For John Green, It’s Tuberculosis All the Way Down For John Green, It’s Tuberculosis All the Way Down
The New York Times
The best-selling author “got a little emotional” while talking with The Times about the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Listen to the full conversation.
The first time I read a book by the best-selling young adult novelist John Green, I was on a plane. “The Fault in Our Stars,” about a teenage cancer patient who falls in love, made me cry so hard that a flight attendant repeatedly came to check on me.
Mr. Green’s new book is nonfiction and it’s about tuberculosis, the infectious disease. TB, he says, has become his great obsession; he talks about it to his millions of young followers on TikTok and YouTube, who at times have mobilized to confront drug manufacturers about high TB drug prices. The book, “Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection,” explains how TB is responsible for everything from romantic poetry to New Mexico’s statehood, and asks why a fully curable disease nevertheless killed 1.3 million people last year alone.
It’s a chronicle of slow but hopeful progress. But that progress was derailed recently when the Trump administration’s abruptly dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, ending American support for key health programs around the world. I invited Mr. Green to The New York Times for a conversation about where tuberculosis came from, why it hasn’t gone away and where it all goes from here.
The transcript below has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Stephanie Nolen: I really love talking about tuberculosis; I can talk about TB all day. But there aren’t a lot of people in my life who are super happy to sit and talk about TB with me. So this feels like a real luxury. I’m so glad that you’ve come to see us at The Times. Want to sit and talk about TB?
