Photo by Marina Waters
John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, joins us to tell a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.
In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.
John Green will be in conversation with infectious disease epidemiologist and award winning science communicator Jessica Malaty Rivera.
About the Author
John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of books including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down, and The Anthropocene Reviewed. With his brother, Hank, John has co-created many online video projects, including Vlogbrothers and the educational channel Crash Course. John serves on the board of trustees for the global health nonprofit Partners In Health and spoke at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on the Fight to End Tuberculosis. John lives with his family in Indianapolis. You can visit him online at johngreenbooks.com or join the TB Fighters working to end tuberculosis at tbfighters.org
About the Moderator
Jessica Malaty Rivera is an infectious disease epidemiologist and award winning science communicator. She earned her MS in Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Georgetown School of Medicine and has dedicated the last 15 years of her career to emerging disease surveillance, public health policy, and vaccine advocacy. Her specialty is in translating complex scientific concepts into impactful, judgement-free, and accessible information for a diverse audience. From 2020-2021, she served as the Science Communication Lead for The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. Currently, she is a Research Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator, a Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, and a Senior Advisor at the deBeaumont Foundation. Between her day jobs and being a full time mother to three little kids, she also dedicates several hours a week to promoting science literacy and debunking misinformation on social media.
COVID SAFETY PROTOCOLS: We strongly encourage attendees to wear masks at our events, although they will NOT be required. We will have masks available for attendees who want them. Do NOT attend the event if you, or any member of your family, have any respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough, runny nose, and/or sore throat), or have had a significant exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. We have virtual options available, or we can refund your ticket(s).