Anthropocene Reviewed

You might know John Green from Paper Towns, The Fault is in our Stars, Turtles all the way down, or any of his other books. You might also know him from the movies based on his books, or his long-running YouTube video series with his brother Hank – the VlogBrothers. Really, John Green’s greatest talent is that he seems to be special while also being ubiquitous. He is an incredibly talented writer and storyteller, and he brings all of that to Anthropocene, where he rates various aspects of the human-centric planet on a five-star scale. Just the idea of it is absurd. The scope of it is daunting. How do you take a wildly complex, multi- faceted and layered idea, and bring it down to a single rating? John does it.

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Tackling two separate concepts per show, he takes listeners on a journey that can at times bounce between brilliant jaunts of curiosity and absolute spoken word poetry, bringing you to a well thought out conclusion for the rating that, more often than not, I find myself agreeing with. Whether it is “Prom and the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment” or “Hawaiian Pizza and Viral Meningitis” John Green starts you someplace unexpected, brings you on a journey through what you know, pushes you into a real of learning new things, and finishes with you in the exact place you needed to be (even if you didn’t know it in advance.

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My only criticism, if there is to be one, is that Anthropocene only releases new episodes infrequently, so be prepared to fall in love and then wait a long time.