Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey Happiness Lab listeners. On the last episode, I
Speaker 1: spoke to best selling author John Green about his mission
Speaker 1: to get us talking about tuberculosis. TB is a disease
Speaker 1: we've been able to successfully treat for decades, and yet
Speaker 1: millions of people still die because of it, and that's
Speaker 1: partly because we won't hand over the relatively small amounts
Speaker 1: of money needed to pay for treatment. John thinks that's
Speaker 1: a scandal, and if you agree, we've launched an appeal
Speaker 1: to help send any cash you can spare to give
Speaker 1: directly dot org slash TB. That's GiveDirectly dot org slash TB.
Speaker 1: John's latest book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, is all about this
Speaker 1: awful disease that's shaped our world. But that disease won't
Speaker 1: go away until we put in some effort to fight
Speaker 1: it properly. John asked me to help him out at
Speaker 1: a launch event for the book in New York, and
Speaker 1: that's what you're about to hear. The evening started with
Speaker 1: John giving a short reading from Everything Is Tuberculosis that
Speaker 1: explains how a visit to a clinic in West Africa
Speaker 1: and a meeting with a special young person sparked his
Speaker 1: interest in Tackling TV special thanks to Symphony Space for
Speaker 1: allowing us to share this episode with you.
Speaker 2: Hildy, Hello, whoa Hi. Thank you so much, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much. It's so great to be here with you today.
Speaker 2: It's such a gift to me that to be here
Speaker 2: in New York City at Symphony Space for the official
Speaker 2: pub date the launch of the book Everything is Tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: So this is a little bit of my book from
Speaker 2: when I first visited Lacat Tuberculosis Hospital in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: when I didn't even know to put it, frankly, that
Speaker 2: tuberculosis was still a thing. When we arrived at Laka,
Speaker 2: we were immediately greeted by a child reduced himself as Henry.
Speaker 2: That's my son's name, I told him, and he smiled.
Speaker 2: Most Sierra Leonians are multilingual, but Henry spoke particularly good English,
Speaker 2: especially for a kid his age, which made it possible
Speaker 2: for us to have a conversation that went beyond my
Speaker 2: few halting phrases of CREO. I asked how he was doing,
Speaker 2: and he said, I am encouraged, sir, I am happy.
Speaker 2: He loved that word encouraged, and who wouldn't. It's like
Speaker 2: courage is something we rouse ourselves and others into. My son,
Speaker 2: Henry was nine then, and this Henry looked about the
Speaker 2: same age, a small boy with spindly legs and a
Speaker 2: big goofy smile. He wore shorts and an oversized rugby
Speaker 2: shirt that reached nearly to his knees. Henry took hold
Speaker 2: of my t shirt and began walking me around the hospital.
Speaker 2: He showed me the lab where a technician was looking
Speaker 2: through a microscope. Henry looked through the microscope and then
Speaker 2: asked me to as the lab tech, a young woman
Speaker 2: from Freetown, explained that this sample can take tuberculosis, even
Speaker 2: though the patient had been treated for several months with
Speaker 2: standard therapy. The lab tech began to tell me about
Speaker 2: this standard therapy, but Henry was pulling on my shirt again.
Speaker 2: He walked me through the wards, a complex of poorly
Speaker 2: ventilated buildings that contained hospital rooms with barred windows, thin mattresses,
Speaker 2: and no toilets. There was no electricity in the wards
Speaker 2: and no consistent running water. To me, the rooms resembled
Speaker 2: prison cells. Before it was a TV hospital. LACA was
Speaker 2: a leprosy isolation facility, and it felt like one inside
Speaker 2: each room, one or two patients lay on cots, generally
Speaker 2: on their side or back. A few sat on the
Speaker 2: edges of their beds, leaning forward. And all these men
Speaker 2: the women were in a separate ward, were thin. Some
Speaker 2: were so emaciated that their skins seemed wrapped tightly around bone.
Speaker 2: As we walked down a hallway between buildings, Henry and
Speaker 2: I watched a young man drink water from a plastic
Speaker 2: bottle and then immediately vomit a mix of blood and bile.
Speaker 2: I instinctively turned away, but Henry continued to stare at
Speaker 2: the man. I figured Henry with someone's kid, a doctor maybe,
Speaker 2: or a nurse or one of the cooking or cleaning staff.
Speaker 2: Everyone seemed to know him, and everyone stopped their work
Speaker 2: to say hello and rub his head or squeeze his hand.
Speaker 2: I was immediately charmed by Henry. He had some of
Speaker 2: the same mannerisms of my son, the same paradoxical mixture
Speaker 2: of shyness and enthusiastic desire for connection. Henry eventually brought
Speaker 2: me back to the group of doctors and nurses who
Speaker 2: were meeting in a small room near the entrance to
Speaker 2: the hospital, and then one of the nurses lovingly and
Speaker 2: laughingly shewed him away. Who is that kid, I asked, Henry,
Speaker 2: answered a nurse, The sweetest boy. He's one of the
Speaker 2: patients we're worried about, said a physician who went by
Speaker 2: Doctor Michael. He's a patient, I asked. Yes, he's such
Speaker 2: a cute little kid, I said, I hope he's going
Speaker 2: to be okay. Doctor Michael explained to me that Henry
Speaker 2: wasn't a little boy. He was sixteen. He was only
Speaker 2: so small because he'd grown up malnourished and then the
Speaker 2: TV had further emaciated his body. He seems to be
Speaker 2: doing okay, I said, lots of energy. He walked me
Speaker 2: all around the hospital. This is because the antibiotics are working,
Speaker 2: doctor Michael explained. But we know they are not working
Speaker 2: well enough. We are almost certain they will fail, and
Speaker 2: that is a big problem. He shrugged, tight lipped. There
Speaker 2: was a lot I didn't understand. Thank you, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much. So it is now my honor to introduce
Speaker 2: my conversation partner for this evening. I'm so excited I
Speaker 2: can barely contain my excitement that doctor Lorri Santos is here.
Speaker 2: I mean, doctor Lori Santos is a Yale professor and
Speaker 2: the host of one of my favorite podcasts, The Happiness Lab,
Speaker 2: where you can learn how to be Happy, which like,
Speaker 2: so everybody, please welcome Laurie.
Speaker 3: I think the one thing John didn't mention is that
Speaker 3: I'm also a huge John Green fan.
Speaker 2: Oh I want to hear that.
Speaker 3: Fighter sitting up here, like try to try to hold
Speaker 3: it together.
Speaker 4: So John, because I'm a fan.
Speaker 3: When I got this invite to come have this conversation
Speaker 3: with you, like my head did a little spinny thing,
Speaker 3: like the sort of head explosion EMODEI was like all
Speaker 3: over my kitchen and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: I get to talk John Green about his new book.
Speaker 3: What's the new book about an organizer like tuberculosis? And
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, cool, cool. I trust John Green
Speaker 3: with my attention span for anything. I'm gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: go with this, And I'm so happy I did, because,
Speaker 3: as usual, you put your trust in John Green and
Speaker 3: he tells you an amazing story that you didn't know
Speaker 3: that you needed to know already. And for those of
Speaker 3: you who haven't read the book yet, you're in for
Speaker 3: a treat because you, like me now are going to
Speaker 3: be a complete TV information Stan.
Speaker 2: You'd love to hear that.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 3: Not going to like do any spoilers, but like tuberculosi
Speaker 3: is big, like pre Victorian TikTok beauty trend before TikTok,
Speaker 3: like tuberculosis the cause of so many things historically and
Speaker 3: so on, like as usual, tuberculosis for John Green has
Speaker 3: become not a disease but a story, a story that
Speaker 3: shaped literature and beauty, beauty and public health policy. And
Speaker 3: I think for me here even happiness and some of
Speaker 3: the science of happiness that we're going to get to
Speaker 3: talk about. But to start, I'm just curious what made
Speaker 3: you want to tell this particular story. Now you know,
Speaker 3: we just met Henry, but beyond Henry, like why tuberculosis now?
Speaker 2: Well, to me, tuberculosis is the exemplary disease of injustice.
Speaker 2: It is a disease that only exists because we allow
Speaker 2: it to exist. It follows the paths of injustice and
Speaker 2: inequity that we blaze for it. Overwhelmingly, the people who
Speaker 2: will get tuberculosis are the people who are most oppressed,
Speaker 2: most marginalized, most left out by the systems that we've built,
Speaker 2: whether that's transportation systems or healthcare delivery systems, and so
Speaker 2: it's not just a disease, although it is a biomedical
Speaker 2: phenomenon obviously, like it's a bacterial infection. There are biomedical
Speaker 2: realities about tuberculosis, but it is also a social phenomenon.
Speaker 2: How we imagine and have imagined that disease throughout history
Speaker 2: matters so much because it doesn't just shape how people
Speaker 2: live and die of tuberculosis, it also shapes who lives
Speaker 2: and dies of it.
Speaker 3: And so something I really found stragging it in your book,
Speaker 3: And I'm kind of embarrassed to admit before I read
Speaker 3: the book, I kind of feel like TV was.
Speaker 2: This disease of the past totally.
Speaker 3: And the book reminds you, of course that this is
Speaker 3: ongoing struggle for millions of people. Or remind me of
Speaker 3: the Flockner quote like the past is not dead, the
Speaker 3: past not even in the past, Like TV not dead,
Speaker 3: also not in the past. Give me a sense of
Speaker 3: the scope of TV today and why it's a plate
Speaker 3: that we need to be paying attention to now.
Speaker 2: Well, the scope of TB today is very different from
Speaker 2: the scope of TB six weeks ago, unfortunately, and so
Speaker 2: last year about ten million people got sick with tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: About one point twenty five million died. The most recent
Speaker 2: estimates are that with the defunding of USAID, we can
Speaker 2: probably expect that to go up by about thirty percent,
Speaker 2: which is hundreds of thousands of human lives. Stephanie Nolan
Speaker 2: reported in The New York Times last week that hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of people have seen their treatment interrupted. This
Speaker 2: is a catastrophe on an individual level because it means
Speaker 2: those people are very likely to die. Most of those
Speaker 2: people will die if they aren't promptly put back on treatment.
Speaker 2: And even if they are promptly put back on treatment,
Speaker 2: they're very likely to develop drug resistant tuberculosis because even
Speaker 2: a brief period without access to treatment can lead to
Speaker 2: drug resistance. And so that's a catastrophe on an individual level.
Speaker 2: It's also a societal catastrophe because it means that there
Speaker 2: will be more complicated forms of drug resistant tuberculosis circulating
Speaker 2: in communities, potentially, you know, most terrifyingly, leading to forms
Speaker 2: of tuberculosis that we simply have no tools to treat
Speaker 2: or cure, which is a threat to the entire world.
Speaker 2: I mean, of course, tuberculosis doesn't have a moral compass.
Speaker 2: It also doesn't have a geographical compass. It doesn't know
Speaker 2: about political borders. It will always strike the most vulnerable
Speaker 2: among us. But it isn't limited to impoverished communities. We
Speaker 2: have tuberculosis here in New York City. We have tuberculosis
Speaker 2: in the United States and this so that's the size
Speaker 2: of the problem. We're going to lose at least one
Speaker 2: point twenty five million people, probably more to tuberculosis this year.
Speaker 2: And all of those deaths, I want to be clear,
Speaker 2: are needless. When I asked doctor kJ Sung how many
Speaker 2: people should be dying of TB if everybody had access
Speaker 2: to healthcare, he seemed very confused, and then after a
Speaker 2: moment he said, well, none, And that really struck me
Speaker 2: that all of those deaths are optional.
Speaker 3: There's so many sucky cygings about TB. But one thing
Speaker 3: that the book describes in such a poignant way is
Speaker 3: that people don't just suffer from the disease. They suffer
Speaker 3: from the culture and the stigma around the disease. And
Speaker 3: sometimes they're not suffering from the microbes. They're suffering from
Speaker 3: our crappy human minds and the way we think about disease,
Speaker 3: and so explain why this part of the disease is
Speaker 3: so painful, and maybe share some parallels with how TB
Speaker 3: and other kinds of diseases that we think about today
Speaker 3: are very similar in this regard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, tuberculosis is a highly stigmatized disease. Several
Speaker 2: TV survivors have told me that surviving the stigma is
Speaker 2: harder than surviving the disease. People will be abandoned by
Speaker 2: their families. They're told that they're responsible for their own illness.
Speaker 2: They're told that they got TB because they were too poor,
Speaker 2: or they got TB because they drank too much, or
Speaker 2: they got TB for any number of reasons. The truth
Speaker 2: is that, of course, illness doesn't know about morality, right, Like,
Speaker 2: my dad had cancer a couple times when I was
Speaker 2: a little kid in the nineteen eighties. He had bladder cancer,
Speaker 2: and I saw some of this up close. That like
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties, it was still pretty commonly believed
Speaker 2: that like cancer was caused by like bottling up your emotions,
Speaker 2: and that became like a literal cancer. That is, it
Speaker 2: makes a kind of somatic sense in the way that
Speaker 2: all these stigmatizing ways of thinking do, but of course, like,
Speaker 2: we know that's not what my dad got bladder cancer.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, he's actually very expressive man, very
Speaker 2: in touch with his emotions. And even if you weren't,
Speaker 2: he still didn't deserve to get cancer. There I was
Speaker 2: engaging in stigma. So it's devastating for people because it's
Speaker 2: already difficult to live with disease. It already others you
Speaker 2: it already. You know, you're already told by the social
Speaker 2: order that you're not a full person. You're already, you know,
Speaker 2: dehumanized in all kinds of ways when you're ill. And
Speaker 2: yet this way of imagining the sick as less than
Speaker 2: fully human, as outside of the regular, you know, group
Speaker 2: of the social order, it just it doubles the burden
Speaker 2: of being ill. And so I think we really have
Speaker 2: to fight it. The problem with stigma is that the
Speaker 2: best way to fight it is to make it curable, right, Like,
Speaker 2: think about strep throat. We don't stigmatize strep throat. Nobody
Speaker 2: says like, oh, you got strep throat, like you must
Speaker 2: be a terrible person. We don't stigmatize strep throat because
Speaker 2: it's eminently curable, and that should be the case with
Speaker 2: tuberculosis and most other diseases of injustice.
Speaker 3: I think it's so fascinating though, because I feel like,
Speaker 3: even with strep throat, it's kind of like, well you
Speaker 3: went out to that restaurant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like we always want to have a
Speaker 2: reason why people got sick. Yes, there's this wonderful young
Speaker 2: woman named Casey Aldman who died of cancer a few
Speaker 2: years ago, and she told me once that stigma is
Speaker 2: a way of saying, you deserved for this to happen,
Speaker 2: and I don't deserve for it to happen. And so
Speaker 2: for me not to have to worry about this happening
Speaker 2: to me, I have to have a reason why this
Speaker 2: happened to you. And that's what stigma is ultimately.
Speaker 3: But it's so messed up that we make up this reason.
Speaker 3: I mean, in some ways it's kind of good, right.
Speaker 3: You had this quote in your book that I loved.
Speaker 3: We like to know why things happen, especially bad things.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Our mind is just searching for explanations, and the way
Speaker 3: we search for explanations for all kinds of scientific stuff.
Speaker 3: But in this case, well, like, well, if the explanation
Speaker 3: is this disease just hits you, indiscriminately, like I'm at
Speaker 3: risk too.
Speaker 4: Our brains can't handle that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really overwhelming. And so the other strategy we
Speaker 2: have for dealing with this, in addition to stigma is romanticization,
Speaker 2: which sort of seems like the opposite of stigma when
Speaker 2: you first think about it, because instead of like dehumanizing someone,
Speaker 2: you're sort of putting them on a pedestal. But it
Speaker 2: serves the same function of casting someone out of the
Speaker 2: social order. Like I've experienced this a little bit because
Speaker 2: I have what the television commercials call moderate to severe
Speaker 2: obsessive compulsive disorder, and that is my actual diagnosis.
Speaker 4: It is not actually it's not actually a drug commercial
Speaker 4: that year.
Speaker 2: No, No, this is real, man, this is real life.
Speaker 2: And people both stigmatize OCD. You know, some of the
Speaker 2: compulsive behaviors especially are highly stigmatized because they're seen as
Speaker 2: odd or off putting. But they also romanticize OCD that
Speaker 2: they act like having OCD comes with all these superpowers.
Speaker 2: It makes you a brilliant detective, like that guy on
Speaker 2: the television program Monk. And like that's just not my experience,
Speaker 2: Like I haven't found that it makes me good at
Speaker 2: anything other than worrying about the very specific and totally
Speaker 2: irrational thing that I'm consumed with worry about, and it
Speaker 2: I just I think it's overrated, you know. And so romanticization,
Speaker 2: which happened a lot in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Speaker 2: as a way of making sense of this disease, as
Speaker 2: a way of making understanding why a bad thing was happening,
Speaker 2: was just another strategy for saying, you deserve for this
Speaker 2: to happen, and I don't like. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: examples of this is John Keats, the great British Romantic
Speaker 2: poet who died of tuberculosis in eighteen twenty five. When
Speaker 2: he was dying, Percy Shelley wrote him a letter that
Speaker 2: was like, hey, you know, this is a bummer. I'm
Speaker 2: paraphrasing this is a bummer and everything, but this consumption
Speaker 2: does tend to strike people who write great verses as
Speaker 2: you have done, which is a very interesting thing for
Speaker 2: Percy Shelley to say, because he also had consumption. So
Speaker 2: he was a little bit like, and I am also
Speaker 2: a great poet. Consumption flex, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, consumption flex.
Speaker 2: Classic consumption flex.
Speaker 3: One's like you think about TV, is that we moralize it.
Speaker 3: We look for explanations stigmatize people. Another psuchy thing about
Speaker 3: TB is that it ruins this thing that we so
Speaker 3: need to be healthy humans, which is our sense of connection.
Speaker 3: So a super sad part about this book is that
Speaker 3: John tells all these stories of TV patients who have
Speaker 3: to get shipped off to some sanatorium. Henry is a
Speaker 3: wonderful case in point here they just have little control
Speaker 3: over their lives. And the interesting thing I thought was
Speaker 3: so cool in your stories about TV is that this
Speaker 3: has kind of been a big theme of your work
Speaker 3: with fictional characters too, Right, these folks who just want
Speaker 3: to be connected and just want to be part of
Speaker 3: the world, but they kind of can't for some reason.
Speaker 3: And so I'm curious what you learned about isolation from
Speaker 3: TB and kind of connection broadly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Henry has told me that his dream is to
Speaker 2: be a person in society, which I think is so
Speaker 2: beautiful because he just wants to be accepted as a
Speaker 2: full person in his society, and for so long that
Speaker 2: was denied to him because of tuberculosis, not because of
Speaker 2: the disease itself, but because of the way the disease
Speaker 2: is imagined. By us, by the people around him, by
Speaker 2: his community, and it is really really difficult, especially you know, historically,
Speaker 2: like my great uncle died of tuberculosis in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: and he was in a sanatorium. He died in a sanatorium,
Speaker 2: like so many millions of Americans, and he was in
Speaker 2: a sanatorium. And in those sanatoria, people's lives were so
Speaker 2: highly controlled. They were told that they shouldn't cry, including children,
Speaker 2: were told they shouldn't cry because it would be an
Speaker 2: exciting cause of tuberculosis. They were often told they couldn't
Speaker 2: be visited by their families because that might excite them
Speaker 2: and lead to tuberculosis. They were told they couldn't stand up,
Speaker 2: They were told they whether or not they were allowed
Speaker 2: to read, whether or not they were allowed to journal,
Speaker 2: and so on. They lived these very highly controlled lives,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately that's still the case for many people living
Speaker 2: with tuberculosis. We still emphasize control over care.
Speaker 3: And I think this is something more broadly about disease.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've talked, you know, as you just did
Speaker 3: so nicely about your own mental health struggles. I think
Speaker 3: anybody facing any disease right now, it's kind of the
Speaker 3: loneliness connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really hard to be isolated, right, And disease
Speaker 2: itself can be isolating because it makes us hard for
Speaker 2: it can make it hard for us to leave the house.
Speaker 2: It can, especially infectious disease can make it dangerous to
Speaker 2: be around other people, and that's really hard. Those interruptions
Speaker 2: to connections are so profound. And I think it's safe
Speaker 2: to say that if Henry had been like most people
Speaker 2: and had been completely abandoned by his family the way
Speaker 2: so many people are, he probably wouldn't have survived. But
Speaker 2: he was very fortunate and is very fortunate to have
Speaker 2: an extraordinary mother who visited him almost every day of
Speaker 2: the three years that he was hospitalized and brought him
Speaker 2: extra food every chance that she got, and loved him
Speaker 2: through that. He wrote a beautiful poem about her that
Speaker 2: I quote in the book about how he said, you
Speaker 2: stand here when others ran away, and that switch of
Speaker 2: tents where he's talking about his mother standing in the
Speaker 2: present tents and everyone running away in the past tense
Speaker 2: has always been so meaningful to me.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think he's also really lucky that he's
Speaker 3: an amazing author that's bringing his story to light here today.
Speaker 4: This is a part Us just a clap food.
Speaker 1: You're listening to a special bonus episode with me talking
Speaker 1: live to author John Green about his book Everything Is Tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: It's time for a break, but we'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. So I want to switch gears and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about happiness.
Speaker 2: Because I love talking about happiness. I talk about what
Speaker 2: an easy time to talk about happiness, Laurie, No, But
Speaker 2: this is why I'm.
Speaker 3: So happy to be on stage with you talking about happiness,
Speaker 3: because I think you know, usually when we talk about happiness,
Speaker 3: we get it wrong. We're kind of in toxic positivity space,
Speaker 3: where's like, happiness is about ignoring all the terrible stuck
Speaker 3: in the world, and we're just going to be like joy, joy,
Speaker 3: joy all the time. And I think you get happy
Speaker 3: Pinus right from a scientific perspective because you realize that
Speaker 3: meaning comes not from avoiding suffering, but from embracing it
Speaker 3: with a sense of duty curiosity. You get that wonder
Speaker 3: can come from really mundane, weird stuff, and we can
Speaker 3: kind of get positive emotion from that, and you get
Speaker 3: that in the face of like really terrible, sucky stuff.
Speaker 3: The move is curiosity and kindness and so he's actually
Speaker 3: kind of happiness expert.
Speaker 4: I think is really what we're getting at.
Speaker 2: Thank you. That is my reputation.
Speaker 5: So let's start with hope.
Speaker 3: You've said before that you don't like this idea of optimism,
Speaker 3: but prefer this concept of hope. How do you define hope?
Speaker 3: And what is thinking so closely about TV taught you
Speaker 3: about hope.
Speaker 2: Hope for me is a belief that we can make
Speaker 2: the world better together. We can only do it together,
Speaker 2: but we can do it together. And it's also a
Speaker 2: belief that human beings can be good news. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that we are good news. We're certainly not good
Speaker 2: news all the time. I'm not saying we're good news.
Speaker 2: I'm saying we can be good news. We might be
Speaker 2: good news. We can become good news, and we can
Speaker 2: be good news for each other. Right like that, That
Speaker 2: is what I really believe. And I believe that because
Speaker 2: if I don't like, my life is in danger. Like
Speaker 2: despair for me is not some it's not some abstract
Speaker 2: idea that feels very distant. It's something that I struggle
Speaker 2: against every days. It's the thing that makes it hardest
Speaker 2: to get out of bed. You know, much more than fatigue.
Speaker 2: It's fear and despair and worrying and being consumed by
Speaker 2: those emotions. And if I don't have a measure of
Speaker 2: hope to combat that with, I'm in big, big trouble.
Speaker 2: And so I have spent a lot of time trying
Speaker 2: to develop my sense of hope and hold on to
Speaker 2: it and believe that it is the correct response to
Speaker 2: the human condition. And I really do believe it.
Speaker 3: You had this is where I reveal I'm a nerd
Speaker 3: and I read everything about John, but you had this
Speaker 3: quote that I love and whish I could just totally steal.
Speaker 3: Which is the most punk rock thing to do in
Speaker 3: the world right now, is to embrace the current problems
Speaker 3: with earnestness and hope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, earnestness is so underrated man, People like to uh
Speaker 2: And I get it. I totally get it, especially if
Speaker 2: you're young you've had an uncommonly crappy situation that you've
Speaker 2: grown up in, like if you're under the age of
Speaker 2: like thirty five, My I'm sorry. And also like I
Speaker 2: feel a little responsible because like we did. We did
Speaker 2: that a lot of it, not all of it. Some
Speaker 2: of it was done by infectious disease, but we did
Speaker 2: a bunch of it, and I'm sorry, are bad. We
Speaker 2: didn't do a good job of being good news for
Speaker 2: you a lot of times, and I'm really, I'm genuinely
Speaker 2: sorry about that. And this is a really difficult time
Speaker 2: to grow up. But I think so many people use
Speaker 2: irony as a kind of armor, as a way of
Speaker 2: trying to protect themselves, and I absolutely understand wanting to
Speaker 2: protect yourself. It can you know, being earnest to the
Speaker 2: world is hard work. I think about it in terms
Speaker 2: of my dog who would who would my old dog
Speaker 2: who who's since passed away. He would he would run
Speaker 2: around and then he would get real tired and he
Speaker 2: would roll over and he would show his belly to us,
Speaker 2: the vulnerable part, the most vulnerable part of him. He
Speaker 2: would show it to us and trust us. And that's earnestness.
Speaker 2: And it's hard, hard work, and it's hard work to
Speaker 2: be vulnerable, but I think it's worth it.
Speaker 3: That's a nice transition because one of the things I
Speaker 3: absolutely love about your work is a kind of counter
Speaker 3: and tuitive thing, which is it. I know lots of
Speaker 3: your fans know that one of the goals of being
Speaker 3: a nerd fighters, We're going to decrease the suck.
Speaker 4: Yours to decreasing the sock in the audience.
Speaker 3: Right, But the counter intuitive part is that to decrease
Speaker 3: the suck, you often have to actively point out the suck, right,
Speaker 3: to find the hidden suck and drag it out into
Speaker 3: plain sight when no one's paying attention to Triberculiss, you're like, no.
Speaker 4: Look at the suck. Look at it.
Speaker 3: You wave the suck in people's faces, and that must
Speaker 3: be hard, Like you're kind of the bearer of the
Speaker 3: suck in lots of ways, and I'm curious how you
Speaker 3: handle that.
Speaker 2: Well. The key for me is being able to handle
Speaker 2: that in community. You know, I am not the only
Speaker 2: TV fighter in the world. There are thousands, maybe millions
Speaker 2: of TV fighters. There are TV hunters in Lisutu right
Speaker 2: now actively finding cases of tuberculosis, not just waiting for
Speaker 2: people to come into the hospital when they're so sick
Speaker 2: that it's very hard to cure them. There are TV
Speaker 2: fighters in the back of the room right now who
Speaker 2: are partly responsible, who are partly responsible for the fact
Speaker 2: that two million more gene expert tests are available than
Speaker 2: were last year because Dan and hur finally lowered the
Speaker 2: price of that test. And it's hard, hard work. It's
Speaker 2: hard work for community health workers. It's hard work for
Speaker 2: doctors and nurses, it's hard work for us. It's hard work.
Speaker 2: But it's also really good work. And to do it
Speaker 2: in community is fun. The last thing the great physician
Speaker 2: Paul Farmer ever said to me was, isn't this fun?
Speaker 2: Isn't it fun that we get to be friends in
Speaker 2: this work? And that's true. It was really fun to
Speaker 2: be friends with Paul.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is something that we get wrong a lot, right.
Speaker 3: We think, you know, kind of avoiding discomfort rather than
Speaker 3: sort of embracing it in community. The path through a
Speaker 3: happy life is the path to a more beatingful life
Speaker 3: because you just kind of keep all the good emotions and.
Speaker 4: Get rid of the bad.
Speaker 3: But one thing I love that your work has done
Speaker 3: for me, your novels and this book is like it
Speaker 3: kind of puts it in your face and makes you
Speaker 3: think about it more. It also feels like this is
Speaker 3: something that you've done for a while. I know, way
Speaker 3: back in the day you had time working as a
Speaker 3: student chaplain and children's hospitals. I feel like that maybe
Speaker 3: must have been some of the first spots you look
Speaker 3: closely at illness and death, so maybe you really experience
Speaker 3: with it, but a lot of us don't like looking
Speaker 3: at the suck like so close on. I'm curious how
Speaker 3: you learn to sit with just comfort rather than running
Speaker 3: from it. And also, just like how you did it
Speaker 3: for the book, right, you were trying to bring this
Speaker 3: out to community with your work, but there was a
Speaker 3: lot of times you were sitting with some pretty negative
Speaker 3: stuff writing this, and I'm just kind of curious how
Speaker 3: you tackle that.
Speaker 2: I wanted to write a hopeful book. I think that
Speaker 2: all good books, all true books, are have to be hopeful,
Speaker 2: because I think hope is, for lack of a better term, true.
Speaker 2: But I also wanted to write a the honest book.
Speaker 2: And the honest truth is that tuberculosis is an unbelievably
Speaker 2: horrifying scourge that we've allowed to be with us now
Speaker 2: for the seventy years since it's been curable, and that
Speaker 2: says a lot about us. It says that we don't
Speaker 2: value all human lives equally, even if we say we do.
Speaker 2: It says that we've built systems that exclude people, that
Speaker 2: exclude especially marginalized and racialized people. It says that we've
Speaker 2: failed to deliver cures to the people who need those
Speaker 2: cures the most. It says that we've built systems that
Speaker 2: prioritize the creation of capital over the creation of saving
Speaker 2: human the creation of human health. It says a lot
Speaker 2: of bad things about us, but it is also true,
Speaker 2: as I say in the book, that the year I
Speaker 2: graduated from college, two point five million people died of tuberculosis,
Speaker 2: and last year one point twenty five million did. That's
Speaker 2: one point twenty five million too many. Nobody should die
Speaker 2: of tuberculosis. But that progress is real, and it's important
Speaker 2: to understand that it wasn't natural, it wasn't inevitable, it
Speaker 2: wasn't always going to happen. That progress happened because lots
Speaker 2: of people work together to make it happen, and we
Speaker 2: devoted resources and attention to making it happen. And so
Speaker 2: for me, the answer to that question is solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.
Speaker 2: The answer to that question is trying to find ways
Speaker 2: to be in community to feel less alone. That is
Speaker 2: really the key for me. When I don't feel alone
Speaker 2: in my feelings or in the world, I feel happy.
Speaker 2: And when I do feel alone, in my feelings or
Speaker 2: in the world. I feel scared, and so.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about how you've not felt alone in this process.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that's amazing about your
Speaker 3: work is that you use the power of narrative to
Speaker 3: shape how a lot of people have viewed the situation
Speaker 3: thinking about it, maybe not with despair, but with like
Speaker 3: this is sucky, but like we can put some agency
Speaker 3: in to fix this. I'm just curious what the response
Speaker 3: has been from your fans so far, Like, what have
Speaker 3: you heard about people learning about the TV crisis through
Speaker 3: this book and through your work.
Speaker 2: Well, it's pretty great, it's pretty amazing. This. So I
Speaker 2: just realized just now in the last three seconds that
Speaker 2: there are probably some like infectious disease doctors who thought
Speaker 2: they were coming to a talk about tuberculosis.
Speaker 4: I mean, we can go there if you want. I
Speaker 4: was gonna do with happiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I just totally forgot about them. And they
Speaker 2: must be like, who the hell is this guy? Why
Speaker 2: are all these people laughing at these jokes? I don't
Speaker 2: understand why. If I say it's not normal to sneeze,
Speaker 2: well they have a reaction. So please don't feel excluded.
Speaker 2: Please feel welcomed. I forgot your question because I got
Speaker 2: concerned about the infectious disease doctors reaction. Ben Like, the
Speaker 2: reaction has been incredible. I mean, it's been not that
Speaker 2: I'm reading every good Reads review but which you should
Speaker 2: not do. I know there are some authors in the room,
Speaker 2: some author friends, some authors in the room don't read
Speaker 2: your Goodreads reviews, but I should. I should suffer. You
Speaker 2: should not do as I say, not as I do.
Speaker 2: But no, the response has been incredible and really overwhelming.
Speaker 2: I mean, just the fact that, like I mean to
Speaker 2: your point that you made at the beginning of our conversation,
Speaker 2: the fact that people would be like, oh, this young
Speaker 2: adult novelist wrote a book about tuberculosis I'm in is incredible,
Speaker 2: Like that is an incredible fact, What a what a
Speaker 2: gift to me. Thank you so so much for believing
Speaker 2: in my work that much and just being here today.
Speaker 3: So but this is just a theme with so much
Speaker 3: your work, at least my kind of interaction with your work,
Speaker 3: which is like your stuff always brings us into things
Speaker 3: that we do not face, and a big one for
Speaker 3: me because I'm a huge the natophobe. Is it a
Speaker 3: lot of your work deals with the fragility of life.
Speaker 3: The natophobia is fear of death. By the way, probably a.
Speaker 4: Lot of you.
Speaker 2: Oh thank god, I was in trouble.
Speaker 3: So I was dropping some Yale professor's stuff right there.
Speaker 3: I apologize. I apologize, No.
Speaker 4: Like yours stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean fall on ourself, Like you just make us
Speaker 3: look at death like we're part of the natural world.
Speaker 3: It's gonna happen to YouTube, yes, but like we don't
Speaker 3: like to think of ourselves as animals, Like we don't.
Speaker 4: We don't like to look at the natural world.
Speaker 3: And I think that has led to a lot of
Speaker 3: the stigma and the stuff we're talking about. And yeah,
Speaker 3: the good news is that the science shows that you're right.
Speaker 3: The more we focus on the fragility of life, the
Speaker 3: more you embrace it, the more you do generous stuff,
Speaker 3: the more you live well. But I'm just curious how
Speaker 3: you deal with that, Like, what's gravitated you towards this,
Speaker 3: and what have you discovered personally by focusing on this
Speaker 3: so closely.
Speaker 2: Well, I just think it's a big deal. I'm a
Speaker 2: little like you. I'm a little confused. It's a thing.
Speaker 2: I'm a little confused. Why everyone else isn't thinking about
Speaker 2: it all the time. Yeah, yeah, right. I texted my
Speaker 2: brother once I was in an airport and I texted
Speaker 2: my brother, do you ever think about the fact that
Speaker 2: when you're in an airport, everybody who's in the airport
Speaker 2: will be gone in like seven or eight decades? And
Speaker 2: Hank God bless him wrote back, No, but I do,
Speaker 2: LORI I do. I don't know why. I don't know
Speaker 2: why I was put here to witness a lot of
Speaker 2: death and talk a lot about death, but I was.
Speaker 2: And that's just that's that's the situation I ended up in.
Speaker 2: I am like you, I don't know if I'm afraid
Speaker 2: of death so much as I'm deeply concerned about it,
Speaker 2: you know, like I just think it's a very very
Speaker 2: big deal and that we need to we should spend
Speaker 2: more time thinking and talking about it, because when we
Speaker 2: don't than when people are dying, or when people who
Speaker 2: are going are with people who are dying, we kind
Speaker 2: of exclude them. We sort of push them to the side,
Speaker 2: and we're like, oh no, that's very inconvenient, Like that's
Speaker 2: something I don't like thinking about, that's something I don't
Speaker 2: like being exposed to, and that makes it so much
Speaker 2: harder to die. It makes it so much harder to
Speaker 2: love someone who's dying. And so I think it's I
Speaker 2: just think it's important, And I think dying people and
Speaker 2: people who are loving people who are dying need to
Speaker 2: be fully embraced by the social order.
Speaker 3: And then we need to remember that we can take
Speaker 3: agency to fix the parts of the social order that
Speaker 3: are hurting people, that are causing people to suffer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have this love. There's so many good quotes
Speaker 4: in this book.
Speaker 3: You guys, bring a highlighter when you start reading this
Speaker 3: because you're just gonna want to agree easy. But here's
Speaker 3: another one that I think fits with this idea a lot.
Speaker 3: You note that when we know about suffering, when we
Speaker 3: are proximal to it, we are capable of great generosity.
Speaker 3: That is a striking thing about your is that you
Speaker 3: make us care about life that's really fragile, but you
Speaker 3: somehow allow us to do it in a way that
Speaker 3: doesn't cause us to like, you know, shield their eyes.
Speaker 3: You cause us to react with generosity and helpfulness. And
Speaker 3: so I want you to tell some stories of generosity
Speaker 3: that have come out from this book.
Speaker 4: You know, what have the.
Speaker 3: Fans been able to do these sort of TV fighters
Speaker 3: that maybe wouldn't have happened if you hadn't written this.
Speaker 2: So many TV fighters are taking actions. One of those
Speaker 2: actions is something like giving money to support TV charities
Speaker 2: who are trying to fill gaps that, I want to
Speaker 2: be clear, cannot be filled by anything but governments, but
Speaker 2: are desperately trying to fill whatever gaps they can. And
Speaker 2: that is itself a tremendously generous and helpful action. Also,
Speaker 2: and I know this, I know you hear this all
Speaker 2: the time, and it sounds like pitter patter, I totally understand.
Speaker 2: But people like TV fighters regularly organize call athons and
Speaker 2: email athons to reach out to their representative, and that
Speaker 2: matters when I talk to people in Washington. I talked
Speaker 2: to someone a couple of days ago who was like,
Speaker 2: I have been getting a lot of calls about tuberculosis,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, good, I hope you're getting a lot
Speaker 2: of calls about other things as well. I hope you're
Speaker 2: getting a lot of calls about diseases of injustice, like
Speaker 2: malaria and HIV and diabetes and heart disease. And so
Speaker 2: I'd really think that matters. And and I am so
Speaker 2: inspired by them, they really they really lead me. They'll
Speaker 2: have a Callithon and I'll be like, oh God, all right,
Speaker 2: I'll call Todd Young. And Todd Young is a senator
Speaker 2: of mine who's a big believer in global health, has
Speaker 2: been a big supporter of global health, was one of
Speaker 2: the sponsors of the NTV Now Act. But I right
Speaker 2: now need him to be more more public in his
Speaker 2: support of global health. And so I just call him,
Speaker 2: you know, and I let him know that.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons I'm so glad you bring this
Speaker 3: up is, like me writing about happiness science now, is
Speaker 3: that there's lots of evidence that one of the best
Speaker 3: things you can do to increase hope is to actually
Speaker 3: take agency about something small. When you make this speed
Speaker 3: del call to your senator and or you do something
Speaker 3: to fight TV, it doesn't just like do good in
Speaker 3: the world. It actually changes your psychology. You kind of
Speaker 3: feel like, oh, there are ways to take action on
Speaker 3: these things. Like it's a funny kind of like spiral
Speaker 3: loop that when we act in ways that are hopeful,
Speaker 3: we actually become more hopeful. And so I think that
Speaker 3: you're increasing hope in a couple ways. One just through
Speaker 3: the narrative but second, just through getting people to get
Speaker 3: off their butt and do stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel better. And it's really hard to get
Speaker 2: off your butt and do stuff, especially right now, like
Speaker 2: the temptation to despair is so overwhelming and the sort
Speaker 2: of the horrors abound in so many directions for a
Speaker 2: lot of people that it's really difficult to even know
Speaker 2: where or what to respond to, where or what to
Speaker 2: take action. But those, on some level you asked me earlier,
Speaker 2: I picked TB, and on some level because I had
Speaker 2: to pick something. You know, there's a lot of problems.
Speaker 2: I could have picked one of the other ones, you know.
Speaker 2: I could have picked climate change, I could have picked malaria.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's an endless number of problems, right, But
Speaker 2: I'm counting on y'all to solve some of those problems,
Speaker 2: and then you count on me to try to deal
Speaker 2: with TB, and then together, hopefully we make a better world.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to just nerd out about more quotes
Speaker 3: in this book because my highlighter died when I was
Speaker 3: reading it, and so I'm just going to give you more.
Speaker 3: This one is related to just where we were just
Speaker 3: talking about this idea that like when you act, you
Speaker 3: can overcome your despair. And you know that mere despair
Speaker 3: never tells the whole human story as much as despair.
Speaker 3: I would like to insist otherwise. And this was very
Speaker 3: comforting for me because they suggested that John two experiences
Speaker 3: despair about all this horrible stuff. He I mean, that's
Speaker 3: like community, right, were just talking about why this is
Speaker 3: zo immortant. But you're able to approach these moments of
Speaker 3: despair in ways that truly show the human story. And
Speaker 3: so I'm wondering with this book, in particular, with Henry's
Speaker 3: story in particular, like how'd you tried to weave that in?
Speaker 3: Because you're like throwing the despair out there. What kind
Speaker 3: of like literary magic do you use to get us
Speaker 3: to like flip the switch and go towards joy and
Speaker 3: hope and so on.
Speaker 2: Well, I tried to draw that arc, right, the arc
Speaker 2: from despair to hope. On some level, that's the arc
Speaker 2: of lots of my books. It's the arc I tried
Speaker 2: to draw on the anthropascene reviewed too, from you know,
Speaker 2: going from a place of profound hopelessness and fear and
Speaker 2: a feeling that there was no reason to get out
Speaker 2: of bed in the morning to a place of hope.
Speaker 2: There's individual essays that try to draw that arc, but
Speaker 2: the book itself also tries to draw that arc. And
Speaker 2: I wanted to draw that arc in this book too,
Speaker 2: because even though the size of the crisis is overwhelming,
Speaker 2: and this is just one crisis among many, right like
Speaker 2: tuberculosis is just one disease among many. Health is just
Speaker 2: one issue among many. Even so, I still think that
Speaker 2: there is cause for hope. I still think that there
Speaker 2: is reason for hope, not because things are going to
Speaker 2: get better in the next year, but because, like we
Speaker 2: have to fight for them to get less worse. Every
Speaker 2: person who doesn't die of tuberculosis is who would otherwise die,
Speaker 2: is a success for us. And unfortunately, the number of
Speaker 2: people who are going to die of tuberculosis is going
Speaker 2: to go up because of decisions mostly made by my government,
Speaker 2: to some extent decisions made by other governments, but mostly
Speaker 2: decisions made by my government. My job is to try
Speaker 2: to fight that every way I can, all along, all
Speaker 2: along that journey, whether that's you know, legislatively, whether that's
Speaker 2: through the through the judicial branch. However, that is to
Speaker 2: fight that every way I can.
Speaker 3: Another way I think you fight it really well. And
Speaker 3: this is something that I'm so grateful for your work
Speaker 3: for is you often fight the sucky stuff with awe,
Speaker 3: the sense of wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wonder is underrated.
Speaker 3: Man, oh my gosh, there's like a oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: don't even get me started. In a happiness science, it's
Speaker 3: like one of the positive emotions that is so easily
Speaker 3: available to us, like literally in the people around us
Speaker 3: and the good things they're doing, or in like nerdy science,
Speaker 3: like just go on blog brothers and you'll see some
Speaker 3: awe for sure, but we don't realize it's such a
Speaker 3: powerful emotion. And so I wanted to ask you an
Speaker 3: awe question. In the whole TV story that you've told,
Speaker 3: what was the moment where you found the most wonder,
Speaker 3: the most awe?
Speaker 2: And thinking about this story, there's a moment where we
Speaker 2: as a species figured out that this wasn't an inherited disease,
Speaker 2: that this was a disease caused by a bacterium. And
Speaker 2: I was reading about this moment where Robert Coke is
Speaker 2: literally giving like reading a paper at a scientific conference
Speaker 2: and the audience just falls completely quiet, and one member
Speaker 2: of the audience and I hold that evening to be
Speaker 2: the most significant moment of my scientific life, and that
Speaker 2: moment when we realized, Okay, this isn't an inherited condition.
Speaker 2: This is an infectious condition, which means that we need
Speaker 2: to be imagining it and understanding it and fighting it
Speaker 2: very differently, not just accepting it but trying to try
Speaker 2: to find ways to fight it. Is a huge moment
Speaker 2: in human history, and it really is a moment of
Speaker 2: awe because it was the culmination of so many generations
Speaker 2: of people trying to understand the world around them, the
Speaker 2: culmination of people trying to develop microscopes to see smaller
Speaker 2: and smaller creatures, and eventually we see these wiggling rods
Speaker 2: that we discover cause tuberculosis.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's such a beautiful story because it's like sciencey,
Speaker 3: nerdy science awe, Like, oh my god, we figured I
Speaker 3: was on microbe. But it was also a story of
Speaker 3: people like tackling these interesting problems, Like you tell such
Speaker 3: great human stories about the scientist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like trying to figure out like how do
Speaker 2: you actually prove a chain of transmission? Bad news for
Speaker 2: guinea pigs for sure, but how do you prove a
Speaker 2: chain of transmission? How do you that this little wiggly
Speaker 2: rod is actually what's causing the illness, not like just
Speaker 2: some coincidence or some byproduct of the illness. That's a
Speaker 2: really difficult problem, and Robert Coke had a brilliant solution
Speaker 2: for it. Now later he would go on to cause
Speaker 2: tremendous harm. And that's also part of the scientific story,
Speaker 2: is that in the pursuit of scientific understanding, we can
Speaker 2: cause a lot of harm, especially if we're not careful.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't adequately careful when it came to promoting
Speaker 2: what he believed was a solution to tuberculosis. But that
Speaker 2: moment of discovery has always stuck with me because it's
Speaker 2: just so because it wasn't just about him. It was
Speaker 2: about thousands of people who'd contributed to that field. And
Speaker 2: so he gets all the credit. But think about all
Speaker 2: the people who had to follow down the wrong paths
Speaker 2: in order for Robert Coke to understand what the right
Speaker 2: path was. Think about the people who were editing the
Speaker 2: medical journals that Robert Coke read, Think about the people
Speaker 2: who were living with tuberculosis, who were pursuing their own
Speaker 2: treatments and understandings of the disease. All the doctors who
Speaker 2: are working on tuberculosis. This it's really a collaboration of
Speaker 2: millions of people that led to this moment.
Speaker 1: It's time for a break, but we'll be back soon
Speaker 1: with more of John Green and his thoughts un Suck,
Speaker 1: awesome and the end of tuberculosis.
Speaker 3: Another theme that comes up in this book and in
Speaker 3: lots of your books is that even when you're facing
Speaker 3: these terrible situations, you can find these moments of like
Speaker 3: small joy. And it was one of the best things
Speaker 3: about the book is that you'll hear many of Henry's
Speaker 3: moments of small joy. I'm curious where you're getting your
Speaker 3: small moments of joy in this not the worst of circumstances,
Speaker 3: but with the time right now.
Speaker 2: People are always funny, Like people are funny. Dying people
Speaker 2: are funny. People are funny when they're suffering, Like people
Speaker 2: are funny. People are always funny. This is my favorite
Speaker 2: thing about us is like I love some gallows humor.
Speaker 2: I love some like late night everything is terrible, let's
Speaker 2: make a joke about it, humor. And I just think
Speaker 2: I find joy in that. I find joy in human connection.
Speaker 2: I find joy in getting to do this work together
Speaker 2: with y'all like to me it it goes back to
Speaker 2: what Paul said, like, isn't this fun? You know, despite everything,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that we're trying to tackle the world's
Speaker 2: biggest problems and healthcare, inequity and the legacies, the horrific
Speaker 2: legacies of colonialism. This, this being able to be in
Speaker 2: this work together is really very quite fulfilling. And so
Speaker 2: I find a lot of a lot of joy in that.
Speaker 2: I find joy, for lack of a better term, in resistance.
Speaker 3: I love the humor point too, because I had to say,
Speaker 3: even though it was a John Grubbe book, I really
Speaker 3: didn't think there.
Speaker 4: Was gonna be a lot of humor in a book
Speaker 4: about sparrculous West.
Speaker 2: A couple of jokes in.
Speaker 4: You know what, that's there. It's there. I found it.
Speaker 4: But that's hard.
Speaker 3: Like again, it kind of just nerdy literary question, right,
Speaker 3: like how do you find ways to weave the humor
Speaker 3: into such a terrible story of suffering?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I would just say that, like Henry
Speaker 2: is a very funny person who suffered a lot. I
Speaker 2: have suffered some and yet am hilarious. I don't know,
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for that thoroughly unearned applause. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like every you know, life is funny books. Horace said
Speaker 2: twenty one hundred years ago that poetry should inst and delight.
Speaker 2: It's easy to instruct, it's hard to delight. It's especially
Speaker 2: hard to delight when you're instructing. And I did want
Speaker 2: this to be a book that at least had moments
Speaker 2: of delight, because, you know, reading a book should should
Speaker 2: be pleasurable. It shouldn't feel like work. It shouldn't feel like, oh,
Speaker 2: I've got this obligation. It should feel like a connection,
Speaker 2: a chance to you know, connect with a story and
Speaker 2: connect with an author and kind of co create something together.
Speaker 3: So we're tragically running out of time because this is
Speaker 3: like the coolest hour of my wife to be up
Speaker 3: here with John. And but we're not going to end
Speaker 3: on my questions. Different thing I forgot to tell you
Speaker 3: at the top of the show was that we're going
Speaker 3: to hear from you. You all have submitted questions in advance,
Speaker 3: and I and John's folks have picked some of the
Speaker 3: best ones and we're going to go through those. But
Speaker 3: this is going to be my last question, and so
Speaker 3: I wanted to end in the most nerified way possible.
Speaker 3: I want to not forget to be awesome. Uh, come on,
Speaker 3: you've got folks, this is a problem. As you know,
Speaker 3: it can be easy to forget to be awesome when
Speaker 3: we're tackling hard topics, when it feels like the world
Speaker 3: is falling apart. I'm curious, how are you embracing awesome
Speaker 3: these days?
Speaker 2: Well, we talk about decreasing world suck and we talk
Speaker 2: about increasing world awesome, and I think they're both important.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to try to increase the overall
Speaker 2: worldwide level of awesome. You know what I've been doing recently,
Speaker 2: and this is ludicrous. I've been playing this video game
Speaker 2: called Fifa. It's a soccer video game, and I play
Speaker 2: as the team I sponsor in real life so that
Speaker 2: I can so that I can see my logo on
Speaker 2: the back of their shorts. It brings me great joy
Speaker 2: to see my own logo on the back of their
Speaker 2: shorts inside a video game, and then people pay me
Speaker 2: to watch this ridiculousness. I'm not good at this game.
Speaker 2: I actually I did a sports podcast yesterday and this
Speaker 2: guy was talking to me about it, and he said,
Speaker 2: you're really trash at FIFA, and I was like, thank you.
Speaker 2: I know, and and people pay me for this, and
Speaker 2: then I use the money to buy a real life
Speaker 2: player for my soccer team. Don't applaud this stupidity. This
Speaker 2: is a terrible use of resources. But I did it
Speaker 2: because it brings me a lot of joy. So yeah,
Speaker 2: just little things like finding finding a video game you
Speaker 2: like playing Red Dead, Redemption two, whatever. It is, just
Speaker 2: finding some joy.
Speaker 4: Love that. So now we're transitioning to your questions.
Speaker 2: These are all for your question. Sorry, we can't answer
Speaker 2: all of them.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: First one is from Olivia Marie from Birmington, New York.
Speaker 4: Livia, you don't want ye.
Speaker 3: Okay, this one Bighamton, thank you.
Speaker 4: Sorry. Olivia Marie's question.
Speaker 3: We know you now connect a lot of things to
Speaker 3: tuberculosis because tuberculosis is everything. Can you connect tuberculosis to
Speaker 3: Taylor Swift?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, hold on, I got to get on my phone.
Speaker 2: I don't want to miss the I don't want to
Speaker 2: mess up the lyric. She's got a lyric about tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: Hold on, where is we?
Speaker 3: I almost want you to sing this lyric afterwards.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to sing it, Okay, I can't find it.
Speaker 2: But it's something like you know, like went to the
Speaker 2: Lake district. You know the line where the poets went
Speaker 2: to die, the lake district where the poets went to die.
Speaker 2: Y'all y'all heard that?
Speaker 4: End up singing the whole audience.
Speaker 2: That's about the British Romantic poets who all died of tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: Legitimately it is. That's not like, it's not like a
Speaker 2: distant connection, like she has written indirectly about TV. Thank you.
Speaker 2: By the way, I am very grateful to my producing
Speaker 2: partner Rosianna, who when we were reading that question backstage
Speaker 2: and I was like, I don't know if I could
Speaker 2: do it. Rosianna spun around and she was like, what
Speaker 2: do you mean you can't do it and immediately produced
Speaker 2: that lyric in a way that I clearly cannot.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're like taking it down from Taylor Smith because
Speaker 3: this is a tough one.
Speaker 4: This is from anushre. She notes.
Speaker 3: A newre notes I was diagnosed with spinal TB after
Speaker 3: years of pain when I visited a doctor in India.
Speaker 3: I had gone to dozens of doctors in the States
Speaker 3: to no avail.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Given the popularity of global travel, TB no longer seems
Speaker 3: like a disease that is only localized to certain countries. Right,
Speaker 3: how do we encourage American doctors to consider TB, especially
Speaker 3: in its rare re forms, as a possible diagnosis.
Speaker 2: This is such an important question, and thank you so
Speaker 2: much for asking it. So this is a huge problem.
Speaker 2: We have ten thousand cases of active TB in the US.
Speaker 2: It's going up and it will go up much more now,
Speaker 2: and yet we don't think of TV a lot of times.
Speaker 2: Doctors they have a phrase that I think is a
Speaker 2: very beautiful phrase. They say, we have a low index
Speaker 2: of suspicion. Is an index of suspicion a phenomenal phrase.
Speaker 2: I have a very high index of suspicion with almost everything.
Speaker 2: But they say they have a low index of suspicion
Speaker 2: with tuberculosis, you know. And they say, like, oh, when
Speaker 2: you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. And I
Speaker 2: understand that. But we have quite a lot of TV here,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, the public health officials that I've
Speaker 2: talked to are always trying to educate the doctors and
Speaker 2: nurses and communities that tuberculosis is a diagnosis we should
Speaker 2: be thinking about, including tuberculosis with bone involvement like you had,
Speaker 2: which I know can be unbelievably painful. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: spoken to people who described that pain to me in
Speaker 2: ways that just made me shudder. And so I'm so
Speaker 2: sorry that you had to go through that, so grateful
Speaker 2: that you were eventually able to be diagnosed. But it
Speaker 2: doesn't surprise me that you were ultimately diagnosed in India,
Speaker 2: where there's lots of tuberculosis, where folks have a high
Speaker 2: index of suspicion, rather than in the United States. But
Speaker 2: it is something that we need to work on with
Speaker 2: our public health departments, with doctors and nurses, with our
Speaker 2: hospital systems, to remind them to think of TB when
Speaker 2: they're thinking when they're hearing from their patients.
Speaker 3: It also feels like if we're doing that more in
Speaker 3: the US, it just turns TV into more of a
Speaker 3: conversation here, which hopefully can get people to care about
Speaker 3: it worldwide too.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right.
Speaker 4: Here's one from from New York City.
Speaker 3: Is there a story graph Buddy read for Everything's tomerculosis?
Speaker 4: Should we create one?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: And yes, I'm in totally What did you think I
Speaker 2: was going to say, like, no, don't read this book
Speaker 2: in community they would bum me out. No, please read
Speaker 2: it in community. Incredible. The best way to read is
Speaker 2: to have conversations. I married a person from a book club.
Speaker 2: We were in a two person book club, and we
Speaker 2: had no idea that we were interested in each other.
Speaker 2: We thought it was totally normal to start a two
Speaker 2: person book club to read books together and then to
Speaker 2: meet and discuss those books over drinks. We thought that
Speaker 2: was just a completely platonic thing. And then one day
Speaker 2: I was like, am I in love? We both highlighted,
Speaker 2: you want to hear something really cute. We both highlighted
Speaker 2: the same passage in a Philip Roth book, and the
Speaker 2: passage was the thing isn't owning the person. The thing
Speaker 2: is having another contender in the room with you. And
Speaker 2: Sarah has always been that contender in the room.
Speaker 3: That is acused thing ever, And I don't think you
Speaker 3: thought you were going to get dating.
Speaker 4: A vice from John Green on stage.
Speaker 2: Today, start a two person book club. That's my advice.
Speaker 4: I mean, apparently it worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it worked.
Speaker 3: And make sure you share each other's highlights in the books.
Speaker 3: You can do it with really good book here. But
Speaker 3: since you're getting personal, I'll jump to this question. This
Speaker 3: is one from Ellen Stearns from Large Bart, New York.
Speaker 3: How has being a parent changed.
Speaker 4: You as a writer so much?
Speaker 2: For one thing, it slowed me down, but no, it's
Speaker 2: changed it so much. I could never have written The
Speaker 2: Fault in Our Stars or Turtles all the Way Down
Speaker 2: without Henry and Alice because with The Fault Nar Stars,
Speaker 2: you know, having kids helped me to understand this deep
Speaker 2: fundamental truth about love, which is that love is stronger
Speaker 2: than death, Love survives death. As long as Henry and
Speaker 2: Alice or I am alive, I will be their dad
Speaker 2: and they will be my kids. And so love is
Speaker 2: stronger than death. And understanding that made it possible for
Speaker 2: me to write The Fault Nar Stars, I think, and
Speaker 2: I never knew that until I was a parent myself.
Speaker 2: And then with Turtles all the Way Down, they helped
Speaker 2: me because they helped me get better. They helped me,
Speaker 2: they helped me get better every day.
Speaker 3: I want to do a fall up on that one
Speaker 3: you mentioned, Fauldnar Stars, Turtles all the Way Down. Curious
Speaker 3: how being a parent helped you with this book. You
Speaker 3: shared the passage that one of the things that brought
Speaker 3: you to chat with Henry is that you know you shared.
Speaker 4: A name with your son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd never thought about that, but that's true, Henry.
Speaker 2: If it weren't for you, they'd probably, you know, everything
Speaker 2: is tuberculosis or if we'd named you Atticus as we
Speaker 2: thought about, might not exist. Man, that's so weird. Life
Speaker 2: is so weird.
Speaker 3: So here's another cultural one. This one's from Molly from
Speaker 3: Jersey City. If Moulain Rouge was more realistic, would Christian
Speaker 3: have caught TV from satim?
Speaker 2: I don't know, not necessarily. I mean, we forget. How
Speaker 2: long does that the whole thing take place? Like five days?
Speaker 4: Like it's like a two hour show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild though, like a like a lot happens,
Speaker 2: but like it all takes place over the course of
Speaker 2: the development of one show. Maybe it's like six weeks.
Speaker 2: I don't she gets sick. Very It's not a super
Speaker 2: realistic portrayal of tuberculosis. There are realistic portrayals of tuberculosis
Speaker 2: and media, but that is not, in my opinion, and
Speaker 2: really one of them. What's your favorite Red Dead Redemption
Speaker 2: to the video game? It's very realistic, Okay, I just have.
Speaker 4: To channel Connor from Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you were shuting your listening to this,
Speaker 3: but you actually wrote a question about red Dead redemption too,
Speaker 3: so I'm gonna read I'm going to read that one.
Speaker 3: Connor notes most of what I know about tuberculosis comes
Speaker 3: from the video game.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you've ever played that game, SEW,
Speaker 3: and if so, what do you think about his portrayal
Speaker 3: of the deceased.
Speaker 2: I thought it was great. I thought I did a
Speaker 2: great job. He gets six slowly over time. This is
Speaker 2: a spoiler for anybody hasn't played this video game, but
Speaker 2: not that much of a spoiler. It's fun and it's
Speaker 2: a really fun video game. You have to kill a
Speaker 2: lot of people, which I was trying to play with
Speaker 2: my son, and I was like, is there a way
Speaker 2: for us not to kill so many people?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: Can we just sort of negotiate? Seems to go straight
Speaker 2: to violence every time you can ever have a conversation
Speaker 2: where you're like, listen, wouldn't this be better if you
Speaker 2: just gave us half the money and kept the other half?
Speaker 2: But you're an outlaw, so I guess it's part of it.
Speaker 2: But it's a beautiful video game. It's just like very
Speaker 2: visually beautiful, very engaging and engrossing, and I thought the
Speaker 2: portrayal of TV was quite good.
Speaker 4: Are there other video games that have portrayed TB?
Speaker 2: I only play FIFA in Red Dead Redemption two.
Speaker 4: Oway.
Speaker 3: Now we're going to get to a tough one because
Speaker 3: you're bringing the tough ones. Think John can take it.
Speaker 3: Your work in so many of your books, especially Fall
Speaker 3: in Our Stars, explores illness and the different ways it
Speaker 3: impacts our relationships with the world and with each other.
Speaker 3: How has your own personal relationship with illness changed since
Speaker 3: Hank's cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, I think it
Speaker 2: probably has changed in ways that I haven't totally settled
Speaker 2: on yet. Like it feels like Hank just had cancer,
Speaker 2: and I know it was a year and a half ago, but.
Speaker 4: Can you I mean, I'm sure all the fame.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just for the infectious disease doctors in the room.
Speaker 2: I keep forgetting about them through there. My brother had cancer.
Speaker 2: Weird thing to laugh at. No, I'm just kidding. It's
Speaker 2: fine to laugh at it. My brother had cancer two
Speaker 2: years ago. He had Hodgkin lymphoma, but we didn't know
Speaker 2: what kind of cancer he had for about three weeks.
Speaker 2: And that was the scariest three weeks of my life.
Speaker 2: We thought it might be a metastasist from another site
Speaker 2: or another kind of lymphoma that was much more serious,
Speaker 2: and in the end he had this very treatable, very
Speaker 2: curable form of cancer. And it's worth noting that nobody
Speaker 2: ever said, I'm not sure if treating your cancer is
Speaker 2: cost effective, even though it cost one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: times more to cure Hank's cancer than it would have
Speaker 2: cost to cure Henry's TV. Nobody ever said that. Nobody
Speaker 2: thought about that. It never came up, It was never
Speaker 2: a discussion. Hank got the kind of personalized, tailored treatment
Speaker 2: that any of us would expect and that all of
Speaker 2: us deserve, and as a result, he survived, and he's
Speaker 2: healthy today and doing great, And you know, it has
Speaker 2: changed the way I think about illness. It's just a
Speaker 2: reminder that illness often comes quickly. What does he comings say,
Speaker 2: spring is like a perhaps hand coming carefully out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: and that feeling of something coming carefully out of nowhere
Speaker 2: can be wondrous and also terrifying. And it was a
Speaker 2: really hard thing for our family to go through. But
Speaker 2: Hank was was very well supported throughout, not just by us,
Speaker 2: but also by so many people. And i'matologized if I
Speaker 2: get emotional, but by so many people in this community
Speaker 2: it made a huge difference for his ability to get
Speaker 2: through that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it just speaks to the power
Speaker 3: of community and ways you don't even expect, to the
Speaker 3: power of like generosity in reaching out. I'm sure those
Speaker 3: of you who were in the audience and said good
Speaker 3: things about Hank helped Johann to hang out during this time,
Speaker 3: you probably didn't maybe realize how much it was affecting
Speaker 3: both of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you probably didn't know like how much
Speaker 2: your comments mattered and how much your outreach mattered and
Speaker 2: little gifts of all forms. But it really did matter,
Speaker 2: you know. It was really overwhelming. I remember when Hank
Speaker 2: told me that he was going to I was like,
Speaker 2: don't talk about it, just you know, you don't have
Speaker 2: to talk about it. Don't feel like you have to
Speaker 2: talk about it, and he was like, I think I
Speaker 2: want to, And then he texted me guaranteed one out
Speaker 2: of ten video meant that he knew he was going
Speaker 2: to get a lot of views, which he did. That's
Speaker 2: a reminder though, that like even amid darkness, we can
Speaker 2: be very funny. Like that's a great example to me
Speaker 2: of like being funny amid everything, like finding ways to
Speaker 2: still be because we're still fully human. You don't stop
Speaker 2: being a person when you get really sick. That's really
Speaker 2: important to understand. So, yeah, he's doing great, and it
Speaker 2: has definitely changed the way I think, not just about
Speaker 2: illness but about everything. It's just a reminder of the
Speaker 2: precarity of all things. You know, we're only here for
Speaker 2: a little while.
Speaker 3: It was also really a theme in the book you
Speaker 3: know you mentioned no one ever asked if Hank's cancer
Speaker 3: treatment was cost effective. These may come out a final
Speaker 3: sort of happiness question, which is like, there's a lot
Speaker 3: in this book to get angry about, to get pissed
Speaker 3: off about.
Speaker 4: How do we channel that appropriately?
Speaker 2: I think we have to channel it, like you said earlier,
Speaker 2: into action and community, into working together to try to
Speaker 2: make the world suck less.
Speaker 4: It all goes back to less suck, more awesome.
Speaker 3: I think here's the last question I have from the audience,
Speaker 3: and it's funny. It's going back to us being here
Speaker 3: in New York. I think the organizers really wants to
Speaker 3: pick a very New Yorky question. John's last question, but
Speaker 3: it's actually a question from Alana Harris, who's from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Wow, and she makes for coming all this way.
Speaker 3: She kindly points out Tulsa, Oklahoma parentheses the capital of
Speaker 3: Oklahoma Solas Florence.
Speaker 2: Today it is everybody knows that.
Speaker 3: Here's what Alanna says. She says, Hi, John, you spent
Speaker 3: some time living as a young artist. You spent some
Speaker 3: time as young artists living in New York City. Do
Speaker 3: you have a favorite police, a favorite piece of advice
Speaker 3: you received during that season of your life? And or
Speaker 3: do you have any hindsight to offer to the new
Speaker 3: generation moving to New York City for careers in the arts.
Speaker 2: Get a roommate, maybe five.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: I think the best piece of advice I received during
Speaker 2: that time actually came from my editor, Julie strass Gable,
Speaker 2: who's here, who's been my editor for twenty two years,
Speaker 2: since two years before Looking for Alaska was published. And
Speaker 2: when I was living here, I was writing paper Towns,
Speaker 2: and I remember Julie said to me, you're twenty nine.
Speaker 2: You can't act like a little deer in headlights anymore.
Speaker 2: That was really good advice because I was still acting
Speaker 2: like I was twenty two, you know, like I don't
Speaker 2: know anything. I'm just a little boy, you know. I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to make my way in the world. And
Speaker 2: that's one thing that comes to mind. The other thing
Speaker 2: that comes to mind is another friend who's here at tonight,
Speaker 2: Marian Johnson, the great writer. I was writing a book
Speaker 2: with Marian Johnson. She was writing Sweet Scarlet. I was
Speaker 2: writing Paper Towns. Were sitting across the table from each other,
Speaker 2: and I was crying. She said, you know, you don't
Speaker 2: have to feel everything that they feel. It's really good advice.
Speaker 4: Right. Well, that was our last question.
Speaker 3: I want to end with another thing we know boose happiness,
Speaker 3: which is gratitude when I do this without trying to cry.
Speaker 3: But John thank you for bringing to light news suck
Speaker 3: that I didn't know about but found incredibly curious and
Speaker 3: incredibly hopeful. Oddly, Thanks for giving me hope in moments
Speaker 3: where I really needed it. And thanks for your curiosity,
Speaker 3: your courage, your kindness, and all your books keep them coming.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, doctor Roy Santos, everybody, thanks one
Speaker 2: more time for doctor Wrri. Okay, I forgot. I have
Speaker 2: a mic over there. It's okay. So we're nearing the
Speaker 2: end of our time together tonight, But I don't blame
Speaker 2: you if you feel like we're also nearing the end
Speaker 2: of our time. In a more general sense, you may feel,
Speaker 2: as I sometimes do of late, that the world is
Speaker 2: a little bit ending. Societal collapse is in the air,
Speaker 2: noted theologian Timothy Chalomeay. Recently, he really said that he's
Speaker 2: so beautiful, and he's so pithy. We know that the
Speaker 2: world will end. It will end for each of us,
Speaker 2: for all of us, for our planet, but not today,
Speaker 2: not yet. My friend Henry loves the verbs and courage
Speaker 2: and discourage, and right now I confess that I am
Speaker 2: very discouraged. I feel that my courage is being dragged
Speaker 2: down by all sorts of forces, especially by those who
Speaker 2: argue or act as if some human lives are more
Speaker 2: valuable than others. How can we respond hopefully to a
Speaker 2: moment where hope does not feel rewarded or justified. How
Speaker 2: can we imagine better worlds when so many power structures
Speaker 2: seem intent upon making worse ones? I mean, one recent
Speaker 2: estimate holds that, as I mentioned earlier, cutting all US
Speaker 2: related tuberculosis funding will result in three million more cases
Speaker 2: of TB every year. It's easy to feel that this
Speaker 2: is the end of history, and I don't blame you
Speaker 2: if you feel it. There's a dread about our historical moment,
Speaker 2: a general feeling that horror is here and worse is coming.
Speaker 2: And I feel that too. I mean, why are we
Speaker 2: even here just to suffer, just to worry? Sometimes it
Speaker 2: feels that way, but I think we are in this
Speaker 2: not yet. We are here to be with each other
Speaker 2: in the deepest sense, to help others feel less alone,
Speaker 2: and to allow ourselves to help us feel less alone.
Speaker 2: I believe we are here to accompany each other through
Speaker 2: the joys and travails of humanness, through the wonder and
Speaker 2: the precaarity. We do not live at the end of history.
Speaker 2: We live in the middle of history. I argue in
Speaker 2: the book that we're products of history, but we are
Speaker 2: also ourselves historical forces, and together we can change the
Speaker 2: arc of our shared story. I've seen that happen. The
Speaker 2: year I graduated from high school, twelve million children died
Speaker 2: under the age of five, and last year fewer than
Speaker 2: five million did. That progress wasn't natural or inevitable. It
Speaker 2: happened because millions of people, billions if you count all
Speaker 2: the taxpayers who contributed to it, work together to make
Speaker 2: the world safer for children. And that is my hope.
Speaker 2: I know that today feels like the last day, the
Speaker 2: end of the story, because it's the last one we've
Speaker 2: lived through so far. But today is not the end
Speaker 2: of the story. Today is the middle of the story,
Speaker 2: and it falls to us to fight for a better end.
Speaker 2: My friend Amy Cross Rosenthal, who died of cancer a
Speaker 2: few years ago, knew this better than anyone I've ever met.
Speaker 2: Amy used to ask people to sing an old song
Speaker 2: from World War One, sung to the tune of that
Speaker 2: New Year's Eve song ald Lang Zone, British soldiers in
Speaker 2: the trenches, horrified by the pointlessness of war, would sing
Speaker 2: we're here because we're here, because we're here, because we're here,
Speaker 2: and Amy changed the meaning of that song without ever
Speaker 2: changing the words. She turned it into a kind of
Speaker 2: battle cry for hope. It's true that we can't say
Speaker 2: with certainty why we are here, but we can nonetheless
Speaker 2: celebrate being here, especially being here together in community, because
Speaker 2: that song, when sung together, takes on an entirely different
Speaker 2: meaning at least for me, and if you'll indulge me,
Speaker 2: I'd like to sing it together once now, hopefully with
Speaker 2: doctor Warri Santos.
Speaker 5: We're here because we're here, because we're here, because we're here.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being here with us tonight.
Speaker 2: Thank you,