From Young Adult Romance to the World's Deadliest Infectious Disease – Writer John Green takes on TB

It’s hard to overstate how popular writer John Green is. His most famous book, The Fault in Our Stars – a novel about teenagers with cancer, young love, and fate – has sold tens of millions of copies. The film based on the book brought in more than $300 million and it’s still popular to this day.

Green has become a YouTube star and leader of online communities of fans including Nerdfighteria, as well as a co-host of an annual fundraiser for Project for Awesome. He's also passionate about public health. Green is a member of the board of trustees for Partners in Health and posts regular videos about it.

A trip to Sierra Leone in west Africa got Green interested in tuberculosis. Now he’s written a book about that ancient disease: Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.

There are more characters than numbers in the book – from Henry, the charismatic young man John met who appears throughout the story, to the thin and pale women who once made people perceive TB as sexy (really). The book brings a star quality to an often-forgotten infection. Green hopes he can focus the attention of his dedicated audience on this leading global killer. His work to bring attention to TB comes at a dire time, as the incidence of drug-resistant TB grows and the U.S. government slashes funding for global TB care and research.

In this episode of One World, One Health, John Green chats with host Maggie Fox about the book, why he wrote it, and what he hopes its publication will accomplish.