“60 MINUTES” LISTINGS FOR SUNDAY, OCT. 7
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JOHN GREEN – Few of the millions of his young fans know the bestselling author John Green suffers from a mental illness. Jon Wertheim profiles the phenomenally successful writer, who is also a star of YouTube, podcasting and Hollywood, and discusses his way with young audiences and how he deals with OCD. Sarah Koch and Chrissy Jones are the producers.
THE PAVAROTTI OF PASTA – Lesley Stahl goes to Modena, Italy, to meet Chef Massimo Bottura to taste and see why his restaurant ranks #1 on the list of the top 50 eateries in the world. Richard Bonin and Sabina Castelfranco are the producers.
THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”: BEST-SELLING AUTHOR JOHN GREEN IS A HERO TO MILLIONS OF YOUNG FANS, BUT FEW KNOW THE MENTAL ILLNESS HE MUST OVERCOME EVERY DAY
He feels their pain. He gives them hope. He defends the nerds. To millions of his young fans, John Green is a towering figure and a beacon of truth. He does it all in a series of bestselling novels, YouTube “vlogs” and podcasts that have captured the attention of their generation. But what many of those fans don’t know is that Green has his own pain. He struggles every day with mental illness. Green, whose young adult bestsellers have become blockbuster films, appears on 60 MINUTES in a profile by Jon Wertheim to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 7 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Green suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder. He describes his illness as a spiraling of thoughts that is difficult to stop. He gives Wertheim a hypothetical example. “It might be that I am eating a salad and it suddenly occurs to me that somebody might have bled into this salad…that thought just expands and expands, and then I use compulsive behaviors to manage the worry…”
Exercise helps distract him from the effects of OCD. “I have a few strategies. I exercise. That’s probably the biggest thing. Exercise is pretty magical in my life,” he tells Wertheim. “I don’t enjoy it. I don’t relish the thought of going for a run, but it is very helpful because I can’t think.”
Green confronted his illness head on by writing Turtles All the Way Down, a bestseller that has OCD as its theme. “I wanted to try and give people a glimpse of what [OCD] is…put them …at least a little bit inside of that experience.”
While exercise and other coping measures are helpful, the anti-anxiety medication he has been taking for years is just as important. He knows because he tried to get off it.
“I bought into this old romantic lie, that in order to write well, you need to…be free of these mind-altering substances,” he says. “The consequences were really dire, unfortunately. I’m lucky they weren’t catastrophic.”
His ability to control his illness has enabled him to manage and enjoy his lucrative career. His young adult genre books are naturals for the film-going teens and young adults, the largest group by age to attend theaters. The film version of his novel The Fault in Our Stars grossed more than $300 million.
“I have a really wonderful life,” he tells Wertheim. “I also have a pretty serious chronic mental health problem. And those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
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