Skip to content

I Was a Teenage Dirtbag

2026-02-10 · letter vlog · John · 5:17 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life (also: Projects) · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, fundraising ask, self promotion

At 48, near the low point of the happiness curve, John tells Hank that friends of over 30 years, like his high school friends Daniel Alarcón and Sean, are a gift of middle age; he announces The Away End, their soccer podcast, and rules Complexly out of P4A grants.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The P4A 2026 fundraiser is live with perks; middle age as the low point of life satisfaction

  • ★★ John says the 19th Project for Awesome starts in three days, but its fundraiser is already live with P4A-only perks such as a new episode of his podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed. — 00:00:00 · Project for Awesome, The Anthropocene Reviewed (podcast)
  • ★★ John says that according to actuarial tables, around age 48 life satisfaction bottoms out on average, so this should be the unhappiest part of his life. — 00:00:18
  • ★★ John says one joy of middle age, for him, is having friends he has known for over 30 years, a joy he could not have known at 29. — 00:00:24

00:00:29 — John's 30-year friendships with Daniel Alarcón and Sean, and thinking about high school after a friend's death

  • ★★ John shows a photo of himself and Daniel Alarcón as teenagers, calling them proper teenage dirtbags: Jägermeister t-shirt, backwards cap, oversized jeans. (playful) — 00:00:35
  • ★ John's wife Sarah, who went to the same high school, says he was surrounded by the smell of stale cigarette smoke then; the photo convinces him. (playful) — 00:00:44 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ John says Daniel always looked cool to him and was one of their high school's best soccer players on a state-finalist team in Alabama, while John didn't make the team. — 00:01:00
  • ★★ John says Daniel stood out as a brilliant writer in a class full of great poets and story writers, writing with nuance and beauty without sacrificing clarity. — 00:01:13
  • ★★ John recalls reading the Peru-born Daniel's stories set in Peru when Daniel was 15 or 16 and thinking they belonged in The New Yorker, where they now appear. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says Daniel became a very successful writer: he wrote Lost City Radio, one of John's favourite novels, co-founded the Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante and won a MacArthur Genius Grant. — 00:01:38
  • ★★ John calls Daniel's recent podcast with Serial, The Good Whale, about the whale from Free Willy, flat-out brilliant. — 00:01:50
  • ★★ John says his friend Sean, a groomsman at his wedding and his friend since John was 14, is now a successful podcast producer with the best taste in music of anyone he knows. — 00:01:56
  • ★ John jokes that he is still the frail, anxious person he was at 14, now 48: you can change in adulthood, he just hasn't. (playful) — 00:02:05
  • ★★ John says he and Sean have laughed incredibly hard together and had some of the most important deep conversations of his life. — 00:02:14
  • ★★ John says a friend from high school died last year (2025), and since then he has been thinking about how lucky he was to go to that school with those people, and how difficult that time was. — 00:02:22

00:02:39 — Gratitude for old friendships and the launch of The Away End, a soccer podcast for the 2026 World Cup

  • ★★ John is grateful for high-school friendships that waxed and waned over decades without disappearing and held him together; the love shared then is with him still. — 00:02:39
  • ★★★ John announces The Away End, a podcast with Sean and Daniel looking at history, beauty, corruption and their personal histories through soccer, the game that has animated their 35-year friendship. — 00:02:55 · The Away End
  • ★★ John says The Away End is meant to get listeners ready for and entertain them through the 2026 Men's World Cup. — 00:03:14 · The Away End
  • ★★ John says the 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by Canada, the US and Mexico, was supposed to celebrate North American cooperation but now appears it will be something else. (hedged) — 00:03:20 · Canada, United States

00:03:33 — Old friends and siblings need shared projects; friends of 30 years as a gift in a hard stage of life

  • ★★ John asks viewers interested in soccer, how nations become nations, or his middle-school athletic career to check out The Away End wherever they get podcasts. — 00:03:33 · The Away End
  • ★★★ John says old friends, like siblings, sometimes need shared projects as an excuse to connect. — 00:03:43
  • ★★★ John tells Hank the channel, the Project for Awesome and everything grown from them exist because he wanted to get closer to Hank through a shared project, which has worked for almost 20 years. — 00:03:47 · Vlogbrothers, Project for Awesome, Hank Green
  • ★★ John says he started The Away End with Daniel and Sean because he misses them and sharing stories with them; it also gives him a professional reason to watch soccer. — 00:04:02 · The Away End
  • ★★★ John says middle age is a difficult period (teenage kids, aging parents, health scares), but friends of over 30 years to ease you through it are a hell of a gift. — 00:04:15
  • ★★ John says he could not have imagined when younger how good it would feel to love and root for people for over 30 years. — 00:04:28

00:04:31 — 40 years of being Hank's brother; Complexly congratulated but ineligible for P4A grants; livestream reminder

  • ★★ John tells Hank they have been friends, or at least siblings, for over 40 years, which is probably why Hank is his favourite person to root for. (hedged) — 00:04:36 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John congratulates everyone at Complexly on officially becoming a nonprofit. — 00:04:48 · Complexly
  • ★★★ John says Complexly will not be eligible for a Project for Awesome grant, because the brothers should not benefit even indirectly from the P4A. — 00:04:55 · Complexly, Project for Awesome
  • ★★ John invites Hank and Nerdfighteria to the P4A livestream at projectforawesome.com/live, starting noon Eastern on Friday. — 00:05:08 · Project for Awesome, Nerdfighteria

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Daniel Alarcón · friendship · Middle age · Sean Titone · The Away End

Also: People: Sarah Urist Green

Projects: Complexly · Project for Awesome · The Anthropocene Reviewed (podcast)

Works: Free Willy · Lost City Radio · Radio Ambulante · The Good Whale

Organizations: MacArthur Fellows Program · Serial Productions · The New Yorker

Concepts: association football · Happiness · Spanish language

Places: Alabama · Canada · Mexico · Peru · United States

Events: FIFA World Cup

Also centred on friendship: How to Make Friends · How Do Adults Make Friends? · How I Made Friends · So, I've got cancer · Views · My 2025 Bingo Card

Also centred on Middle age: A Middle Aged Man · Old Man Yells at Cloud · The Terrors of Middle Age

← Previous: One week until P4A! · Next → Why Isn't Everybody a Nonprofit?!