438: The 2014 Episode

What happened to John in 2014? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

  Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

• 0:15Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you deuce advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I once heard about two communists who were sitting on the beach at a nudist colony.

• 0:28John Green?

  Whoa.

• 0:28Hank Green?

  And, and one of them says to the other, have you read Marx? And the other said, yes, it's these dang wicker chairs.

• 0:37John Green?

  So see, that's a good dad joke, Hank. That got me.

• 0:44John Green?

  So listen, Hank, are we actually gonna do this thing? Are we actually gonna put aside the entire, the entire shtick of this podcast to answer one question? What happened to John in 2014?

• 0:55Hank Green?

  I think, sure. Look, I forgot about this promise that we made and I'm glad that you remembered. I am not prepared, but I, I have been talking about it with my therapist.

• 1:06John Green?

  I was gonna say, haven't you spent 12 years preparing?

• 1:12Hank Green?

  It's funny, I finally, after, after a long time of working with my therapist, I finally was like, there's probably something you should know. And it was a really weird conversation.

• 1:22John Green?

  Okay, so tell me, let's start there. Let's start with, what was the conversation? How did you explain 2014 to your therapist?

• 1:28Hank Green?

  I mean, she doesn't know what Tumblr is.

• 1:31John Green?

  Neither do a lot of our listeners. And so

• 1:33Hank Green?

  No.

• 1:33John Green?

  we should, we should give the your therapist version.

• 1:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Recently, I said to my therapist, I bet you don't even know who Matt Walsh is. And she was like, I don't, but I will learn if you need me to. And I was like, that's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.

• 1:47John Green?

  I don't know who Matt Walsh is.

• 1:49Hank Green?

  That's great. That's great.

• 1:51John Green?

  Is he a good guy? Or am I on his team or am I not on his team?

• 1:54Hank Green?

  I don't think you're on his team.

• 1:56John Green?

  Okay, great. That's helpful feedback.

• 1:58Hank Green?

  Solid.

• 1:59John Green?

  2014, Hank. Take, take us back. What did you tell your therapist?

• 2:04Hank Green?

  Well, so for, so there was this long period of time.

• 2:08Hank Green?

  Uh, when it was all like kind of simple and sparkly.

• 2:11John Green?

  Yes.

• 2:12Hank Green?

  As being a vlog brother went. And it was just, it was a roller coaster that only went up.

• 2:17John Green?

  Right.

• 2:18Hank Green?

  And it felt like it really was. It felt like, what could go wrong? It's just a bunch of people goofing around, having a good time.

• 2:25John Green?

  Now, that's not entirely true. There were hard times before 2014, but in general, Nerd Fight area itself grew a little bit every year. So things got like, it was a little bit bigger. It was a little bit better. It was a little bit more powerful. The stuff we were doing was a little bit cooler. And it grew very organically. So I think at the end of 2007, we had 9,000 YouTube subscribers.

• 2:49Hank Green?

  Which was a huge, huge amount for us and also for YouTube. Like that put us in the top 200 YouTube channels.

• 2:56John Green?

  And then by 2010, when we started VidCon, we probably had a few hundred thousand YouTube subscribers. And I remember actually, we were in the top 100 most subscribed at that point.

• 3:07Hank Green?

  Right. That like happened right around then. It was the, and it was the only time that we quickly soon after dropped off. But there was that moment when we were in the top 100.

• 3:17John Green?

  We were a pretty big YouTube channel, but YouTube itself was really quite small and insular. Now, again, there were hard times. There were things that went wrong. There were mistakes that Hank and I made. Uh, going into that. But in general, Nerd Fight area grew nonetheless. And in a healthy, felt what felt like a sustainable way. And I agree with you, Hank. It felt like, you know, we had really good jobs and our jobs just got better over time.

• 3:48Hank Green?

  It was so weird and fun. Nothing meant a lot. Like there was no, like it wasn't a high status career. It wasn't a high paying career. And because of that, there was not a lot of expectations and people weren't very competitive. And it was just, I don't know. It was just chill. And you.

• 4:07John Green?

  We're also very forgiving when you made mistakes.

• 4:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, because it didn't matter that much.

• 4:12John Green?

  Right.

• 4:12Hank Green?

  John, um, you know, through, through this was, was like a weird member of this. And weirder than me, because like I was just a blogger, you know? But John had the, you had this like other. Part of your career that was very sort of mainstream legitimate, even before The Fault in Our Stars.

• 4:33John Green?

  Yeah, I had a career before The Fault in Our Stars, and I made a good living writing books before The Fault in Our Stars. But for context, The Fault in Our Stars came out January 10th, 2012.

• 4:46Hank Green?

  Right.

• 4:46John Green?

  And in its first week, it sold more hardcovers than all of my previous books combined.

• 4:50Hank Green?

  So there was this weird thing where you occupied a culturally legitimate space of publishing, as well as this culturally important, but not yet recognized as important space of YouTube and social media.

• 5:04John Green?

  Right. And that gave me a certain amount of cachet in two different worlds, right? Like, I'd won the Prince Award.

• 5:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:13John Green?

  But I was also a YouTuber. And when I joined websites like Tumblr or Twitter, but especially Tumblr, which I joined, I think, in 2011, there was a different level of attention given to me than was given to Hank, because I wasn't just a vlog brother. I was also that author of those books that were becoming kind of popular.

• 5:37Hank Green?

  Right. And then in 2012, when The Fault in Our Stars came out, that became much more the thing, where it was like, this person is a legitimate cultural figure, especially among this group of people who are very nerdy, reedy-type people, and also tended to be young adults. And so you were there, and you weren't the only one. There were a couple of people like this.

• 6:01John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:02Hank Green?

  Who were, you know, kind of famous-ish. Like, they had status in more legitimate parts of society and were also on Tumblr in this rough-and-tumble weirdo, cool, new, social space. And that was very cool. People loved that.

• 6:20John Green?

  It was very cool. It was very exciting. It's like how Ashton Kutcher was on Twitter.

• 6:24Hank Green?

  Right. Yeah, it's like, no, you're from the TV. TV guys shouldn't be on Twitter.

• 6:29John Green?

  How can you be on Twitter when you're also a famous person? Like, why would you risk all that fame for Twitter? I think was the general vibe. But then it was very exciting that Ashton Kutcher was on Twitter. I remember when he followed me. I was like, that's so cool. Ashton Kutcher follows me on Twitter. The next 10 times I tweeted, I was like, oh, God, Ashton Kutcher's gonna see this.

• 6:48Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it feels like suddenly you're in the room. You know, there's this weird thing where certain kinds of status feel like they are inaccessible. And then when like the room makes them accessible, then that's like really cool and exciting. But part of the excitement of that is like the proximity to that power. And then like, what's the question? Like, what do you do with the proximity to that power?

• 7:15John Green?

  Well, okay, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, though. Let's stay in 2012 just for one second. So 2012 was very exciting for me. It was also very stressful. Hank and I were on tour. Crash Course was launching in the early part of that year. And then the rest of that year, I remember we got off tour, and I'd been on tour before. And, you know, we'd had big events before. We'd sold out all of our events before. It wasn't the first time that had happened, because that happened with Paper Towns, too, because of Nerd Vitaria. But then I got off the road, and the book was selling better every week than it had sold while I was on the road. And I remember calling my agent, like, we were on a family vacation to try to reunite the family after the stress of tour. And I was in New Orleans,

• 7:59John Green?

  and I called my agent, and I was like, when does this end? And she was like, I don't know. And that was the first time I glimpsed like, oh, my life is different now. Like, you know, I mean, on a functional level, it was different, like, just in terms of financial security. I mean, I made more money in 2012 than I'd made between the ages of 22 and 36.

• 8:20Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:20John Green?

  And then it was also different in terms of me being, having a level of attention I'd never had before. Like, you know, I remember, like, Time Magazine named The Fault in Our Stars the best book of the year. And, you know, it was, it was just a completely different level of attention than I'd ever had before. But a lot, but it was over, I think the thing to emphasize is that it was overwhelmingly positive attention. Like, I think the book had like 4.6 average rating on Goodreads after a million reviews. Like, that's the level of, I don't know if you've ever been on Goodreads, but nothing has a 4.6, not even The Great Gatsby. So the book was very popular, but it was also sort of beloved.

• 9:00Hank Green?

  Yeah, and this is kind of hard to remember in retrospect because now like anything that's popular, there will be a some amount of backlash to it. Now, what I'll say is that for the for most people, they are like probably haven't been exposed to that backlash. Like I have a guy, like there's an oncologist who goes to the same gym as me. And he's like, oh, I just found out that you're John Green's brother. Can you tell him that that's the book I recommend to like to cancer patients? And it is the best portrayal of the disease. And this is a guy who like watches people, children and adults, go through cancer all the time. And he's like, it's the best portrayal I've ever seen. And so like, to lots of people, like, and this is like a weird thing

• 9:41Hank Green?

  about our experience of pop culture. It's so online. And like, most people's experience of pop culture is much less, sort of like woven through with these various, you know, blowbacks and controversies and dramas that kind of tend to happen if you spend a lot of time in online spaces.

• 10:00John Green?

  Yeah, tended to happen a little less.

• 10:03Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was, this was the other, yeah, the thing I try and remember is that like, we were patient zero of a lot of things.

• 10:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Hank Green?

  Because we were so online so early.

• 10:15John Green?

  We were so online even in the 1990s.

• 10:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So also patient zero of of like,

• 10:22John Green?

  Of the internet.

• 10:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, being on computer and having conversations we probably shouldn't be having with people who probably shouldn't be talking to us.

• 10:29John Green?

  Totally, totally. So it's 2013. They are making a movie of The Fault in Our Stars, which like I sold the movie rights. I remember we were in a middle school auditorium, Hank, before we were going to perform somewhere. And I was like, should I sell the movie rights? And you were like, yeah, it's free money.

• 10:53John Green?

  That that turned out to be an oversimplification.

• 10:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:58John Green?

  I.

• 10:58Hank Green?

  Well, usually it is because usually they don't even make the movie. I got money for my for my books movie rights and they're never making those.

• 11:07John Green?

  Free money, exactly. And and with with Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns and an abundance of Catharines, it had been free money because they paid me an option fee and then they never made the thing. Now, eventually they made some of those, but that was only because of the success of The Fault in Our Stars. So I'd sold the movie rights and then like a script came and I was used to that part. But the difference was the script was really good. I remember reading the script and being like, feeling like a sort of pit in my stomach, thinking, oh, my God, they might actually make this movie. And it was a mix of excitement and dread because I knew from experience that when they make a movie out of your book, there are wonderful things that happen. I knew not from my own experience, but from my author friends' experiences.

• 11:51John Green?

  There are wonderful things that happen and then there are really difficult things that happen. And those things happen sort of regardless of whether the movie is a good experience. And I want to be clear, the movie was a great experience. I was included in every aspect of it. I certainly didn't have decision making power, but I was always welcome at the table. And the kids who were in it were very kind to me. And I have especially good memories of the cancer survivors who played the kids in the cancer support group. And in general, it was just a really awesome experience. It was a huge gift to me. And so all the while the movie is being made, the book just keeps selling.

• 12:35John Green?

  Like it's it's it's number one on the New York Times Bestseller list, week after week after week for for literally years. I mean, it eventually became, I think it's important to emphasize this, even though it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn. Because like, I think it's important to understand like how much of my identity I let slide into this world. Because that's what really proved catastrophic.

• 12:59Hank Green?

  Why wouldn't you? Because it's so, it's so. Good.

• 13:04John Green?

  It was so intoxicating.

• 13:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:07John Green?

  The fame was intoxicating, the proximity to celebrity was intoxicating, the money was intoxicating. And then also there was this feeling that like, look, it's not like I was out there trying to sell something that I wasn't proud of. I was out there trying to sell something that your oncologist friend thought was really good portrayal of cancer. Like I was, you know, like-

• 13:27Hank Green?

  You had read so many cancer books and you were like, these are all bad.

• 13:32John Green?

  So bad.

• 13:33Hank Green?

  There's so many bad cancer books.

• 13:35John Green?

  I grew up, I grew up like loving the cancer book genre, but also recognizing how destructive it was because it portrayed the lives of sick people primarily as a series of lessons that could be learned by the well. And I was trying really hard to write an un-romanticized book that, that used the conventions of that genre, but that wasn't about healthy kids learning lessons. It was about sick kids having meaning in their lives. That's, that was the goal of that book. And whether I achieved that goal is not up to me to decide. It's up to readers to decide. But like, I was proud of the book and I, I, you know, I wasn't like selling widgets. I was selling something that I was close to my heart.

• 14:13Hank Green?

  And I want to say, I hope that you are still proud of the book. Um, because I am proud that you wrote the book. I, I, I think that it is a good thing in the world. I think that it has been a, it is a, uh, been a, a, a, like it has had a positive impact on the vast majority, like the 99% of the people who have read it. And, and most of the damage done by the book has been done by people who are like, well, this is a big enough thing that we should probably use it as, as like a tool with which to have a cultural discourse. Uh, and, and like backlash is a way for, to, to, to gather attention.

• 14:49John Green?

  Yeah, no, I think most of the people listening to this podcast probably have no idea about the backlash at all. I mean, I have, I, I have very complicated feelings about that book, the same way that you would have very complicated feelings about a rocket ship that sent you into space. Like it was, it was great to be in space, but it was also very weird. And if I could go back to space, I would do it differently.

• 15:11Hank Green?

  Right. Yeah, I have all kinds of things that I do differently with my books, but like it doesn't bother me because they didn't become cultural institutions.

• 15:19John Green?

  I mean, I would write it differently now. I'd write all of my books differently now. That's the nature of growing as a person. Hopefully you continue to change and that's why you write new books. But, um, but yeah, so anyway, all through 2013, the buzz was growing. And then it was, it was really in 2013 that I started noticing I had to apologize a lot. So I would say something on Tumblr and somebody would, would be like, that's actually really hurtful and I would apologize. And then it became kind of a joke that like, oh, John's always apologizing and he's-

• 15:56Hank Green?

  I think, I think we need a step before this, which is like how, how fun it is to like see a John Green. Cause you're, and your, your Tumblr name is Fishing Boat Proceeds. I think is a good, is a good way into this. So it's not like John Green's Tumblr is called Fishing Boat Proceeds because of an inside joke from a Vlogbrothers video.

• 16:13John Green?

  You don't even know that it's my Tumblr most of the time.

• 16:15Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. But then, but then like, it's kind of a secret that it is like, if you're in on that information, then you like, see a funny joke that John Green made on Tumblr. And it's, it's like, it, you know, you're there in the room joking with this author of the biggest book of the year.

• 16:31John Green?

  And he sees your posts about him and he likes them. And when you tag him, he shows up and comments and that makes you happy.

• 16:40Hank Green?

  And it makes you happy too. It's like fun and weird.

• 16:43John Green?

  Yeah. But it's, but it's weird, right? It means that anybody can be in contact with me at any time.

• 16:48Hank Green?

  And you have, you're setting up that expectation. And so if something is happening and you are not responding, then everyone knows that you know about it, but are not responding.

• 16:58John Green?

  Exactly. Yeah. And so you set the expectation that you reply to everything and then you actually have to reply to everything. Which means you have to apologize a lot because like, look, you make a lot of missteps. The, the, the metaphor that I found most helpful that in the thick of it you shared with me was it's like you're in a giant robot suit. Like you are inside of a transformer costume and every and you're Godzilla and everything you step on, uh, you do way more damage than if you were just a human being stepping on the earth.

• 17:31Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:31John Green?

  And accidentally, you can step on a house.

• 17:34Hank Green?

  So you gotta be real careful.

• 17:36John Green?

  You gotta be, you gotta be extra careful. And in fact, I would argue you cannot be careful enough and still have a life online. And so I thought that I could still have a life online if I was just careful. But in fact, like you cannot be careful enough because the giant robot suit gets too big and too powerful. And and then you have to take a step back.

• 17:57Hank Green?

  I have to be, I can use this for good and I can, I can like show that I I'm responsible and thoughtful and that I I can show that you you can respond to criticism with empathy and and like do a good job of showing that you're growing as a person and doing better. I think it is actually powerful and and like those actions are good.

• 18:17John Green?

  Yes, I agree. And I think it's really important, but it's really, I'll just say like for me, it's it's actually, you're better at it than I am. But like for me, it's really hard to be inside the Godzilla suit and step on things because I worry that no matter what I step on, I'm hurting things. And yes, like a lot of good was done in that time. A lot of money was raised for people living with cancer. A lot of money was raised through the Project for Awesome. Like a lot of good things happened in that time and I try, I tried my best, I genuinely tried to use my power well. I think that I had to understand that when you have that much power, you know, maybe Taylor Swift can use it well, but I can't. And like the amount of power that I can use well is like current nerd fight area anti

• 19:02John Green?

  tuberculosis efforts power, right?

• 19:05Hank Green?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think you absolutely could do more. I think that the question is whether you want to or not, and the answer to that is is no. And and that's, that's fine.

• 19:15John Green?

  The cost of doing more to me feels very high.

• 19:19Hank Green?

  Uh, on the world?

• 19:20John Green?

  No, like the cost of being famous again.

• 19:23Hank Green?

  Feels very high, such that I'm confused by why you're doing it. Yeah, no, I totally get that, which is maybe a topic for another video. Yeah, we'll do, we'll do that. We'll do that one next. Why does Hank still want to be famous? I actually, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm working, I'm working on this as a Hank's channel video, of course. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank wanting to be famous. Hank wanting to be famous is astonishingly still a thing. This podcast is also brought to you by Laura Dern. Laura Dern, not quite Helen Hunt. No, but she's awesome. I mean, what a lovely person. Really. I, I, I sound like I'm celebrity mooching or whatever, but I really like Laura Dern a lot.

• 20:02Hank Green?

  What a, what a great actor in person. Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by the Fault in Our Stars. The Fault in Our Stars is still in print. So like, if you haven't read it, there's nothing saying you can't. And today's podcast is brought to you by editing the reposts of other Tumblr users, a feature that actually existed, which we're probably gonna mention at the future of this podcast after the actual ads. Maybe we'll get to it, but I do want to say that it is the case that this instinct to find,

• 20:37Hank Green?

  to point out ways that a person with a lot of power is making missteps, that that like is a, it is a very natural and good instinct to be like, hey, you gotta be more careful. You're doing a wrong thing here. Yeah, good instinct. It is important to recognize that you can do that in a way that is actually more about gathering attention for yourself and feeling some amount of power than it is about actually trying to have the positive impact. And those things are in communication with each other, and it's very difficult as a person with power to know which thing is happening and how much, how seriously you should be taking something.

• 21:20Hank Green?

  And that is like one of the hardest parts of our job.

• 21:23John Green?

  Yeah, it's hard to understand what's good faith criticism and what's bad faith criticism because all criticism feels bad, right? Like, all criticism makes you feel defensive. And all criticism makes you feel like, especially if you've put all of your identity eggs into the single basket of "The World Loves The Fault in Our Stars" and John Green. It's really hard when people are like, "Actually, I don't think we do." And so even good faith criticism can make you defensive. It's just that when you get good faith criticism, you need to be defensive and work through that and then listen.

• 21:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, and like a really weird thing is that good faith criticism can come along with a bunch of bad faith criticism. So teasing it all apart is really hard.

• 22:05John Green?

  Yeah, teasing it all apart is, can be really challenging. And I wasn't good at it, let's just say that. So there was some good faith criticism of my work, and there always has been. And I try to listen to it and learn from it. Some of that was about my Tumblr post, some of that was about the book itself, some of it was about previous books that I'd written, whatever. I tried to listen to all that good faith criticism. There was also, in, starting in about May of 2014, right around the time The Fault in Our Stars movie came out. And the movie did very well. It was the number one movie in the world. It beat Tom Cruise at the box office. It was a huge phenomenon. It was one of the most profitable movies ever made.

• 22:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, it came out at the same time as Edge of Tomorrow, which was also called Live, Die, Repeat, which is like Groundhog's Day, but with war.

• 22:55John Green?

  Really good movie, by the way.

• 22:57Hank Green?

  I watched it like several years later because like at the time, I was like celebrating that you were beating Tom Cruise. Like, that was the vibe. I was like going to the movie theater and being like, "Here's John's poster and here's Tom Cruise's poster. Which of these two you think is gonna be the bigger movie? Ha, ha, ha, it's actually my dumb brother." And then I watched Live, Die, Repeat and I was like, "Actually, this kicks ass."

• 23:15John Green?

  Pretty good movie.

• 23:16Hank Green?

  Both good movies.

• 23:17John Green?

  Emily Blunt's in it, I think. Yeah, it's a good, good film. So anyway, that's, it was a very successful movie. I went on a very stressful press tour.

• 23:27John Green?

  My face was everywhere. They made a Saturday Night Live sketch.

• 23:29Hank Green?

  I went to the premiere, Catherine and I got outfits.

• 23:32John Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Hank Green?

  We had to.

• 23:33John Green?

  You didn't wear a suit, but you did get an outfit, which I appreciate.

• 23:38Hank Green?

  I really did. I was I was wearing Carhartts.

• 23:41John Green?

  The stars of the movie and I were on a crazy press junket where we were like touring around the country and we were, I mean, it was, it was, it was nuts. And the press junket itself was so stressful and overwhelming and I didn't always do a good job answering questions. And sometimes, sometimes I would answer a question in a way that I wasn't proud of, and then I'd try to fix it. And then they wouldn't let me fix it because that's the nature of press junkets. And so I had to apologize for a bunch of things I said on the press junket, which I did feel really bad about. And I even recognized it as I was saying them, that I was like misspeaking and not saying what I was trying to say. But, but they published, of course, the

• 24:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, they published the thing that's gonna get the most clicks.

• 24:23John Green?

  So there was that going on. And then, at the same time, people on Tumblr, a large percentage of people on Tumblr were like, actually, it feels like this guy doesn't belong here, which, by the way, was correct.

• 24:39John Green?

  I didn't belong there anymore.

• 24:40Hank Green?

  And that's kind of like the reason why it was so cool you were there, until it was the reason why it was so uncool you were there.

• 24:47John Green?

  Yeah. So someone posted a post that got a lot of attention that was like, John Green is like the creepy uncle at a pool party who's gawking at all the girls, or John Green's vibe feels like this.

• 25:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:02John Green?

  And the proper way to respond to that getting going viral would have been to just stop using Tumblr. Because I, what they were trying to say was, John Green, it feels like John Green shouldn't be at this pool party. And what I took it as is, John Green is some kind of sex pest, some kind of predator. And for a variety of reasons, that hit me very, very hard. I felt very defensive. I felt very angry. And I wrote a post expressing my anger instead of leaving Tumblr, which was a mistake. I shouldn't

• 25:43John Green?

  have done that. I should have expressed my anger to you and to my wife. And I should have expressed my frustration to a lot of people who weren't 15 year olds.

• 25:55John Green?

  Because it's like developmentally normal to not like the thing that you liked when it was popular. Like, I also wouldn't have liked The Fault in Our Stars if it was being carried around by my bullies in high school.

• 26:07Hank Green?

  Yeah. And like, you know, very often, and this is a thing that you and I have had to get used to, very often, how you feel about something is more an expression of your identity than how you actually feel about something, or how good or bad it actually is. Like, I hated Dave Matthews Band when I was in high school, like, a lot. And it had nothing to do with Dave Matthews' music. It had everything to do with the people who liked Dave Matthews Band at my high school, who did not like me. And so, I did not like Dave Matthews Band in return.

• 26:35John Green?

  Yeah, there was a weird thing that was happening in Nerd Fight Area at the time, which is that Nerd Fight Area was becoming cool, and all of our videos were getting like 500,000 views, and they were getting views from lots of cool kids. And they were like, I don't know about this term nerd fighters.

• 26:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, but it was also like a younger audience than had been our, like, you know, like, not like way younger, but like a few years younger than the average nerd fighter. Like, changing the vibe. People were watching because they liked the movie. They maybe hadn't even read the book. And they were like, this is a cultural thing that is happening. And it is happening, sort of like, in the mainstream part of culture. It's like, not what we were ever about.

• 27:20John Green?

  Right. Mainstream culture was never what Hank and I thought was cool, even when we were teenagers. And so, having somebody make a sketch about your book on Saturday Night Live was weird as hell, because like, that's not what we wanted to have happen to. Like, that wasn't our dream. That wasn't what was cool to us.

• 27:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, you'll notice that John and I never tried to like leverage YouTube success into like being on TV.

• 27:45John Green?

  Because we didn't think being on TV was cool.

• 27:47Hank Green?

  It's not cool to us.

• 27:48John Green?

  It's not because like, we're above it. We just don't think it's like, we're actually below it.

• 27:56Hank Green?

  When I was on set for this Clash of Clans thing, so like, we made this like mini film for a Clash of Clans ad. I got paid good money for it. It was very fun.

• 28:04John Green?

  More money than I got paid for The Fault in Our Stars movie.

• 28:08Hank Green?

  Well, you've made more money off the fault in our stars movie and book sales, but.

• 28:12John Green?

  In book sales, yes. I'm doing, I'm, I'm fine. I'm just a little resentful.

• 28:18Hank Green?

  So I, so I did this thing and they were like, is this like, isn't it cool to like, be doing like a movie to like, see how it's all made? And I was like, I'm going to be honest with you. Like, none of this is appealing to me at all.

• 28:29John Green?

  This isn't my thing. I don't want to be on a set with 60 people.

• 28:32Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Like I am, I am interested in the technical aspects of what we are doing, but I am not interested in the like stardom that I am experiencing. Like, please stop treating me like I'm different from any of the rest of you. I am just another member of the crew.

• 28:46John Green?

  That great Clash of Clans celebrity that we're all after.

• 28:49Hank Green?

  No, it was like, they really wanted me to feel like I was the, like the celebrity on set and like, they wanted me to have all of the thing. And I was like, please stop. Just give me the normal food that everyone else is eating.

• 29:00John Green?

  There's an author, I won't name them, who insists when movies are being made of his book, he insists on having an Eames lounger. Instead of a casting chair like everyone else sits in. And so he sits in his Eames lounger and praises the film. And I'm just like, oh God, please give me a regular chair. Don't put my name on it.

• 29:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:23John Green?

  So anyway, we were talking about 2014. I think that we are being a little easy on me.

• 29:29Hank Green?

  I know. Well, you're being a little hard on you and I'm being a little easy on you. And I think that that's the appropriate thing.

• 29:34John Green?

  Let me give one example.

• 29:36Hank Green?

  I agree that you handled that, that criticism badly. I don't know what the exact right thing to do is. I think that it's a very hard situation because you aren't just like, there's one thing where, where you're hurt by it. And, but there's another thing where like, true harm is being done to a lot of different things. And in particular, that harm is being done to the people who love what you do. There's harm being done to the, the community. That's really important to us. So you you can't really do nothing with that. Like if it's viral, if a lot of people are seeing it, if they're questioning, they're like, oh, my God, is the thing that I love actually bad? Is this gonna like, like, because one of the things that we, I know that we are both terrified of,

• 30:19Hank Green?

  is making ourselves into the villain after being something that's like good in people's lives, because we've seen people do this. We've seen people go from being beloved to like doing villainous things.

• 30:32John Green?

  And it doesn't just, it's not just bad for that person. It's also bad for the people who loved the stuff.

• 30:38Hank Green?

  It's so bad, and we just don't want that to be the thing that happens here. That's like one of the huge things we are fighting for. It's one of the biggest pieces of stress in our lives, is to like not be, like, I had a panic attack about this last year because people were really mad about something I did. And and I didn't know how to respond to it for a variety of complicated reasons. And and I could feel that people were kind of like, oh, is this thing that not a lot of people, but some portion of people were like, oh, is this thing that I liked actually bad? And I just don't, like, I want people to have things that they can have faith in not being bad.

• 31:14John Green?

  Right.

• 31:14Hank Green?

  And that doesn't mean I'm perfect, but like, I'm at least, but like trying, there's like, you know, like, it's better to have people who are trying than people whose brand is being assholes, and so you're not surprised when they're an asshole.

• 31:24John Green?

  Right.

• 31:24Hank Green?

  Which is, you know, at least they're not hypocrites. And I'm just like, it's so easy to tell a story. And I've seen this happen with a bunch of different, like, good natured creators, like the McElroy's have had this happen to them.

• 31:35John Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Hank Green?

  Where people like, like, decide that, like, oh, are the McElroy's bad actually? You know, BB, like Baby No Money is like a rapper who like, is like generally like a positive guy, and like feel like has good vibes and like.

• 31:50John Green?

  I think he's neutral. I feel neutral about Baby No Money.

• 31:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, but like, he's had like a big blow up, but like, if he was like professionally a dick, yeah, no, yes, weirdly, yeah.

• 32:00John Green?

  I haven't paid attention to that. That's a shame. Uh, yeah. So like, I think that's, it's, it's, of course, there's an element of like, I would like to preserve my reputation because all my identity eggs at that point in my life were in that basket, but there's. There's also an element of like, I want to preserve the people who love the fault in our stars and let them love the fault in our stars without thinking, actually, this guy is is a terrible person.

• 32:23Hank Green?

  So I think that it was right to leave Tumblr. Like, that would have been the right call, would be to leave Tumblr.

• 32:27John Green?

  Well, I didn't. I didn't, to be clear. That would have been the right call.

• 32:31Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'm saying, yes, when you said that, yeah. But I think that the the like, best case is like to recognize the harm being done.

• 32:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Hank Green?

  And be like, there is a piece of this harm that's being done that is, it's just perception. But like, the fact that it's just perception, like, there's a way to communicate the exit that that hopefully mitigates the harm being done to people.

• 32:53John Green?

  Maybe. I don't know. It was really hard and I didn't handle it well.

• 32:56Hank Green?

  And again, you're patient zero of this. Like, it was so strange. Like, the network effects, we didn't understand that so much of what works on social media is getting pissed off and like, loving being pissed off and loving feeling superior to other people.

• 33:14John Green?

  So what happened, basically, just to summarize, is that Tumblr especially, but to a lesser extent Twitter and the rest of the internet, went from really, really liking me and thinking that I was the bee's knees to actively disliking me. And a huge percentage of people were like, actually, this guy sucks.

• 33:35Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:36John Green?

  And here are some of the reasons why he sucks. And by the way, some of those reasons were correct. So I'll give an example that's of this. When the movie came out, I was like, I was at the peak of like, feeling myself is the other thing.

• 33:48Hank Green?

  You're about to say, yeah.

• 33:49John Green?

  So I was like, really feeling myself and like, feeling that I was like, a positive force in the world and everything, which is always dangerous. So I remember I posted on Tumblr, like, I can't believe that, because they actually changed this for the movie, that in the movie, the girl kisses the boy. And isn't that great? And isn't that like, progressive? And have you ever seen that before in a YA movie? Or something like that. Something terrible. That was really stupid. That like, of course, you've seen that before in a YA movie.

• 34:17Hank Green?

  There's dozens of examples.

• 34:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:22John Green?

  And so people were like, can you believe this jackass saying that his movie is so inspirational and radical because the girl kisses the boy? And, uh, and then I immediately deleted the post when I, when I saw the backlash and I apologized for it and everybody was like, this is, this is how you apologize and he did a good job apologizing. But then later I did a worse job apologizing. And then the sort of culmination of this, this is not actually why I left Tumblr. There's a lot of misinformation.

• 34:50Hank Green?

  There's a lot of, there is, this is, we're gonna set the record straight.

• 34:53John Green?

  We're setting the record straight, eh? Back then you could, you could change it to make it look like someone had said something they hadn't said.

• 35:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, and it would appear just like any other repost, uh, but, but in fact, it was not, it was, you just like edited the post. Yeah.

• 35:12John Green?

  And so somebody changed something I actually wrote to say that was very earnest, which is, which was my brand, which increasingly was like not Tumblr friendly.

• 35:23Hank Green?

  Yeah. I also want to say that this is a platform effect. This is a thing that happens on every platform I've ever been on. And it happened first on Tumblr, like that was my first experience of it, where like it goes from being like fun and sparkly and community based and everybody's sort of like riffing off each other and building on each other's creativity to over time, it just like, there's something slowly sours and like trying to figure out exactly what this is about is, is, uh, an interest of mine, but it does tend to be that it goes from being like platforms go from being very open, very creatively collaborative into having strains, not like necessarily all of the platform, but having these strains of, um, social policing over what is and isn't cringe.

• 36:08John Green?

  Right.

• 36:08Hank Green?

  You know, people feeling like they're not sure how to, and it like, it like shuts down creativity, like the moment it shows up, it can shut down a lot of creativity. And I watched this happen on TikTok and I watched it happen on Twitter and I, I, you know, YouTube has been sort of, you know, like that happened kind of early on on YouTube and that, but like it kind of just turned it to like a more of a business environment, which I think is. On the way that these things can go kind of healthier. But but it really does. And I think that it is in part about it feeling like there is social status tied to success on the platform. And that means that people will do things to get attention that that they wouldn't otherwise

• 36:50Hank Green?

  do because that that attention feels better because there's more status tied to it. And they also become less collaborative because that kind of sharing feels less good.

• 37:00John Green?

  Well, the great irony of all this, Hank, is that Tumblr is once again an extremely creative, creatively productive place.

• 37:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:09John Green?

  Precisely because it blew up and then in the ashes, something was rebuilt.

• 37:13Hank Green?

  Yeah. And now there's no social status tied to being a Tumblr person.

• 37:17John Green?

  There is no social status.

• 37:18Hank Green?

  As you as you would call them a Tumblrino or whatever you called them.

• 37:22John Green?

  I believe I called them Tumbly Poo's, but now they call themselves Tumblrinas.

• 37:26Hank Green?

  OK, yes. So one of the cringe things that John did on Tumblr is he would, as a way of expressing that you were an outsider in this space, you you would you like created this cringe word for people on Tumblr.

• 37:39John Green?

  It was supposed to be cringe, of course. I was aware that it was cringe. Anyway, we have to get to the reblogging. A post goes viral, which appears to be written by me because of this editing feature. And the post is extremely sexually explicit. We don't have to get into exactly what it said, but it was extremely sexually explicit. And when I say it went viral, I mean, it was shared hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of times. And I am often still confronted with this post one way or another, people putting it in my inbox, people saying it out loud to me on the street, which happened recently, which was unpleasant. And I I don't know how to read this post, except as a joke about my sexuality. And so it is hard for me to read.

• 38:24John Green?

  It is hard for me to experience it because it feels to me like a joke about my sexuality. And I'm not comfortable with that joke. And I'm not comfortable with I don't talk about my sexuality online. And like, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable, is the summary of it.

• 38:38Hank Green?

  To try and understand this sociologically.

• 38:41John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Hank Green?

  You were a guy who was trying to be very authentic and

• 38:47John Green?

  Earnest.

• 38:47Hank Green?

  The word you used, earnest. Yes, that's a great word for it. Trying to be earnest on this space that was becoming increasingly ironic and more cynical. And like growing up and these like people were growing up and they were becoming teenagers who were like having more critical thoughts about their world, uh, which is totally all very understandable. And, and I think that what this post was about was like doing a transgression, like finding a way of doing a transgression that was like, nobody's gonna think that John Green actually posted this. And that's the whole point. Like it has to be something John Green would never post.

• 39:21John Green?

  Right.

• 39:22Hank Green?

  It was not meant to fool. It was meant to be a, a transgressive, ha ha, look, like there's this high status guy who's from the world of the legitimate, but we are in the world of the, of the scrappy and illegitimate and ironic and cynical. And, uh, and so here is like a manifestation of that tension and of that rebellion. And you were just the, the, the lens through which it occurred, but like your brand got wrapped into that. And it was like one of the biggest social moments of the platform.

• 39:54John Green?

  Yes. And

• 39:55Hank Green?

  Like if anybody remembers anything about Tumblr, this is like the top 10 list. Yeah.

• 39:59John Green?

  Just to be clear, like, I understand that it's probably not a joke about my sexuality. I'm just saying that like internally, inside my experience, that's what it feels like.

• 40:09Hank Green?

  And, and what it does do is it puts an idea into people's heads of the, of a sexualized John Green.

• 40:15John Green?

  Which I don't like.

• 40:16Hank Green?

  No, yeah.

• 40:17John Green?

  I just don't like, period.

• 40:18Hank Green?

  Like, it's very bad.

• 40:19John Green?

  Well, I don't care if it's bad or good, but like, I just don't like it. And I, and I feel like that's something that I should have control over.

• 40:24Hank Green?

  Right. And that's one of the transgressive things that it was about was like, let's take this very non-sexual thing and let's sexualize it.

• 40:31John Green?

  Person. Yes. Right. Yeah. So anyway, uh, that happened and a lot of people, the narrative

• 40:38John Green?

  That emerged out of this years later is that copy pasta bullied John Green off Tumblr, which is a great narrative, and I wish to God it were true.

• 40:48Hank Green?

  It's the most, it's the most salient, like it is the thing that makes sense.

• 40:52John Green?

  So the two things that emerged from that were, well, now we can no longer edit re blogs because John Green told Tumblr to change the feature, which is hilarious. First off, I would never, I never spoke to anyone at Tumblr about their features. I would have no control over their features. They changed it because what a bad system.

• 41:16Hank Green?

  They probably knew before that happened that it was pretty bad. And then when it happened, maybe they were like, actually, we should probably fix that.

• 41:23John Green?

  One of the only times that somebody did reach out to me from Tumblr was at the end of 2014, and they were like, you were the most talked about author on the platform this year. Would you like to make a video celebrating your fans? And I was like, just smart enough to be like, nah, I think I'm going to pass on that one.

• 41:43John Green?

  So anyway, the narrative should have been, the true story should have been, that was enough for John, he got off Tumblr. What actually happened is that that wasn't enough for John, and he stayed on Tumblr. And then eventually I got off Tumblr because, I mean, this is very dark, but it's true. Somebody posted a picture of my house, of my Google, a Google street view of my house with a circle around the window where they were going to break in and kill me. And it was my kids, I don't live there anymore, but that's part of the reason I moved, actually. It was my kids', it was Henry's window. And I was like, all right, I think that's enough. I think I had enough Tumblr.

• 42:22Hank Green?

  I don't need to be carrying that around.

• 42:24John Green?

  Yeah, because it's probably, I mean, obviously, somebody's probably not going to do that. And I still had anonymous asks turned on so people could send me anonymous messages because I was an idiot. And so it was an anonymous message and like, of course, nobody, you know, probably nothing's going to happen, but like, it freaked me out. And I was like, and I was just like, why am I still here? I'm still here because I'm trying to prove a point to my haters. I'm not still here because like, there's a lot of people who like me and who's, who like benefit from my work here. I'm trying, and at that point, you just gotta, it's, it's long past, it was long past time to leave when I finally left. And now I'm back.

• 43:04John Green?

  Now I'm back on Tumblr under a different username and I'm really enjoying myself ironically.

• 43:12Hank Green?

  Is there like a contingent of people who are mad that you're back?

• 43:15John Green?

  Yes, yes, I don't care. I don't care. They're like, we gotta bully John Green off Tumblr again. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. I'm broken on the inside now.

• 43:27Hank Green?

  I remember when I like went back and I made some Tumblr posts a few years ago. You were like mad at me. You were like, this feels like a betrayal. I'll be honest with you.

• 43:33John Green?

  It feels like a betrayal and now I'm back. Now I'm the one who's back.

• 43:39John Green?

  Oh God, life is long if you're lucky.

• 43:42Hank Green?

  I will sometimes like run across, you know, people and it's so clearly illustrative for me because I'll run across people who are like bragging that they once bullied John Green off Tumblr.

• 43:53John Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Hank Green?

  And I'm like, it's been 10 years.

• 43:56John Green?

  Find a better enemy.

• 43:57Hank Green?

  When you say, you know, part of the cool thing that's going on right now is this proximity to this power.

• 44:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Hank Green?

  That people can respond to that by saying, all right, well, like, what's the, what's the most powerful thing I could do right now?

• 44:11John Green?

  And the most powerful thing you can do is always that you can make somebody's life miserable and like make a, and, and, and, and harm a productive community, right? Like that's, that's what, uh, basically what the biggest professional trolls on the internet do all day.

• 44:28Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:28John Green?

  And some of them are in positions of tremendous power in the United States.

• 44:32Hank Green?

  We did hire a bunch of them to run the country.

• 44:35John Green?

  Yeah, we have hired a bunch of them.

• 44:37Hank Green?

  So that's, that's really weird. Um, but it, it makes sense because it is like an ineffective way to wield power.

• 44:42John Green?

  Yeah. And it probably feels to some of those people like it was a good way to wield power because it helped Tumblr get weird again and not have Tumblr be this like sort of, platform where famous people could become more famous. And maybe there's something to that. I'm not, like, something did have to happen to Tumblr for Tumblr to get cool again. And it happened because Tumblr is cool again. But I think the biggest thing that had to happen is that Tumblr needed to, to your point, Hank, not be a place with a ton of social capital. Like Twitter is still a place with a ton of social capital.

• 45:16Hank Green?

  So much. I think honestly wise because social capital was so tied to political and financial capital.

• 45:22John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I guess for me, we've talked a lot about the challenges that came out of 2014. We haven't talked a lot about the gifts that came out of 2014. And there were two big gifts. One was that the success of The Fault in Our Stars allowed me to focus on Crash Course more or less nonstop for two years, which I think has had a big impact on the way that people learn and I think has been a cool thing in the world that I'm really proud of. And the other is that it built like half a hospital in Sierra Leone. Like with the money that came from that, I have financial security, which is incredible rare gift and something that I try really hard not to take for granted

• 46:07John Green?

  or take advantage of. But also like, I've been able to do stuff with that, deploy that capital, to use a Hank Green businessman phrase, in a way that I think is good. And so a lot of good stuff has come out of it. And there's the fact that like, you know, that book reached 50 million people.

• 46:28Hank Green?

  That's crazy.

• 46:29John Green?

  It, you know, almost everyone hasn't read it. Both things are true at the same time. But like, it reached 50 million people in the last 14 years since it came out. And what a gift that is. Like, it's easy to lose track of that because inevitably, you know, you pay attention to the one negative outcome instead of the 10 positive outcomes. But like, the positive outcomes from that book so outweighed the negative outcomes. It's because of that book that Esther's actual memoir, This Star Won't Go Out, was able to be published. It's because of that book that, you know, I was able to write Turtles All the Way Down eventually. It's because of that book that so many people have written me to tell me that the story made them feel less alone, or it made them feel seen, or

• 47:12John Green?

  consoled, or encouraged them. And like, so much good came out of that time as well that I tend to forget about.

• 47:20Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, I mean, and also, like, I don't think anybody would have been likely to read Everything is Tuberculosis. If it did not come from the author of The Fault in Our Stars.

• 47:30John Green?

  Probably wouldn't have been a number one New York Times bestseller.

• 47:35Hank Green?

  And I, and like, you know, the, the, the interesting thing about that influx of people that we had, you know, suddenly getting, it was the most views we ever got on VOD Brothers was that period of time, is that like, some people stuck around and they were the ones, they were like the right ones, you know?

• 47:53John Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Hank Green?

  And, and we've always been a little bit conscious of that. Like, we don't want the biggest audience, we want the audience we want.

• 47:59John Green?

  Having a big audience in 2013 and 2014 taught us that we don't want the biggest audience we can get, we want the best audience that we can get, and we want the audience that's right for our content. And part of that, you shape by the stuff you make.

• 48:14Hank Green?

  My god, John, I cannot believe that we've finally done this.

• 48:18John Green?

  We did a whole episode about 2014. I'm gonna post it on Tumblr. Sizzling sandwich perfection-blog.tumblr.com.

• 48:27Hank Green?

  Our big podcast that's way bigger than we thought it was.

• 48:31John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Once we get those Tumblr listeners, we're really gonna blow up.

• 48:37Hank Green?

  Honestly, like, that, that period was a huge part of how I wrote my books.

• 48:42John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:43Hank Green?

  Because I could, I could understand the terror of this, of like, and like, how you get sucked into, you know, fighting these, these stupid fights and, and becoming a symbol in people's heads rather than like, an actual person.

• 48:58John Green?

  Right.

• 48:59Hank Green?

  And the thing that, that I'm always reminded when I see the people who are on, like, you know, somebody saying on Twitter, like, reveling and having bullied John off Tumblr is that, like, those people weren't nerd fighters. You know, they, they weren't like people, they, they were never the people who liked us. I, I almost think of it like, this is what I sometimes think, is like, there are, there is kind of a group of dedicated John Green haters and a smaller group of dedicated Hank and John haters. I, I will say, I think that you, you still have more of this than I do for, I cannot figure out why, reasons.

• 49:33John Green?

  Yeah, but it'll change if you get more famous, don't worry.

• 49:36Hank Green?

  I think that might be a part of it, is that you, you still have been closer to the center of culture than me. And what I think of it is, is like, okay, so like the haters, if there's a fire, the haters are gonna pour gasoline on it. But that doesn't mean that the only thing that's burning is the gasoline. And so it's like really upsetting to watch people who are just there because they want to do the damage, actually like spreading the fire to people who, who I think are being damaged. Where it's like, you know, like, I feel like sometimes the right thing to do is to take a step back because it's hurting a community of people or it's hurting people's ability to continue to have faith in, in things in their world. Cause I think that nihilism is so dangerous and it is one of the main things that you and I believe together

• 50:21Hank Green?

  and are kind of trying to do is, is saying like, okay, but like, if you believe in the hopeful world, that actually does increase the chances that the hopeful world will arrive.

• 50:30John Green?

  Right.

• 50:30Hank Green?

  Like a, a society without trust doesn't exist. And people who trust each other accomplish far more than people who do not. Uh, people who don't trust each other accomplish nothing.

• 50:40John Green?

  But I think that your metaphor is very apt because there's so much gasoline on the fire sometimes that you, it, it's hard to tell where the fire is, but there is a fire. There is like, there was something inherently impossible. So like, two things are true at once. There was something inherently impossible about being as famous as I was in 2014 on the internet. Not being as famous as I was, but being as famous as I was in being on the internet were impossible.

• 51:07Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:08John Green?

  And yet at the same time, there were many legitimate criticisms of the way that I was being and famous and using my platform. Now, there were also very bad faith criticisms. There was also a lot of pouring gasoline on the fire, but there was something there. And I did have to learn and I still, I, I'm gonna have to learn again. I'm not done learning about this. So I, I, I, I think that there, I think both those things are true at the same time.

• 51:38Hank Green?

  Okay. Last question for, and maybe only question I've actually asked you.

• 51:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Hank Green?

  Now I'm interviewing you, John.

• 51:45John Green?

  Great.

• 51:45Hank Green?

  Okay. But, but do you think that the fault in our stars would have gotten big if you hadn't been online? Like super online? Like if you? Like, was that, was that part of the energy? And, and like being on, like Vlogbrothers, one thing, but like the, the energy of this sort of like cultural moment and, and like John being involved in it.

• 52:07John Green?

  I think that it was a huge part of the success of both the book and the movie. And I think that the book probably would have been successful anyway. It was just one of those books that hits at the right time and has the right words in the right order to appeal to a lot of people. But it wouldn't have been as successful as it was, right? Like, I look at a book like We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, or The Book Thief by Marcus Husek, two books I absolutely love that were really successful. You know, like really bestselling books and both had adaptations made, although We Were Liars was just made last year, and were, were really, really successful and still are successful, by the way.

• 52:48John Green?

  The only reason The Fault in Our Stars is in a different world from those books, which are both better, in my opinion, than The Fault in Our Stars. The only reason that The, that The Fault in Our Stars is in a different world is because there was so much energy around it and a lot of that energy came from online spaces. And so how can I not be grateful to those spaces?

• 53:08Hank Green?

  The, the point that I want to make there is like, you know, you, you couldn't be that online and that famous, but like, that's true in both ways. Where like, it wouldn't have happened at all.

• 53:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 53:20Hank Green?

  But also like, once it, once it happened, it wasn't sustainable.

• 53:23John Green?

  Right. That's exactly it. And, I mean, Everything is Tuberculosis has been a phenomenal book in my life, unlike anything I've ever experienced before. And there's no way that happens. There's no way I get to go on that journey of spending five years learning about tuberculosis or three years writing a memoir i- if The Fault in Our Stars doesn't happen. And so it, it has, it has given me tremendous creative freedom and also with a large percentage of my readers, they have a lot of faith in me now. Like, they'll follow me anywhere. They'll follow, you know, like imagine in 2012, you were like, hey, this guy's going to write a history of tuberculosis and it's going to do pretty well.

• 54:03Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 54:04John Green?

  Like, that would not have been possible. All right, Hank, we need to get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon lost. What's the news from Mars?

• 54:12Hank Green?

  Oh, boy, they do keep... So the news from Mars is not from Mars this week. John, I don't know if you know this.

• 54:20John Green?

  Yeah.

• 54:21Hank Green?

  But we're going back to, we're going back to the moon.

• 54:24John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:24Hank Green?

  And I feel like nobody's aware. But like, the moves...

• 54:28John Green?

  I just feel like there are so many empty promises right now and like, empty threats.

• 54:33Hank Green?

  Just not gonna happen.

• 54:34John Green?

  Threats that do happen and like, it's very hard to, are we actually going to the moon?

• 54:39Hank Green?

  So, in a mere couple, actually, I don't know when this episode's coming out, but when is it? I think it's like, February 10th, the Artemis mission is launching, and they're not going to land on the moon, but astronauts are going to fly around the moon, going to go out to it and come back as a, as a test to see how this, this goes. Let me make sure I have my numbers right. The current schedule has, less than a month from now, Artemis 2 astronaut launch, and then they will go around the moon on a 10-day mission.

• 55:10John Green?

  Wow.

• 55:10Hank Green?

  And, and that has already sent an uncrewed capsule to the moon into orbit in 2022. And then Artemis 3 will be landing astronauts on the surface of the moon, and then eventually, maybe from there, on to Mars. So we're, that is actually like, occurring.

• 55:30John Green?

  Wow.

• 55:33Hank Green?

  As much as it doesn't seem like news at all.

• 55:35John Green?

  I'll believe it when I see it.

• 55:37Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 55:38John Green?

  I've learned to trust my eyes, Hank, not, not the predictions of experts.

• 55:44Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, I don't know. Apparently, it's, NASA's schedules can change, and there isn't a set launch date yet, so we'll see.

• 55:51John Green?

  All right, well, we'll see, we'll see. I hope that we make it to the moon. That would be awesome. Thank you for listening to this therapy session. We appreciate it.

• 56:00Hank Green?

  Now, whenever somebody is like, "Hey, what was that thing about 2014?", instead of being like, "Oh, Tumblr did this, and then there was this, and then John got bullied", but no, instead, you can send them to this episode. We were there.

• 56:13John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, our memories might not be perfect, to be fair.

• 56:16Hank Green?

  They're perfect. They're perfect, and I will stand and say it in a court of law.

• 56:22John Green?

  Yeah, there's a million different versions of that story, and they're all legitimate in their own ways. But this is our version. Thank you for listening to it. If you want more episodes like this, too bad. Usually, we just answer your questions.

• 56:34Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout. It's mixed by Joseph Tunametish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrohass and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla, and as they say in our hometown.

• 56:51John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.