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

human-centered planet on a five-star scale. I'm John Green, and today I'll be reviewing Whispering

and the Weather.

Let's begin today with Whispering, an unvoiced way of speaking. In a Whisper, the vocal cords

don't vibrate, but air passes through the larynx with enough turbulence to be audible,

that close range anyway. People sometimes Whisperer do the laryngeitis or other disorders of the

larynx. Usually though, we Whisper because we want to speak to one person, but not to everyone.

To illustrate an example of a Whisper, I'd like to tell you about the first time

my daughter whispered to me. I have a friend, Alex, who is one of those impossibly easy-going,

imperturbable souls who can instantly recalibrate when faced with a shift in circumstance.

But occasionally, when on a tight schedule, Alex will become visibly stressed and say things like,

we've got to get a move on. Alex's wife Linda calls this, airport Alex.

Much to my chagrin, I am usually airport Alex. I cannot stop worrying that the kids might be

late for school, that the restaurant might cancel our reservation, that my psychiatrist will

fire me for tardiness and so on. Anyway, one morning when my wife was out of town for work,

I was sitting at breakfast with my then three-year-old daughter, who is never airport Alex.

For small children, time is not kept by clocks, and so I always feel the need to be the keeper

of the schedule, the maintainer of punctuality in the realm. It was 837, 23 minutes from being

late to daycare. My daughter was eating her toast very slowly. Long pauses between bites to

consult with a picture book she'd brought down that morning. I kept urging her to finish eating.

This is your 8-minute warning, I said to her, as if 8 minutes meant anything.

I tried to line up everything for departure, the shoes, the coat, the backpack containing nothing

...