John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down" (with Hank Green)

[Applause] University politics and pros is thrilled to host John Green with his brother Hank Reid on the second stop of their 19th City bus tour in support of John's new novel turtles all the way down when he won the prince war his young adult debut Looking for Alaska John Green has distinguished himself as a master of smart contemporary literary novels with genuine and relatable characters in addition to looking for Alaska grievances the best-selling and award-winning author of an abundance of katherines paper tins and the molten or stars last tooth which have also been made into major motion pictures additionally along with the other thing Green is the co-author Will Grayson Will Grayson and collaborator with Lauren Myracle and Maureen Johnson on let it snow recalled a romances pancreas a producer auger under and gifted musician his debut novel an absolutely remarkable thing will be published next fall our creators and co-host of the vlogbrothers video projects in the world vlog brothers launched 10 years ago and Jonathan continued to upload two videos a week to their YouTube channel in 2011 the brothers launched the educational YouTube channel crash course video projects but tonight we're here for John Briggs first new young adult novel since the Fault in Our Stars was published nearly six years ago please join me in welcoming John [Applause] [Music] join grants offender group to evolve a little review for a little bit from the book I think all you need to know going into this is that the story is narrated by a 16 year old girl named Anissa struggles with obsessive thought spirals and uses kind of compulsive behaviors to manage those thought spirals one of which is that she digs her thumbnail into the finger pad of her middle finger and she's been doing this since she was a little kid so this disc Alice has opened up these calluses on her fingertip and so it's very easy to put cut open skins kind of crack the skin and she does that a lot but she worries that that there might be infection underneath the callus and she has just met this boy Davis who she knew when they were kids but the embassy each other in a long time Hazen and her best friend Daisy go and kind of arranged to meet with Jameis and then after spending some time together Davis is driving driving them home also takes place in Indianapolis thank you to the three over here presumably interning for some kind of Congress although only the river separated us it was a 10-minute winding drive back to my house because there's only one bridge in my neighborhood we were quiet except for my occasional directions and when we last pulled into my driveway I asked for his bone intact my number into it Daisy got out without saying goodbye and that was about to do the same but when I gave him the phone back Davis took my right hand and turned it over palm up I remember this he said then I followed his eyes down to the band-aid covering my fingertip I pulled my hand away and closed my fingers into a fist does it hurt he has it for some reason I wanted to tell him the truth whether it hurts is kind of irrelevant that's a pretty good life motto he said I smiled yeah okay I should go right before I close the door he said it's good to see you inside yeah I said you too when I got home I watched TV with mom but I couldn't stop thinking about Davis looking down at my finger holding my hand in his I have these thoughts that dr. Karen Singh calls intrusive but the first time she said if I heard it in vases which I like better because like invasive weeds these thoughts seemed to arrive at my biosphere from some faraway land and then they spread out of control I guess everyone has them you look out from over a bridge or whatever it occurs to you out of aware that you could just jump and then if you're like most people you think well that was weird and you move on with your life but for some people the invasive you kind of take over crowding out all the other thoughts until it feel he thought you're able to have the one you're perpetually either thinking or distracting yourself from you're watching TV with your mom this show about time-traveling crime solvers and you remember a boy holding your hand looking at their finger and then a thought occurs to you you should have that bad day to check to see if there's an infection you don't actually want to do this it's just an invasive everyone has them but you can't shut your zone since you've had a reasonable amount of cognitive behavioral therapy you tell yourself I am NOT my thoughts even though deep down you're not sure exactly what that makes you and then you tell yourself to click a little X at the top corner of the thought they could go away and maybe it does for a moment you're back in your house on the couch next to your mom and then your brain says well but wait what if your fingers affected why not just check the cafeteria wasn't exactly the most sanitary place to reopen that wound and then you were in the river now that Americans because you've previously attended this exact rodeo on thousands of occasions and also because you want to choose the thoughts that are called yours but the river was filled me after all had you got some river water on your hand and gonna take much the band-aid you tell yourself that you were careful not to touch the water but then your self replies but when you touch something that touched the water and then you tell yourself that this is a lot that the wound is almost certainly not affected but the distance you've created with that almost gets filled by the thought you need to check for infection just check it so we can calm down and then fine okay you excuse yourself to the bathroom and slip off the band-aid to discover that there isn't blood but there might be a bit of moisture or a bandage pad you hold a band-aid up to the other bite of a bathroom and yes that definitely looks like moisture could be sweat of course but also might be water from the river or we're still cereal pretty good drainage of sure sign of infection so you find the hand sanitizer in the medicine cabinets please someone to your fingertip it burns like hell and then you wash your hands thoroughly singing your ABCs what you do to make sure you've scrubbed for the full 20 seconds recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and then you carefully dry your hands with the towel and then you take your thumbnail all the way under the cramp and the callus until it starts bleeding and squeeze the blood out for as long as it comes and then you blot the wound dry with a tissue and you take a band aid from inside your jeans pocket where there is never a shortage of them I could carefully reapply the bandage you return to the couch to watch TV and for a few or many minutes you feel the shivering jolt the tension easing the relief of giving it to the lesser angels of your nature and then two or five or 600 minutes later you start to wonder wait did I get all the pus out was there pus even or was that just sweat it wasn't us you ain't need to drain that wound again in the spiral toilets Thanks so that seemed a zit can't pay attention to the TV show she's ostensibly watching earlier in the novel she fails to notice that her best friend has died her hair she can't pay attention in conversations in short she is a truly terrible detective obsessiveness and observational genius has been linked for a long time in the popular imagination from Sherlock to the TV show monk and I'm sure that must be true to some people's experience but it is not true two aces or for that matter to mine I wanted to write a detective story about a detective whose brand disorder is distinctly unhelpful and although the book is entirely fictional and mazes challenges are very different from mine when it came to writing about the mental illness I was writing partly from within my own experience I had a very happy childhood my parents were kind and supportive and deeply loving I have wonderful friends a great brother but I was not a very happy child a lot of my childhood was consumed with obsessive worrying and dread as a kid it was often a fear of poisoning I would become convinced that I'd eaten something that was definitely going to kill me and I couldn't stop worrying about it no matter what I did and eventually I developed behaviour to cope with this worry because I was hours to it every day I don't need certain foods at certain times I'd only sit certain chairs at the cafeteria I now realize of course that I had and still have obsessive-compulsive disorder but at the time I didn't know that I had no way to get expression to perform to the experience of my thoughts because it was so deep down an abstract and scared I couldn't talk about it that way you talk about a chair or a table I lacked language for the fear and the pain that it caused me which made it all the more painful and also more isolated it felt like all the time there was a real monster like an actual monster but it lived inside of me it felt like I was stuck inside of a prison that was the exact size and shape of my body it felt it's easy to say what it felt like it's hard to say what it was in fact it still aren't to say what it is and most of all it made me feel like a passenger in my own consciousness if I can't stop thinking these thoughts that I don't want to have but whose thoughts are they exactly who's the captain of this ship I call myself it's clearly not my self it's the monster self I'm just riding shotgun and it Turtles all the way down aces have control over her thoughts is hugely destabilizing to her sense of self she has to navigate a constantly fracturing and collapsing understanding of what or who she is but she doesn't only have to know the definition of self that's independent from her intrusive thoughts and the behaviors that she uses to help manage them she also has to figure out how to which he calls the skin in case of bacterial company known as ISA long enough to imagine the lives of others with compassion than some semblance of real understanding which i think is the actual key to solving any mystery and also is a challenge for each of us so that a story about this you may have heard it before if you have I apologize but I will tell it better this time so in 2003 when the us-led coalition forces invaded Iran I was living in Chicago with three roommates Katie Shannon and Hasan then my roommate Hasan was from Wade but a lot of his extended family lives in Iraq and he was out of touch with them for several weeks and it was extremely stressful and scary and the way that he kind of dealt with this was to watch cable news 24 hours of definitely he was always either at work or on the couch watching usually Fox News and if you want to hang out with him you've had to sit on the couch with him and watch the news so one day we were watching the news together there's one of the situation's were like new footage is coming in to the studio and the anchor is seeing it for the first time but because he has a microphone he's an expert and a camera is panning across is a huge hole in a wall and always mostly covered by the piece of plywood and on that plywood is scrawled in black sprayed me very angry looking Arabic graffiti and the guy on TV is talking about the anger on the Arab Street or whatever my friend song starts to laugh and I said what's so funny and he said the graffiti I said what's funny about it and he said it says happy birthday sir despite the circumstances so it seems to me that like the central challenge of a human life is that what a minute-by-minute basis it is almost impossible to consider the happy birthday service by the circumstances possibility right now we project our biases and expectations and experiences and so on on to everyone and everything else because we are stuck with just this one consciousness we look at the world in just this one way and I would like to tell you that I think stories are some magical way out of that problem the reading and writing can make you purely empathetic so that you know exactly what it's like to be someone else but I just don't believe that I can think stories can help us to empathize but I don't think they can ever tell us precisely what someone else's life is like and that's why we mustn't think that reading a book or even many books makes us qualified to speak over other people were on behalf of them but I think they can get better at listening and then crediting others with personhood and an understanding and remembering that everyone does have a birthday and for me at least the best way I found to improve my listening is through stories my kids are my kids my parents are my parents but in the tequila Mockingbird scallop isn't mine even instead I'm asked to live inside of her consciousness to see the world as she sees it I think every novel is a way out of your life and into others it Turtles all the way down I wanted to give people a look and what it's like to be stuck with a mind that doesn't always deal yours and also maybe home people who struggle with that terror to feel reading and writing aren't only about empathy of course but I do think ultimately that's why I read and write I'm trying to remind myself convinced myself that other people are real that their love and loss is as real and as important as my own and each time I relearned that truth I understand that I too am real that I may not always control my thoughts but that I have nonetheless a real creature a singular noun capable of loving and being loved not just capable above in fact but also it's so great to be here we're so excited to be on on the road together my brother and I it's an absolute blast so far it's day two so it's early but the most interesting thing so far I have to I have to say has it been the time that I've been able to spend with my brother by the time I've been able to spend with the presenter it's my pleasure to bring them out right now I think you're really going to enjoy getting to know and ladies and gentlemen dr. Lawrence turtle [Applause] my name's dr. Lawrence German professor of turbo studies I really excited that the Greek brothers brought me out here to talk to you today as hi what up discuss some of the areas of my expertise phylogeny and taxonomy is this thing on I may be my [Music] one of the differences as you the genie is a bunch of genetics and violence with the same roots but which is spike so it's like a genetic fighting it's a categorization system based on genetics cabinets too fast it's really it's about it's it's pretty in regards to how we classify organisms but taxonomy was treated before we do it genetics even was in fact Carl banks the father of taxonomy [Applause] he created a taxonomy a hundred years ago for Charles Turner was even born it's that when you think about it because we still use many of his systems in fact in Baxter class you probably learn these what are called domain kingdom I'm looking at Jesus species these are called taxa taxa is also in the singular all attacks on and attack time is categories now there's only one thing in the category both in the taxon below the taxon you're looking at you call it a mano two victims if I were to the taxa there are elements of the for example this says be able to build macaw and there is only one of those species of Indigo macaw there in their subspecies and so you would talk about a model two big species but could you give me reason that of genus can be monotypic if there's only one species in that gene is in the case which the chip star this kind of family that only has one genus that only has one species and there are no subspecies or will I can kick the bearded breathing is bird the only species that's all I know about the bearded wheel the order on our example here of the red box is Colonel floral but you really brought order you can probably think of a part of course one genius and one species [Applause] dr. chu man.you over there the first one is the Arrancar or turbulent in time Italy has one species in the entire order that you might think to yourself what she wants and anteaters the aardvark is not a South American in either it's native to Africa we're never to a large range but this planet success all of its ancestors are ten it's its closest living relatives which I mostly include because couching minutes but also because of this weird fact about the elephant when we first found the first elephant room you might be I mean you know your hands but it turns out when we started coming to the final of genetic studies instead of taxonomic ones we're is more related to the element into the Shrew yeah what else do we got doctor turtleman will let me tell you we got the box it is the calm before means the Watson is the South American bird the divergent of other birds around 64 million years ago just after the dinosaurs went extinct that's how long it's been since these guys shared ancestor with a bird real weird Birds they're all the same they're not these guys here does please they're ruminants they're like counselled wings how do you look at me like that it's not moral diets they produce a lot of waste which is why I South America there come to refer to as the stink bird and finally our last monotypic order is the order rico system [Applause] it shares the body with the loser because it shares the ancestors for the lizard but in fact tuatara are around as related to a lizard as a burden to a crocodile these things are super weird and sheltered from competition from other organisms which has allowed them to maintain a sort of living fossil status that allows us to understand agree to the more about the evolution of lizards incidents when it was possible in order to learn all the things that they've been able to teach us because they went extinct on the mainland of New Zealand where they were protected from all these newer fancier body forms where tuatara were able to survive and then were recently reintroduced to the mainland it's very exciting congratulations to Atari we are from other places too people say with us the birds are kind of genetic because in front of genetics know that you are always the thing that you once were so we are all related the birds are still dinosaurs because that is their ancestors we show you humans also a mono atomic species are on amazing and tension sir doctor in Houston fee and Mathis dalibor premium cordoned think about that that this bird cost indeed here means bogey fish mooney dishes because optimistic averted roots were descended from the building missions even be eternally the equal of genetically alerts us to understand that all of a sudden Oh even my name is [Applause] French and I want to answer a few questions about Toros all the way now this boy wears book killing yesterday I see you got your copies thirty minutes ago but first I wanna answer this question from Amanda Dubrow I came all the way from Pittsburgh can I have a turn please I have terrible news Amanda and not just one piece of terrible news with two pieces first no Jenna turtle I don't have one I know you know if it's legal for me to give you oh man I know this is going to disappoint you and it's going to disappoint many turtle lousiest including me I'm sure dr. Mary Turner my coaches my container everybody turn us I mean the collection of turtles but they're mostly used symbolically and that brings me to the second question which comes from Jessie well the reason for the title be revealed in the story yes but not before it is revealed right now because you could just google this and lots of people have I didn't even Bend the turtles all the way down story lots of people when I announced the title got mad at me because there's great contributions virgil samms knows the song turtles all the way down and they're like my suits durga Simpson and actually a certain sense and I are both ripping off a story that goes back about their 50 years and nobody knows who first told it or who it's about so there's this scientist giving an hour-long lecture in a big lecture hall about how the earth is you know billions of years old and it's a sphere that formed out of Stardust or whatever I don't actually know that much about the history of the earth like you know might emerge near undersea volcanoes or whatever a few billion here and slowly became more complex for all that of the oceans so that we are all still loading fish in the eventually humid suburbs like 250,000 years ago in the now and in the end of this big long lecture so me in the back raise their hand and it says you know that's all fine a good mr. scientist but the truth is the earth is a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle and the scientists like things think so I can have some fun with this and so he says well if that's true what is the turtle spectacle and the the woman says Electra instead of getting a larger terminal and then the scientist is what is that turtle standing on and she says there you are stands here it's Turtles all the way down because well for two reasons first off when I first heard the story I thought it was a story that was making fun of superstition about the dumb superstition is but now I realized that it is this story about how two people can both be right because I think obviously the world is a billions of year old sphere I have done a flat earther but I also think that the the world is the stories we tell about it and about the stories we tell about a real important impact and the stories we tell about ourselves and each other are true and real and important the other thing is that in a lot of places in my life when I've been sick I feel that I am looking for the bottom turtle in a situation in which there is no bottom turtle because it's Turtles all the way especially have to breathe who writes in really phenomenal handwriting john other than a dead like how do you know when your book is done enough to share I have a hard time sharing my writing well I mean I spent six years writing this book and I also have a hard time sharing my ram it's very scary it's you know it's it's it's overwhelming to show it's actually harder to show it to like one or two people you really love than it is to show it to a group of people who frankly who actually can't see cuz you get them to turn down the light so much it's really hard and I think it's like I think it should be armed because if it's not hard that it's not important to you and you want you want your writing to feel important to you and you want to feel like you're communicating something that feels urgent to you and then significant and like you desperately want people to hear the story and you are genuinely hopeful that it will be useful to them or that they'll respond to it in some way that that would be beneficial to them you want it to be a gift right and anytime you give somebody a gift it's eerie because what if they hate it or what it's like you were you kind of went over the top like what if it wasn't an appropriate gift there's all kinds of anxiety when you give someone you care about a gift and I think that's very similar to the anxiety of sharing your writing as for how do you get over though I don't know really how do you get over that I think you I think it's important to - I think you've to remember what you're doing what you're doing and you have to be able to interrogate while you're doing it to borrow a phrase all the way down like you have to be able to to know that you're making it as a as a gift in that you want to share it because of that impulse rather than there's many other impulse and as for how you know you're done when you can't go on any longer and you cannot make it any better and the wake is making it worse that's when it's time to show it to someone and have that person to tell you which eighty percent of it you have to do eat my experience anyway and the last question I want to answer is from Jessica writes what was it like writing about mental illness I there were there were separate questions that were in this category one was about whether or not I feel like it's important to be mentally ill to be a great artist and I don't in fact my favorite writers are entirely sane and I think there is obviously a huge problem with stigmatization of mental illness in our culture but I think there is also a problem with romanticizing mental illness in our culture like if you google all artists are if you google all artists are a lot of those bad I don't think that's true I also don't think that it's a helpful way to look at creative output it is true that people who work in creative fields have higher than average rates of mental illness it is also true that lawyers have higher than average rates of mental illness but you never see people say like oh you want to be a lawyer better ride that line you know better better try to be as thick as you can be and still work it's a terrible idea you know the truth is that I could write about a mental illness when I was sick like when I embarrassing I can't write anything I can't read anything for that matter and so my experience is named that I write that when I am treating the chronic health problem that I have like a chronic health problem you know when I'm treating it with consistency and care when I'm taking my medication when I'm doing this stupid therapy stuff that works even though it's and I really wanted to share that because while I do think that I don't want to be embarrassed about the fact that I have a mental illness I also want to share with you then I think it's possible and in fact quite likely and common to have a rich and fulfilling and wonderful and long and happy life while also living with a chronic mental illness and my work is best when when I'm taking it seriously and when I'm taking my health [Applause] [Music] we didn't answer there were so many good ones I have I'm deeply apologetic but now I would like to welcome back to the stage my brother Hank so we can talk to you about issues that are important to us [Applause] right [Applause] yeah you really only have one job I was going to give you some background I know I don't know the whole story here and I might be missing it I don't want to apologize if I am but I was going to tell the story as I imagine it to be true so whenever on tour in 2012 I'm gonna just take that Rafi thank you to nerdfighters named Sarah Louise man and this at the I believe in the Washington DC event in 2012 like five you know fire five and a half years ago and they married in three days this week and they are like how about we can come to your event there's a lot of stressful wedding planning so we just I think it point they better be here I think they're here so Sarah Louise if you're here could you just come up real quick [Applause] first up Cheers [Applause] you actually know what it is because we've gotten off your registry I'm solving [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what a journey they're embarking upon and whether I argue the best mix we got for a better grab like that's broken so I hope I've noticed he did register for monogrammed highball glasses which is by usual be presumptuous it's good to have you what I feel is if you didn't even come from living that I'm gonna really use give me like 15 Baxter did he sent me monogrammed time this is stupid will twelve years later you know we're never like 24 and yeah do you know it your phrase of the week is yes I remember we do this bit where we both have a phrase the week but we don't know what the others visit at the end of the show we're gonna get oh you're gonna start but also out there this is a great question for Katy Dear John Hank what yet unanswered question do you most hope to see answered in your lifetimes scientific or otherwise there's some later this decade thank God how do you know what you want I would like to know like very selfishly I have a bunch of public health questions like what causes my brain problem and is there a perhaps the slightly sharper instrument to treated with relatively one instruments of current psychiatry apologies to the psychiatrists out there also apologized the Ottomans were saying that's there is the stupid it does work but it is also stupid oh it's not really into us a living thing time there is there is but I want to know all about it I don't know how they how they make babies their chemistry is based on those two things mostly book about extra-terrestrial doing in [Applause] and I like shotgun but it's like no I get to write the book the next guitarists feel doing it like like they're like winch and a rifle and I'm like no how they do with them like what what what is he a life made out of it because it almost definitely is it made out of DNA right and that's so weird that's a little no and I think there's some thought to like well all of our all of our tools for figuring out whether there's like a living thing going up it's based on our chemistry and so we need new tools that we're gonna try and figure out the like this happen together way what is Moore's these alive and we just can't tell like the whole point is just like a giant or it's just not eating fish generally strong technique works and then he tries to not get baby by the ghost accept movies recently a big dog it's not a great game for our trip I got their intended with the tiny classic Nintendo [Applause] [Music] they're not great yeah listen exam I'd leave it open we've upgraded this is from Kim and the guinea dear Hank John without a fight one elephant sized puppy or 100 puppy-sized elephants what would you choose like basically coming is it to the death because dark again there's a stalemate in which case I would definitely picked the elephant-sized puppy because you know [Applause] I don't know man if you've got a lot of puppies would miss you while they were the same elephant [Music] you gon just made of mush there just if they would eat you in one bite like I don't know like I think Mario's which would you rather cuddle with I'd like a bunch of elephants for our one big man Dear John here is it okay to feed birds this undermined until I'm emphasizing every word of it is it okay to feed birds on a college campus if it's with proper birdseed thank you for inserting us into what I assume is an advanced or you how grateful I am for this opportunity to be divisive about a subject I knew nothing I also want to think about this so let me take a gander like I don't know I'm just assuming like you're out the argument that is being had and do not hit the birds he's not a question about bird health [Music] problems do not beat the birds is a fizzle is a bird as pest problem the more you beat the birds the more birds they are the more bird poop there is the more bird dead birds there are which is a thing if you have to worry about the maintenance does and think that that's I've never seen a lot of dead birds because I allow this kind of entrance in the fire st and there would always be pigeons who were making bad decisions and so and so I generally like a little meat another pigeon population wears a tux I mean I like Hank I have no idea what the answer to your question is it was good but you had no idea I was talking about your next question so [Music] so I know exactly what I want but I also know that I could never have it what I want more than anything is to be the guy who plays bass guitar and Hank Green's band [Music] [Applause] to be the bass player in rem which is been my child I really like that seemed to be the ideal position in the band is like you're on stage and you get to sing backup but you you aren't like a Michael Stipe famous who for those who don't know Mario I don't know that just always see that that was always my dream and of course I can't leave it as anyone who has ever heard me singing or playing the bass guitar is a big job if you try sometimes we might find that at least you get what you need I enjoy looking at children because they seem to know what they want and I might yes teach me to have direction toward chicken nuggets at least but yes correct again the right the right manner jeonggi have another question for us sure in this question I think it's Renato spitted write their name since tears I look forward to reading your book an expert doesn't come out for a year you didn't co-write this term on thing I look forward to reading next book you still haven't shown it as a parent with children who are challenged by anxiety and depression of interested in open advice you may have for parents in my shoes how best to help my young adult children move through life with mental illness it's a great question and I mean I think the first thing is to try to get the good care which unfortunately is extremely difficult in our country and a lot of places mental health care is just not treated the same as other kinds of health care and it's really unfortunate so I think like persevering through that process with in helping them make the appointments and keep them helping them you know figure out what's gonna work for them because mental illness is treatable people do experience you know going to be great monks talked about before but I think that's a huge thing and then the only other thing that you can do I think is is love them where they are and as who they are one of the hardest things about being a parent in my experience is that all you want to do is take the pain away from your kids and you can't write like I mean you never take whatever they're gonna experience and they're all going to experience something that you can't take away from them that's very hard thing to accept them to live with but it is the it's the nature of the game so I think you have to love people where they are if you haven't put your money to want animal like a tuatara what would you choose I have another connection to this you go we're all fishes so myself it's also an animal that's a cop you gotta go for it but I got to call back to dr. turtleman's I think you didn't see my previous phone a fish call back because I think you were not watching me probably dr. journal did backstage so this is one of them to be like the reason I wrote about this is that it is completely astonishing to me that in most states including Indiana you cannot leave your multibillion-dollar fortune to a nonhuman animal because of course you can't but you can leave your billions of dollars state to a corporation that exists only to benefit a single non-human animal these corporations are of course people this is a completely fascinating loophole the blocks of weird reach people have used over the years I'm serious to leave their cats tens of millions of dollars they're like you know [Music] yes the answer is that in this hypothetical situation I would rebelled against the system and say I refusing to accept this ridiculousness leave your money to malaria research Jesus while all the pet lovers out there very much without only needs ten million dollars for you fifty bucks the coyote eating I don't do those again thank you that's what couple have been rid of this is exciting dear child making first of all thank you for everything thank you for everything Alex secondly what would you say to the creators of freedom that they're content with our part of your writing won't matter either because they don't think it's boot or co-founder because they may not have a wide reach [Music] [Applause] on the brain but so do it because it's all its tolerance yeah retention rates if just because something that's never wide range doesn't mean it doesn't matter you know I got like if you think about the most I got as an adult what I think about the people who are most important to me as when I was a child like I don't think about celebrities I don't think about people who had a broad reach I think about people who have a very narrow the very deep reach you know like I was talking earlier tonight about my middle school librarian is incredibly important person in my life but you know we only work with however many kids per year and so I think thinking about like broad reach equally good is I know it's like the kind of like deeper way of thinking about what constitutes success in our culture but I think it's flawed like I think you can have it if one person reads your story is profoundly impacted by it and remembers forty years that's cooler than making something that like lots of people watch that doesn't matter much to them in my opinion yeah the other great bush in terms of in terms of creatives like creatively progress it's like I think that like happiness comes much more from a place of being getting better you know and like like one day I look back and I'm like wow I sure couldn't play that chord and now it's just nothing to me or I sure like I sure looked and have written something that good and now that that's sort of regular to me and I can do it a lot like that like understanding your own progress as I think we're a lot of satisfaction comes from rather than success and I think ultimately satisfaction is the thing that we're trying to get to we usually want to get when we talk about success news requires a nasty little bit okay you ask us question in the hall is my last question that's a lot of pressure okay I go first okay I wanted to pick a really important one yeah oh that's another unanswered question I would like answered immediately I knew go forward in a basic one-minute forbidden proper time okay what about the grandfather paradox what happens there okay what's going on what's your question I mean I can I say fine for the last class question it's so good alright what is the purpose of the tan thing on the front of the book back excel at the FT va.com do you notice a little this little diamond thing on the back of backpacks with little spots on it yes okay well that's there somebody who makes those and turns it into that puts it all back max you know something that happens yeah so I know too much about manufacturing things don't know that thing is called but a noted in its four it's a basically just an attachment point if you want to let clip your keys on or something it was originally a attachment point for like mattress pads let her play those things that like campers would sleep on it was much bigger and very different looking and it's sort of shrunk down to be like well it's this is an area of the backpack that didn't have anything on it that was visually uninteresting but put this thing okay so that's the answer to your question I'm sure you're ready [Applause] commander you right here John I think my husband thinks that eggs are dairy but I say the dairy comes from the cow [Applause] I don't this brought you my difference I guess initially brought to you by speedy bagman sleepy [Applause] we brought to you by Oh [Applause] NASA's podcast brought to you by the backpacks dftba [Applause] for sale right now actually yeah all the eggs are dairy camp as well hey what is the news from Mars this day no sometimes the Sun is like black like like a little magnetic exclusion of the services to us a little high-energy particles into the hunters makes a solar flare like sometimes we'll get solar flares on earth and they can keep it interrupts like satellite communication even power it sometimes but does have a really long time when it's across the fingers it doesn't happen this year is boy in the geography of space so most of the massive solar flares go like not in the plane of the solar system this go up and out or like where they go somewhere where the earth isn't and they pass through this empty spaces happens that we get hit by the solar flare and we do and so most of the big ones we get missed by the Mars decided by the big one and it's down the largest Aurora we've ever witnessed on Mars is happening and like yesterday and today so there's a big like if we were on Mars really worried about the high energy particles so you know we don't be like down the corner more reason not to go to Mars well happy news from America's favorite third tier English soccer team is [Applause] splitter videos for America's favorite third tier English soccer team and when the lid is dark dark darkness everywhere 12 games into the lead one season fancy women have scored five goals but Americans complain there's none of goals and soccer this time with their goals the US Men's National Team times dark times for an American soccer fan ebooks fandom of the colony would rip off for that's the relegation zone that means that we stayed there to be able to season we'd be the lead to the bottom tier of English football don't want to go back there have to travel to places like children ham ain't no place names in England so yeah it's as bad as the solar player situation in Mars I guess my year phrase of the week was was it my own man which is not really great one before and myself in the pack that about my intuition you should have seen my face I was like basically top it was yeah [Applause] I used it three times in an attempt to make you think like surely he wouldn't use it three times it didn't work okay thank you all for at least making it up and as they say about hometown don't forget to be awesome [Applause] which I left backstage but there are that many songs because someone's calling them at home because it's a book reading and usually there are no songs of book readings but you get some [Applause] you yeah usually there yeah so I play music I don't do it that often but I really enjoy doing it I mostly sing about science you could have doctor turn on and no science songs it's a comedian books on science which is not the poster everyone people who are disappointed so most things wrong about a fish there is and it's very difficult to live in the deep sea and so when you have no food there are a lot of you around that's sort of how ecology works like as more food there's more organisms and when there is a very very little food then you like when it's time to like make the next generation of fish you have to work really hard to find another river of your own species in if that is hard enough for us here on a very crowded theater with a cubic mile so the deep sea anglerfish has figured out the solution to this problem which is that when a male is born akan female sister normal fish but when a man was born it's just like I know who's and some fins and testicles so he cannot survive unless he sniffs out a female anglerfish and if he finds her people bite her and the enzyme there was an enzyme in her skin that will dissolve his lips and then their circulatory systems will fuse together and he will be fed by her heart we've all met this guy right [Music] so slowly whose body will justice like siness into her body and it'll just be paradise on her side next generation she releases her eggs in the water releases a hormone in different blood which cost the testicles to release sperm into the water and they joined together and that's how the next generation of fish is born about to strike I've been his firm and through it all my friends I've to learn that love is not about whether you get stabbed it's how slow the knife against her [Music] much better [Music] goodnight [Music] battalion [Music] to finding me they are all who's there together create see what everybody likes a female on her side and then slowly he becomes his from producing parasites say he looks at all he lives until she dies I think he literally never leaves her side [Music] the younger has no reason to the Santiago's despair you simply do not be it's very entertaining that means the scene but if I do that all the time you really caught me my friends and I [Music] [Applause] [Music] do we [Music] [Applause] because it's a pretty weird well a ever existed by itself in isolation something very odd happens when you try to separate the beam energy it takes to break up those two best friends is just enough degree to more than join back up to them and those are Joseph likes going to get imagine knowing that that's gonna be trying to think you might be you be minute absorber both in the exact same instance probably thirty million light years [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] right now you behind your sisters energies only one understands but it's only 4% of what the universe [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] leave it once upon a time and I guess it would steal molecules like hey I turn key into you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I some science songs but this is after all John Green shows up with you like on a deal with the world the difficult person is good person to take advantage of it all be a human basically so I don't sing the song here's [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I was like wait whatare you listen to it five thousand more times [Music] and then okay okay this is a good song on a complicated song good secret I'm totally on board I'm now a national all-star fan this is my song before this little bit and it's gonna be maybe a little more guitar later this about works [Applause] it's an institution to observe in 1963 we thought they were selling articles but they're not after made up of three separate releases it just before confusing as our knowledge increases and that is what gives it specific the time and they also make the other things including the neutron Street Journal [Music] [Applause] we exist for only very reasonable words how electric charge massive speed and becomes a Sicilian which is reference I've never been studied on their own no bounce dreams join you [Music] join together in two different ladies baryons and Mason fellows simply decayed it's a very honest [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so I'm gonna ask for a little bit of just a small thing here if we could bring up the house real quick thank you forgot to mention this to the people but book how book how fast they did that anywhere huge thanks to equity mister Emporium and also have Buffett's pros for just being the best it's great [Applause] and it's pretty cool to be back here in this room I was not in that room there what you didn't really hear her there who through cheering over which I appreciated is the sound of New York saying hello to you I ask you to say hello to Charlotte where we will be tomorrow so what I would like you to say if you could is hello to Charlotte it's Washington we love you on three [Music] hello Charlotte its Washington we love you on three one two three [Applause] so before we leave tonight I want to tell you a story you can bring the house that's all the way down now what is great about my friend Amy trust Rosenthal who died earlier this year anyway sent me to a brighter and then Juarez filmmaker and a person who sought Wonder in every human moment that I've never known anyone like her she also gave me one of my first big breaks it's writer putting me on the radio in Chicago back in 2002 though years later she invited me to one of her readings and at the time I was in one of my periods of sustained unwellness unable to choose my thoughts but that particular episode was accompanied by the chest crushing and depression I found nothing enjoyable I struggled to get out of bed the usual it was at once utterly boring and absolutely excruciating Susan Sontag rare that depression is melancholy - its charms I didn't want to go but I felt obligated because Amy had done me this huge favor by getting me on the radio I have to confess that I find relentless positivity really annoying like sometimes when talking to somebody who just loves the world with all of its joy and Wonder I want to grab them by the collar in the screen to leave is to suffer but Amy was never deluded in her optimism she always acknowledged the darkness one of the last lines she wrote and one of my favorites was death maybe knocking on my door but I'm not getting out of this glorious bath to answer it so anyway I went to the minute I was alone and very nervous and stuck with these invasive thoughts that I couldn't stop having and also Amy kept wanting the audience to participate in the things that she was doing and I hate audience participation it always makes me very nervous because what if the audience doesn't deliver and also I'm going to the show to be entertained not to be part of the entertainment and then Amy started talking about how in World War one all these British soldiers who didn't understand their cause or why they were being asked to fight and dive her tiny patches of ground far from home started singing this song to the tune of that New Year's Eve song auld lang syne we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here it was earth recursive lament an acknowledgment that there was no wide that might in the trenches was meaninglessness all the way down but that night in 2004 any transform of the song for me without ever changing the words that might Amy made me understand that we were here meaning that we were together and then even when we felt alone we were not really because we were part of vast and deeply interconnected us and also that we were here that a series of astonishing and likelihoods that made us possible and here possible and brought together a group of people that had never existed before and would never exist again and that we might never know why we are here but that we can still proclaim and hope that we are and you may be feelin that moment what I have believed ever since that hope is not foolish or idealistic or misguided hope that life will get better and more importantly that life will go on is the correct response to the arc of history as Emily Dickinson wrote hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all and so even though I do truly hate audience-participation I hope you will join me in singing in Amy's memory and in her hope we're here because [Music] thank you again everyone for being here it's the the first bid again provides just a tiny bit is there anyone in the audience named Caroline [Applause] are you aware that there is a song about your name you may have heard it we can [Music] like everybody in this place was said didn't the istake fog papa you can never know I love these are participation moments where people officers know what to do and they do it together and they're these big collective master or dissipated but if it's a noise you never know some people want to be one you never know if everybody is truly together [Applause] people do it who said and who did we do you don't reckon we do together miss just then it's true the only way we can have a true moment of togetherness is for 1,500 people all at the same time not to if you are doing it will say New York did a very good job like way better than I expect it's hard like it's so there's two things they can happen one you can be first about together [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there's 2% there's one Soviets over it's over - there's two papa and you're gonna feel the it's going to be incredibly hard but I will tell you if he can do it he can have that moment of true together this nothing can you have an experience with [Applause] with apologies to the birth of my children we're gonna do this together we decided when began [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that's already too [Applause] being here tonight and took all these intros or supporting this event for your local bookstore a lot of bookstores politics one of them but there are also many others and I can tell you that we are not as the looking at Indianapolis keep them [Applause] [Music] every year is really [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you you

Channel: Politics and Prose

Views: 27,419

Rating: 4.9572954 out of 5

Keywords: P&P TV, Washington DC, Politics and Prose, Authors, Books, Events, Literature, John Green, Hank Green, Awesome Nerd Fighters, Turtles All The Way Down, young adult, ya, vlogbrothers

Id: sxyVyO3zx4I

Length: 91min 45sec (5505 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2018