July 8, 2025 • 17 mins
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: author of The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, the recent Everything is Tuberculosis, and more, John Green!
Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask AI” and audio rebuses.
Subscribe to The Puzzler podcast wherever you get your podcasts!
"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas.
Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.
The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions.
Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. This mini
puzzle is inspired by our guest, John Green, author of
the mega bestseller The Fault in Our Stars. The title
of that book comes from Shakespeare, who had a line
in his play Julius Caesar, the faultier Brutus is not
in our stars, but in ourselves. So my question to
listeners is, and to Greg, what other books or movies
(00:24):
have titles inspired by Shakespeare lines. I'll give you an example.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was from Hamlet. The
Answers to Others and more puzzles Puzzles after the break,
Hello puzzlers, Welcome back to the Puzzler podcast The Laudanum
(00:48):
in Your Puzzle Pack Medicine. I am your host.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hey, we've gone back to the nineteen l You.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Know it's the topic of John's book, so I thought
it was appropriate. I am your host A J. Jacobson.
I'm here with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Plisk. Greg. Before
the break, we asked you and listeners to come up
with books or movies with titles that come from Shakespeare lines,
such as our guest today, John Green's The Fault In
our Stars. Didst thou come up with? Anything I did? Is?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The one that I always think of is the Tomorrow
and Tomorrow speech from Macbeth, because there are a bunch
of titles in there. The probably most notable one is
sound in the Sound and the Fury Right, which is
right at the end of that speech. An Alistair MacLean
book called The Way to Dusty Death, which is in
the middle of that, And I think there are several others.
(01:40):
I thought of Agatha Christie because by the Pricking of
My Thumbs is an Agatha Christie book and it's a
Miss Marple mystery, and the rest of that line, something
Wicked this Way comes is a Ray Bradbury.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
That's amazing. First of all, very impressed with your Shakespeare
title knowledge.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I did it.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Secondly, one I love. I mean, can you imagine being
a writer where you write a sentence where the first
part it becomes a famous site and the second part
like one sentence. There are a couple more. We've got
Band of Brothers, the TV show What Dreams May Come,
All the World's a Stooge, a three Stooges episode, of course,
(02:21):
and the above mentioned The Fault in Our Stars, which
brings us to our wonderful guest, the author of many books,
Turtles All the Way Down and the new nonfiction bestseller
Everything Is Tuberculosis. Welcome back, John Green.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
It's great to be with you as always.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Ah, I love it. And we were just talking about
the line the fault in our Stars from Julius Sieger,
and I thought about that line a lot when reading
your new book, because that line is all about how, oh,
the fault, dear brutus is not in our stars but
in ourselves. The meaning it wasn't luck, It wasn't fair,
It was our bad decision to blow. And I feel
(03:02):
that may be true sometimes, but a lot of times
it's not true. For life, the stars really are and
with tuberculosis and disease, a luck plays a huge part.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, it's a birth lottery in a lot of ways.
I mean, if you're born in the United States, you
have like one ten thousandth the chance of contracting tuberculosis
as you do if you're born in Sierra Leone. And
so that's just a birth lottery that doesn't reflect anything
about human choice or anything. What it does reflect a
little bit, though, is human built systems of resource allocation
(03:36):
of resource distribution, and so those are things that we
can change. So it's an interesting place with tuberculosis. It
lies in between these worlds, where the fault is in
the stars in the sense that you don't pick whether
you get tuberculosis. Anybody who breathes can get tuberculosis. But
the fault is also with ourselves in the sense that
(03:57):
we need to build better systems that distribute cure for
tuberculosis to more people.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Oh man, that's lovely, absolutely true. The book is really
inspiring a call for action. But since the John Green book,
it is also filled with delightful information, as are your novels.
And I hope you take this as a compliment, John,
but I think your novels could be the best most
(04:23):
trivia filled novels ever.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think that's because we both have a passed with
Mental Floss magazine AJ And when I was writing my
first couple books, I was working a full time for
Mental Floss, and so I was constantly writing trivia alongside
writing novels. And so I love, I love including some
trivia in my novels for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Oh yeah, it is great. And by the way, that's
how I met you is Mental Flaws. So I'm grateful
to Mentlaw and Neelie Lohman was the editor of Mental
Flaws and she is a producer now on the Puzzler.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
So it's a small world when it comes to Mental Floss.
We're all still interconnected, and.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Will and Mango we're just guests on the Bustle.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes, And I was an avid reader of Mental Floor really,
so I just received all the you know, greatness.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You're part of the first to pay me to write,
is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
That is great to know. Well, I know that you wrote.
You wrote a book for them all about cocktail party banter,
how to survive at a cocktail party. Uh, do you
remember any of the are any of the banter that
you need to survive?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Well, very very little. And indeed I struggle at cocktail party.
So I probably should reread that book.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
You should, You should reread It's good.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I often get asked what's my favorite fact? And I
always struggle. I came up with one just moments ago.
For this, Michaelangelo, when he was painting the Sistine Chapel,
wrote these letters saying how much he knew the Sistine
Chapel sucked and it was his worst thing ever and
That always makes me feel a little better about that
he's encouraging.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's always. It's always to know that even the greatest
artists feel like they're complete frauds.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
One other memory I have of mental Fluss, which you
wrote about in the intro to your Mental Flauss book,
was that we celebrated Genghis khan Is Dead day. Do
you remember that?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I do.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I do remember that.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
It was because we had a diverse staff. We didn't
want to commit to one religion for the December holidays.
But everyone can agree Genghis Khan kind of a.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Jerk, or at least that he's dead, right, I mean,
the one thing that we're absolutely sure about is that
Genghis Khani is dead. You're a regardless of your position
on Genghis Khan's leadership style, we can agree that he
is deceased and that is something that we will acknowledge
at our holiday party.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
That in this world of misinformation, I feel we can
agree on that. Although there are Genghis Khan apologists who
say he increased trade routes and all that. But yeah,
I'm not a huge fan. Anyway, back to mental Floss,
we have a puzzle today that pays tribute to mental flows.
It's called mental to dental, and it's a puzzle all
(07:06):
about phrases where you replace the M at the start
of the first word with a D and magically transform
it into something else. So, like mental flaws, you replace
the M, it becomes dental floss. So I might give
a clue such a for that one, I would have
given a clue, like a trivia magazine becomes something to
(07:26):
clean your teeth. So mental change the M to a D.
Mental flows to dental floss. I'll give you another example,
just to make sure it's clear. If you change the
first M to a D in this phrase, a winner
of our nation's beauty pageant becomes an insult to the
United States. So in that one it would be miss
(07:47):
America becomes dys America. And all of these, by the way,
are not necessarily real phenomena. They might be sort of fictional,
as in our first example, are you ready, I'm ready?
All right, replace the first M with a D and
a Lindsey low Hand movie magically transforms into a film
(08:08):
about female college advisors.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Okay, I can think of a few Lindsay low Hand movies.
But I have to say I'm not deeply familiar with
her ouvra and may need to rely on my chief
puzzle officer here for a hand.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I'm just afraid you were going to say that. I
immediately thought of The love Bug, which it definitely is not.
What's the second half of the question.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
A film about female college advisors? Well, let me help
with the first part.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
This is a team getting in there through the second part.
What are college advisors? Are they deans? Are they counselor
not deans? Dean? And we've changed the D.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I've got it. I've got it.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Okay, good engineered it.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Way to reverse engineer it. It is mean girls becomes
dean girls.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh you got that. Teamwork, nailed it nice, exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Thank you Greg, Thank you John.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
We were just talking about teamwork before.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Nothing is life is a collaboration.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
There you go. I have about this one. Change the
first M to a D, and Samuel Longhorm Clemens transforms
into his evil.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Twin M Very good, very good. I think I have
this one. Mark Twain becomes Dark Twain.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That is it Dark Twain. Now from my deep internet
googling research, I found out you wrote your college thesis
on a Mark Twain.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Wow, you did do some deep research.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Well, actually Andrea did, but thank you Andrea.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I did. I wrote my college thesis about Mark Twain's
relationship with Christian science. He wrote a book about Mary
Baker Eddie called Christian Science, and that's what I wrote
my college thesis about. I don't know if it holds up,
haven't reread it in almost thirty years. But it was
a fun It was a fun research project for me.
It was one of the first times I really took
academic seriously. To be perfectly honest.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
With you, I'm guessing he wasn't a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
He wasn't a huge fan. I mean and generally he
wasn't a huge fan of religion. But he particularly disliked
sort of new religions and new American religions, which he
saw as a threat to his his idea of America.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, let's let's stick with a little literary action with
this is a George Elliott novel that becomes uh, pickle
herbs on your dental string. So it's not two words,
it's a four word phrase.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Well, the George Elliot novel that immediately comes to mind
is Middle March.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Oh, I love it.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I don't think that Didal March doesn't work silas uh
Man does. Another doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well, I'll tell you one of the last word in
both of them is a reference to where we met.
It's a callback to the dental string.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It's a reference. Oh it's oh, it's dill on the floss.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Still on the exactly mill on the flosh.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Because I read it in college and everything, and then
I completely forgot about it. That poor novel.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I've never read it, so it's even poorer in my estimation,
I will say again. Andrea up with her excellent googling skills,
found that you were inspired by George Eliot in The
Fault in the in Our Stars if you remember that.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh yeah, I don't remember how, but I mean I
read George Elliott a lot back when I was writing
that book, so I'm not surprised. How was I inspired?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
You inspired? And glad you asked you inspired because she
wrote a fictional epigraph meaning like a quote at the
beginning of the book that was not a real quote,
and you did the same thing in The Fault in
Our Stars and I steal from her. She's angry, No,
she'll forget me, which is boring, as we've established, Well, yes,
(12:16):
it's a it's a lovely thing. It's very very delightful.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
All right.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I've got one more for you, which is, uh, this
is a journalist who exposes corruption becomes a guy who
uses garden instruments to gather up aquatic birds. So very
very common situation.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Very common. We've all been there that I think that
would be a muckraker becomes a duck raker.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
That is exactly what it is. A muckraker becomes a
duck raker.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And the muckrakers were, of course, the progressive era folks
like Upton Sinclair and Ida tarbin Well who exposed they
like they were great.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I mean they were Oh, I mean the Jungle is
still a harrowing, harrowing read.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, I haven't read it. I'm luckily I'm a vegetarian.
So I think they could read it now.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, you could read it now. You'd be just fine.
You'd be like, what a great decision I made?
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Exactly Well well done, John, you cruised on through. And
by the way, I know that you are also in
addition to the spelling bee, you are also a crossword guide,
right do you still do the crossword.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
I do the crossword every Sunday with my spouse. It's
a third thing in our relationship. So it's a sight
of joint rapture for us.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And you have appeared a few times. I think you
and your books, and were you ever doing the puzzle
when you appeared?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I have done the puzzle when I appeared, and I
can confirm that it is as delightful as you would imagine.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, I liked your quote somewhere where you said that
you feel bad for the ninety seven percent of Americans
who have never read the fault in our stars, but
you were quite happy to know that you had one.
And I mean, think of me. I appeared in a
Saturday because I'm obscure, Like, think of the ninety nine
point nine percent of Americans who've never heard of me. Sure,
(14:21):
but I know me, so even.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It's such a fun feeling, I mean, it really is.
Were you doing the puzzle when you found it out
or did it time?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I was someone spoiled it, but it was okay, It
was okay, and then I went to do it. Well,
there were a couple It's a little complicated because then
there was a follow up puzzle where I was also in,
and that one I was so rattled by it. That
one I was doing and I was so rattled that
I couldn't finish the puzzle because it was just too overwhelming,
(14:52):
So it broke my streak. Well, thank you, John, We
got you for one more episode, which I'm very excited about.
And everyone pick up his book Everything Is Tuberculosis, which
is wonderful, fascinating, inspiring and filled with delightful trivia because
we all grew up on our mental floss as one
(15:13):
of our first jobs. In the meantime, I do have
an extra credit for the folks at home. Remember this
as you change the initial M in the phrase to
a D and get a whole new phrase. A demented
physicist becomes someone who studies fathers. A demented physicist becomes
someone who studies fathers in randomized control trials.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Those don't have to be two different things.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
You could be a demented physicist who studies fathers. You're right,
but that's a different.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Puzzon is a different puzzle, But you will get credit
nonetheless if you crack the code. And we will be
back tomorrow with John and more puzzles, And in the meantime,
if you have a minute, we would love it if
you would rate the puzzler on whatever podcast platform you
listen to it on, because it makes a huge difference
(16:05):
in people finding the puzzler, which we would love. And
we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles. They
will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Hey, puzzlers, it's your chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska here
with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. John
Green joined us for a game we called Everything Is
John Green, based upon his excellent book Everything Is Tuberculosis,
which connects all kinds of fascinating things to the history
(16:39):
of what is still our most deadly infection. In this puzzle,
we took phrases that have nothing in them and change
them to phrases with everything in them. And your extra
credit clue was this, This everything phrase is what Oscar
Wilde said when he arrived in America but was feeling
kind of stupid.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's a thing you say when you come through customs.
And the answer is I have everything to declare, but
my genius. Of course, Oscar Wilds was I have nothing
to declare but my genius, but that's why we call
it a puzzle, and that's why you're listening to the Puzzler.
Catch you next time.
Hello puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. This mini
puzzle is inspired by our guest, John Green, author of
the mega bestseller The Fault in Our Stars. The title
of that book comes from Shakespeare, who had a line
in his play Julius Caesar, the faultier Brutus is not
in our stars, but in ourselves. So my question to
listeners is, and to Greg, what other books or movies
(00:24):
have titles inspired by Shakespeare lines. I'll give you an example.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was from Hamlet. The
Answers to Others and more puzzles Puzzles after the break,
Hello puzzlers, Welcome back to the Puzzler podcast The Laudanum
(00:48):
in Your Puzzle Pack Medicine. I am your host.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hey, we've gone back to the nineteen l You.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Know it's the topic of John's book, so I thought
it was appropriate. I am your host A J. Jacobson.
I'm here with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Plisk. Greg. Before
the break, we asked you and listeners to come up
with books or movies with titles that come from Shakespeare lines,
such as our guest today, John Green's The Fault In
our Stars. Didst thou come up with? Anything I did? Is?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The one that I always think of is the Tomorrow
and Tomorrow speech from Macbeth, because there are a bunch
of titles in there. The probably most notable one is
sound in the Sound and the Fury Right, which is
right at the end of that speech. An Alistair MacLean
book called The Way to Dusty Death, which is in
the middle of that, And I think there are several others.
(01:40):
I thought of Agatha Christie because by the Pricking of
My Thumbs is an Agatha Christie book and it's a
Miss Marple mystery, and the rest of that line, something
Wicked this Way comes is a Ray Bradbury.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
That's amazing. First of all, very impressed with your Shakespeare
title knowledge.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I did it.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Secondly, one I love. I mean, can you imagine being
a writer where you write a sentence where the first
part it becomes a famous site and the second part
like one sentence. There are a couple more. We've got
Band of Brothers, the TV show What Dreams May Come,
All the World's a Stooge, a three Stooges episode, of course,
(02:21):
and the above mentioned The Fault in Our Stars, which
brings us to our wonderful guest, the author of many books,
Turtles All the Way Down and the new nonfiction bestseller
Everything Is Tuberculosis. Welcome back, John Green.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
It's great to be with you as always.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Ah, I love it. And we were just talking about
the line the fault in our Stars from Julius Sieger,
and I thought about that line a lot when reading
your new book, because that line is all about how, oh,
the fault, dear brutus is not in our stars but
in ourselves. The meaning it wasn't luck, It wasn't fair,
It was our bad decision to blow. And I feel
(03:02):
that may be true sometimes, but a lot of times
it's not true. For life, the stars really are and
with tuberculosis and disease, a luck plays a huge part.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, it's a birth lottery in a lot of ways.
I mean, if you're born in the United States, you
have like one ten thousandth the chance of contracting tuberculosis
as you do if you're born in Sierra Leone. And
so that's just a birth lottery that doesn't reflect anything
about human choice or anything. What it does reflect a
little bit, though, is human built systems of resource allocation
(03:36):
of resource distribution, and so those are things that we
can change. So it's an interesting place with tuberculosis. It
lies in between these worlds, where the fault is in
the stars in the sense that you don't pick whether
you get tuberculosis. Anybody who breathes can get tuberculosis. But
the fault is also with ourselves in the sense that
(03:57):
we need to build better systems that distribute cure for
tuberculosis to more people.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Oh man, that's lovely, absolutely true. The book is really
inspiring a call for action. But since the John Green book,
it is also filled with delightful information, as are your novels.
And I hope you take this as a compliment, John,
but I think your novels could be the best most
(04:23):
trivia filled novels ever.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think that's because we both have a passed with
Mental Floss magazine AJ And when I was writing my
first couple books, I was working a full time for
Mental Floss, and so I was constantly writing trivia alongside
writing novels. And so I love, I love including some
trivia in my novels for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Oh yeah, it is great. And by the way, that's
how I met you is Mental Flaws. So I'm grateful
to Mentlaw and Neelie Lohman was the editor of Mental
Flaws and she is a producer now on the Puzzler.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
So it's a small world when it comes to Mental Floss.
We're all still interconnected, and.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Will and Mango we're just guests on the Bustle.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes, And I was an avid reader of Mental Floor really,
so I just received all the you know, greatness.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You're part of the first to pay me to write,
is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
That is great to know. Well, I know that you wrote.
You wrote a book for them all about cocktail party banter,
how to survive at a cocktail party. Uh, do you
remember any of the are any of the banter that
you need to survive?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Well, very very little. And indeed I struggle at cocktail party.
So I probably should reread that book.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
You should, You should reread It's good.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I often get asked what's my favorite fact? And I
always struggle. I came up with one just moments ago.
For this, Michaelangelo, when he was painting the Sistine Chapel,
wrote these letters saying how much he knew the Sistine
Chapel sucked and it was his worst thing ever and
That always makes me feel a little better about that
he's encouraging.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's always. It's always to know that even the greatest
artists feel like they're complete frauds.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
One other memory I have of mental Fluss, which you
wrote about in the intro to your Mental Flauss book,
was that we celebrated Genghis khan Is Dead day. Do
you remember that?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I do.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I do remember that.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
It was because we had a diverse staff. We didn't
want to commit to one religion for the December holidays.
But everyone can agree Genghis Khan kind of a.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Jerk, or at least that he's dead, right, I mean,
the one thing that we're absolutely sure about is that
Genghis Khani is dead. You're a regardless of your position
on Genghis Khan's leadership style, we can agree that he
is deceased and that is something that we will acknowledge
at our holiday party.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
That in this world of misinformation, I feel we can
agree on that. Although there are Genghis Khan apologists who
say he increased trade routes and all that. But yeah,
I'm not a huge fan. Anyway, back to mental Floss,
we have a puzzle today that pays tribute to mental flows.
It's called mental to dental, and it's a puzzle all
(07:06):
about phrases where you replace the M at the start
of the first word with a D and magically transform
it into something else. So, like mental flaws, you replace
the M, it becomes dental floss. So I might give
a clue such a for that one, I would have
given a clue, like a trivia magazine becomes something to
(07:26):
clean your teeth. So mental change the M to a D.
Mental flows to dental floss. I'll give you another example,
just to make sure it's clear. If you change the
first M to a D in this phrase, a winner
of our nation's beauty pageant becomes an insult to the
United States. So in that one it would be miss
(07:47):
America becomes dys America. And all of these, by the way,
are not necessarily real phenomena. They might be sort of fictional,
as in our first example, are you ready, I'm ready?
All right, replace the first M with a D and
a Lindsey low Hand movie magically transforms into a film
(08:08):
about female college advisors.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Okay, I can think of a few Lindsay low Hand movies.
But I have to say I'm not deeply familiar with
her ouvra and may need to rely on my chief
puzzle officer here for a hand.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I'm just afraid you were going to say that. I
immediately thought of The love Bug, which it definitely is not.
What's the second half of the question.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
A film about female college advisors? Well, let me help
with the first part.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
This is a team getting in there through the second part.
What are college advisors? Are they deans? Are they counselor
not deans? Dean? And we've changed the D.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I've got it. I've got it.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Okay, good engineered it.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Way to reverse engineer it. It is mean girls becomes
dean girls.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh you got that. Teamwork, nailed it nice, exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Thank you Greg, Thank you John.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
We were just talking about teamwork before.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Nothing is life is a collaboration.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
There you go. I have about this one. Change the
first M to a D, and Samuel Longhorm Clemens transforms
into his evil.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Twin M Very good, very good. I think I have
this one. Mark Twain becomes Dark Twain.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That is it Dark Twain. Now from my deep internet
googling research, I found out you wrote your college thesis
on a Mark Twain.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Wow, you did do some deep research.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Well, actually Andrea did, but thank you Andrea.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I did. I wrote my college thesis about Mark Twain's
relationship with Christian science. He wrote a book about Mary
Baker Eddie called Christian Science, and that's what I wrote
my college thesis about. I don't know if it holds up,
haven't reread it in almost thirty years. But it was
a fun It was a fun research project for me.
It was one of the first times I really took
academic seriously. To be perfectly honest.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
With you, I'm guessing he wasn't a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
He wasn't a huge fan. I mean and generally he
wasn't a huge fan of religion. But he particularly disliked
sort of new religions and new American religions, which he
saw as a threat to his his idea of America.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, let's let's stick with a little literary action with
this is a George Elliott novel that becomes uh, pickle
herbs on your dental string. So it's not two words,
it's a four word phrase.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Well, the George Elliot novel that immediately comes to mind
is Middle March.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Oh, I love it.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I don't think that Didal March doesn't work silas uh
Man does. Another doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well, I'll tell you one of the last word in
both of them is a reference to where we met.
It's a callback to the dental string.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It's a reference. Oh it's oh, it's dill on the floss.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Still on the exactly mill on the flosh.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Because I read it in college and everything, and then
I completely forgot about it. That poor novel.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I've never read it, so it's even poorer in my estimation,
I will say again. Andrea up with her excellent googling skills,
found that you were inspired by George Eliot in The
Fault in the in Our Stars if you remember that.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh yeah, I don't remember how, but I mean I
read George Elliott a lot back when I was writing
that book, so I'm not surprised. How was I inspired?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
You inspired? And glad you asked you inspired because she
wrote a fictional epigraph meaning like a quote at the
beginning of the book that was not a real quote,
and you did the same thing in The Fault in
Our Stars and I steal from her. She's angry, No,
she'll forget me, which is boring, as we've established, Well, yes,
(12:16):
it's a it's a lovely thing. It's very very delightful.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
All right.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I've got one more for you, which is, uh, this
is a journalist who exposes corruption becomes a guy who
uses garden instruments to gather up aquatic birds. So very
very common situation.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Very common. We've all been there that I think that
would be a muckraker becomes a duck raker.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
That is exactly what it is. A muckraker becomes a
duck raker.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And the muckrakers were, of course, the progressive era folks
like Upton Sinclair and Ida tarbin Well who exposed they
like they were great.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I mean they were Oh, I mean the Jungle is
still a harrowing, harrowing read.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, I haven't read it. I'm luckily I'm a vegetarian.
So I think they could read it now.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, you could read it now. You'd be just fine.
You'd be like, what a great decision I made?
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Exactly Well well done, John, you cruised on through. And
by the way, I know that you are also in
addition to the spelling bee, you are also a crossword guide,
right do you still do the crossword.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
I do the crossword every Sunday with my spouse. It's
a third thing in our relationship. So it's a sight
of joint rapture for us.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And you have appeared a few times. I think you
and your books, and were you ever doing the puzzle
when you appeared?
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I have done the puzzle when I appeared, and I
can confirm that it is as delightful as you would imagine.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, I liked your quote somewhere where you said that
you feel bad for the ninety seven percent of Americans
who have never read the fault in our stars, but
you were quite happy to know that you had one.
And I mean, think of me. I appeared in a
Saturday because I'm obscure, Like, think of the ninety nine
point nine percent of Americans who've never heard of me. Sure,
(14:21):
but I know me, so even.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It's such a fun feeling, I mean, it really is.
Were you doing the puzzle when you found it out
or did it time?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I was someone spoiled it, but it was okay, It
was okay, and then I went to do it. Well,
there were a couple It's a little complicated because then
there was a follow up puzzle where I was also in,
and that one I was so rattled by it. That
one I was doing and I was so rattled that
I couldn't finish the puzzle because it was just too overwhelming,
(14:52):
So it broke my streak. Well, thank you, John, We
got you for one more episode, which I'm very excited about.
And everyone pick up his book Everything Is Tuberculosis, which
is wonderful, fascinating, inspiring and filled with delightful trivia because
we all grew up on our mental floss as one
(15:13):
of our first jobs. In the meantime, I do have
an extra credit for the folks at home. Remember this
as you change the initial M in the phrase to
a D and get a whole new phrase. A demented
physicist becomes someone who studies fathers. A demented physicist becomes
someone who studies fathers in randomized control trials.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Those don't have to be two different things.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
You could be a demented physicist who studies fathers. You're right,
but that's a different.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Puzzon is a different puzzle, But you will get credit
nonetheless if you crack the code. And we will be
back tomorrow with John and more puzzles, And in the meantime,
if you have a minute, we would love it if
you would rate the puzzler on whatever podcast platform you
listen to it on, because it makes a huge difference
(16:05):
in people finding the puzzler, which we would love. And
we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles. They
will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Hey, puzzlers, it's your chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska here
with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. John
Green joined us for a game we called Everything Is
John Green, based upon his excellent book Everything Is Tuberculosis,
which connects all kinds of fascinating things to the history
(16:39):
of what is still our most deadly infection. In this puzzle,
we took phrases that have nothing in them and change
them to phrases with everything in them. And your extra
credit clue was this, This everything phrase is what Oscar
Wilde said when he arrived in America but was feeling
kind of stupid.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's a thing you say when you come through customs.
And the answer is I have everything to declare, but
my genius. Of course, Oscar Wilds was I have nothing
to declare but my genius, but that's why we call
it a puzzle, and that's why you're listening to the Puzzler.
Catch you next time.
Hosts And Creators
Greg Pliska
A.J. Jacobs
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