4.6 • 7.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
The writer talks about longing to fall in love, his life with mental illness, and why adulthood is underrated.
This episode originally aired in 2018, and contains a description of suicidal ideation. If you find yourself in a moment of crisis like John did and need to talk with someone, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 988. They're open 24/7—please ask for help.
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0:00.0 | Have you always been comfortable talking to people who are not your age? |
0:05.0 | I've always been comfortable talking to... |
0:09.0 | Well, I don't know how to answer that question honestly. |
0:14.0 | I've never felt like I'm particularly good at talking to anyone. |
0:18.0 | This is the answer. |
0:22.0 | This is Gaff Secks and Money. |
0:27.0 | The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. |
0:35.0 | I'm Anna Sales. |
0:43.0 | Author John Green is in his mid-40s, but he's built a career on his ability to connect with teenagers. |
0:50.0 | His best-known young adult novel is The Fault in Our Stars, a story about two teens both dying of cancer who fall in love. |
0:59.0 | Even before that book came out, he had a huge following of teenagers online. |
1:05.0 | When we talked in 2018, he told me he reaches them by being in the online spaces they're already spending time in, like on YouTube. |
1:13.0 | Good morning, Hank. It's Wednesday, August 31st. Apparently it's talk to people. |
1:17.0 | Back in 2007, he and his brother, Hank, started an experiment where they posted weekly videos for each other. |
1:23.0 | And soon, other people began to watch too. |
1:26.0 | Now, more than a million people subscribe to their channel. |
1:29.0 | Many of them teenage fans looking for advice and a sense of community. |
1:33.0 | So Hank, I want to address the people who have recently ended or will soon end their formal education and enter what is known as the real world. |
1:39.0 | Okay, the first thing that you'll notice upon entering the real world is that it is neither more or less real than any of the previous worlds you have encountered. |
1:47.0 | When John was growing up in Orlando, he didn't feel like he had a real sense of community. |
1:57.0 | He was close to his parents and to his younger brother, Hank. |
2:00.0 | But he also spent a lot of time alone with his thoughts. |
... |
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