A Toolkit for a Noisy Mind: How John Green Manages Anxiety, Depression, and Intrusive Thoughts

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Plus, how the bestselling author writes his way out of despair.

John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of books including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down, and The Anthropocene Reviewed. With his brother, Hank, John has co-created many online video projects, including Vlogbrothers and the educational channel Crash Course. His most recent book is Everything Is Tuberculosis.

In this episode we talk about:

John's toolkit for managing thought spirals and dispair
Why he wrote a whole book about the thing that terrifies him
How he maintains hope in a chaotic and unfair world
Finding the "self"
Shame reduction through naming
What John learned from his time as a chaplain in a pediatric hospital
His current view of God
And the question of how much––or how little––we should be sharing about ourselves with other people

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% a happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18.4	Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Today we've got a wide-ranging, super interesting,
0:24.6	and in its own way, very practical conversation with the writer and YouTuber John Green,
0:30.5	who has a lot of experience, way too much experience, I think he would say, in managing anxiety,
0:37.3	depression, and intrusive thoughts.
0:39.8	We're going to do a deep dive into his toolkit for managing the aforementioned, which includes
0:44.6	a lot of effective strategies. We're also going to talk about his view of God, how he maintains
0:49.1	hope in a chaotic and unfair world, and why he wrote a whole book recently about the thing that terrifies him.
0:56.2	Many of you know John Green, but for those of you who don't, he's the author of many, many
1:00.3	best-selling books, including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, and Turtles All the
1:05.4	Way Down. He's not only a writer. He does a ton of stuff on YouTube with his brother Hank.
1:11.0	John has created something called Vlog Brothers and also an educational channel called Crash Course.
1:17.9	So John's coming up.
1:18.7	Before we dive in, though, heads up.
1:20.5	We're in the middle of a five-day meditation challenge over on my new meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris.
1:25.5	And it's not too late to join.
1:26.9	The challenge is called Even You Can Meditate.
1:29.2	Every day it features a new meditation from the great Seb and A Salasi.
1:32.4	And then twice during the course of the five days, we do live video sessions where you can ask questions of me and Seb.
1:40.0	The first video session already happened, but you're not too late to join the second one.
1:44.5	And don't worry if you sign up after the fact, this challenge will be available on demand in perpetuity.
1:51.5	Again, it's available exclusively over on the 10% with Dan Harris app.
	...

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