

So obviously, private sector is one place to go. You also make a case, though, that public investment is necessary.

[John Green]

It's hugely important. I mean, the one half of one penny per tax dollar that we were spending on foreign aid until about eight weeks ago was, I think, the best investment that the American people made. America has traditionally been the most generous donor in the fight against tuberculosis. The United States expresses its power partly through its generosity. That's been the case for centuries, really. And there is no replacing public investment. I mean, the majority of people who've seen their treatment interrupted by the USAID defunding stockouts will die. Like I said earlier, it takes four to six months of antibiotics to cure this disease. But if you interrupt your treatment in the middle of those four to six months, it's catastrophic. Even if you only interrupt it for a couple weeks, it means a skyrocketing risk of developing drug resistance. If you have drug resistant tb, it means a skyrocketing risk of developing further drug resistance, which is a catastrophe not only for that individual who is very likely to die, but it is also a societal catastrophe because it means much more drug resistant tuberculosis circulating in communities that's harder to treat and it also risks the great terror of us all, which is a version of tuberculosis that we have no tools to address, which would take us right back to the 1910s and 1930s when my great uncle died.

[Adam Grant]

So, John, given that scenario, it seems like private investment is an important band aid, at least. When I see you sort of going after a company on social media, my first thought is, you've done this so often and so effectively now that do you even need the megaphone? Can you just reach out to the CEO and say, I would really hate to create a PR crisis. Can you just fix this now?

[John Green]

Oh, I do that.

[Adam Grant]

And how does it work compared to the public approach?

[John Green]

I mean, I much prefer a private approach. I do not enjoy publicly naming and shaming anyone or anything. I'm not a confrontational person. My brother and I have worked together for 20 years. We've had one argument in those 20 years. It's very difficult for me to be confrontational. So I find it wildly unpleasant to confron the most powerful corporations in the world. I would much rather have a private conversation with them. And I try to have those private conversations every time or offer to have those private conversations. And I say, I think we both don't want this and it can be very effective. You know, I think a lot can happen in private and we've seen some meaningful change in the world of tuberculosis tools when it comes to private conversations. But sometimes it has to become public.

[Adam Grant]

I may not be the only person in the room wondering, what was the fight with Hank?

[John Green]

Oh, it was during the first VidCon. My brother and I started a YouTube conference and some like some screen wasn't working properly and I said, hank, the screen isn't working properly. And he said, I know. And I said, you need to fix it. And he said, stop looking at me that way. And I said, I don't know where else to put my eyes. And that was it. We didn't talk for like six hours. And then I was like, I didn't know where to put my eyes. And he was like, I get it, man. I forgive you. So, yeah, it resolved fairly easily.

[Adam Grant]

Thank you for clarifying that. So when I was reading the book, there were all these gems buried in it. And one of my favorite moments, maybe my favorite paragraph, was about Marco Polo. Talk to us about that because I think it says something really meaningful about both the human condition and a writer's life.

[John Green]

Yeah. So there's this children's pool game that you might have played called Marco Polo where one person closes their eyes in the pool and says, marco, Marco. And the other people have to say polo, Polo. And then the Marco person kind of uses their echolocation to tag somebody.

[Adam Grant]

Never heard it described that way before.

[John Green]

But at any rate, that's how I think of writing, is that I'm sitting in my basement for years writing some version of Marco, Marco, Marco. And eventually the book comes out and for the first time, I hear someone say back to me, polo. And it's the loveliest thing. It's the most amazing thing. And it's true for all creative work, really. I mean, on the Internet, the Marco Polo happens much faster, Right? You say Marco on Instagram and somebody says Polo three seconds later or whatever, which I don't find quite as fulfilling. But it still works.

[Adam Grant]

Not on my Internet. When I say Marco more often, they're like, but why did you choose Marco? Why wasn't it just Mark? Isn't Marco spelled with a K, not a C?

[John Green]

How can you be talking about Marco at a time like this? You're so right, man. They don't say Polo. That's why I don't like it as much. That's why I like writing books more, is because you have a long. You have more of a chance to really engage in a deeper conversation and people hopefully understand why you're saying Marco at the end of it. But I also think it works in the sense. I mean, I write about it in the book in the context of this young woman named Shreya, who was a big fan of my book the Fault in Our Stars. And she died of drug resistant tuberculosis. She died suing her government trying to get access to that drug I mentioned earlier, Bedaquilin. And when she died, she was actually reading the, rereading the Fault in Our Stars in the last days of her life. And I often think if I'd become alive to the tuberculosis crisis. Earlier, if I had heard Shreya's voice crying out, marco, Marco, Marco. You know, I might have been able to say Polo in a meaningful way, but I didn't hear that voice. And I think about what that says about my information feed. I think about what that says about the privilege that I enjoy in my life and how I can do a better job of listening to people who are crying out Marco, as well as being the who's saying Marco.

[Adam Grant]

That's such a poignant sentiment. I think it also gives us a little bit of a window into your self described, sometimes obsessive thoughts.

[John Green]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

So you've written extensively about your experience with ocd. By now, it comes up in the book, and I hadn't seen the connection until you called it out that you're writing a book about tuberculosis and many of your own obsessive fears revolve around disease.

[John Green]

I spend a lot of time thinking about disease, probably more than the average person, although I would argue. I mean, my OCD is deeply irrational and everything, and it has nothing to do with reason or with reality or with the world as it actually is. It's a distorted thinking process. But I think it probably. It must be related on some level to my fascination with infectious disease and with writing about disease in general. On the other hand, it's always been confusing to me why more people don't write about disease. This thing that kills 90% of us, we spend so much time writing about other things that kill and harm us, like war and divorce and everything, and so little time writing about disease, which is overwhelmingly, I think, like both the greatest expression of injustice in the world because disease tends to follow the paths of injustice that we blaze for it, but also, like, for lack of a better term, it's just super important. I'm confused why other people don't worry about it.

[Adam Grant]

I share that confusion. I think one of the extraordinary things you've done in the past few years is you made it really clear to people, hey, you can be extremely successful and also struggle with mental illness.

[John Green]

Yes, I've lived with fairly serious illness for most of my adult life, and yet I also have a really wonderful life. And those things aren't mutually exclusive at all. Of course I'm worried. Life is worrisome, and the world right now, especially, is worrisome. But that doesn't tell the full story.

[Podcast Host Adam Grant]

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[Adam Grant]

John it seems like there are a growing number. There's a growing number of people who are dealing with irrational fears and thoughts right now. Only unlike you, they don't realize their beliefs are irrational. And I wonder if you could talk to us about how you think about.

[John Green]

Confronting that when it comes to trying to help people when they're pretty far down a conspiratorial rabbit hole. I don't know how to do that. And I have folks like that in my own life, and it's really hard and heartbreaking, and, you know, it's easy to get lost out there, and especially in an ocean of information, it's easy to get lost. It's hard to understand how reliable information works. And I think the architecture of the Internet makes it harder to be honest with you.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I think so too. Just from reading some of the research on debunking unfounded conspiracy theories, it seems like a helpful starting point is just to ask people, what sources do you consider credible and what would convince you that your beliefs are wrong? And once you find out what they find persuasive, it's a little bit easier to reach them on their terms.

[John Green]

Right. That's interesting. Well, I'll try to use that with my family.

[Adam Grant]

Try it at your own risk. So while your crash course videos are being gobbled up in schools at the same time, some of your books are being banned?

[John Green]

Yeah, that's a weird experience. Like, people always ask me, how do you feel about it? And they want me to be, like, outraged. And I guess I am outraged. But, like, mostly it just hurts my feelings to be called a pornographer. I really. That's not what I set out to do. And I think that if you read those books that way, it's weird. That's. My main feeling, is that it seems weird. It really bugs me. And, look, I'm not on the. I'm not the hero of that story or the main character of that story. The main character of that story are the teachers and librarians who are daily affected by this collective insanity that's caused lots of school districts to ban lots of books. But it's devastating. I mean, it really has hurt the ability of my books to reach people. And that's true for lots of other authors, the vast majority of whom are LGBTQ authors or authors of color. I sometimes feel like I'm thrown in there. So they'll say, look, we're not racist. We also ban John's books.

[Adam Grant]

I guess I have to wonder. It seems to be the case that sometimes book banning is counterproductive. Right. It just draws attention to the very book that people are trying to sweep under the rug. Have you experienced that at all?

[John Green]

I think that used to be the case more than it's the case now. I think the chilling effect has actually begun to work fairly well so that sales of highly banned books, instead of going up like they used to, are now going down. I. It just. It's so hard to fight against. And yet we have to fight against it because we have to stand up for the librarians and teachers who want to be able to teach and curate their libraries in line with their expertise. I mean, we have trained and hired people to do this work, and those people are teachers and librarians. And we just need to trust them to do their jobs.

[Adam Grant]

Bravo. So a bunch of questions that were submitted are about writing. This seems like a good time to ask a few of them. How do you deal with writer's block when you have it?

[John Green]

Well, my dad always used to tell me that coal miners don't get to get coal miners block, but I never found that very helpful. So what I find helpful is giving myself permission to be bad. You know, to write poorly, to not know where I'm going. Like, I delete 80 or 90% of my first drafts. And so there's no consideration about trying to, you know, make sure that every word that goes down on paper is going to survive into the final manuscript. So I just try to give myself permission to suck. I think a lot of times we spend so much time in the preparatory phases thinking about how we want to do something, thinking about how we're going to do something and what it might look like and who we might do it with. Just start. Just start and be bad. You go back and watch the first videos that Hank and I made in 2007. They're bad. And I'm not being modest. We've made good videos since then, but not then. Those videos were bad. And about 300 people loved them. But they loved them because they loved us. And so I think just starting sometimes is the hardest thing. Like, it's a cliche to say that the scariest thing for a writer is an empty word document. But it's true. It's really hard to write the first word. The first word is so much harder than the second word.

[Adam Grant]

I think you might be onto something. The best preparation is action.

[John Green]

Absolutely. That's so much more succinct. God, this guy.

[Adam Grant]

For the aspiring writers in the room, do you have a favorite writing tip?

[John Green]

I think the best apprenticeship we have as writers is reading. Right? Like we get to learn directly from Toni Morrison. We get to learn directly from Shakespeare. I almost, I used to work as a book reviewer and I reviewed hundreds and hundreds of books over a five year period while I was writing Looking for Alaska. And I almost preferred the bad ones in terms of learning about writing because then you can see the strings of the puppets moving a little bit more and you can be like, oh, like that's how you do that. That's how you get a character to walk through a doorway. Because all I want to do, Adam, honestly, when I'm writing fiction is have two people in a room talking to each other about their problems.

[Adam Grant]

You should have been a psychologist. What is the worst career advice you've ever gotten?

[John Green]

Oh, I've gotten so much bad career advice. First off, there are so many different careers. But the truth is, regular people engage in all kinds of creative work, and they do it in all sorts of different ways. It may be a side hustle, it may be a passion project. It may be something that you choose not to monetize. But regular people do creative work in all sorts of ways. The value for me is in the making of the thing. You have to be able to find value in making the thing. And that's true whether or not it's creative work or a marketing campaign, because you have to find a little bit of the intrinsic value in doing the work. Because otherwise you become entirely reliant upon exterior feedback. Exterior, positive, it doesn't matter.

[Adam Grant]

Validation.

[John Green]

Validation, that is God, Adam Grant. That is the exact word that I was looking for. You're looking for external validation, and you have to find some of that within you. Because if you're only looking for external validation, my experience is, it will never be enough. You have to find meaning in the making of the thing, not just meaning in the way the thing is received.

[Adam Grant]

Well put. I got a text earlier from a super fan of yours who insisted I ask you this question.

[John Green]

Oh, God.

[Adam Grant]

The question is, John, what is your favorite Hank Green creation? Oh, that came from Hank Green.

[John Green]

He knows what I'm going to say. He invented a form of glasses that render three dimensional movies in a crisp two dimensions.

[Adam Grant]

Isn't that backward? Okay, nevermind.

[John Green]

Yeah, he called me and he was like, hey, I figured out a way to make 3D movies. Just be in 2D. I said, why would you want to do that, Hank? That's the worst idea I've ever heard. People pay extra to go to the 3D movie theater. Why would they see the movie in 2D? And he was like, it's for people who want to go to the movies with their friends, but don't get headaches when they watch 3D movies. And I was like, hank, your market for this product is six people, and the product cannot cost more than $8. So we're looking at a maximum return of like, 20 bucks. Well, 100,000 copies of 2D glasses later. Boy, was I wrong. Turns out there are a lot of people who want to watch 3D movies in two dimensions. And Hank is a genius, and I was wrong. And when he asked me for $5,000 in startup capital, I should have provided it.

[Adam Grant]

Team Hank all the way on that one.

[John Green]

Yeah, no, he saw it coming. So, I mean, it's hard to pick a favorite thing that Hank has done, but I always say 2D glasses because it's the most ludicrous thing he's done.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. He did submit a follow up question that was more serious. Hank says, my real question is, John, if you had to quickly prove to aliens that humanity was worth saving, what would you show them?

[John Green]

I think there's so much I could show them because we're capable of such compassion and generosity and we're capable of such sacrifice for each other. But I would actually show them a graph. I would show them a graph that begins the year I graduated from high school, 1995, and ends today. And that graph would show the number of children who die every day. And what that graph would show is that the year I graduated from high school, 12 million children died under the age of 5. And last year, fewer than 5 million did. And that progress was not inevitable. It was not natural. It did not happen because people. Because people were always going to get healthier or we were always going to make the world safer for children. It happened because millions of people, billions of people, if you count all the taxpayers who participated in that progress, came together and decided to prioritize the lives of children, decided that children's lives should have value. And as a result, we've decreased child mortality by 60% in the years since I graduated from high school. And what breaks my heart is that that might not be true for much longer.

[Adam Grant]

Wow, that's really powerful. I have to continue on the Hank thread a little bit here.

[John Green]

Hank is my brother, by the way, in case there's anyone who doesn't know that.

[Adam Grant]

I feel that's been established.

[John Green]

Yeah, he's my little brother, and he's very successful on TikTok. I think it's important for you to know that he's mostly a big deal on TikTok.

[Adam Grant]

Well, strangely enough, this goes to one of the questions I want to ask you, which is, I don't feel envy very often, but when I watch you and Hank collaborate, I think, oh, it would be so cool to have a sibling relationship like that.

[John Green]

It's really, really special. I mean, my brother is my closest collaborator. He is my oldest friend. You know, in adulthood, it's Very difficult to remain close to your siblings. In fact, Hank and I weren't particularly close. I left for boarding school when my brother was 11, so I never knew him as a teenager. And it is the joy of my life to be so tight with my brother and also to have somebody I can trust all the way down. And I really am kind of the tale to Hank Green's comment.

[Adam Grant]

Is there something you can teach us about how to build that kind of relationship?

[John Green]

Make stuff together. You don't have to make it for anybody else. Make pottery together. Have a project where you exchange video blogs once a week? Just make something together.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. So one of my most brilliant collaborators, Marissa Shandell, is here, and she sent me a video that you and Hank did a while back. It was a vlogbrothers video about motivation. And it shocked me because you talked about how you love motivational quotes.

[John Green]

I do.

[Adam Grant]

I watched that and I was like, john Green likes motivational quotes. This is just incongruous. Like, you're a deep thinker and you write about important, complicated things.

[John Green]

Thank you.

[Adam Grant]

And you like these cheesy. What is going on here?

[John Green]

The cheesier the better, you know? Like, it's not about how many times you fall. It's about how many times you get up. I'm like, yeah, it is. I love that cheesy stuff because it's true. It works on me. And so I am deeply inspired by the cheesiest, like, always attributed to Anonymous, because nobody is willing to take any credit for having said something so silly. But I love it. I love an encouragement.

[Adam Grant]

Maybe you can help me with this, because I see a lot of those quotes and I just roll my eyes and I'm like, first of all, where's your randomized, controlled experiment to support that? But secondly, some of them are just wrong. Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you'll still land in the stars. First of all, the moon is closer than any star, so that's wrong.

[John Green]

Vastly closer.

[Adam Grant]

Secondly, you'll probably get hit by an asteroid.

[John Green]

Yeah, well, also, if you shoot for the moon and you land in the stars, it's a catastrophe. You're so far from the moon, you're light years away from the moon.

[Adam Grant]

Also, stars are very uncomfortably high.

[John Green]

Very high. You don't want to land amid a star. That's a catastrophe. That's the last thing you'll ever do. No, I agree with you. A lot of them don't work for me. But the ones that do work work for me. The ones that are technically inaccurate don't work for me. Like sometimes people ascribe them to me, you know, like. Cause I did say in one of my books, in an abundance of Catherine's, what's the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? But that's at the beginning of the book. And then the whole book is about proving that wrong. The point of life is to be here with each other in true solidarity and try to ease each other's journeys. And so I spent the rest of that novel trying to prove that quote wrong. And everyone always quotes the quote and I'm like, no.

[Adam Grant]

Out of context. Very disappointing. Only Boost Mobile Boost Mobile will give you a free year of service.

[John Green]

Free year when you buy a new 5G phone. New 5G phone. Enough. But I'm your hype man. When you purchase an eligible Device, you get $20 off every month for 12 months with credits totaling one year of free service. Taxes extra for the device and service plan online only.

[Capital One Tech Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

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[Adam Grant]

Okay, lightning round time. Are you ready for this?

[John Green]

I love a lightning round.

[Adam Grant]

Excellent. All right, first question. You delete most of your tweets.

[Podcast Host Adam Grant]

Why?

[John Green]

I mean, have you been on Twitter? That's the answer. I'm sorry, I thought this was a lightning round. Adam.

[Adam Grant]

It is, but I wanted to hear why. What leads you to abandon the thought you thought was worth sharing?

[John Green]

Oh, the moment that it escapes containment and like it starts to get retweeted by people or commented on by people who aren't in my community. I'm like, oh, no, I didn't mean that for you.

[Adam Grant]

What's something you've rethought lately?

[John Green]

Oh, my God. Almost everything. I have rethought my relationship to organizations like usaid, who I've, you know, like, I've often been critical of, but I also feel very strongly about. But like, I feel very strongly about their work. And their work has made a huge difference and saved millions of lives.

[Adam Grant]

What do you think is the biggest impact that AI will have on creative careers?

[John Green]

I don't know. And I think anyone who says they know is not telling the truth. I don't know. I don't know.

[Adam Grant]

Some people say long form is dead. I say, long live long form. What do you say?

[John Green]

I say long live long form. Long form is the future, I think. Good.

[Adam Grant]

That's good news for a lot of us.

[John Green]

But I'm also biased. I mean, I write books for a living.

[Adam Grant]

Touche. To close the lightning round, if you could only have either Banana scratch and sniff or Dr. Pepper, what would you choose?

[John Green]

Oh, torture. But Dr. Pepper, it's my daily companion. Dr. Pepper is the greatest achievement in human history. It's the only soda that has no natural world analog. It doesn't taste like an orange or like a kola nut or like vanilla or like lemon lime. It tastes like the soda Fountain in 1889 in Waco, Texas, smelled when Charles Alderton tried to invent a soda that tasted like the smell of that particular pharmacy.

[Adam Grant]

Are you sure you're not on their payroll?

[John Green]

No, I tried to be. Adam, I had this incredible conversation with the Dr. Pepper Snapple Company. They were like, hey, we know you're a big fan. We'd love to talk to you about a sponsorship. And I was like, Dr. Pepper should sponsor humanity's relationship with the moon. And they were like, we were hoping that you would make a TikTok saying that you like Dr. Pepper. And I was like, that's boring and I do it anyway. They never had a follow up call.

[Adam Grant]

All right, John, so two closing questions before we end. One is just coming back to tuberculosis for those in the room who want to do something about it. Where can we begin?

[John Green]

Nothing can fill the gap that government leaves. But we have to try to fill some of these gaps with organizations like Partners in Health that are doing incredible work on tuberculosis. So if you can support those organizations any way you can. But then the other thing is fighting and scrapping for every dollar of tuberculosis research and response that we can save. And that means talking to people in Congress and in the Senate and asking them to reclaim the power of the purse that is enshrined to them in the Constitution.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, love it. Last question is. This is actually a mashup of two audience questions. Given that you explore so many existential topics, what would you say is the meaning of life and what is your goal in life?

[John Green]

Thanks for the easy one. Thanks for the softball. I think the meaning of life is to be with each other, to be in community, and to carry each other through everything in life. I also think we're here to pay attention. And my goal for my own life is to try to help people pay attention to the stuff that sometimes is easy to forget about, whether that's tuberculosis or the wonder that's all around us. So that's what I see as my little role to play in the job of together forging meaning in life.

[Adam Grant]

Well, you do it magically, John. I cannot think of a time when I've interacted with you or your work and it hasn't made my life better. And I know there are a lot of people in this room who feel that way too. Can't thank you enough.

[John Green]

Thank you. It's a gift to be with y'. All. Thank you.

[Podcast Host Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[John Green]

The first generation of kids who read that book are now in their 30s and they're fine. They're okay. They're scarred and traumatized. But not by looking for Alaska. Right. But instead by the like overall circumstances in which they find themselves.

[Adam Grant]

I thought you were gonna say it was Twilight.

[John Green]

No, I love Twilight. I will not stand for Twilight slander.

[Capital One Tech Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called chat concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology. At Capital One.

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