The Responsibility of Public Influence

Hello, it is Hank. I'm sorry to have invaded the dear Hank and John feed for my own nefarious purposes here, but I have a little sample for you to listen to, a sample of a new podcast I'm doing, which is called Humans, in which I have conversations with interesting people about how weird and awful and wonderful it is to be A person I've recorded about a dozen of these already, and I've had conversations with authors and actors and astrophysicists. The first three episodes are with John Green, who is my brother, who you probably know about. Winnel Lu, the editor of the New York Times Game Connections, and third is our episode with Helen Hunt. Yes, that Helen Hunt, the Oscar winning actress who has an IMDB credited in every one of the last fifty years and who I had a huge crush on in high school. And then our fourth episode is probably going to be, I think, with Zay Frank, the guy who basically invented vlogging and who inspired John and I to start the thing that we do now and also now makes the show True Facts with Zay Frank, which you may have seen, just absolutely hilarious. anyyway The overall conceit of the show is that it is good to take a little bit of time here and there to zoom out a little, to understand that the thing that we are is very weird, certainly unique in the history of the Earth and also of the known universe Being the kind of thing we are is a weird thing that nothing has ever done before. so it's not surprising that we're not always great at it. But in order to make it through, we're going have to be careful, we're going have to be thoughtful, we're gonna to have to think and listen. So that's really what the idea is. I'm just trying to talk to interesting people and extract from them ways in which humanity can survive. New episodes come out every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. And now I will play for you a little teaser of the first episode of Humans. my brother John Green I hear you talk a lot about in favorable ways, like things lacking sentimentality. L you wanted to write an unsentimental cancer book. Yeah. But you're also very earnest. Yeah. And these two words sound like the same thing, sentimental and earnest. I know that they're not But that does seem like a contradiction. Like you're one of the most earnest people I know, but at the same time You are constantly like striving for a lack of sentimentality Yeahep. Achingly, achingly earnest. Fingingly earnest. Sounds like someone's called you that. So annoyingly earnest. It annoys me to get out in front of it. Like I also find it exhausting What does that word even it mean to you? It means like Sincere, serious. Unronic, mostly it means unironic And I want to be that in my work. I want to be that in my life. I don't want to use the armor of irony or cynicism to protect me against real feeling. I want to feel all that there is to feel while I'm here. I think that other approaches to life are a waste of time B donon't want to be sappy about it It is a very fine line, Hank. You're right, and I'm not always on the right side of the line Well, but you know about it. you know about that line. I know about the line. It' bright to you. I'm aware of the line. In most of the books version of the Fault in our stars, I found it I tried to anyway. Yeah. But I'm not always on the right side of it. Like if you're going to err on the side of being cheesy or on the side of being cold and distant, I'm always going to err on the side of being cheesy And so I'm aware of the line, but I don't always walk it perfectly But I think that whole distant, merely intellectual approach to life and art leaves a lot on the table It leaves a lot of human feeling on the table that's really at the center of what it is to be a person This is why I want to ask this question because like You don't have anything against being earnest. I'm there with you and I've been brought there by you But what is sentimentality. what is on the other side of that line Is it just like people's perception of the earnestness or is it actually a different thing I think it's a different thing. To me, sentimentality is a little bit of a lie. It's the kind of lie that we tell ourselves in retrospect looking back at the past. It's the lie that everything happens for a reason. It's the lie that you know, those sort of cursive encouragements that are post it at IKE, tellell us That to me is sentimentality. We're creating these cute little nice things to tell ourselves about the horrors that aren't really real. Right. I don't want to trap on anyone's worldview, but I think it's very, very, very difficult to argue that everything happens for a reason. in a world of such profound human built injustice. Do you think that that is I mean, I know that we have different world views here. Has that changed how you feel about releligion about God No, not really because I've never believed in a God who intercedes some of the time, but not all of the time. I've never believed in a best of all possible world sort of theology I've always believed in a God who acts on humanity primarily through humanity Always is a long time That feels like a more complex theology than probably was taught to a thirteen year old. But I didn't really grow up believing in God. So like I was able to conceptualize God when I was in my twenties or nineteen, you know? I was able to form a theology without a ton of baggage I feel really bad actually for people who grow up. So religiously traumatized by the fear of hell or by these religious tenantets that would tell people that they're not full people or that they're somehow removed from God's love for being themselves You see that a lot with people in the LGBTQ community, you see it a lot with people who grow up being told that they're desires or their way of being in the world is itself somehow terrible or worse than other ways of being in the world I didn't grow up with any of that We grew up going to church occasionally, but like it wasn't a big deal. And so by the time I came to Christianity and And I really came to Christianity because I'd grown up a Christian Yeah, I think if I'd grown up a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu, I would have gone to those faiths, but I went to Christianity and you know, was able to find enough there for me for it to feel productive. This is fascinating I had always assumed that it was kind of a continuousness, even though of course like our parents and you go to different churches. Yeah you know, you're episcopalian there I mean, nominally, M and dad don't go to church, so I assumed that you had sort of just like carried it through. You got confirmed and just like I did, and you were just paying more attention in church in Sunday school than I was No, I don't think so I's interesting. I didn't really read the gospels until I was in college. Oh. true of most middle school students, they're not out there reading the gospels. But I don't know. Maybe. as far as I can tell, nobody's out there reading them lot of people who say a whole lot about Jesus, not doing a lot of gospel reading. But is one of the reasons you don't talk that much about your faith that you are sensitive to people who have been traumatized Yeah, for sure. And I don't labor under the delusion that it's right either And so I don't have the same I mean, there's a lot of talk about evangelism. It really feels like that's one of the things about faith is that you're supposed to believe it's right That's what faith, that's what that word You're supposed to believe that it's a right. Okay. I'm not sure you're supposed to believe that it's the right by There's a lot of emphasis on evangelism in Christian history and in Christian literature On the idea that like you should go out and preach the good news that you can be forgiven and yada, yada yada of radical hope that hope is available to all people at all times, even unto death and all that stuff And I mean, first off, like as a Midwesterner, I'm congenitally incapable of that kind of evangelism But secondly, I just don't feel like it's my way or my place I don't feel like it's my place to say to somebody who's hugely religiously traumatized, Oh, but like come back. If you just were at this church instead of that church, it would have been better. It's interesting becausecause sometimes when I talk about how I like I'm a little bit jealous of religious people, that like having this built in community, having a worldview that you can sort of fall back on, having you know, some amount of comfort about the everlasting nature of the soul. you've tempered me in those moments and you've been like, nowank It's not all puppy dogs over here It's not all puppy dogs. and a lot of times to create an in group, people create an out group And that's very dangerous, especially when it comes to something that's as important as religion where you're talking about fundamental truths, if you're talking about a group of people who can't access fundamental truths or who are removed from the deepest love that is available to us as humans, like That can be very, very dangerous. I remember once I went to a Pentecostal church, a pew jumping church as the pastor described it It was called Church O the Woods. Did you jump any pews? I did not jump any pews, but I, you know, I felt it. I felt it. I felt my hands going up. I felt the magic The thing happened So I was like, what the hell is happening? Like the thing is happening, I am moved, I am transcended, I am, you know, not jumping over pews, but I'm about to. Nice And then during the prayers The pastor started railing against the Pentecostal church across the street And how they were doomed and fallen And I was like, Oh man, that's a bummer. Did you need that part? You just transcended me, man. We don't need to go here. Can't we just sing and dance? Do we have to go there It was like, prray for our fallen brethren across the way Church of the woods. Man, Church or of the woods sounds amazing. It sounds like you actually just go into the woods Trcend. Pretty good church, man. It was pretty good church I was looking at a bunch of interviews with John Green because I was gonna to do this. And also I'm trying to learn from good interviewers and how they do their thing because it's not particularly easy. There's a bunch of stuff you use your brain in a lot of ways And you did a wild card with Rachel Martin on NPR And I was scrolling through the comments because that's what I do. I wonder how you feel about this number one comment, first comment with a thousand likes I think John Greene is my pastor Yeah, I mean, that's nice to hear. You gonna get people to jump some pews? I don't think I'm gonna get anybody to jump over pews. And indeed, I don't want to because that stuff is so powerful that it's tricky I don't want to have that kind of power over people I don't think anybody should want to have that kind of power over people. I'm suspicious of people who want that. I think I used to want that when I was in my twenties, but that's a byproduct of being in your twenties. You're not allowed to want it in your forties. You wanted to be a pastor that would get people to jump over abuse Well, I wanted to be a pastor who would get people pretty enthusiastic I was never going to be a pew jumping church guy, But you wanted to you wanted to have that that power. Yeah. I mean, I literally wanted to be a pastor and I wanted to be a pastor partly because I wanted to, you know to flock. Yeah make people feel those big feelings. And help people through the biggest, most difficult parts of their lives. Sure. But I'm trying to get to the thing that you were saying just then, which is like the difference about how you were feeling about it in your twenties you wanted to be like the the leader of this group. right in a really powerful way. Yeah, the leader of the group, for sure. Yeah I don't think that's universal among pastors, by the way. I think lots of pastors go into it for primarily service related reasons. I'm not sure that I was one of those people. Yeah, and you probably would have ended up there. I would have gotten there I would have gotten there But it would have been a journey How do I feel about Somebody saying that and lots of people up voting it, I feel grateful. But I also feel like Humans need better third places than the internet. Yeah. And they deserve better third places than the internet. and so I worry about them if I'm their pastor. because Uh, I worry that I'm place where I do that work is not suited to that work didid it anyway Yeah, and look, I've always been conscious of that, Hank. L even in two thousand seven when we had like four hundred YouTube subscribers, I was very conscious of the fact that people were taking us seriously and as a result, we needed to The privilege of being in their lives seriously As a writer, you know, I try to remember that Young people are giving me, usually young people are giving me a seat at the table in their lives when they're forming their values, which is very serious business. And I should try not to mess that up if I can both in the way that I write and in the way that I in public or live in public So what are the weird things about you and I is that we've been making Vlog Brothers videos for twenty years. There's not a lot of people who are still at it. And of the ones who are, they don't have a steady sized audience. right the way that we have. We basically have the same number of viewers now that we had in like twenty twelve. And we've had peaks and we've had valleys, but like we've never down to a place where it feels like it's really worth doing it anymore. I can't really figure out why I think that some of it is the quality of the audience that we got from the beginning. it was just like the kinds of folks that we were reaching Some of it is that we are trying, like in those valleys we're like, okay, this is starting to look worrying. What should we do about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. we start to do a little clickbait We're not above it Certainly not But I wonder to what extent like and I've never thought about this before, but like You're B desesire and a little bit of training and having a flock Part of that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it might be a part of it. I think that the biggest thing is that We changed with our audience. We've grown with our audience And there's a lot of luck involved in that At the end of his life, Mark Twain was asked, what's the difference between you and Brett Hart, this other comedian from the West who is a beloved comic writer who never really ascended into the you know, the literary pantheon the way Twain did And Twain said and I was like, what's the difference between you and Bret Hart and these other guys And Twain said, they were kidding, I was preaching. And I do think on some level We've been preaching the whole time. Now you know, it's not religious preaching But it's preaching it's trying to talk to each other and an audience about the big stuff at the center of human life, whether that's grief or love or astronomy I'd say you talk a fair amount about religion, but I actually hear you talk less about Twain And I know that he was also a subject of study for you in school. Yeah That's true. It's true. I double majd in English and religion. You're asking me a lot of questions about religion. You're not asking me any questions about planain And that is the tease. If you want to finish, just search Hans, Hank Green, wherever you get podcasts and follow the show. N episodes every Thursday