Everything Is Tuberculosis cover art

Everything Is Tuberculosis

The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Everything Is Tuberculosis

By: John Green
Narrated by: John Green
Try Premium Plus free

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $21.99

Buy Now for $21.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. 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 and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 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.

©2025 John Green (P)2025 Penguin Audio Contagious Diseases History History & Philosophy Physical Illness & Disease Science
All stars
Most relevant  
Novelist, YouTuber and observer John Green presents a history of the treatment of tuberculosis and the people it has affected. While this book starts with some wide-ranging trivia relating to the historical influence of TB, and returns there occasionally, central to the book is the story of the treatment of TB, and the story of one family affected by it. John Green presents this with all the humanity you'd expect from a man who "fell into" an interest in tuberculosis while visiting a school he helped to fund. A great listen.

On hope, humanity and tuberculosis

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
well researched and well told look into TB. makes strong arguments for better and more just delivery of global health

thoroughly recommend

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Compelling. Well read and well written. This was worth waiting for. Bravo John, and bravo Henry Rider.

Nailed it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It's a beautiful narrative conveying harrowing information, lovingly conveyed in a way that it's clear the author is capable of listening and not trying to center his voice, but those who were there. I loved this book - ate it up in less than a day and non-fictions books read well by their author are particularly special. 5 stars.

Love, empathy and hope

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
really well narrated and written. I did not think I would find TB as interesting and frustrating as I did. many thanks to John for making the story so engaging.

super interesting (and frustrating)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found this book extremely interesting and also heartbreaking. I hope we can choose a world where people don’t have to die from TB

Great read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A fascinating, thoroughly researched and beautifully presented study of TB. Like many people, I give it little thought from my comfortable life in a society where health care is taken for granted. My eyes are open and I am recruited to the cause.

Think you know about TB? Think again!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I'm sad the book ended too quickly, I enjoy his perspective.
Awful truth of inquity with a hopeful outlook as always from John.

Beautifully hopeful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The only reason I started this book was a love of John Green's YouTube videos and his book The Anthropocene Reviewed. Why did I keep listening, hours in? Because of Henry Reider and his mother, Isatu.

I'm ashamed to admit that, prior to reading this book, I thought of Tuberculosis as a 19th century disease. Of course, you'd hear about it from time to time, but much like Ebola, it seemed like a problem that was distant - separate from the 21st century world.

Tuberculosis is a here and now problem. It highlights the role racism and socio-economics plays in global health inequalities.

This isn't a niche essay on the history and impacts of Tuberculosis in society. This is a book for all of us. It's a book about injustice, humanity and creating spirals of virtue.

This is a book for all of us

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.