Complexly, John Green
37 episodes listed below
Small things, rated against vastness.
The Anthropocene Reviewed treats ordinary and unlikely subjects as openings into larger human questions. A tree, a vaccine, a childhood alien fear, or a movie scene can become a measured essay about survival, memory, absurdity, and awe.
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The Anthropocene Reviewed is a literary essay show disguised, only partly, as a series of ratings. Its method is simple enough: take one subject, consider it closely, and assign it stars. The actual experience is stranger and more generous. A single ginkgo tree can lead into botany, local history, fossil time, and the feeling of standing under yellow leaves as they fall. An orbital sunrise can hold space travel, astronauts, art assignments, friendship, and the humility of describing something never personally seen. The opening scene of Penguins of Madagascar can coexist with the smallpox vaccine because the show trusts listeners to follow tonal turns without being hurried through them. It is funny, but rarely performs lightness for long. It is grave, but wary of making suffering look tidy. Illness appears often: OCD, vertigo, smallpox, pandemics, and the frightening fragility of consciousness. So do forms of relief, including vaccines, friendship, family patience, art, trees, games, and the moon. John Green’s presence is central, not as a detached critic, but as someone who lets research and confession sit beside each other. The essays like exactness: named paintings, dates, astronauts, diseases, childhood objects, and the strange textures of ordinary life. They also like uncertainty. A memory may be embarrassing, a fear may be irrational, and a hopeful image may still feel a little cheesy. That mixed feeling is part of the architecture. The five-star ending is not just a gimmick; it is a miniature verdict that often undercuts the essay while completing it. The show’s rhythm is measured, with clean turns around breaks and recurring thanks to listeners who suggest topics. It makes room for melancholy without becoming airless. It makes room for humor without flattening pain. Its cultural criticism is grounded in objects, scenes, and bodies rather than abstract argument. The Anthropocene Reviewed is best heard by people who enjoy being led from a peculiar detail toward a much larger question, then returned to the detail with a changed sense of scale.
Made for: For listeners drawn to reflective personal essays, cultural history, science, and artful digression. It especially suits people who like careful melancholy, dry humor, and criticism that keeps a human pulse.
What sets it apart: The show turns the familiar review format into a compact philosophical instrument. Its ratings of trees, vaccines, games, fears, and moons feel playful on the surface, but the essays use them to measure luck, mortality, memory, and wonder.
The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. On The Anthropocene Reviewed, #1 New York Times bestselling author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down) reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale. WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including On the Media, Snap Judgment, Death, Sex & Money, Nancy and Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin. © WNYC Studios
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
John Green turns ratings into reflective essays about how history, nature, popular culture, and private experience become entangled.
John Green uses the structure of a review to connect ordinary subjects with the memories, histories, and anxieties gathered around them. The pairings can be deliberately improbable, as in "Penguins of Madagascar and the Smallpox Vaccine" and "Gray Aliens and Rock Paper…
Gray aliens and ginkgo leaves share a five-star scale, then quietly rearrange your emotional furniture.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A quiet, observant piece that turns one ginkgo tree into a meditation on attention.
The episode gives a small piece of Indianapolis room to breathe. John Green starts with a college memory and follows it into a single ginkgo tree, then into the leaves, shape, and the way it disappears and returns with the season.
A joke about a movie opening becomes a clear-eyed meditation on dread and medicine.
The piece opens in a comic register, then lets the ground drop out from under it. A scene from Penguins of Madagascar and the nuisance of a familiar blowhard set up a lighter mood, but the real business is the smallpox vaccine and the fear wrapped around it.
A self-review that folds illness, writing, and goodbye into one understated episode.
John Green uses the episode to review himself, and the result is more revealing than tidy. He talks through the indefinite hiatus after the next episode, the dizziness and labyrinthitis that left him in bed, the trail he cut through the woods at home, and the old review format…
A listener shaped study of Dazzle Camouflage, pandemics, headphones, and the moon.
Seventeen listener suggested topics give the episode its shape, but the real subject is how Green answers strangers: with gratitude, grief, and an inbox that sits at the center of the exchange. The opening makes the point plainly.
John Green turns rock-paper-scissors and gray-alien fear into a calm, cumulative essay about luck and unease.
John Green braids rock-paper-scissors with childhood fear of gray aliens into a calm, funny essay about how luck and dread leak into ordinary life.
Slow, unhurried Vermont conversations on gender, class, and aging, hosted by Erica Heilman.
Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal argue through media meltdowns, trans policy, and psychiatric skepticism.
Michael Buerk chairs a panel cross-examining witnesses on the week's contested moral question.
Authors Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon interview writers and dissect essays like Toni Morrison's.
John Green reviews one ginkgo tree near his Indianapolis home.
Two reviews, one uneasy hinge.
John Green reviews his own podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed while announcing an indefinite hiatus, tracing the show's origins to his recovery from labyrinthitis following the publication of Turtles All the Way Down.
John Green reviews 17 topics suggested by listeners, ranging from tweenhood, The Mountain Goats, and headphones to Dazzle Camouflage, bath bombs, and the moon.
John Green reviews gray aliens and rock paper scissors on The Anthropocene Reviewed, exploring how both illuminate the way human minds are shaped by information and cultural transmission.