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The Daily

'The Interview': John Green Knows That No One Really Loves You on the Internet

November 22, 2025 • 44m

Summary

⏱️ 9 min read

Overview

John Green, bestselling YA author and YouTube creator, discusses his lifelong grappling with hope in the face of suffering, his eight-year break from fiction writing, and how his work in global health connects to his broader mission of finding meaning in a world full of injustice. He reflects candidly on anxiety, faith, parenting, internet fame, and why he's drawn to writing about teenagers experiencing profound emotions for the first time.

Hope as the Antidote to Despair

Green opens by explaining his philosophy that hope is the necessary response to consciousness, even as he battles daily with despair. He describes carrying a note in his wallet about declining child mortality rates to remind himself that progress is real, even when suffering persists. The challenge, he explains, is holding both the reality of suffering and the reality of progress together simultaneously without succumbing to cynicism or denial.

  • Green battles major depression and severe OCD, making despair a daily presence he must actively ward off
  • Despair is problematic because it only creates more of itself and prevents meaningful action
  • He keeps a note about child mortality declining from 12 million to under 5 million to remind himself progress is real
  • The great challenge is holding together both the reality of suffering and the reality of progress
" I can't afford despair. I really can't. I don't think humanity can afford despair because the problem with despair is all it does is make more of itself. "
" I'm interested in the kind of hope that holds up to scrutiny, the kind of hope that does hold up to the worst things that happen to us, that holds up to our worst days. "

Working as a Hospital Chaplain: Confronting Suffering

Green recounts his transformative six months as a chaplain in a children's hospital, an experience that derailed his plans to become an Episcopal minister. Witnessing incomprehensible suffering, including a devastating fire that killed two children and badly burned two others, fundamentally challenged his understanding of God and the universe. This period became the axis around which his entire life spins, shifting his focus from theological questions to practical ones about alleviating suffering.

  • Working at the hospital was the most important six months of Green's life, causing him to abandon his path to becoming an Episcopal minister
  • A devastating fire involving four children, two of whom died, was a pivotal traumatic experience
  • He lost interest in questions about whether God is real, becoming focused instead on how to bring about the world God would want
  • The experience taught him that no parent should have to bury a child, and he felt no one was enforcing that law
" There is a law that says that no parent should bury a child and someone needs to enforce it. And that's how I felt coming out of the hospital. Like there was no one enforcing that law. "
" Suffering is not just unjustly distributed, but fundamentally unjust in the fact of it. "

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