Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 61. John Green: The Fault in Our Birbiglias

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

In addition to his new hit book “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” John Green has written several novels that have debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list including “The Fault in Our Stars” which was adapted into an indie blockbuster with Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and featuring Mike in the role of Patrick the youth pastor. Mike and John recount meeting each other on the set of the movie and in the slow round John recalls getting a banana smushed in his face in 4th grade. John helps Mike work new out jokes and they end up in a rabbit hole of summer camp nostalgia. John also becomes the first guest to try to place his own Jack Antonoff music sting. Please consider contributing to: Partners in Health Check out Mike's tour dates at: Birbigs.com

I remember after I had sold my first book, I went to New York and met my editor for the first time, like in real life. And she said, would you like to write another book? And I said, yes. And she said, what are your goals for your first book? And I said, my goal for my first book is that it does well enough that you'll let me write a second book. well enough that you'll let me write a second book. That was the voice of John Green, who is a multiple New York Times number one bestselling author, YouTube creator, and podcaster. His novel, The Fault in Our Stars, was a runaway sensation that was made into a film that was also number one in the box office that I actually played a small role in.

I was Patrick the Youth Pastor. His recent book is a number one New York Times bestseller as well called The Anthropocene Reviewed, which I love. I actually listen to the audiobook because he reads it himself. He's got a great voice, and it's a great, great book. This is working it out. Oh, I'm Mike Birbiglia I forgot to even mention that And I should point out that I have some really, really exciting tour dates coming up

The tour has been a blast In the month of January I'll be in Berkeley at the Berkeley Repertory Theater Which is gorgeous If you're anywhere near the Bay Area You gotta come check that out. I'll be in Seattle. I'll be in Portland. I'll be in Charlotte, Asheville, Durham, Indianapolis, Dallas. I'm going back to London. I'm for the first time doing a show in Paris, for the first time

doing a show in Iceland. I'm really trying out some stuff on tour right now that I've never done before. I'm so excited to share the new show, The Old Man in the Pool, with you. I had this great conversation with John Green today. I gotta say, one of my favorite episodes of all time. I know I always say it, but there's something about this one

where I said a thing, and then he said a thing, and then I said a thing, and then he said a thing, and I think we both ended up saying a lot of things we weren't planning to say and we weren't planning to remember from our childhoods and our lives. Enjoy my conversation with the great John Green. When I was in my early 20s, the people I looked at as models were people who had long careers, not necessarily like big careers. Yeah.

I mean, my favorite band was the Mountain Goats. My other favorite band is They Might Be Giants. Yeah. You know, bands that have had amazing long careers without necessarily having a lot of big hits. Yeah. And even like you point out in Anthropocene Reviewed, which I mean, I could talk about this book endlessly. I love this book so much. It's I would say like it's my favorite book I've read in years. Thanks, man. Yeah. I mean, it's so moving. It's so moving. It's so funny. But one of the things you point out is that Great Gatsby was a failure for Scott Fitzgerald, at least critically.

Like, and you actually read some reviews of at the time where someone calls it, one of the reviewers calls it a seasonal book at best. Yeah, a book for the season only, which is like such a, it's such a massive miss. It's such a, when I read that, it was one of those moments in research where you're just like, oh, thank God. Like, thank God I spent an extra two hours reading about this so that I came across this incredible, incredible review of Book for the Season Only. Just chef's kiss, perfect, missed the point entirely. Well, and that's sort of the theme. It's an interesting book because it combines a certain sort of anthropological discussion

of the Anthropocene, which is the geological era human beings are a part of, for lack of a better way of describing, the last 12,000 years or so. But then the reviewed part of the title has to do with in the last like 20 years or so, we've started putting three, four, five star ratings on things basically because of metadata. Yeah. Because of Amazon, because of metadata. Yeah. Because of Amazon, more or less. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And these are not ratings that are actually helpful to humans, right?

No. If I read a 400-word review of the new Mike Birbiglia show, I learn a lot more than I can learn from any single data point. But because these information systems are so powerful, these information sorting systems are so powerful and so important to our lives, we've done this weird thing where we've started to really pay attention

to those numbers as if they matter. Like when I'm looking at a plumber, I'm like, I don't know, you know, this guy's got 4.4 stars, this other guy's got 4.6 stars. He might be better. Yeah. no, this guy's got 4.4 stars, this other guy's got 4.6 stars, he might be better. Yeah. And of course, that's a piece of the picture. That single data point can tell us something.

Yeah. But I'll give you an example of the unreliability of the single data point. I like the Anthropocene Reviewed book, and I'm proud of it, and I'm really glad that you like it. But it has a much higher average Goodreads rating than Gatsby. I love that example. I think Gatsby is probably the superior might be a better book. And you never know. We'll never know how these things age until a couple of hundred years from now. I don't like my odds, but yeah, I hear you. That's a very funny point, though. But yeah, so anyway, to give the listener a sense, if they haven't read this book already, is you take this sort of massive geological era, the Anthropocene that we're living in. And then you pick out things, whether ideas, the idea of wonder, for example, or, you know, sunsets, for example, as an idea,

and you give it a star rating. And you, Dr. Pepper, you give it a star rating. And from that, you give it a star rating. And from that, you jut into these really elaborate personal stories and experiences with these micro things, which have sort of a larger macro emotional experience. And it's really interesting because it's, I don't know who originally coined the phrase about writing, but I find it to be very true, which is in the specific, we find the universal. And I feel like that must have been a guiding principle for you with this specific book. It seems like that's exactly what it is. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be

overly deferential to you here, but I was thinking a lot about... Why not? Why not, though? I think that'd be a nice thing to do. I was thinking a lot about... Why not? Why not, though? I think that'd be a nice thing to do. I was thinking a lot about your work when I started this project because one of the things I really... I mean, one of the things that's the hardest for me is getting to a place of emotional sincerity or earnestness and without being cheesy, without turning people off via sentimentality or whatever. And your work was one of my first ways into that, like ways into understanding how you could use the specific to get to the universal, how you could use the funny and the ironic to get to the emotionally

real. And I wanted to try to do that. I wanted to find these places where my little life runs up against these big historical forces. But I also wanted to figure out like, how do I find a way to write directly about emotion? How do I find a way to write about the beauty of a sunset without it being cliche and sentimental and somehow like stripping away the irony that's kind of my default setting to get to some kind of real emotional depth? Yeah. It's interesting because I think for the listeners, it's a very inspirational book in terms of the depths of challenges that you reckoned with that I didn't know about along the way. You know, you were working a job at a book

list in Chicago, and you had a mental-emotional breakdown that led you to move back with your folks. And, I mean, you really, I mean, in so many ways, hit rock bottom. The idea of you, that same person, being the same person who wrote all these number one bestselling novels, it's oddly, like, it's oddly a self-help book in some ways. Yeah, I hear that. Yeah, I mean, I've never written directly about those times in my life before. And I mean, in some ways, I was always writing about them because, you know, you use that stuff when you're writing fiction. But I'd never tried to write about it in a memoir-y kind of way or trying to approach it through the lens of nonfiction. And it was way harder. It's really hard. I mean, it's tough to look at that stuff and see it through the lens of how I was living it then, not through the lens of now. Like the lens of now is I grew up, I, you know, I found a

lot of stability in my life. I have wonderful friendships. I have a great marriage. I have wonderful kids. Like I didn't know that any of that was going to happen, putting aside the professional stuff, which is important, but not nearly as central, I think, to my overall well-being. You know, in that moment, in those moments, yeah, it was really difficult. And going back there was hard. But it's interesting is like, one of the things you open in the book by saying is, is that you, you know, people often read into your fictional novels, things that they go like, you know, do you get nervous when you kiss, you know,

the way this character does or whatever? Right. Yeah. I mean, a very famous interviewer asked me if I have panic attacks when I kiss girls. And I was like, I mean, you know, I got, first off, no, but like more to the point, what a wildly inappropriate question. But like more to the point, what a wildly inappropriate question. How do you feel about sharing your life and, you know, real things that happened to you in the format of nonfiction like Anthropocene Reviewed? I mean, like I know you and I've seen Sleepwalk With Me and I've read the book and I've heard the This American Life retelling of that story.

And I understand that you tell the story as a story. Right. And a lot of it happened. When I was very early on in my career, I remember one of my good friends from high school, Daniel Otterkoen, just won a MacArthur Genius Grant. He's a brilliant writer. And he told me, I mean, before either of us had published anything, I was telling him about my first novel. And he said, you know, the fact that something happened is not a reason to put it in a book, but it's also not a reason not to put it in a book. Sure. And thinking about making stuff that way, thinking about it like holistically as what serves the book, as what serves the reader, as what serves the audience, that's the kind of

stuff that I'm actually thinking about when I'm writing. I'm not thinking about like, is this real? Yeah. But I think there's such a temptation now to read the author into the work. And some of that we've done to ourselves by being so available. You know, like people know a lot about me and, or at least they can certainly find out a lot about me. And so inevitably, they're going to read me into it. And I can't get mad at them for doing exactly what I asked them to do in watching my videos and reading my tweets. kind of stuck and constricted in that and not knowing how to navigate the fact that I was always going to be a character in the story, no matter how much I didn't want to be, no matter how much I wanted the story to work as a story on its own. And I think in some ways, writing this

book, The End of the Scene Reviewed, was a response to that. It was a response to being like, well, gosh, I can't figure out a way out of this little, you know, kind of thing I've constructed for myself. So maybe I should just try to write as me. So I met you, of course, through The Fault in Our Stars because our mutual friend Michael Weber co-wrote the screenplay. And he called me and he said, hey, have you read this book, The Fault in Our Stars? And I said, no. And he said, well, read it. And then I did. And I cried and cried. I was the last person to not read it. It was the most popular book on the planet. I cried and cried and said, yeah, count me in to play this little part. And that's how we met. I came to Pittsburgh and we went to a Pirates game. We hung out and this movie was a big hit. And to this day, a lot of people don't even know me

from anything else. They go, you're the guy from Fault in Our Stars. I'm like, yeah, I do some other things, but sure. Yeah, it's funny.

I mean, like, I knew in the abstract that the movie was a big deal because, you know, like, Willem Dafoe was in it and Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley and all these famous people. But I was actually already on set when they were like, and Mike Birbiglia is going to play Patrick. And I was like, wait, what? The Mike Birbiglia is going to be in this movie? You're the only person who said that.

And I was so, I was like, oh my God, it is a big deal. Like this is a proper Hollywood blockbuster. That's an outrageous comment. I don't know if you know this, but they had me try out for that. I had heard this. Yeah, and I was so bad. So you say it was, you say it was easy, but like I submitted a tape and I sure as hell didn't get the job. That is so funny. Yeah. Oh

my God. So they like, they picked the guy who would play me if I were lucky, if I were in a movie. That's amazing. But I was, yeah, I was just, I was so excited. And I was also super nervous to meet you. I don't know if you have this at all, but I don't want to be starstruck. I don't feel like the experience of starstruckness is good for either the star or the struck. I feel like it's a negative experience for both people. The star or the struck. But I did. I felt a little starstruck.

And then when we went to that Pirates game, we had a great time. And it was just a great night. And the Pirates made the playoffs. Yeah, it was a big— Which was not an event I was particularly invested in before the game, but I really enjoyed the experience. By the end, yeah, of course. And then, so I read the Fault in Our Stars book, and then when Michael called me, and I was, the YA, the young adult genre, I was unfamiliar with prior to that.

And then after I read the book, I didn't understand it. Because I was like, well, this is very sophisticated. And this has all the ingredients of a novel for adults. So I just, I literally don't get it. I don't get it to this day. Can you explain it? Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of YA novels that are as good as any book.

Right. And I had a little bit of the same feeling when I started working at Booklist when I was in my early 20s. I didn't understand much about contemporary YA literature. When I thought of young adult books, I thought of Sweet Valley High and Babysitter's Club and Go Ask Alice and things like that. And then almost immediately when I started working at Booklist, because I was the youngest person there, I was the closest thing they had to a YA. I was like 22. They started sharing YA novels with me. And I was like, oh, my God. Like reading Walter Dean Myers and Laurie Holtz Anderson and Marcus Zusak.

And I just felt like this is incredibly exciting. This is so good. Like so many of these books are so, so good. And I think the best YA novels take teenagers seriously. They treat them as serious, seriously. They treat them as serious, thoughtful, intellectual creatures, which they are, and take the problems of teenagers seriously. And whereas like a lot of books for grownups about adolescence, like say a book like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which is a great book, they have a lot of narrative distance. There's a feeling of almost looking back. There's almost that, you know, rose-tinted glass of looking back into the past, the Barbara Walters soft focus. And what I love about my favorite young adult books is that they have

no narrative distance. It feels like it's happening right now. It feels like it's happening to you or to your high school self. And that visceral feeling was so exciting to me when I first started reading YA that I really wanted to write it. It's interesting because when I read Anthropocene Reviewed, I connect with it in such a deep way, but you and I have a very similar background. You're 44 with kids. I'm 43 with a child. You grew up in Florida.

I grew up in Shrewsbury, the Florida of Massachusetts. We're both preoccupied with sort of similar, like you're really into like Diet Dr. Pepper. I'm really into like Coca-Cola and coffee, you know, like it's just, we have similar kind of nerdy interests. And so I'm like, when I'm reading, I'm like, okay, he wrote this for me and thanks a lot. You know, I really appreciate it. But do you think in the draft process,

you're like, I need to make sure I open this out to people of all experiences and ages? No, I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not sophisticated enough to think that with that kind of like cleverness about audience. That's, that's what it is. It's you're not sophisticated enough. Okay, we can move to the next one. But for whatever reason, though, I just have never, I've never thought about audience that way. Like, I've never, I'm not able to be conscious about it. The moment I become conscious about it, it's like seeing your, you know, seeing yourself in a hall of mirrors where you see an infinite number of mirrors and like, I can only look at all of the me's. when I'm writing, like, I really can't afford to be self-conscious. So I, I mean, I guess maybe in the revision process, I, I, I, I try to think about the needs of the audience, but I think about it very abstractly, you know? Yeah. I do think though, that with this in particular, like, I, I will confess that it, like, it means, it means a lot to me that you liked it and that you responded to it because I was trying to write something that the people I like would like, if that makes sense. Yeah, sure. Of course. I wanted my best friend to be like, oh, I liked that way better than any of your other books.

to, you know, I wanted to get closer to me and closer to the way that I, you know, would write if I were writing directly as myself. Do you, it's so funny, I was looking at my calendar, 2019, we hung out, you, me, and Sarah at the Comedy Cellar. And I remember. It was so fun. And I remember it like it's a dream or something, like how am I socializing and stand-up comedy and all this stuff? Do you like stand-up comedy? Because you're very funny, and your books are very funny, but they're not comedic essays per se.

No, definitely not. I love stand-up comedy. I mean, it's an astonishing art form to me. It's an astonishing art form to me. I am perennially nervous when I am in any kind of live theater experience. I find being in the audience to be really challenging from an anxiety management perspective. I get that. I'm so worried. I remember seeing Hamilton with my son,

and he just had this huge smile on his face the whole time. And I couldn't stop thinking, I hope they remember their lines. Oh my gosh. What if they forget their lines? This is ridiculous. That is a ridiculous concern. Yeah, I know. They do it every night. They're fine. They're going to be okay. Even if they do forget their lines, they've probably got strategies for dealing with it. They're professionals. This is Broadway.

But I couldn't stop thinking about that. And then when I – I think you probably – I don't know the extent to which you remember that evening, but because you've performed a lot. But my experience that evening was Sarah kept looking at me and being like, you laugh so loudly. I do too, by the way. I'm a super loud laugher. And I don't know what it is for you, but for me, it comes from knowing what it is like to bomb. Sure. You know? I know it all too well. Yeah. And I just remember that so vividly that whenever I am at a standup comedy show, I do, I laugh very aggressively and I laugh hard because, well, one, it's funny. I'm enjoying myself. And two, I'm just, I'm so worried for you. I'm so worried for you when you're on stage. Like every time I see you on stage, and I saw you once or twice, I think twice before we met.

And, I mean, you're a very confident, comfortable person on stage. You make everybody feel comfortable and everything, but I'm still scared for you. I get it. I mean, that's how I feel. I feel like I want to be a, when I watch another stand-up comedian, I try to be a supportive audience member. Yeah. If they're intending for me to laugh, I'm going to try to laugh. I want to laugh.

Yeah. I'm going to try to laugh. Yeah. There are going to be probably moments where I'm like, that one wasn't for me. My professor, John Glavin, screenwriting professor in college, once said something that I found to be very wise. said something that I found to be very wise. He said, all we can do for each other as human beings is

amuse and be amused. Yeah. I really like that. I really like that idea of like, we can try to amuse and we can try and be amused, and if we do both of those things, then like,

probably there's more harmony. Yeah. And just as we tend to pay a lot more attention to loving than we do to being loved, we tend to pay way too much attention to like more attention to amusing than to being amused. And we need to pay attention to both. Like when I'm in that setting, I want to be amused. In the same way that like when I'm reading a book, like I want to like it, I want to be amused. In the same way that when I'm reading a book, I want to like it. I want to read it generously. Right.

Well, it's funny because, and of course being amused is related to this, there's this line where you say that a friend of yours said, quote, for anyone trying to discern what to do with their life, the best thing to do is to pay attention to what you pay attention to, because that's pretty much all the information you need. And that's the same as being amused. That's the same as listening. That's the same as watching. I feel like that's, I mean, do you think of that as a lot of your job as a writer? I mean, do you think of that as a lot of your job as a writer?

It's all listening. Almost all of life is, right? Like, if you're paying careful attention, this is the pleasure of being in the company of great comedians, is that they're experts at listening. Really, like, that's what they're good at. They're good at yes and. More than being good at telling jokes, they're good at paying a really careful kind of attention yeah and so that is yeah that's definitely what i'm trying to do in my work i think that's a lot of art in general though is yeah i i'm i'm very fond now of this idea of both amusing and being amused being pretty essential to the point of life.

Yeah, I mean, I'm interested by it. Once he said it to me, you know, 25 years ago, and it stuck with me ever since. Yeah. Wow. And I once repeated it to my dad. I said, you know, my professor, John Glavin, said this thing. The goal is to be amused and be amused. And he goes, I don't think that's true.

Okay, so we do this thing called the slow round. And a lot of it's based on memories. And do you have a memory from childhood where you just think of it a lot, but it couldn't possibly even be a story because it's just a thing in a loop? Yeah. I have a few. I got a banana smushed in my face when I was in fourth grade. I had maybe snorted.

By this kid, Eric. And he smushed this banana in my face. And then I smacked him with the back of my hand. And then I had to go to the principal's office. And I was in the principal's office, and they were like, why did you hit Eric? And I was like, there's still banana on my face. What do you think? Oh my God, that's so funny. Yeah, and I still feel like, you know how there's something about when you're wronged that you just feel it so intensely.

I remember one time when I was a kid, my mom got into the car and she said, you've been smoking in this car. And I was like, no, I haven't. And she was like, you have been smoking in this car. I smell smoke. And I was like, no, you smell smoke because I have been smoking.

Oh my God. But I have not been smoking in this car. And that's not fair. It's not fair of you to accuse me of something that I didn't do, even though I did just have a cigarette. But not in your car. I would never do that. So do you have a smell you remember from your childhood? Yeah, a few of them. I have a vivid vivid memory so i went to a boarding school for the last three years of high school and i vividly remember the smell of our dorm room it was because we used this

artificial scent called spring rain to like mask the other smells and what were those maybe like smells. And what were those? Maybe like Gatorade, chewing tobacco, sweat. So the combination of all these smells. Yeah, that's very nice. But with the overwhelming glade spring rain on top of it still comes back to me sometimes. And then I also remember the smell of the rhododendron trees at camp. Like I went to camp when I was a little kid. It was like the only three weeks of the year when I felt okay. And I loved. And sometimes I'll still like catch a whiff of the way, you know, camp smelled.

Oh, yeah. And I'll feel transported back to childhood, but in a way that doesn't feel scary. Yeah. And it's really lovely. That's great. What's a story that you tell your friends casually, like at bars and things like that, but you have never put into a book? There are a few I mean

I'm trying to think of one that's appropriate that I can tell for the podcast mine is obviously before I told it on stage was the sleepwalking story because it was

oh god I bet that story so extreme yeah yeah I mean I and I don't know if this will be funny sometimes I tell the story

about how I became the boxing reviewer for Bookless Magazine I don't think I this will be funny. Sometimes I tell the story about how I became the boxing reviewer for Booklist magazine. I don't think I've ever told this story before. But like at Booklist, you would have these incredibly specific niches because the magazine reviews 400 books every two weeks. Wow. And there are just so many books. So I had no interest or knowledge about boxing whatsoever. But I was a reviewer for Booklist.

And one day, my boss, who I tell a story about in the book, in the section about Harvey, he's really the person who really saved my life. There's no other way to say it. He recommended you watch the movie Harvey, which I would recommend to people also, by the way. Yeah. Jimmy Stewart film. Yeah, it was a really wonderful movie. And I also, I watched it at this point in my life where I was really, really sick. I was severely, severely mentally ill. And I was going through a really life-threateningly bad time. And Harvey did a lot for me because it showed me a mentally ill character who was still very valuable and still very valued. And who could amuse and be amused and love and be loved and all those things.

And that really, it did, it changed my life. And Bill knew that. But I always talk about Bill like he's a character in a noir mystery novel. Like that's how he was to me in those years and still is to some extent. Like he's just, he's a master of pauses. He doesn't use a lot of unnecessary words. And he's a brilliant, brilliant person. So one day he comes into my office and he says, hey, kid.

He always called me kid. And I say, hey. And he says, hey, you know George Cohen? And I said, yeah, of course I know George. I've worked with George for 10 years. He said, or five years. He said, oh, yeah, kid, I got terrible news. George died.

I said, what? He said, George is, he's dead. And I was like, George is dead? And he's like, yeah. No, he's 91. He had a good run. So listen, kid, George was on Holocaust and boxing. Now, I got Eileen on Holocaust.

Oh, my God. That's amazing. But I'm going to need you to take up boxing. And I was like, okay. And he left. And that's how I became the boxing reviewer at Booklist Magazine. It was a great reminder to me that when my day as the boxing booklist reviewer was done, everything was going to be fine. It's going to be fine. They're going to go to the next guy. They're going to go to some other kid. They're going to go to Andrea, and they're just going to say,

Andrea, you're boxing. John's dead. You're boxing. He had a good run. He had a good run. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Doesn't that just

say it all? What is, oh gosh. Some of these questions I won't ask you because you're actually so self-deprecating that I can.

I can try. I can try. I can already see where you're going to go with it. But you know what, Mike? You've called me to not be self-deprecating, and I'm going to not be. Okay. I'm going to—

What do people underestimate about you? My ambition, for sure. Oh, number one. Well, that I— Well, you always demand contractually, even with this podcast, you demand that I say you're number one, multi-number one, I got a final cut. New York Times bestseller. Actually, I'm going to edit this.

I'm going to put in those little nice little Jack Antonoff acoustic riffs. Stings. That's all me. Acoustic riffs. Oh, my gosh. I, no, but I do really, like, especially when I was was younger, like I wanted to be successful so, so badly. And I was, you know, just really, really hungry for what it turned out like success cannot feed you. But I really wanted it.

That's so fascinating. And do you recall being an inauthentic version of yourself? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like what did that look like? What was the inauthentic John Green along the way? I heard you talking in a previous episode of the podcast about having a period in your life where you wore a cowboy hat

and you were cowboy hat guy cowboy and that was your identity and i definitely tried on a lot of those identities like i tried on being trench coat guy and yes that's right and being eyeliner guy you sure and i you know i and and and of course, all those are little two-dimensional versions of yourself that are inherently inauthentic because they're two-dimensional. Yeah. And I think there was a period in my life where I was trying on being a successful author guy or, you know, semi-famous writer guy. And so when you asked that question, the first thing that sprung to my mind was, I got these suits from Burberry. You know Burberry, the like clothing store?

Oh, yeah, sure. I got, like they gave me a suit once for a thing. And then I was like, I really like this suit and so I went to like the Burberry store in Indianapolis and I got a few suits and I look at pictures of me in those suits and I just think like you knew that wasn't you like look at you wearing sunglasses you knew you knew that you knew that was yeah but i i i wanted to i don't know like i wanted i want in in almost like a middle school way i wanted to be cool yeah so yeah i think about myself in those Burberry suits and I feel like that didn't feel authentic to myself, even as I was living it then. Like I always felt like it was a little

bit performative. Do you feel like between the Burberry suits and the desire to be successful and all this stuff, was it an attempt at reversing like, you know, you got bullied in high school and things like that. Do you feel like you thought it would redeem you sort of to the bullies of your past? I mean, there's definitely an element of being... Revenge fantasy? Yeah. Being fueled by resentment, especially early in my career. I was really fueled by resentment, which I learned eventually is like a fuel that

burns, but it burns very dirty. Yeah. I'm sure you have book ideas, story ideas that eventually you just have to let go of because they don't go anywhere. Do you have a qualification in your head for when to let go of something? No. Do you have one? Can you tell me how to do it? No, it's all I have is if it doesn't occur to me anymore, I don't do it. If it doesn't pop into my brain. Yeah.

I mean, one time I wrote like 150, 200 pages of this story that was a desert island story, and I was so fond of it. And I'd always wanted to write a desert island novel. I love desert island stories. It's like my favorite genre in the whole world. And I spent a year on this. And then it just was kind of going nowhere, and I didn't know what the deal was with it. So I put it away for a couple of weeks, and then I reread it, and there was just nothing. There was nothing. I'd wasted the whole, I mean, I guess I hadn't wasted it, but in that moment I felt like I'd wasted it. And I don't know how to get rid of ideas faster than

that. Yeah. I, I think that's one of the hardest things actually is sorting through what, which idea needs attention now. Yeah. Because it, especially early on, it's so hard to tell. Yeah. No, I mean, I have so many things that I wrote for the Anthropocene Review that never, just never worked. Yeah. Like, I remember I spent like a month writing and rewriting this review of the movie Die Hard 4. I think that's so funny because I'm a huge Die Hard fan and I didn't know there

was a number four. And trying really hard to like understand my own feelings and thoughts about Die Hard 4 and like why what they say about my broader approach to making and consuming art and this and this and this and this. And then finally, after like, you know, writing like 10,000 words and deleting 8,000 words, I was like, you know, maybe I don't need to have an opinion on Die Hard 4. Maybe that is the thing I've been writing toward is I don't have an opinion on this movie and that's okay. this is material um why is let me lead with this because because you have so much stuff with uh you work with your brother a lot and i work with my brother a lot and um and when i was a kid, my brother used to punch and suffocate me. It's almost like older brothers go to a special martial arts class on how to cause the most physical pain without making a mark. Meanwhile, I was five, getting my head slammed against the pavement,

thinking, I guess it's okay, he is my brother. And then I would cry to my mom, but my brother was also very funny. So before she could yell at him, he would make jokes to me and I would be laughing. And then he'd say to my mom, if he's so hurt, why is he laughing? And my mom would be so confused that the case would be dismissed. I love the case would be dismissed. That is like, that's the thing that every older brother is reaching for, right? Like not a guilty verdict, but a mistrial. Yeah. And it would be dismissed. You know, it's wonderful about this. And this is sort of a window into the whole process for the listeners. I just improvised the case would be dismissed.

That's good. Probably because the alchemy of you and I talking at the same time, and so I know my audience, and I know the kinds of things that you enjoy, and I think that came to me. Yeah, you get the sine wave. Exactly, and so I just jotted that down. My mom was so confused the case would be dismissed.

But yeah, no, I think that that maybe is a good capper for it. Why is he laughing? Why is, yeah, yeah. Like, if he's, if it's that bad, how come it's funny? But of course, like the joke to that joke is that all the time when it's that bad, it's also funny. Every time, like the worst, all the worst moments in a human life are also funny a hundred percent i mean i talk about that extensively in my new show the old man in the pool is is laughter laughter and crying run hand in hand in in relationship of course to funerals and yeah and people dying and people we love and all this stuff. But also in a very literal way, like we laugh until we cry. Yeah. And then we, you know, like on the worst days of your life, you cry until you laugh a lot of times.

Like if you're lucky enough to be with someone in that grief. A hundred percent. Who's really with you in it, you generally can get, you have, there are moments of, there, and I don't know that that like saying moments of humor is the wrong thing. It's more like you just can't believe how bad it is. But at least it's also bad for this other person. At least it's also bad for this other person who loved this person who just died. Hopefully you're with someone who's committed to amusing and being amused. Yes, yes.

But not in a way that's trying to minimize the extent of the loss, which is a difficult balance. And kind of, in my experience anyway, one that can only be found with other people who are going through it. I think that's true, yeah. There's a weirdness about grief in that it's so isolating a lot of times. It feels like you're on a planet. Cheryl Strayed said this. This isn't my idea, but

it feels like you're on planet, my friend just died and everyone else is on planet earth. I love that. But if in those moments when somebody else is with you on planet my friend just died like there is such consolation in that for me yes so yeah

not about your joke it's just a side note no I mean this is the extrapolation that goes into you know the next draft of the joke I mean

that's one of the things about this part of the show that I think sometimes people some people get and some people don't which is like it's a discussion to sort of like joke. I mean, that's one of the things about this part of the show that I think sometimes people, some people get and some people don't, which is like, it's a discussion to sort of like go down different tunnels of this theme and go like, oh yeah, there's something there potentially. And maybe this could loop into something else. Yeah. I mean, it's the cliche version of it is that you're looking at an elephant from a lot of different directions and you're trying to describe lots of different parts of the elephant.

And then there's like a zoom out moment where everybody's like, holy crap, it was an elephant all along. That's interesting. Yeah, like my brother Joe often describes comedy writing as letting your brain go for a walk. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think that's what a lot of it is, I think. Right. And not knowing where you're going gonna get to and being okay with that yeah yeah um do you have that with your brother where

were you masochistic with each other when you were younger no but you telling that story in the magical way of comedy did remind me of something i hadn't thought about in many years, which was that when we were pretty young, like he was probably seven and I was probably 10, my two best friends and I, with my little brother, rode our bikes to the mall without consulting our parents. It was a different time. And it was a pretty busy road. And I remember looking back and like my brother wasn't able to keep up and it was a pretty busy road and he was just sobbing. And so we get to the mall and he's just uncontrollably sobbing. And I was like, well, this is a pickle because we got to get him home. And we got to get him home in such a state that he does not say to mom and dad, hey, we went to the mall. No, I know.

Oh, my gosh. I like bought him stuff. I bought him stuff. I think I got him a koosh ball at a kiosk. Oh, my gosh, a koosh ball. Yeah. And then when we went on the way back, I remember I was like, Hank, I will take the rear. And no matter how slow you go, I will be behind you.

And so you'll know that you're safe. And I thought that was very mature and a cool, protective, big brother thing to do. And I'll tell you what, the nanosecond we arrived at home, the door closed, he burst into tears holding his koosh ball. And he's like, John made me go to the mall. And I almost died. Yeah. So I thought of you, I was writing this joke the other day and I thought of you, which is, I've been trying to cut back on soda because I'm not sure what it is. Like the recipe for Coca-Cola is secret and the recipe for Diet Coke is wrap poison in water i don't know

why they didn't keep that one secret so that's a joke i'm trying to get that into the show because yeah you and i both have a soda thing oh thanks that one's finished what how did your diet dr pepper thing start because you talk about it extensively in the book. It's like, was it from childhood? No, it wasn't. I didn't even like diet soda until I was in my 30s. And I think it's because I hadn't had regular soda in a long time. Yes. That's exactly why we become attached to diet soda is because we're so far removed from regular soda.

Why we become attached to diet soda is because we're so far removed from regular soda. We forget about the pleasure of like an actual Coca-Cola enough to drink a Diet Coke. Absolutely. But I remember, I do vividly remember it was like being 32 or 33 years old and drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper and being like, oh my God. Yeah. years old and drinking a diet dr pepper and being like oh my god yeah this is really i could i could drink a lot of these it has just enough caffeine for an old man and you know it's it's zero calorie it's a little it's it's sweet enough it's sweet compared to lacroix you know and you make the point in the book that they simulated the flavor of regular Dr. Pepper. And so it's engineered. It's basically Dr. Pepper, no calories.

Yeah, much more than any other diet drink because the taste of Dr. Pepper itself is so far removed from any real world analog. Like, it's not like Sprite, which is a mix of lemon and lime flavors, however distant it might be from actual lemons and actual limes. There's a real world analog that you can kind of peg your mind to. There is no real world analog for Dr. Pepper. Even in its very conception, it was chemical. I think it's very telling that almost all sodas were invented by pharmacists or chemists. Sure. Like, they're drugs. My mom was a nurse when I was growing up, and I'd get a cold or whatever, and she'd give me Coca-Cola.

Yeah, it works. And it was pretty good. It was a pretty good situation. I still do it today, not for my daughter, but for me. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a nice gift that you could give yourself when you're not well. So, okay. This is another sort of family thing. Christmas is a huge holiday for my family and our family rule is no gifts over $5, which I think if Jesus were around around today that would be his rule

he'd be like don't make a big thing of my birthday no gifts over five shekels but christmas is such a strange holiday because it's jesus's birthday but no one gives jesus presents we just give them to each other for no reason. Under a tree we killed that was pumping out 300 pounds of oxygen a year. We're like, okay, kill that. I'll buy you a candle that'll be gone in a week. I'll wrap the candle in this other tree we killed. All in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. So anyway, my brother Joe hates the $5 gift rule.

He's like, $5 minimum and preferably something from my Amazon wish list. Joe is the only person I know who treats Christmas like it's a wedding registry. He's like, I've always wanted a stainless steel popcorn popper, and we just keep running out of wine goblets. No matter how many I have, I always need more. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, Christmas is hard to make jokes about, right? Because it's been joked to death. In fact, my brother has a song called Jesus Gets Nothing for Christmas. Oh, wow. So that joke goes, that part of the joke goes away, I think. I think you can keep the joke,

but I think you have to go listen to Jesus Gets Nothing for Christmas to try to get new angles on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But I think that the whole idea, I mean, the more you think about gift giving, the weirder it is because to what extent is it really about the person? And to what extent is it about what you want to say about what you know about the person? Yes.

And the thing about a $5 gift, it just doesn't really solve that problem. Because you can still go to the dollar store and try to – is it about the other person or are you trying to express something about who you are? Right. Dental floss, pencil toppers. Yes. And I'm sympathetic to Joe's position on this because I would rather personally, I don't want things I don't want.

Right. Even if they're thoughtful. Same, same. Even if they're a deep, meaningful response to something I do love. Yeah. I don't want it if I don't want it. No, sometimes my mom will get me like a sweatshirt. It's like a Cape Cod sweatshirt XL. I'm like, I'm a medium and that is not a sweatshirt I would wear. I love you. I don't have room in my closet. I live in New York City.

Yeah. It's like the, it's like that thing where your mom will be like, oh, I made you your favorite spaghetti. And you're like, I don't, I don't like spaghetti and I haven't in many years. My dad, my dad, that was my dad once where we're at a restaurant and he goes, And you've never asked. You've just never asked. I had that with my dad once. We're at a restaurant and he goes, Michael, you should try the salmon. I go, Dad, I haven't eaten fish since I was three years old. I'm allergic.

Are you catching any of this? Like, I get that you're absent, but you don't have to be all caps absent. All right, I got this thing about summer camp, which is we were talking about sending my daughter to summer camp because some of her friends were going. And my worry is that when I went to my first sleepaway camp as a kid, we didn't tell my parents about any of the dangerous stuff that had occurred. Like, we got to pick five activities, and one of mine was riflery. My parents did not know that I had chosen riflery. I was a fidgety 11-year-old child who always dropped the bowl

of orange slices on the way to soccer practice. clearly what I needed to clean up my act was a firearm. Another activity I chose was drama. One day, there was a police cruiser who showed up at the camp and took away my drama counselor who had threatened one of my other counselors in a walk-in freezer with a knife, which I thought was a little dramatic. I had a few notes.

And so we go home from that week, and my mom says, how was camp? And we go, it was great. And she never heard a word about it. And now I'm that mom. I'm taking my daughter to camp, and I'm saying, how was camp? And she's like, it's great. And I want to be like, what about the rifles and the walk-in freezer? But I feel like that would be crazy. Yeah, there's such an intensity to summer camp, though.

My summer camp, my defining summer camp experience was this thing called the Huck Thin Adventure, where we our own raft, myself and like nine other 11-year-olds and then like two 19-year-olds. Yeah. And then we rafted down the French Broad River for 10 days and we slept on the raft and we lived on the raft. What? This was a sanctioned activity in the camp? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we ate sardines on the raft. And then after 10 days, we arrived in Knoxville, Tennessee, and somebody came and picked us up. Oh, my God. That's amazing. And it was intense, man. I mean, you see some stuff on the river. You see some stuff on the river. Life on the French Broad River is not like life in Orlando.

You know, like it's not. It was intense. Yeah. I mean, I remember so many camp memories from Camp Marshall. I remember running to horseback riding and being sweaty and out of breath. I didn't realize it wasn't in the same location. It was down the road, and it was like a 20-minute walk. I get there. They go, where's your boots?

I go, fuck, I don't have my boots. Then I jog back, and I'm jogging back, and I'm realizing, oh, I have to take a shit. Then I'm like, I'm getting to my cabin cabin and I'm trying to put my boots on, but I also have to take a shit. And then I run into the latrine cabin and I'm like shitting with my boots on. And then like, I don't quite make it there in time. And it's just like a debacle. And I'm literally like, I don't want this to be my life.

I wish this wasn't my life. Like there's so many things at camp where you're like, I wish this wasn't my life like there's so many things at camp where you're like i wish this wasn't my life i remember it's i yeah so you're bringing back all these memories for me i so when i was a kid and i mean this this is embarrassing to say out loud but when i was a kid like when i had to pee really bad i would take the my my penis and I would pinch my penis to stop the flow of the pee, to hold it longer. Yes, of course. And I remember one day I was walking to tie-dye class or whatever, and I was holding my penis to stop the flow of pee because I didn't want to pee in front of the person I was walking with. Sure.

And the person was like, what are you doing? And I was like, nothing. And they were like, you are doing something. And I was like, no, it's nothing. And they were like, let it go. And I was like, I can't. Oh, my gosh. I can't.

I can't let it go. Yeah. But it's just like the overwhelming. Oh, my God. Because they're fostering independence, right? Like, and you're not ready to be independent. Like, I wasn't ready to be independent. I was still holding my penis when I had to pee.

You know what's so amazing? We're talking about the young adult stuff and how emotions are so raw and that, you know, at age in your life. I was probably at Camp Marshall, seventh grade, something like that. There was this camp. At the end of every week there was a dance oh god and i had a crush on this girl her name was she was french canadian her name was katrine and and um and we had a crush on each other and it was like we're gonna dance with each other and we're gonna kiss at the dance or whatever that was sort of the plan that was distributed socially among the convents. Yeah, right. With this kind of thing, you receive word about it more than you make the choice.

Yes, I receive word that Katrina and I would be kissing at the dance. And then we spent a lot of time at the dance, but then we didn't kiss at the dance. Oh. Which is perfectly adorable and probably based on both of our reticence. We proceeded, Katrina and I proceeded to be pen pals when she went back to Canada, writing long form handwritten love letters. Oh. That I had for many years and then, like, my mom just had.

And it's just like, wait, my mom has these love letters now? From when I'm, like, in sixth grade or whatever it is. And it's so rawly embarrassing because it's literally just being like, I love you so much and blah, blah, blah. It's like, I couldn't tell you three things about this person. And in turn, she could not tell you three things. Oh, forget about it. She couldn't say three things about me. We, John, I'm telling you, we are so, we were soulmates. We were made for each other. Oh, the feeling is so real though, even though it's not based in any reality, like the feeling is still real i my first kiss was at camp yeah and i remember like i received a word you know like i was you receive word yes

and a friend a friend of hers came to me and said tiffany wants to french yeah and i said okay well i guess we're gonna french like we'll save it for the last night of camp. And we had, like, a candlelight ceremony where I would cry. I've always been a crier. And, you know, it was the end of camp. I was going back to my regular terrible life. My regular terrible life. And I was like, and then Tiffany came over to me, and she hugged me. This is the most cinematic thing that's ever, it's the most like R-rated romantic comedy thing that's ever happened to me. But this is 100% the truth. She wrapped her arms around me. I wrapped my arms around her like this, like around her, you know, neck, shoulders area. And we began to French, as we called it.

Sure, French kissing, sure. And then I noticed way too late that I was still holding the candle and my hair was on fire. Oh, my God. And my hair was on fire. You could probably smell it. I don't know if you've ever smelled burning hair, but it's the worst smell. It's the worst smell.

Oh, gosh. And that was my first kiss. That's huge. It was big. It was a nice moment. Well, I'm glad we memorialized it here today on the show. I'm glad we got to that.

Well, I think the camp thing is going to be huge because I think the camp thing is going to be huge because I think because of you and me kicking this around, I remembered the love letters and the dance with Katrine and all that stuff. I've never written that down. If you can find those love letters, Mike,

imagine if there are lines in those love letters that are just gold, which there are. I mean, you were talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls here, John. I mean, I don't think we're going to be able to find them. The thing that we end the show with is working it out for a cause. And if there's a nonprofit that you appreciate and you feel like is doing great work, I will contribute to them, link to them in the show notes and encourage others to contribute.

Thank you very much for doing that. My brother and I are longtime supporters of Partners in Health, an organization that seeks to strengthen healthcare systems in impoverished communities around the world. Hank and I, in particular, are working on, with PIH, on the Maternal Center of Excellence in the Kono District in Sierra Leone, which is a maternal care center that is being built now and that will dramatically change the healthcare delivery in that region of Sierra Leone, which is the epicenter of maternal mortality in the world. And so the link is pih.org slash Hank and John if you want to donate, or if you just want to learn more about the challenges

of maternal health in impoverished communities, you can go to pih.org. That sounds fantastic. I'm going to contribute to them. I'm going to link to them in the show notes. And thanks for doing this. I'm going to contribute to them. I'm going to link to them in the show notes. And thanks for doing this. I'm going to see you in Indianapolis in March. Every time I talk to you, every time I read your books, I feel more alive, more enriched, and I feel like I have a ton of ideas from it.

Oh, thank you. It's such a pleasure to be able to talk with you. And, yeah, I'm just a huge fan of yours, Mike, as you know. So this is it's always cool to catch up and especially to talk about work like this. It's really hard to talk about the process of making something in a way that's constructive and that doesn't like build walls, but instead tears them down. And that's something I really love about this podcast is that it kind of demystifies that act of creation and makes the argument that this is really for everyone. And so, yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks a lot, man.

it's not done. We're working it out because there's no hope. That's going to do it for another episode of Working It Out with John Green. Oh my God. If you haven't read The Anthropocene Reviewed, absolutely read that book. I think you'll love it. I really do. I love that book. If you haven't read Fault in Your Stars, read Fault in Your Stars. That's phenomenal, too. Thanks for joining us. Our producers of Working It Out are myself, along with Peter Salamone and Joseph Birbiglia. Consulting producer,

Seth Barish. Sound mix by Kate Balinski. Sound recordist, Parker Lyons. Associate producer, Mabel Lewis. Thanks to my consigliere, Mike Berkowitz,

as well as Marissa Hurwitz and Josh Uppfall. Special thanks, as always, to Jack Antonoff and Bleachers for their lovely musical stings that John references. As always, a very special thanks to my wife, the poet J. Hope Stein. Our book, the new one, it's at your local bookstore. It's a perfect holiday gift.

I mean, I don't know what you're celebrating, but, I mean, it's about love. It's about family. I mean, isn't that what all holidays are about? Love and family? I'm actually not sure of that. As always, a special thanks to my daughter, Una, who created a radio fort made of pillows. Thanks most of all to you who are listening. If you're able to spend five minutes writing a little review on Apple Podcasts, tell us if you like the show. Throw us some stars. And while you're out there in the world, just tell your friends.

And if you bump heads with someone and you make an enemy, tell that person too. We're working it out. See you next time, everybody.