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This is Science Friday. I'm Floral Lichtman.

Today in the podcast, a deadly disease and the stories we've told ourselves about it.

If consumption was a disease of beautiful

people and sensitive souls, tuberculosis was this horror of being invaded by a microorganism.

As the U.S. retreats from global health, withdrawing from the WHO, dismantling USAID, experts say we can expect

implications for the spread of certain diseases around the globe. Today we're talking about one of them,

tuberculosis. Now, tuberculosis may not be on your radar. In the U.S., it's rare. And if you do get it, there are effective treatments.

But Americans' relationship with TB today is very different than it used to be. And it's vastly

different from how people in other parts of the world relate to this illness. And that's because

TB remains the deadliest infectious disease in the world, killing over a million people every year.

My next guest, who you may know from his novels, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down, explores our relationship with TB and what its path reflects about our society and culture in a new book. John Green is the author

of Everything is Tuberculosis, the history and persistence of our deadliest infection. John, welcome to

Science Friday. Thank you so much for. John, you're mostly a novelist. I am. This book is a departure.

Why a medical history?

Why TB?

Well, it is a very different kind of book for me.

But on the other hand, I'm still writing about smart teenagers who love poetry, which

has always been an interest for me.

Why this book, I guess the short answer is that in 2019, I was traveling in Sierra Leone with my wife and the Global Health Organization

Partners in Health, and they asked us to go to a TB hospital on the last day of our visit,

and I didn't even know that there were still TB hospitals. I was astonished to learn that

...