I’m a relatively recent fan of the Vlogbrothers. I’ve been working my way through all of their videos during my workouts because they’re a lot easier to muddle through if I’ve got something else to focus on, and I have to say that I’ve become a huge fan of John Green’s voice. In a lot of his recordings, he sounds so calm and soothing that I find myself feeling more relaxed, no matter what I’m doing while listening to him. I love Hank Green’s videos as much as I love John Green’s, but I don’t enjoy his voice the same way I do John’s. If I want to feel excited about something or to get psyched up about something I’m passionate about, then I’d listen to Hank Green.

As a result, I was very intrigued when John announced that he was starting a solo podcast in which he would review “different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.” He has called it “The Anthropocene Reviewed” and his first episode was a review of Canadian Geese and Diet Dr Pepper. I’m not going to spoil the review by telling you how many stars he gave each of those things, but I am going to insist that the parts leading up to the numerical rating are the absolute best.

As a huge fan of John Green’s Vlogbrothers videos that were themed as “Thoughts from ________,” I enjoyed these podcasts because they sound just like an extended version of one of the videos. In the first episode, he talks about the history of Canadian Geese, shares some interesting facts, discusses how they’ve participated in the Anthropocene era of the world, and how we Humans have affected them. I learned a lot and I got to do it all while listening to the soothing tones of a wonderful writer. As if that wasn’t enough, he then went on to discuss the soda flavor known as Dr Pepper, which is incredibly interesting to think about. It is a flavor made up of other flavors and there is no naturally occurring equivalent that we can compare it to, so Dr Pepper would not exist without Humans.

The second episode, he discusses Halley’s Comet and Cholera, which are both interesting topics. Halley’s comet appears once every Human lifetime. Some people get to see it twice, if they’re lucky, but never more than that (at least by current life expectancies. Who knows what’ll happen in the next hundred years in terms of Human lifespans…). As a result, its participation in the Anthropocene era is more as a spectator, witnessing the drastic change of the world and Humanity at larger. Cholera, on the other hand, is what happens when people gather large numbers and don’t have access to clean water. Cholera is a side-effect of human expansion and continuously pops up because the people with the resources to end it don’t care about it. John does a much better job addressing the issues that have resulted in an ongoing Cholera epidemic, but I feel like my summary is accurate if a little angrier than John’s analysis. Sorry, but preventable stuff like that pisses me off.

While I haven’t found any kind of regular updating schedule for the podcast yet, I think that it will start to gather steam as more and more people start listening. John and Hank are incredibly busy people who somehow find the time to keep doing incredible new things, so I really can’t fault John for not having a specific schedule right now. He has a lot going on these days, by anyone’s standards. I say I’m a fan of the Green Brothers, but I haven’t even started to plumb the depths of their content outside of their YouTube videos. There’s just so much and I’ve already got so much going on!

Anyway, I suggest checking out John Green’s new podcast. There’s plenty to laugh about, plenty to think about, and you get to listen to Mellifluous tones of the elder Green brother’s voice for almost twenty minutes at a stretch. That’s a win all around.