Hi, reddit! I'm John Green. With my brother Hank, I co-created several YouTube channels, including vlogbrothers and the educational series Crash Course.

Hank and I also co-own the artist-focused merch company DFTBA Records and the online video conference Vidcon.

I've also written four novels: The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, and Looking for Alaska.

The film adaptation of my book Paper Towns will be released on July 24th, and instead of doing, like, one AMA for 45 minutes the day before release, I thought I'd do one each month (if there's interest) leading up to the release of the film. Then hopefully you will all go on opening weekend because who wants to see that movie where Pac Man becomes real.


Edit: That's it for me this time. Until we meet again on r/books or r/nerdfighters or r/liverpoolfc, my friends.

Comments: 3228 • Responses: 52  • Date: 

mr-snrub-1706 karma

Hi John Green, you always seem to pop up in threads where you have been mentioned. How do you find them?
Do you google yourself regularly or do you just stumble across them?

thesoundandthefury3212 karma

I use reddit search.

Speaking of which, we should all buy each other reddit gold so that someday we might live in a world in which reddit search is not completely shit. I'll start by buying you gold.

amullan1510519 karma

...fellow redditor and fan here. Can I get in on some of this gold action?

Scylithe505 karma

Of course! Enjoy! :D

thesoundandthefury1356 karma


IAMA_YOU_AMA189 karma

Hi, I've never actually read any of your books or seen any movie adaptations, but my girlfriend's brother read TFIOS and liked it.

However, I really respect the way you interact with your fans here and thought I'd offer something to make it a little easier: I could set up a bot that will monitor for mentions about you and/or your work and notify you. No more searching needed. I did a similar thing for my girlfriend when she was looking for a job and she liked it (or is good at telling white lies).

Also I'd do it for free, of course, but if you're not interested or don't even respond, I won't be offended. I just thought I'd throw something out there for someone who seems like a genuine person.

thesoundandthefury37 karma

That would be so cool. Email me: sparksflyup-at-gmail. Thanks!

MidwesternTransplant976 karma

Do you ever worry that the marketing for "Paper Towns" enhances/bolsters the manic pixie dream girl myth the book itself combats?

thesoundandthefury1048 karma


I mean, I'm not in control of the marketing of the movie obviously, and I might market it a little differently, but I also understand that you have to set people up with a world they think they know if you're going to point out what is demented and evil about that world. That's what the book (hopefully) does, and what the movie (hopefully) does. But that's hard to do in a trailer for a movie, because you don't want the trailer to tell the whole story. You don't want the trailer to deliver the punch that hopefully comes at the end of the movie when Q finally acknowledges that Margo is not a thing to acquire or a miracle but rather a person.

So I think they face a complicated challenge. (I also think they face a challenge because it's a very different story and tone from The Fault in Our Stars, but obviously they want to capitalize on the success of that movie, which might play into some of it.)

bigghungryphill746 karma

Do you feel that there is occasionally too much emphasis placed on turning EVERYTHING an author has made into a film on the back of one successful adaptation?

thesoundandthefury1071 karma


GiveMeTwoMinutes692 karma

Hi John. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions (sorry about the double-dip).

  1. How long does it take you to think up the insightful conclusions to your videos? and

  2. What colour are you on the button?

thesoundandthefury1347 karma

  1. It's hard to say because on some level you're never not thinking, right? And because I get to make a video every Tuesday, I'm kind of ALWAYS thinking about what might be interesting or fun to talk about next week. So even if I'm watching Liverpool or making my kids dinner or whatever, there's always the churning in the background, my mind being like, "Whether you like it or not, you're going to be making a video on Tuesday."

  2. I'm purple. I find it basically impossible not to press buttons.

yaqooberz585 karma

Have you written anything (or will you write) something for an older audience? I've followed along with your books through high school and college (I actually had my pre-calculus teacher explain the math part of an Abundance of Katherines to me) and was wondering if you would ever venture out to the non-YA world.

I can imagine that some of your fan base is growing older as well and although I will always read a YA John Green book it would be awesome to see something for an older audience.

thesoundandthefury2031 karma

Who knows, maybe someday, but I really like writing for and about teenagers. There are a bunch of reasons for this: 1. I like teenagers because they're experiencing so much stuff for the first time--love and loss and grief and individual sovereignty and driving cars and, in the case of nonredditors, sex. Because those experiences are new, they are extremely intense, and it allows me to think about that stuff in a heightened way that doesn't need to be cut by irony, which is really appealing to me. 2. Teens are extremely intellectually curious, and I love the straightforward way they consider the biggest questions: Is meaning in human life constructed by us or derived from a source greater than us? What do we owe ourselves and each other, and when should we prioritize our own desires over the collective good? Why is suffering unjustly distributed? So writing about and for teenagers allows me just to think about that stuff very directly and without cynicism, which I find extremely enjoyable. 3. Publishing as a YA author also has many, many benefits: Because of schools, your books can hang around in print longer. The economics of YA publishing are not QUITE as blockbuster-driven as adult publishing, so you can have a career without being a household name, and you can keep publishing even when your books aren't selling hundreds of thousands of copies. And most importantly to me, you don't live alongside other "literary fiction" books, or other "mystery" books, or other "romance" books. In the YA world and on the YA shelves, all that stuff lives together--sci-fi and romance and fantasy and mystery and everything. I love that. I love having colleagues who write about fairies and colleagues who write about 17th century American slaves, and colleagues who write about kids growing up today in the Bronx.

So there may be a day when I want to write a story about/for adults, but I really love YA fiction and would be very happy to have a career in it for the rest of my life.

Nanosauromo2196 karma

and, in the case of nonredditors, sex.

That was below the belt, John.

mr-snrub-1940 karma

It is the only "below the belt" action I've gotten in a while though...

thesoundandthefury2436 karma

You're welcome.

Seraph_Grymm98 karma

As a redditor I'm sure he knows the struggle.

nazgulkoopa207 karma

He has two kids, I'm pretty sure he doesn't.

chillitomatocakes203 karma

There's a reason why he doesn't have three.

thesoundandthefury647 karma

Yes. There is. Vasectomy.

dancetoforget27468 karma

What's something someone said to you that has stuck with you--something you still think about?

thesoundandthefury1536 karma

It's funny what sticks in your head and what doesn't. Many of the things that come to mind are private, but this one isn't:

My wife and I went to high school in Alabama together, but we did not know each other in high school. Years later, we became reacquainted in Chicago, where we were both living.

The first time we had dinner together, I told her a story from high school about sitting on a porch swing and thinking about all the things that might happen to me, and how I never thought I'd end up in Chicago across a table from Sarah Urist. And she said, "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia," which I put in my book Looking for Alaska.

That observation has really stuck with me. Sometimes I need that form of nostalgia to get me through a day, but even so I try to be conscious that it IS a form of nostalgia, and that you can get lost inside the prospect of the future just as surely as you can get lost inside the past.

aurthurallan420 karma

My friend Chelsea is a cancer patient and fan of yours who got to talk to you on the phone. She was really excited about it.

If you could only do one, youtube or movies, which would you rather be involved in?

thesoundandthefury731 karma

Please say hi to Chelsea for me! I really enjoy talking to young people living with cancer or other serious illnesses; it's one of the few opportunities I have these days to spend one-on-one time with readers and hear from them directly.

If I had to pick between YouTube and movies, I would pick YouTube. This would be a financially counterintuitive choice, for sure, but I love online video and love working with my brother. Don't tell my brother I said that, though.

Kompy323 karma

You've probably been asked this a lot, but how do you think the movie did compared to the book? And if you wish anything were done differently, what would it be?

thesoundandthefury708 karma

I think movies and books are fundamentally different and should be treated as such when figuring out how to do an adaptation (or a novelization of a movie).

Like, when you're writing a book, all you have is text. You have to figure out how to make scratches on a page that will turn into ideas and images and feelings in someone else's brain. To me at least, writing and reading are aggressively non-visual. I realize it's visual in the sense that you're looking at text, but the way you "see" things you're reading about is very very different from the way you see things you are actually looking at.

And then with movies you have a fairly rigid time frame (90 minutes to 180 minutes, say) and you have images and music and actors bringing life to the characters and their dialogue, so it's just a completely different thing.

So to me the job of a movie adaptation is not to re-create each scene of a book but to re-create the feeling of reading the book, the experience of it. And I feel like The Fault in Our Stars film did an exceptionally good job of that; it's one of the most faithful movie adaptations I've ever seen. That's thanks to the performances and to a great director and also to brilliant screenwriters.

With Paper Towns, I was lucky to have the same screenwriters, and another brilliant director, so I feel like it is again an adaptation that's very faithful to the themes and ideas and characters in the novel, even when it strays from the novel's plot or dialogue or whatever.

I honestly think in some ways both the Paper Towns movie and The Fault in Our Stars movie are better than the novels upon which they are based.

Gtrfrk87290 karma

What do you want your legacy to be? Vlogbrothers? Your novels? Your other work?

thesoundandthefury852 karma

I think my only really important legacy will be my kids.

I know that in America we are supposed to celebrate individualism and everything, but I feel like everything--books, YouTube, whatever--is really a vast creation that we are all participating in. We participate in it by reading and by watching and by making stuff, and the stuff that gets a billion views matters in that process and the stuff that gets 10 views also matters. It's too vast and complex a process for any individual to really claim significance within it. Like, even someone who is really properly significant--Steve Jobs, say--was part of a much larger web of creation. We'd still have personal computers without Steve Jobs. We'd still have smartphones. They might look different; some of the functionality might be different; but we're all part of a vast web.

I guess some people might find that depressing, but I find it really invigorating. I'd rather feel like I'm part of something than feel like I control something, if that makes sense.

BigHowie8256 karma

Hi John - my wife and I are currently watching through ALL of the vlogbrothers videos (we are a little over halfway through 2009). My question to you is: Do you have a favorite vlogbrothers video that you have ever done? Or that Hank has done?

thesoundandthefury457 karma

This is hero's work and I congratulate you and your wife on the epic undertaking.

My favorite vlogbrothers video I ever made is probably my first Thoughts from Places, the one from Munich, because I was like, "Oh, wow this is a totally different way to make a vlog and I really enjoy it!" I have so many favorite Hank videos it's really hard to pick one. Honestly, he impresses me almost every week with his insight and wit.

Buxbaum89248 karma

  1. Is there a project you've been wanting to do, but feel it's too ambitious?

  2. Favorite comedian?

  3. If you had to pick one book for everyone to read, what would it be?

thesoundandthefury903 karma

  1. Yeah, on the educational video side of things we are definitely limited by scale and finances. I would love to see 100 Crash Course videos going up every week instead of four, but there's just no financial model for that at the moment.
  2. I am not deeply knowledgeable about comedy, but I think Dave Chapelle is very funny.
  3. That's an interesting question. Probably Paper Towns, because if everyone on earth had to buy that book I would make like 5 billion dollars.

VagrantExistence90 karma

(7 billion books) x ($6.99)=($5 billion)

Math checks out.

Edit: I now have a thorough understanding of artist royalties.

phthoggos56 karma

this is a general introduction to the system of author royalties in book publishing.

thesoundandthefury89 karma

Yeah I'd be lucky to end up with $5 billion if I sold 7 billion books. But in my case at least, publishers add tremendous value so the deal seems pretty fair to me. (Not all author royalties are fair, certainly, but I think mine are.)

zenithyoda244 karma

1 -- Are you working on a new novel? Can you tell us anything about it?

2 -- Are you a fan of Game of Thrones?

thesoundandthefury435 karma

  1. Yes. No.
  2. Yes.

ideniedyou28239 karma

How is Willie doing?

thesoundandthefury591 karma

Willy is my dog. He is doing well. He is a seven and in good health, although he lives in an area with a lot of coyotes, so...yeah. Small dogs are never in GREAT health when they are surrounded by coyotes.

I can hear him barking right now, though, so for the moment all is well.

cannedpeaches794 karma

Only a 7? Like, a 7 in an "I'd settle down with that" way?

thesoundandthefury722 karma

I'm leaving the typo because of your comment.

rhymanocerous200 karma

First, I love Crash Course and have used it in my classroom. Thanks you!

What do you feel about research that has shown more conversational, less produced educational videos are more effective teaching tools? How do you think you could utilize your platform to help individual teachers learn how to make their own videos and other educational tools?


thesoundandthefury301 karma

  1. I think we need a LOT more research. (Like, in that study, the average view time is four minutes; for crash course videos, the average view time is over 10 minutes and we have some of the highest viewer retention of any channel on YT.)

  2. I also think we need to broaden our ideas around assessment. With Crash Course, we don't want to replace classrooms. We don't want our viewers to have learned everything they need to learn about a topic; we want them to be fired up and excited to continue learning about that topic. And that's a bit harder to assess, except by like asking people, which is not a data-driven way of gathering information.

  3. We really, really want to help more teachers to make more videos and also offer them access to other educational material creation tools. I think Khan Academy is doing a pretty good job of this right now, as is Ted-Ed, and we've worked with both of them and will continue to. But we're also beginning to build our own ideas around this stuff. It's difficult because we are still very very small--but for edu video to be scalable, we need LOTS more people making it, and so we're trying to build tools now that will encourage that. Sorry that's vague, but can't announce things that haven't happened yet, etc.

MikeKeenan30192 karma

Does "Green/Green 2016" have a nice ring to it? hint hint

thesoundandthefury311 karma

I agree that Glozell Green would be a great President, and that Hank could serve ably as her VP.

pterozachtyll177 karma

What do you do when you are feeling uncreative? Does anything in particular inspire you? Do you have a process?

thesoundandthefury515 karma

Well, it's been three years since my last novel was published, so I don't feel particularly well qualified to answer this question.

polishingcheekbones170 karma

Do you think the Looking for Alaska movie will live up to the hype and reignite the passion fans have had for this book for 10 years? (I can already taste the blood that will be shed when Alaska is cast.)

thesoundandthefury285 karma

I have no idea if they'll ever make a Looking for Alaska movie. And if they do, it's impossible to know if it'll be good. So much can go wrong along the way (and in LfA's case, so much HAS gone wrong to keep it from being a movie over the last 10 years).

This is why I like books. You don't need, like, hundreds of people and tens of millions of dollars to make them.

thecwissydee139 karma

John, a lot of people have criticized the similarities between your books, saying that you have a "formula". What is your response to this?

thesoundandthefury467 karma

Well, first, I'd say there's nothing wrong with a "formula." I like a lot of mystery series, for instance, where the same detective finds herself on a case that turns out to be more complex that it initially seemed like it would be, and I do not think these are bad books simply because they utilize genre conventions. (I think there are a lot of genre conventions in "literary fiction" as well, really.)

Secondly, I would say that, you know, all of my books were written by me, and I am just one person and not a particularly smart one, and I have certain obsessions/interests/concerns/etc. that appear not just in my books but also in everything else that I do.

But ultimately I just don't agree. I wrote a comic novel about a child prodigy trying to use a mathematical theorem to understand romantic relationship. I wrote a boarding school novel about grief, a novel about the destructiveness of the male gaze and dehumanizing others by romanticizing them, and a romance about two kids with cancer. To me, the books are tonally and thematically very different.

There are of course similarities: I like writing about smart, curious kids whose intellectual reach slightly exceeds their grasp. And Im very curious about how the way we imagine each other and our world ends up shaping actual non-imagined people and the actual non-imagined world.

I think there are a lot of good criticisms of my work: I think sometimes it's didactic; I think too often I escape the complicated problems I write about by embracing the supernatural or the theistic, which to a lot of my readers feels like a cheat; and I am sympathetic to readers who feel like I don't pay enough attention to story because I get so far up my own ass about the ideas that interest me.

But I find that particular criticism just kind of boring and unconvincing. (And also annoying, obviously, since I'm clearly responding defensively!)

jmigandrade138 karma

Hi John! What did you want to be when you were a kid? DFTBA

thesoundandthefury310 karma

I always wanted to be a writer, but it never seemed like a viable career option. (Still kinda doesn't, to be honest.) So I had many plans along the way for day jobs: At various times, I planned to be an earthworm scientist, an Episcopal priest, a Mark Twain scholar, and a paramedic.

Some people believe that in order to be a proper writer you must give everything else up and be ONLY a writer. And maybe they are right. I don't know. But for me, it's better to be a writer AND something else. Every time I haven't had a day job in the 10 years since my first novel came out, I invented a day job for myself.

jeryarr111 karma

Has the new Religious Freedom Act made you consider leaving your state? (assuming that you still live in Indiana)

thesoundandthefury313 karma

I do still live in Indiana.

The response to the RFRA, and the change to the law the legislature was forced to pass, was very encouraging to me. In Indianapolis, the response to the law was overwhelmingly negative across the political spectrum.

It made me very sad and very angry, because it represented for me the worst kind of governance--the kind that legalizes the oppression of the people who most need the protection of a government. But I didn't want to leave Indiana, no. I wanted to stay and fight.

supesfannerdfighter107 karma

John, do you feel like your edited personality gives your fans an inaccurate view of who you are in a regular interpersonal setting? Does your editing process try to include most of your personality or most of who you want to portray yourself as in the videos?

Aside from the question, thank you so much for being who you are. I have been a fan since your introduction to Sarah Palin in 2008. The advent of Crash Course kids and Sci Show kids has given me all new tools for talking to my kids about science.

thesoundandthefury175 karma

Thanks for the kind words!

I mean, the way I construct myself online and in my videos is definitely different from how I am in a regular interpersonal setting. (For one thing, I talk more slowly. For another, I talk much less than I do online. Also, I am usually not in interpersonal settings, because I spend a lot of my time--quite happily--alone.)

But when I ask my closest friends this question--do I seem different online than I do in real life--they usually say yes, but that they can recognize the online me as me. So I don't think it reflects anything inaccurate about me; it's just inevitably an incomplete (and curated!) version of me.

But I also think most of us do this online. Most of us are conscious of how the things we say and do online might be read/viewed by strangers.

Sunderpool99 karma

Have you ever thought about actually writing An Imperial Affliction? It would be interesting to read a book that is in a book (Bookception).

thesoundandthefury174 karma

AIA is the kind of book I'd enjoy reading, but it's not the kind of book I could suffer through writing. I wrote a few pages of it so that Hazel would have something to read in the movie version, and it was a really interesting exercise, but I can't imagine doing that for hundreds of pages.

EDIT: That said, who knows. The future is unpredictable.

MiyukiSnow86 karma

Hi John! I know you talk about it a lot, but do you ever get used to the hundreds of cameras when you go to events regarding the movies?

thesoundandthefury308 karma

No, it's completely surreal and dehumanizing and unnatural. Some people can thrive in that environment, but I'm definitely not one of them.

That said, it's a tiny tiny tiny tiny part of my life. I've spent more time TODAY watching the TV program Doc McStuffins than I've spent on red carpets in my entire life.

NonObservantObserver73 karma

What do you think of Youtube's paid subscription service? Would you welcome it or agree with CGPGrey that it is utterly oppressive to the creators?

thesoundandthefury130 karma

Grey and I always agree, but he is always more radical than I am. :)

It's extremely important to me that our videos be free for everyone forever. My next concern would be lowering the barrier of entry: Most people in the world can't easily access online video because the Internet speeds required are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Then I'm concerned about government and corporate interference in the openness of online video, and about the ability of people to effectively discover the kind of stuff they want to watch.

Those are my biggest concerns. I need YouTube to keep their platform open and hopefully not to distort content discovery too much. They don't have an A+++ history on those fronts, but I actually think they've been pretty effective thus far. I mean, there is a lot of free online video on YouTube that wasn't available 10 years ago.

perhaps132366 karma

Hi John! My name is Anna and I was wondering out of all of you books : what character do you sympathize / relate to the most?

rithsv103 karma

You might enjoy this video related to your question: https://youtu.be/Lht_JH2xi6w

thesoundandthefury200 karma

Oh God. That video is so full of lies and childish bravado; it's so humiliating to watch. THANKS FOR POSTING IT.

But yes, Miles and I have some things in common.

myraclegirl56 karma

John! Hi! Lauren here. Al told me you were doing an AMA, so thought I'd pop in. Al also tells me I have to ASK A QUESTION, so...for you, is there any truth to the notion of fame being lonely? You handle it SO WELL and with such grace, and you seem very much to be "still John." Do you feel like you're still John? (Of course you ARE, but you know what I mean.) What's the biggest upside and the biggest downside to this cool new world you live in?

thesoundandthefury80 karma

Hey Lauren Myracle! (Guys, this is Lauren Myracle, with whom I collaborated on Let It Snow, and who is generally a great author and a lovely person.) Al is her awesome son. HI AL!

I do think that fame is isolating, yes, and probably a little lonely. But 1. it happened when I'd already written a bunch of books, and I had stable relationships within my family and friends, so I don't think it was as weird or disjointed as it would have been for a first time author, and also 2. while it is isolating in some ways, it's also very connective in some ways, because people have been so supportive of my work and of me and that does make me lifted up.

I still feel very much like myself. The biggest upside is that I don't have to worry about money much, which is an incredible blessing and not one to be taken lightly. The biggest downside is that it's kind of inherently dehumanizing, so people sometimes talk about you as if you aren't a real person, which can be pretty painful.

Hope you are well and that I get to see you soon! (Another downside is that I see author friends less because it's harder to go to conferences and stuff. But that will pass!)

My_tits_are_better54 karma

I loved your video with Cara Delevingne, she's such a big personality. Does she stand up to the Margot you envisioned when you wrote Paper Towns?

thesoundandthefury105 karma

Yeah, her performance in the movie is great, because she's an excellent actress. But also, she is more like Margo Roth Spiegelman than any real person I have ever met in my life.

brrrilliant53 karma

What's one book everyone should read?

thesoundandthefury195 karma

As the old saying goes:

If you read only one book this year, you're not reading enough. :)

merthsoft53 karma

Do you have any more plans to do work with Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation?

thesoundandthefury111 karma

Yeah! I've never worked directly with the foundation, but Bill Gates's personal office has helped sponsor several Crash Course projects, including Crash Course Big History.

My wife and I focus our personal giving on female economic empowerment in the developing world and global health and poverty, which lines up in many cases with the priorities of the Gates Foundation, so we certainly support a lot of the same projects and organizations. I really admire the Gates foundation and the way they approach complex health challenges in the developing world, and I'd love to work with them more.

coreytaylorjohnson52 karma

Do you ever get comments on looking similar to Edward Snowden?

thesoundandthefury149 karma

Yeah sometimes, but Edward Snowden is a lot thinner than I am and has a better jawline. I am very impressed with/envious of Edward Snowden's jawline.

IneptlyOmnipotent50 karma

Hello john. Has your fame affected how you live your daily life?

thesoundandthefury250 karma

The truth is, it has affected my daily life mostly by encouraging me to be the kind of person I should be anyway:

So, for instance, I cannot lose my temper in public. One time I yelled at my 5-year-old, "You are not getting a goldfish; and whining will not help your cause," and someone upon hearing my voice asked, "Are you the mental floss guy?"

So, yeah. I try to be courteous and friendly and not a dick in public. And also in private.

deltpand49 karma

Hi, John. Congrats for the MTV award. I still remember you lecturing on a spring day of 2005 at Indian Springs. I am psyched to hear about recent progress pertaining the movie adaptation of your first novel. How likely is it to choose your alma mater as a shooting location?

thesoundandthefury100 karma

I have such fond memories of that day--my grandmother was there and it meant to much to me that she saw me become a published author. (She died soon after.)

The Looking for Alaska movie has been in development for over 10 years, but recently the same producers as TFIOS and Paper Towns AND the same screenwriters have taken the project on, so I feel cautiously optimistic.

I have no idea where it will be filmed, though. That stuff is way out of my control.

aaronsxl46 karma

Do you think your commercial and social success puts you at a conflict of interest with the idea expressed in some of your novels which is that being remembered doesn't matter?

thesoundandthefury204 karma

Maybe, but to be clear, I still won't be remembered. All human effort will be drowned by the rising seas of time, and the species will cease to exist and then the earth will become unable to sustain life, and then the universe as we currently survive in it will end. So...like...in that context none of us will be particularly successful.

Citizen__X73 karma

I'm always so impressed at how positive you are. :)

thesoundandthefury119 karma

I'm not sure what this says about me, but I find the absolute void waiting for us all kind of encouraging. I find it exciting that we are here together for a little while, which is wondrous and precious. As Larkin put it, "We should be careful of each other. We should be kind, while there is still time."

ticky1842 karma

Hi! I'm a kiva nerdfighter and I was wondering if your opinion on microfinance has changed at all based on the criticism it has received in the past few years?

thesoundandthefury80 karma

Not really. I think a lot of the criticism of microfinance is good and healthy; it is not a fix for poverty, and not all microfinance organizations are effective.

But I also think online sometimes we have a tendency to move from one extreme to another rather than allowing for nuance. There's lots of evidence that microfinance works, and I think it's rather hypocritical of those of us who benefit from a credit-based banking system to deny poor people access to that system because we've decided what's good for them.

But we also need to be conscious of microfinance's insufficiencies and not view it as a replacement for other kinds of development, because microfinance is not going to build roads or improve health care systems or get people electricity.

MrPoliSciGuy42 karma

John, as a Liverpool fan, what do you think of Balotelli?

King_Kwong41 karma

I noticed that cigarettes play a significant role in A Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, what is your view on them? Do you smoke/used to smoke?

thesoundandthefury157 karma

Yeah I smoked in high school and college. I was very obsessive about smoking.

For me, smoking was partly a way of dealing with my OCD, or an outgrowth of my OCD. But it was also a socially acceptable way of acting out my self-destructive impulses. For reasons I don't really understand, I think a lot of teenagers feel this intense need to hurt themselves, and I did that by smoking.

In LFA, I tried to use smoking as a metaphor for those self-destructive impulses that we struggle to understand and control. In TFIOS, it's a bit more complicated--Gus thinks it's a metaphor for his control over his life "You put the killing thing between your teeth but don't give it the power to do it's killing"--but in fact it's a metaphor for one's LACK of control over one's life. Even if you never light a cigarette (which is the action most commonly associated with cancer), you're not really in control, because there is this intractable randomness in human life.

tl;dr: Don't smoke.

calibwam36 karma

Hey John! I've read Paper Towns, and listened to the audio book of The Fault In Our Star, love them, and can't wait for the Paper Towns movie.

What was your favorite book when you were 25 (as I am now)?

thesoundandthefury54 karma

I remember reading three books that year that were really important to me:

  1. The Blood of the Lamb, by Peter de Vries, which is a far better cancer novel than The Fault in Our Stars. It's hilarious and ambitious and beautifully sad. What a book.

  2. Sula by Toni Morrison. I'd read Sula as a freshman in college with a great professor, but I was such a poor student that I never really got into it. Like, I read the words but they never came alive for me. I reread it that year after reading and loving a different Morrison novel, and it lit me up.

  3. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. I read it and I was like, "Now THIS is how a book should sound."

roonz36 karma

Hey John!

What was your favorite List Show to do for Mental Floss?

thesoundandthefury72 karma

Anything Meredith writes is hilarious. (Meredith Danko is the lead writer for mental floss, and she's just awesome.) My favorite is, like, 90 Facts about the 90s stuff, because they always contain facts that I genuinely cannot believe and find laugh out loud funny.

The life hacks stuff is also fun to do!

infinitempg27 karma


I'm going on a trip to Europe over the summer for a few weeks and want to vlog it. What are some tips you think I should know before doing this?

Also thanks for choosing my sign for placement in AFC Wimbledon's Stadium!

thesoundandthefury42 karma

I hope you'll go to England and see your sign in real life!

As far as vlogging: It's all about the editing. Remember how easy it is to stop paying attention to something and try to make it visually and narratively interesting in every frame if you can. (I don't always do this, but I feel like it's the most effective strategy these days.) But there are a lot of ways to make online video, and lots of people dislike my style of doing it, so don't take my advice too seriously!

dr_patel23 karma

At one point, you were studying to become a pastor, and even served as a hospital chaplain briefly. What caused you to change paths to becoming an author?

thesoundandthefury59 karma

Well, when I was working as a chaplain, I had a lot of very fancy ideas about why people suffer and why horrible things happen to innocent people who do not deserve the suffering they experience.

And then when I saw those things and held the hands of the kids who were dying, none of those fancy ideas mattered anymore, so I realized I would not be a good minister.

(I do still go to church.)

ajrpugs21 karma

Hey John,

Any advice for aspiring authors?

thesoundandthefury61 karma

Read a lot. Read broadly. Read the kinds of books that you want to sit next to in the bookstore (or in Amazon recommendations or whatever). Read good books and bad ones.

I really believe that reading is our best apprenticeship--through reading, we can figure out how people have used text over the centuries to create stories and ideas in other people's heads.

And then write a lot as well, and be kind to yourself as you write. That's the best advice I've got.

Ac3zzzz17 karma

How are you so successful in everything you do?

thesoundandthefury102 karma

Man, you should see me try to bench press 100 pounds.

rt_stark17 karma

Hi John. I really enjoy crash course. /u/thesoundandthefury

Do you think you would make a Crash Course Economics?

thesoundandthefury46 karma

Crash Course Economics will debut in a couple weeks! :)

wcecil017 karma

What's your beef with Kentucky?

thesoundandthefury17 karma

I mean, I grew up partly in Alabama and I now live in Indiana, so.