The Most Liberating Life Lessons Everyone Needs To Learn | John Green

Key Takeaway

John Green shares how building a mental health toolkit over 25 years has helped him manage OCD and depression. His key insight: "Hard is not the opposite of fun. Hard is just the opposite of easy." By reframing difficulty as separate from fulfillment, and focusing on creative work with purpose and partnership, he's learned to live a rich life alongside mental illness. The most actionable takeaway: when caught in obsessive thought spirals, ask yourself "What is a thought?" and investigate its substance—this shifts thoughts from overwhelming realities to passing mental events you can observe rather than obey.

Episode Overview

John Green discusses living with OCD and major depression while maintaining a successful creative career as an author and YouTube creator. The conversation explores his mental health toolkit developed over 25 years, the nature of the self, and how to find meaning through creative work and relationships. Key themes include: understanding thoughts as transient rather than powerful, the importance of purpose and collaboration, reframing difficulty as compatible with fulfillment, and using shame reduction through naming (making the unmentionable mentionable). Green also discusses his book 'Everything Is Tuberculosis' and how chronic illness shapes our understanding of self and community.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Most Liberating Life Lessons Everyone Needs To Learn | John Green from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

John Green, welcome to the show. Uh, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. You've been incredibly candid about your ups and downs psychologically. So, just like today, how you doing? Today, I'm doing really well, which is certainly not a guarantee. I wouldn't have told you that earlier in the week because there are ups and downs. Um, you know, I've lived with OCD for most of my life. have had periods of major depression and right now all of that feels feels feels a little distant. It feels very well under control.

It feels like I'm able to live the life I want to live. And uh but I also know that as the old Liberian proverb goes, no condition is permanent. The Buddha could have said that. Um it's interesting to know it's a it was an insight arrived at in Liberia as well. Um Um Um I I I noticed that you said a couple of days ago you might have felt differently. So this is really subject to change. to change. to change. Yeah. I I just think a few days ago I was having a lot more uh stress in my personal and professional life and so things were a little more hectic and a little more challenging.

But the blessing of building a set of tools in your life that you can use to help with mental health problems, and I've had now 25 years of getting to work on this stuff, is that the periods of challenge don't go away, but for me, the intensity of them can shrink and also the length of them can shrink. And I and I wish that I'd known that when I was younger because I feel like when I was in my 20s, it always felt to me so permanent.

Depression felt utterly permanent. It felt as permanent as the sun. And in my periods of depression, it it would feel like there was no escape from it and there was no no future. Now I mean I can't say this universally but now I think with the benefit of like I said the toolkit and also I think just maturation I understand that you know these things these things these things can be really intense and really challenging but I can also have a rich full life at the same time and knowing that like knowing that it's possible to live with mental illness and also have a good life is is really important for me.

I think it's important just for everybody to know whether they have a a diagnosis like major depression or OCD or or that just the worried well um that you know a good life can include inevitably will include ups and downs. Yeah. Yeah. I know big ones. If you're cool with it, I I'll definitely want to get into your toolkit in a pretty big way. But before we go there, I'd be curious to hear a little bit more about your situation. You you mentioned depression, you mentioned OCD.

Are they separate? Uh is one the product of another? How how does it work as far as you can tell? So, I'm definitely not an expert. I don't want to pretend to be an expert. Don't come to me for expert advice on anything, let alone mental health. Um, but my own experience has been, and I think this is backed up by research, that OCD is pretty highly correlated with major depression and and anxiety disorders. People who have OCD often also have conccommittent depression or anxiety problems.

You know, for a long time, OCD was classified as an anxiety disorder, and now it's classified a little differently. But I I I don't know how much to depend on those classifications. I think my personal experience has been that not being able to close the loop on a thought spiral is extremely anxietyprovoking anxietyprovoking anxietyprovoking you know and so if for example I am you know I have a passing thought that there might be a radon problem in my house house house and I can't get rid of that thought and I can't reassure myself and I can't close the loop loop on that thought by finding certainty that there isn't a radon problem in my house even by installing a radon detector or calling the National Radon Federation or whatever and then it comes to a point where I'm using these compulsive behaviors making making phone calls checking checking checking you know reinstalling different radon detectors etc.

That's a response to the overwhelming anxiety and the anxiety is born of the fact that I don't want my family to die. I don't want my family to die of radon poisoning or whatever else it is. So OCD tends to strike what we love the most and what we care about the most. It tends to strike us in the places that are the most relevant to us. And for me that's the health and wellbeing of my family a lot of times or the health and wellbeing of myself.

That's what I have to manage I guess. And I like I said great benefit of having that toolkit is that it's easier to manage. But yeah, it's been incredibly hard over the years. I'm sorry that that really sucks. Um I am uh have some people who I'm very close to um extremely close to who have received that diagnosis of OCD. So I have some familiarity with it. But um just for those who don't um you talked about um these thought loops, these thought spirals, you know, I I can say and I think this is quite common that you know I I get into those occasionally.

Like for me it's always very self-centered. Um, am I losing my hair and I just can't [ __ ] stop thinking about it or um uh I looked fat I think in some recent picture and I'm just going down the rabbit hole and I lit I just I'll literally lose sleep about it or we have a dip in our podcast numbers and I start thinking I'm going to have to, you know, sell the house or whatever it is. Um, my understanding, and you'll tell me if if I'm wrong about this, is that OCD is that normal thing, but just exponentially worse.

Yeah. Just where it completely takes over your your ability to be conscious in the world so that I can't read a menu, let alone a book. Um, you know, I I there's this great end of St. Vincent Malay poem I quote sometimes. I think she's talking about depression, but it works for OCD, too. She says, um, "Night falls fast. Today is in the past, blown from the dark hill, hither to my door. Three flakes, then four arrive, then many more." And it's like that for me.

It's like there's like three snowflakes of thoughts and then a fourth one and then it's an absolute white blinding blizzard uh where I just can't I can't think about anything else. I can't distract myself from the thought. I can only use there's a reason that for me that the O comes first in OCD that the obsessive thoughts come first and then the compulsive compulsive behaviors are really born of a desire to control that fear in some way some trying to find some way to handle the the the obsessive fear.

Um some way to reassure yourself, some way to calm down. And the problem is that over time those strategies that you develop, those compulsive behaviors you develop to try to deal with these obsessive thoughts, they they become quite isolating at times quite paralyzing and overwhelming on their own as well. as well. as well. I I could imagine that both the obsession and the compulsivity would be isolating because they're they're driving you deeper into the tunnel of of yourself. yourself. yourself. Yeah. No, everyone else lives on planet Earth and I live on planet.

My family's about to die from radon poisoning. Right. Right. It's amazing to me how much you have gotten done and continue to get done with these incredible books you've produced and this YouTube um juggernaut um Never Mind um uh building and sustaining a family. Uh yeah, I just find that very impressive. I don't know if this is a question, but I just I want to say I find it very impressive how much you've been able to get done. Well, I think you know this is a more ordinary story than people think it is.

Um I think a lot of us who live with serious mental illness also have rich and fulfilling lives and there are times when you know a chronic illness really controls what you're able to do and that's very frustrating. I get really really frustrated when I'm less productive than I want to be or when I feel like being unwell is hampering my ability to be in the world. But um you know there's a lot of ways to be in the world and I think narrow constructions of productivity you know writing x number of books or making y number of videos really can I think sometimes distract us from what's what's really productive.

There's a great line in one of my brother's books where he writes um that you will always be unhappy until you realize that one of the things you need to produce is your own joy. And that's something that I'm you know maybe haven't focused on enough in terms of my thinking about production. So I I don't want to just think about oh I produce videos and books. I I want to think about how I also produce memories and experiences and and joy and rich richness and connection with other people.

A lot of people will be familiar with your brother Hank, your best friend, co partner in crime. Do you think he was saying that we need to take care of ourselves uh before we can be productive? In other words, if we understand productivity even from a reductive standpoint of getting [ __ ] done in the world, actually joy makes sense even within that POV because you're just really not going to be good at what you're doing without the joy. Yeah. And also alongside the other stuff that there needs to be a measure of joy within the work itself.

I think um you know I'm really lucky that a lot of the work I do not just working on books but also working on crash course with a team of people uh is is also joyful work. You know it's it's it's work that deepens my connections with other people that uh feels fulfilling. I find a lot of consolation and encouragement in a sense of purpose. And when I don't feel a strong sense of purpose, it's it's pretty hard for me to even get out of bed in the morning.

But when I do, it's a lot easier. Uh the lot of things that would otherwise overwhelm me can kind of fall by the wayside because I can tell myself, well, I know why I'm doing this. I know why I'm on book tour. I know why I'm getting out of bed in the morning. I know I'm do, you know, making podcasts and videos and stuff and when I have that clear sense of purpose, it's a lot easier for me. Well, it feels like now we've kind of stepped into the toolkit.

Um, you know what what and again with the caveat that you're not a mental health professional. You're we're just talking about what you personally do um to keep your [ __ ] together to the best of your ability. And it sounds it sounds like you just listed two things that are related. One is creative work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe three things. One, creative work, a sense of purpose, and then doing it with a team you enjoy working with. Yeah. My my great friend, the late Paul Farmer, who co-founded Partners in Health, said almost everything that you do in your life that's valuable will be done in partnership.

And I found that to be true. Even writing a book, which feels like a very, you know, lonely ivory tower kind of work is in fact deeply collaborative. deeply collaborative with my editor, with my publicist, with the marketing team, you know, um with the people who lay out the book and decide the the font and everything and the cover and all of that collaborative work is really really important. And um it doesn't exist separate from the writing process for me, but as part of it. And then making YouTube videos is inherently collaborative as well because it requires a team of people.

I mean, I still make Vlog Brothers videos alone in my basement by myself every Tuesday, but even that's a collaboration because it's a collaboration with the audience, a collaboration with my brother. I I I do find a lot of encouragement in collaboration and in creative work and I used to think that the only purpose of creative work was to reach an audience and to, you know, that it had to be made as a gift for the audience and that that was the point of it. These days I find myself thinking that in fact there's a lot of the lot that I get from it and that's okay.

In fact that's good. You know I I would write novels even if they were for an audience of zero because I find a lot of fulfillment in it. Um I really enjoy it and I really learn from from it. I learn about myself. I learn about other people. For me, writing fiction is a mirror in the sense that of course it's coming from me and I'm I'm the one writing it and so it's revealing of to me of my own the sort of the deeper rooms of myself.

But it's also uh a window. It's a window into what other people's lives might be like. A window into trying to imagine, you know, that that other people have just as complex and multitudinous an experience as I do. I absolutely believe that creative work can be an antidote to all manner of despair. Um, and yet I'm I'm curious. I mean, as somebody who is himself in the middle of uh finishing up a book, I find that that it also produces despair. Yeah, fair enough. Hard. Hard.

Hard. It is hard, especially when you're trying to finish something. I think for me the draft the initial drafting the initial writing of a of a story or a book is full of discovery and and intoxicating intoxicating intoxicating intrigue and uh there's there's real thrill in it. And then even in the first set of revisions or so, you're still discovering so much about the story and you're still finding connections to um to other worlds. It's like when I was writing my most recent book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, I remember in revision, I was really trying to balance the story of this young boy trying to survive multi-drugresistant tuberculosis with the history of of this this disease that's killed so many billions of people.

And I was still really enjoying that. And then by the third draft or so, it was just drudgery. It was really, you know, trying to get it right, not for myself or my personal fulfillment, but for the reader, which is of course extremely important, but it is really frustrating. And there are times when you're doing creative work when it's super frustrating because you can't figure out a way into it. You can't figure out the what you're trying to do. And that's really, really hard. Um, but hard is not the opposite of fun.

And and I try to remind myself of that that like hard is not the opposite of fulfilling. fulfilling. fulfilling. Hard is just the opposite of easy. And there are lots of things that are hard that are also worthy. I want to signal to the le to the listener that I have not lost the thread. We will come back to uh John's um uh toolkit because I think that will be of high interest for this audience. But you did mention your recent book, Everything Is Tuberculosis. And I want to we're going to read a little bit from one passage that my ace producer on this episode, Eleanor, identified.

I should acknowledge, I guess, that one reason I'm interested in TB is that I have obsessivempulsive disorder. And my particular obsessive worries tend to circle around microbes and illness. Before the germ theory of disease, we did not know that around half the cells in my body do not in fact belong to my body. They are bacteria and other microscopic organisms colonizing me. And to one degree or another, these microorganisms can also control the body, shaping the body's contours by making it gain or lose weight, sickening the body, killing the body.

There's even emerging evidence that one's microbiome may have a relationship with thought itself through the gut brain information access. meaning that at least some of my thoughts may belong not to me but to the microorganisms in my digestive tract. Research indicates that certain gut microbiomes are associated with major depression and anxiety disorders. In fact, it's possible that my particular microbiome is at least partly responsible for my OCD, meaning that the microbes are the reason I'm so deeply afraid of microbes. It's a fascinating reading and reading and reading and it just makes me wonder like why would you want to dedicate yourself to a book about the thing that terrifies you?

Well, because I'm I'm interested in it, for lack of a better term. I feel like, you know, there's a great Virginia Wolf line where she writes about how uh given the extent to which illness has shaped our lives and and has shaped our communities, you would think that great epics would be written about it alongside love and um you know, war and the other great topics of of of epic literature. And yet, relatively rarely do we do we write and read about illness. And I've always, I guess, been of that Virginia Wolf persuasion that we should write and read about it more and think about it uh more.

Now, I sometimes think about it unhealthily, but I I want to understand it. I want to understand it because I want to understand myself, but I also want to understand it because I want to understand my community and my my social order. Like, what does it mean to live in a world where a million people die every year of a disease we've known how to cure since the 1950s? What does that say about us? What does that say about the the world we share and the world we might share instead?

But I also want to write about it because it does just fascinate me. Um illness fascinates me. Temporariness of us and and everything we love fascinates me and uh I I haven't fully reconciled myself to it. it. it. What does it say about us that hundreds of thousands of people are dying all the time from this disease that we know how to cure? And at the same time, you know, our government, the United States government, both of us are citizens of the United States. Our government has pulled back from funding global health in ways that appear to be like directly leading to fight fatalities.

Yeah. No, I I don't think you need to say appear to be. I think it it is. And we saw hundreds of thousands of people get their treatment interrupted. And we know that when your treatment for tuberculosis is interrupted, so it takes about four months of daily antibiotics usually to cure TB. And um if we don't get those medicines to someone every day and there's a there's a period where they don't take any medicine, it's it's quite likely that they'll develop drug resistance. And that's a real real challenge, especially in the case of extensive drug resistance.

you know, that that can make TB much harder to cure and and in in some cases in some communities make it make it impossible. And so, we're losing 4,000 people a day to tuberculosis. But, uh, I think that as a result of the the pullback, you know, in the next few years, we we'll see we'll see more people dying of TB rather than than than less. And that'll really be the first time since the 18th century that that the number of people dying of tuberculosis goes up instead of down.

And that really is an indictment of the way we distribute resources, not just in the United States, to be clear, but also also in other wealthy countries. Ultimately, TB exists because we allow it to exist. And that's what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about there's all kinds of things in life that are just unfair. You know, it's not fair that I have OCD. It's not fair that my brother had cancer a couple years ago. It's not fair that, you know, kids die of of of cancer.

You know, all kinds of things in life are unfair. But when we have the tools to do something about injustice and we don't use those tools, that makes me especially angry and frustrated because it's not just that it's unfair because we don't know what to do. It's unfair and we do know what to do. We're just choosing not to do it. do it. do it. Yeah, I think another word you could describe aside from it being unfair and cruel is is stupid. Like we it's not like we don't share the planet with the other people with this communicable disease.

disease. disease. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it is really stupid to allow tuberculosis to still be a thing. Um, you know, it gives tuberculosis a lot of opportunities to develop further drug resistance and eventually it could develop resistance to all our tools and we could go back to a world like the one we lived in, you know, 90 years ago where my great uncle Stokes Goodrich died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in North Carolina. That um that is not unthinkable. I think that it's it's stupid. It's callous and it reveals I mean I guess what's most interesting and distressing to me is that it reveals this deep truth about about humans which is that we know in our guts that all human lives are equally valuable and and equally multitudinous and equally complex and rich and yet we don't build systems that reflect that reality.

And some of that is because of you know the nature of structural impoverishment going back for centuries. Some of it is because when lives feel distant from ours because people may not speak the same language or may not use the same tools of the social internet, it's easier to dismiss those lives. But ultimately, that's a that's a failure of empathy. I mean, we do have some technology problems when it comes to tuberculosis and other communicable diseases. But the biggest challenge we have is an empathy challenge.

challenge. challenge. Paleo Valley is a health and wellness brand that focuses on creating nutrient-dense, whole food sourced organic products. The brand's mission is to create nutrient-dense snacks and supplements without unnecessary additives like preservatives, chemicals, or added sugar. To use the highest quality ingredients, and support American farmers practicing regenerative agriculture. agriculture. agriculture. Paleo Valley's 100% grass-fed beef sticks are for clean, healthy protein on the go. I have tried these. My son has tried these. They are legit delicious. They're made with 100% grass-fed and finished beef, raised on American farms using regenerative practices and certified organic spices.

They are naturally fermented for a long shelf life, up to a year at room temperature without harmful preservatives. They're gluten-free, non-GMO, and MSG free. The beef sticks come in five flavors: original, jalapeno, garlic, summer sausage, summer sausage, and teriyak. I have tried the original, as I mentioned, as has my son. We both approved of them heartily. Head on over to paleo valley.com/happier valley.com/happier valley.com/happier or use the code happier at checkout for 15% off your purchase. That's paleo valley.com/happier valley.com/happier valley.com/happier or use code happapper at checkout.

Support for today's episode comes from Square and they've got big news. During Square's byianual releases event, they launched a wave of innovative new tools to help local businesses run faster, smarter, and more profitably. From AI that answers your toughest business questions to tech that simplifies food orders and tracks every dollar. It's all live and it's built for businesses like yours. Whether you're starting fresh or scaling fast, Square helps you keep up and get ahead. And right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/happier.

Visit Square to get started because the right tools make all the difference. Many of the local businesses that I support in Northern Westchester use Square for their payments, and I've always found it to be incredibly easy and quick and reliable myself. If you're a business owner, Square's new financial suite gives you a crystal clear view of your business health. You can compare supplier prices and save with order guide. You can get smart reports that track where your money's going. You can use Square Savings to auto set aside funds for taxes, upgrades, or slow months.

You can also manage your staff, payroll, and schedule all in one place. Right now, you can get up to $200 off at Squarehard at square.com/go/happier. square.com/go/happier. square.com/go/happier. That's s quu a r e.com/go/happier. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. So the other the other thing that that great passage I just from you that I just read back to you. The other thing that it the other question it raises is um and this this seems to come up a lot in your work and in your interviews is the insubstantiality the unfindability of the self.

Like how can John call himself fully John if his microbe is populated by other beings? beings? beings? Indeed, half the cells that are that are made up of me are not mine. Um yeah, that's a little distressing to me. I find I I I have a hard time with that one. But of course, self is incredibly complicated. Self is in many ways an illusion. Like I'm not the same person I was 30 years ago. I don't have many of the same cells. I don't have a lot of the same world view.

I've grown and changed a lot and I hope that I can say the same 30 years from now. Self is a story that we tell ourselves and we need to make it an expansive story so that we're not stuck being the self that we that we were 5 or 10 or 20 years ago. Uh we we don't want to get stuck in that that story so much that we don't keep an open mind to be able to change and grow. And so if there's a positive to me from the fact that half the cells in my body aren't mine, if there's an upside to it, it's if there's an upside to the fact that the soul is not something that you can uh you know go into the body and and and pull out with a pair of tweezers, it's the fact that that means that that my self is also malleable.

My self can also change and and and grow. And uh that's actually an encouragement, I think. So I try to see the upside of that even at times I I if at times I do feel a certain body horror in the fact that I'm stuck inside of a body h with half the cells being uh microbes. Yeah. And I think you've written about the fact that there's some mental horror of wondering you know as somebody who experiences a lot of thought spirals like who I believe you put it like who's the captain of this ship if I can't even claim these thoughts as my own.

I clearly can't control them. Yeah. I mean that understanding that that I'm not in control of my own thoughts is a hard thing to swallow for me. Um but of course I'm not. And and the thing about thoughts is that they're just thoughts. You know, I I OCD and other uh disorders like it, you know, tell you the lie that your thoughts are somehow incredibly powerful. That if you think uh your parents are going to die, they're going to die. that if you think you're poisoning your family with radon, you you you probably are, or at least you can't fully reassure yourself that you aren't.

But thoughts are just thoughts. Thoughts come and go. People have all kinds of weird thoughts all the time, all day long. And and of course, the right thing to do when you have an unusual or distressing thought is I've heard therapists say that it's like uh you're standing on the side of the street and you're watching cars drive by. And the right thing to do is you see a weird car and you just let it drive by and you're like, "Well, that was a weird car.

I bet there will be another car in a minute that'll be a different looking car." But of course, what I do is I'm like, "I got to get in that car and figure out what's going on." And that's the wrong strategy. the wrong that's the wrong strategy. Have you learned better strategies over time? Yeah, I mean definitely understanding that thoughts are not as powerful or as important as I believe them to be or as you know I'm inclined to believe them to be is is powerful for me.

And then and then so understanding that intellectually is of course different than being able to fully internalize it. But understanding it intellectually is a gift and and one that I I take pretty seriously because I I do find that, you know, knowing that as a as a ground of being is is helpful just as knowing that myself is a story I tell myself is helpful because then I can kind of change the story if I need to. to. to. Do you have a story you're currently telling yourself?

Is is this like an exercise in some way? Yeah, Dan, I'm just a dad from Indianapolis. That's the story I'm currently telling myself. Just a husband and dad trying to make make make make his way in Indianapolis. Yeah. I I guess it's that's a really interesting question. I mean, you know, I never want to put all my identity eggs into one basket. You know, I never for a long time I thought of myself like I'm just a writer or just a just a public person. And if my value as a public person goes down, that means my value goes down.

And if my value as a writer goes down or my books don't sell as well, that means I'm not as valuable as a person. And so I'm kidding when I say I just want to think of myself as a dad from Indianapolis. But at the same time, I'm not totally kidding because those are the most important identities to me is, you know, my identity as as a parent, as a spouse, as a son, as a brother. You know, those those core relationships are really where I want to put most of my eggs.

And then the the eggs that need to go into the professional basket, they're important, but they aren't nearly as important as whether or not I'm, you know, taking care of the basics. I really relate to what you're saying. Um, you and I are broadly speaking in the same industry as I guess content creators or whatever you want to call it. And yet, I'm I'm embarrassed to admit, but I I'm doing it anyway, that that most of the time my anxiety centers around the stuff that matters less.

meaning as I referenced earlier when the podcast doesn't have a good month or I put out a book and it doesn't do that well or that I'm clearly consciously and subconsciously putting my eggs in the professional basket when it's not the most important basket. It's not the most important thing, but it is the easiest to measure, right? Like nobody tells you like your your dad your dad points are like 8% down this month and as a result it'll probably continue to go 8% down next month and then pretty soon you'll be out of business.

Nobody tells you that. The the the good and the terrible thing about the internet is that it's made all of this stuff very easy to measure and it's um and it's really easy to conflate what's easy to measure with what's important. Man, that is true. Back to this the the the mystery of the self. Um, I as a practicing Buddhist really see it through a Buddhist lens. Have you encountered much of the Buddhist thought and philosophy and practice around the self? self? self? No, not a lot.

I mean, I know a little bit about non-attachment, but I don't know a lot about the self. So, can you can you educate me? You know, I I think you kind of nailed it to a certain extent when you said before that seeing the insubstantiality, the mystery of the self is good news. And uh because then you can you have the ability to change. Um and I think that's my in my understanding of the dharma which is basically just the fancy way of saying the teachings of the Buddha.

That is the foundational insight or at least one of them. The other is what what your Liberian friends have noticed too which is that everything's changing all the time. And of course that that bounces right back to the self. If everything's changing all the time, how can there be a solid self? um definitionally there cannot be um and so that is the the thing to let go of. It's very hard to do but through practice you can. I'll give you one quick one and it came to mind uh when you were talking before about your intellectual grasp of the fact that thoughts are insubstantial that it it being merely intellectual is you know only of limited comfort.

you you can I think it make it more visceral and this I'm going to steal from my longtime Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldstein which is just to ask yourself the question and when you notice that you're in a flurry of noxious thoughts like what is a thought thought thought check it out go check it out don't just rest in the knowledge that there's no substance to us like go look for it and that can produce at least in my experience some visceral understanding of the insubstantiality I said a lot there but does any of that land yeah no that really reate with me.

It can be very helpful because I think a lot of people come to Buddhism for the stress relief, but the wash up on the rocky shores of this brainbreaking idea of the self being an illusion, but it it on this level then becomes very practical like I don't have to take my thoughts so seriously. That's that's liberating. liberating. liberating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And that they um they pass and there will be other thoughts behind it. Indeed. Um, all right. Let's let's talk about some of your other uh strategies in in in the aforementioned toolkit.

Um, on my list here that is that is the product of doing some research. I see something uh labeled shame reduction through naming. Does that ring a bell for you? And if so, what does it mean? Sure. It uh it means I think the great Mr. Rogers line, anything mentionable is manageable and anything not mentionable tends to be not manageable. And so, um, for me, a lot of the challenge of writing and living in the world is finding form for the formless, finding some kind of ability to give language to the way down deep stuff that's really abstract.

abstract. abstract. And for me, that's where shame lives. That's where embarrassment lives. And if I can give some if I can bring bring that forth into the world and and and allow it to see light through giving it form or giving it it some kind of structure, then it becomes manageable. So how does that work in a momentto moment basis? moment basis? moment basis? Well, I guess I can give you one example. Like when I was writing my book Turtles All the Way Down, which is about a young woman with OCD, her OCD is very different from mine, but you know, we both have the same disorder and we both struggle with a lot of the same stuff.

I was trying to find some way of not just saying what it's like. It's easy to say what pain is like. You know, we we almost always use simileies when we talk about pain. It's like a stabbing in my neck. It's like a a hammer on my head. Whatever. Whatever. But it's hard to say what it is. It's very hard to give direct form for pain whether it's psychic or physical and that was sort of the challenge I set for myself with turtles all the way down and what I really wanted to do was bring forth my own shame by giving it language language like for instance thought spirals which you know that that idea um wasn't inevitable or natural like that's that's that's one way of conceiving of it there are lots of other ways is but language like that and then also in the novel to find find structural solutions, find ways that you know Asa's um internal voice can be loud enough in the mind of the reader that the reader can experience some of what she's going through so that they're not just uh empathizing with her.

They are on some level experiencing what she's experiencing. I I made a note of anything mentionable as manageable. Um because it because it because it that Mr. Rogers that Mr. Rogers, he had a lot of good stuff. He did. He did. It also kind of is consent with my understanding of a meditation practice, which is, you know, you you sit and watch your mind either in formal meditation or as you're just walking around the world and you notice, oh, hatred's coming up or fear. And just the act of labeling it in the moment creates enough distance so that you're not in it.

M yeah. M yeah. M yeah. I cannot tell you how many times that has come to my rescue. And I I can also not tell you how many times I have failed to do it and done a bunch of dumb [ __ ] Um uh another thing on my list is and this has kind of come up obliquely but I think it makes sense to name it explicitly. helping other people uh inter for you I believe you've found that um one way to manage your own psychological struggles is to you turn your attention outward.

Yeah, absolutely. Um there is only so much work I can do within myself and and find fulfillment in it. I also have to turn out to the world and I know that's not true for everyone but it is for me. I need to turn out to the world and um act in the world as best I can on on problems. And one of the challenges of that for me is that you know in the information landscape we all share now there's a new problem every day.

There's a new crisis turning our heads this way and that and it's it's hard. The horrors abound in every direction and and that's true. All those horrors are are real. Uh it's it's not that they aren't real. It's just that I if I feel, you know, if I'm looking in every direction at once, if I'm thinking about tuberculosis and malaria and uh climate change and HIV, AIDS and COVID and, you know, and and and and forever, I don't know what to do with myself. I get overwhelmed and I get paralyzed and I have complete decision paralysis and it's hard for me to even, you know, get out of bed and function.

What I found is that taking a long-term view of long-term problems is really helpful. My brother likes to say that that bad news usually happens all at once and good news happens slowly. If we were to really report the most important news story every day, I would argue that the front page of the New York Times every single day for the last 30 years would read, "Fewer children died today than any day in the last 5,000 years." And that's been true almost every day for the last 30 years, right?

We've reduced the number of people who die under the age of five from 12 million the year I graduated from college to 5 million last year. It's an incredible, incredible achievement. It wasn't natural. It wasn't normal. It wasn't ordinary. It wasn't going to happen anyway. It happened because hundreds of millions of people work around the world to make it happen. And that long-term change has happened very very slowly, infuriatingly slowly. It should be happening faster. We still lose millions of kids every year needlessly. And and so I don't want to pretend that like this isn't a crisis.

It is a crisis, but it's a crisis that can get better when we work on it, when our when we share our attention to it. And whether it's maternal health or tuberculosis or climate change or or any other big problem we share, uh we can see these problems get better when we work on them together. And that outward focus and that long-term way of looking and a systemic way of thinking about these problems is really key for me, really key to my fulfillment and happiness as a person.

Because the other thing is that then you're working with interesting people on interesting problems which is fun. It's fun. It's interesting. It's interesting to think about how to lower barriers to educational access through something like Crash Course. It's interesting to think about how to improve maternal and child health in you know deeply impoverished communities like Sierra Leone where the government is desperate to be working on these problems but just doesn't have the resources to do it. It's it's really interesting, fulfilling work and you know I I get to participate with thousands or tens of thousands of people on on working on those problems and it's it's pretty fun actually.

One of my glib little lines is uh the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass. Um it's I just see that over and over again. And you you and your brother have done a great job of really rallying your audience to and I believe these are your words, decrease the suck, but like as a team. team. team. Yeah. Yeah. You you're not going to decrease that much suck in the world by yourself, but you can decrease a lot of suck in the world in collaboration and partnership with other people.

During this course of this conversation, we've touched on the the the bugs in human nature. like to be a little cute. Um we we have u an overabundance of bad bugs of uh tuberculosis uh because of the bugs in in human nature where we can be selfish and otherize people etc etc. But then there's also the the features in the human operating system which we you've also touched on which is well-intentioned people working together in collaboration have brought down um child mortality in some quite striking ways.

Given all of that, like where does that leave you in terms of your POV on our species? our species? our species? Well, I'm broadly in favor of humans, which used to be a fairly wellestablished fact, but I think now is a bit counterultural. Um, I'm not sure everybody agrees with me, but I'm I'm really quite in favor of humans. I think our capacity for wonder is extraordinary. I think our curiosity is extraordinary, but most of all, I think our capacity for collaboration is very very special.

You know, ants are great collaborators, too, but they don't have our our brain power. And um you know, I I I think I've been thinking about this because I live in Indianapolis, which is the home of Kurt Vonagget, the great American novelist, one of my favorite writers, uh hugely influential person in my own creative and personal life. But there were aspects of Vonagget's work that really bothered me. Um there was one novel that he wrote in the in the 80s I think called Gopagos where he talked about when when someone would die in the novel he would glibly say well they weren't going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway and it's true they weren't.

Um I'm not either. You're not either you know um and and on that level you're right like most most people don't matter that much. They weren't going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway. But the thing is, we only need one person to write Beethoven's ninth symphony. What we really need are people to hear it, people to listen to it, people to be transformed by it. And and that's the gift. It's not that it's some tragedy. Like imagining a world without people is some tragedy because um nobody will be around to write the next Beethoven's ninth symphony.

It's a tragedy because no one will be around to hear Beethoven's ninth symphony. You know, trees I think falling in the woods will still make a sound, but Billy Holiday records won't. And And And I really like us. I don't think that, you know, I don't know that we are good news. Like I I I understand that we are a horror that we have committed unspeakable atrocities uh against each other, against other forms of life. I don't mean to sound polyianaish about this, but I think we can be good news for each other.

I really do. So, I'm asking I've asked about your view of the species. I'm curious like what your view is metaphysically. Like I I understand in your younger years you spent time training to be an Episcopal minister and and also worked as a chaplain in um in a ward where ch uh children's cancer ward I believe which then I think went on to be the the inspiration for your huge uh novel uh the fault in our stars which became a movie. So, I'm I'm curious. I'd love to hear a little bit of that story, but also like what where are you on God these days?

Yeah. So, I worked as a chaplain at a children's hospital and um did know a lot of kids who were really sick or who died not just of cancer but of of accidents of [snorts] um illnesses and other illnesses. other illnesses. other illnesses. And I I I was briefly in discernment as we say for the ministry. I'm still a Christian. I still am episcipalian. I still um you know work from within that religious tradition and find it helpful to work from within that religious tradition. tradition.

tradition. I don't and this this drives people bonkers when I say it, but I don't know how else to say it. I don't I'm not really that interested in the question of whether God is really real. uh in the way that like a a table is really real. Actually quite like a table if if you know tables are constructed and and if if God is a construct or whether God is a construct or a derivation is not the most interesting question in the world to me.

What is really interesting to me and I I realize this separates me from a lot of people in my faith tradition but but what is really interesting for me is what God wants in the world and what God wants wants from us in the world. So, I don't spend a ton of time thinking about I mean, I'm interested in ideas of of heaven as in a metaphysical way. Um, I'm interested in, you know, what what would be useful ways of of recycling consciousness or or maintaining consciousness.

I I mean, I guess I think about that stuff sometimes, but what I'm most interested in is what God wants from the world in my religious tradition. And that's pretty clearly laid out for me in the gospels. So, um, you know, it's pretty clearly laid out that wherever I see the sick or the imprisoned or the, um, those without without, um, clothes or resources, uh, I see God. It's pretty clear to me that the last shall be first and the meek should inherit the earth. And, you know, it's it's it's for me, it's laid out in the gospels in a fairly straightforward way.

If if you're not totally convinced that God is real, how do you know that the gospels are based on what he wants to see in the world? Oh, I don't I mean, it's definitely it's definitely a belief. It's definitely a belief, not a not a I I I haven't derived my my uh my my theological worldview the way that I've derived the way that you you know derive Newton's second law. It's definitely a belief system and a theological system. I guess maybe because I'm American, I don't feel like it has to extrapolate out to everyone.

I feel like I can be quite individualistic about my uh my theology. Yeah. No, that makes complete sense. I I think I was just getting at like what you said before about God being a construct and it may be that our understanding of what he wants in the world is also a construct but but maybe a useful one because we're kind of channeling the best aspects of uh the human mind in that process. Yeah. And if you put Jesus at the center of history as Christians tend to, then um you know Jesus's teachings take on an outsiz outsiz outsiz uh role in your in your imagining of the moral universe.

But but I do think that for me it it doesn't it doesn't really matter whether matter whether matter whether the the the how exactly we came to this place. Um I'm I'm happy that that to be there. I guess guess guess we talk a lot on this show about uh peace of mind, contentment. You know, one big way to have some peace of mind, financial security. For many of us uh and myself included, worrying about money takes up a lot of mental energy. Which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Gamebridge.

They offer financial products with a guaranteed rate. And I want to emphasize that word guaranteed. You're not guessing. You're not refreshing an app wondering what happened overnight. you know exactly what growth you're going to get right from the start. You choose the term. Uh there are no hidden fees and it's refreshingly simple. They've got two products. One is great for people saving up for the next big purchase like a home, big wedding, big trip. Uh they've also got one that's great for people planning for retirement.

Their rates are three times higher than a traditional certificate of deposit. Uh and when the Federal Reserve drops rates, much like CDs, annuities are a great way to ensure that your savings don't take a hit. Gainbridge, let your money work for you. Learn more at gamebridge.com. Rates subject to change. Have you ever invested in something uh that seemed incredible at first but did not live up to the hype? That happened to be back in the '90s when I invested in the company that made the Palm Pilot.

People of a certain age will remember those. They were like kind of the precursor the precursor the precursor to the smartphone, but they were not that smart and not connected to the internet. Anyway, lost a little money on that. If you're a marketer, you definitely know this feeling. Marketers optimize for the numbers that look great. Impressions, reach, and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, uh, well, that's a conversation with your chief financial officer. LinkedIn has a word for this. Bull spend. LinkedIn ads generate the highest rorowaz, 121% of all major ad networks.

Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. Cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/happier. That's linkedin.com/happhappier. That's linkedin.com/happhappier. That's linkedin.com/happhappier. Terms and conditions apply. [bell] Back to back to your time in the in in the children's hospital. I think you've described it as the axis mundi or like the sort of axis of the world for you of your life like there's kind of a before and after.

Can you say a little bit more about why that is? Yeah, I mean you know I was 22 years old and spent 6 months watching uh people being with people on the worst days of their lives and I have so much respect for people who work in children's hospitals. so much respect for people who work in children's hospitals for longer than six months who who don't bomb out of it like I did. Uh because it's hard work. It's hard to be with people as they lose their kids.

It's hard to be with kids as they lose their lives. And you know, for me, it challenged really everything that I thought I knew about the world. I I knew abstractly, of course, that life isn't fair and that um you know, there's both luck based and structure-based injustice, but it's different to see it up close. And I never forgot it, you know, I never got over it. I never I never have been able to put it behind me. And on some level, I don't want to put it behind me.

I want to grapple with the world as I saw it there. I want to um grapple with the world as it really is. And that's that's the world. I mean, I remember one of my chaplency supervisors saying that it's important to remember that that it's uh natural and normal for children to die. That historically half of children died. Half of children died before the age of five. You know, most people who've been born in the history of the world, most most modern humans who've been born in the last 300,000 years never lived to see the age of 20.

You know, I I I want to grapple with that world as it is. And I it makes me not want to live in a natural world. I don't want to live in a in a in in a world that's in a state of nature. I I want to live in a world that's shaped by by empathy and and by by collaboration and by hard human work to make life better, especially for the most vulnerable among us. And who is more vulnerable than a child? So after that experience, you stopped uh pursuing the Episcopal ministry.

Did did that experience kind of shake your conviction in the existence of God? Oh yeah. I mean it shaped it shaped my conviction about everything. Um I didn't emerge from that with with really any um any understanding of a moral universe. Um I felt and and and still feel that the world either is random or behaves precisely as if it were. the world either is indifferent to human concerns or or behaves as if it were and you know I need to build a worldview that incorporates that and that still finds a way to be hopeful.

Oh, you brought me exactly where I was thinking I was I was going to go next which is that that word hope which can be you know triggering or saccharine for folks. What what do you mean by hope? Because it does come up in your public utterances uh not infrequently. What do you mean by that and like how do you generate it? generate it? generate it? I'd say I mean two things. One is that I mean hope that that life can get better for ourselves and for each other and for the most vulnerable people among us.

Um now I don't believe of course that hope is always rewarded but I do believe that hope is always justified. Um and then the second thing that I mean is a more existential hope. the idea that forgiveness is available to all of us at all times. the idea that all of us are worthy of that forgiveness. Um, and and I I I mean forgiveness from other people, but also forgiveness from the universe or however you want to construct it, that um, you know, nobody is is is past the point of of of uh that's that's the idea of radical hope that that uh even unto death and beyond death that there is cause for um for belief that that we're going to be okay one way or another.

I um I um I um I am very I am both a big believer in hope and very suspicious of a lot of constructions of hope because I think sometimes the you know I don't want to be hopefilled sometimes you know like when I'm going through a hard time I don't want to be told like everything's going to work out well and everything isn't going to work out I'm going to die and everyone I love is going to die so hearing everything is going to work out just fine is not very helpful when you're going through a dark night of the soul when you're going through a really difficult time.

Hearing that everything happens for a reason doesn't help me. Um, in fact, it frustrates me because you tell me the reason why this kid died. You tell me the reason why people are suffering. You tell me the reason, you know, I I I I have a hard time with that one personally. I know it helps a lot of people and I don't mean to judge them, but it just doesn't doesn't work for me. for me. for me. What I mean by hope is that um I want to find a kind of hope that can hold up to reality as I find it that that um that can withstand the pressures and uh darknesses of reality.

And I do find that I find that um I find it in community. I find it in um I find it in the fact that we've reduced the number of children who die by 60% in the last 25 years. I find it all over the place. I find stories of hope, stories of people helping each other, extraordinary acts of generosity and sacrifice among humans. I think that that that's the part of our our our story that I want to lift up when I think about hope.

Just one last question I I had for you just in just in just in in in preparing for this, something stuck stuck out to me. Um, you're you you were being interviewed by the New York Times recently and you talked about the importance of not losing the magic of our teenage selves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, can Yeah. Can you just say a little bit more about that? Yeah. I mean, there's something there two things about being a a teenager that I find interesting. And I want to be clear, being a teenager was terrible.

And so, I don't want to go back to being a teenager. I also don't want but I so I do want to lose a lot of our teenage selves, right? like there's a lot that that that you can uh put behind you as you grow and change into, you know, this new imagined self as we've been talking about. But there are two things about being a teenager that I do want to hold on to. And the first is is firsts. The way it the first time you fall in love, it's so intense.

It feels not just like it's unprecedented in your own life, but it's like it's unprecedented in human history. M history. M history. M the first time you're grappling with grief, the first time you're asking big questions about meaning and suffering and what we owe each other and what we owe ourselves, like there's such a lack of irony in those pursuits. There's such an open and honest earnestness in them. And I I don't want to lose that. I really want to hold on to that that earnestness.

And and I know that like earnestness can be cringy and it can feel a little um h you know it just h it's like when I was I remember when I had I had this dog years ago this wonderful dog Willie and and Willie would roll over and he would show us his belly and I would always think what an incredibly vulnerable making thing that is to do like that's where I could stab you. That's where like and yet you trust me with this. And there's something about being really earnest that that is a similar thing where you have to show your belly to the world and it makes you nervous and it can make other people uncomfortable too.

But I think there's real value in it. And then the other thing I don't want to lose about my teenage self or or my teenage experience is the um the way I loved other people. I loved my friends in high school. I went to a boarding school in Alabama and so I spent 24 hours a day with my friends and with my enemies. And I I loved the people I loved with such a ferocity. Um I loved them so much. I would never say that I loved them, of course, but I loved them so much and I I thought they were so cool and I loved being with them and I loved learning about them and it came from a place of real curiosity with no judgment.

And I want to hold on to that. I want to hold on to the way I loved when I was a teenager. picked up my 11-year-old at school the other day and he he he's only been this is only his second year at the school and u he got in the car and said I love this place so much. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, that's such a great feeling as a parent, too. You're like, "Oh, yeah. yeah. yeah. I did it." Yes. Yes. Yes.

At least for one moment. Yeah. Yeah. And I I you know, in listening to you talk about loving your friends with that ferocity in in high school, like I I for much of my adult life just got so focused on my career that I let my friendships lapse and kind of woke up to this uh uh four or five years ago and and has have done a lot I've done a lot of work to reestablish that. I'm going to a party tonight. Um, and getting back in touch with that has been incredibly been incredibly been incredibly moving for me.

Yeah, it's so fulfilling. I I've been thinking about it. I mean, I'm so dependent upon my friends, so reliant upon them, but also they're relying upon me. Like, I've got this buddy. I won't I won't name him cuz he'd probably be embarrassed by this, but he can he can solve any problem I have. Like, you know, I have problem with the kids treehouse or something, and he'll come over and just like fix it in 5 minutes. And I spent a whole day trying to figure out how to get the ladder to work, right?

And he can solve all my problems. And one day he called me and he was like, "Hey, can you go to the doctor with me? I just feel like I need a patient advocate and I feel like you'd be a good one." And I was like, "I am a great patient advocate. I will go to the doctor with you and you will be duly astonished by my brilliance as a patient advocate." Like there is something that I can give you back. And so, you know, there is uh there's a lot of joy in that for me, not just in a lot of joy in the the cooperation and collaboration of friendship.

friendship. friendship. Yes. Yeah. I have a friend who's um everybody calls him Doug can fix it. Yeah. Very similar friend. What else? What's what's on your mind these days? What else is on your mind that we haven't covered? What are you working on? What are you interested in? I'm writing a new novel. I'm writing a novel about two kids in a movie. Um, I'm interested in Hollywood, but but I'm interested in Hollywood as a lens into the world that we all live in now, where we're all sort of commodifying aspects of ourselves and packaging them up and then selling them for free to Instagram audiences and Tik Tok and podcast audiences and what that means, what we lose in that process, what we gain from it, whether that exchange is is valuable or or whether the um most of the value ends up getting captured by by for-profit companies.

for-profit companies. for-profit companies. So, I've been writing that novel. I mean, I've really been writing it since like 2018, but I've been been very focused on it for the last couple years, and that's been really fun. And then I'm just trying to think a lot about the the world, um, the world around me. I'm trying to get outside of myself and, uh, literally touch grass. Uh, you know, get get off the internet a little bit and and go for walks. And I live near the White River here in Indianapolis, which is to me anyway the most the most beautiful river in the world.

And just being able to walk along the White River and uh be alone with my thoughts and know that those thoughts aren't quite as powerful as I once believed they were is a nice uh just a nice way to go about being alive. being alive. being alive. You have a Leslie nope level Indiana patriotism, don't you? I do. I am a big uh big Well, we have our problems, Dan. I I don't wish to I don't I don't wish to minimize the extent to which Indiana has its problems, but I really do love Indianapolis.

I really love this town and I I love the people in it and I I I'm grateful to the people who stay even when it's difficult sometimes to stay. Um I feel a lot a deep deep connection to this place. I'm not a native. I I moved here in 2007 for my wife's job. Very much a trailing spouse and and Sarah got a job here and so we just moved here. But I love it. I really do. And um yeah, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

anywhere else. anywhere else. The this novel you're writing, is is it at all based in any kind of ambivalence you have about being such a prominent player on the internet yourself? For sure. Yeah. I mean, there's no separating myself from the there there's no getting around the the complex feelings I have about my own participation in the social internet. I feel I have complex feelings about it because I I feel like the social internet is not always a positive force in people's lives. Like I want my my participation in it to be a positive force in people's lives, but I don't know that it is a positive force in the social order.

In fact, I think it's been pretty destructive in a lot of ways. and I don't see it getting better. Um, but also there's an ambivalence about what I've what I've given up, you know, what I've given up in in the process of talking about my mental health, talking about other aspects of my private life. Uh, you do, you know, when you when you share something, you lose it. It isn't yours anymore. yours anymore. yours anymore. And there are blessings in that, of course. You know, I mean, there are are tremendous blessings.

I I know that so many people have reached out to me, especially after reading Turtles All the Way Down, and told me how much it meant to them and that they could relate to it and it helped them to feel less alone or help them to understand somebody in their lives who lives with mental health problems. And and that's a gift. I mean, a huge gift. And and yet at the same time, it's hard to get around the fact that I've I've lost something in that process.

And so I do have ambivalent feelings about it, but but true ambivalence where, you know, I I understand the upsides and the downsides and I I don't know where I land on it. Some part of you thinks that maybe you would be better off if your personal struggles stayed personal. Parts of me would be better off for sure, sure, sure, but but but at the same time, and a lot of my personal struggles are personal. I mean, is the other thing, right? Like there's a lot I don't share.

And then I think well if I shared some of that it might be helpful to people in the same way it's been helpful to people as I shared um you know my my OCD or depression experiences. experiences. experiences. Problem with it is that you know to what extent do you have an obligation to the public and to what extent do you have an obligation to yourself? And I don't have an easy answer for that. I definitely do feel like I have an obligation to the public but I I think I might have a bigger obligation to myself.

We have all benefited from your generosity in this regard. Anything else that you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't managed to get to? No, this has been such a great wide-ranging conversation. What a thrill. thrill. thrill. It's a huge pleasure to have you on. This is an unfair question I'm going to ask you now, which is because of course you're going to have to say yes, but uh would you come back on when your novel comes out? comes out? comes out? I'd love to.

I could have scripted that answer. Um I would I would though. I'm not just saying it. saying it. saying it. No, I believe you. I'm just messing with you. Um, John, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to meet you. meet you. meet you. No, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you.