Hello and welcome to the Anthropocene Reviewed, a podcast where we review different facets

of the Human-Centered Planet on a 5-star scale.

I'm John Green, and today I'll be reviewing mortification and civilization.

Two Asians for you today, one of which I know quite well.

The other may be less so.

Let's begin with mortification, a wonderful English word that originally meant to cause death,

like in those days being mortified by shame meant literally dying from it.

Mortification was then adopted into a religious context to refer to rituals meant to subdue the body

and its desires to cause the death of the flesh so that the spirit might strengthen.

These days, mortification mostly means to experience extreme embarrassment,

and I think it speaks to how utterly social and community-focused humans are that even in an age

of self-isolation, we view embarrassment, especially public embarrassment, as a low-level form of death.

Another sign of mortification's importance.

I don't remember what I ate for dinner last Tuesday, and I regularly forget where I left my phone,

but I can recall my every mortification as if it occurred moments ago.

I know this because each evening, when I finish reading for the night, I'll turn off my bedside lamp,

roll over onto my side, close my eyes, and my brain will say,

Oh, good evening. Should we play the blooper reel? And I'll say,

you know, I'd really rather not, and my brain will say,

excellent. Let's begin in a high school auditorium outside of San Francisco.

The year is 2008, and I'm wearing, I can recall precisely what I was wearing,

a pair of blue jeans, a green pinstriped button down that I can only describe as vomit-shaded,

...