John Green is a man of many hats.
On April 2, he’ll be bringing those hats to the Knapp Center for the 47th annual installment of Drake University’s Bucksbaum Lecture Series.
Before he was a bestselling young-adult novelist of titles like “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Paper Towns,” he was a student chaplain at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
In 2011, he co-founded and went on to accumulate billions of views on the educational YouTube channel Crash Course.
Most recently, he’s been immersed in the science and medicine world. In March 2025, he published “Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection,” a nonfiction book that examines global health through the lens of tuberculosis’s history and impact.
Bucksbaum Lectures in the past have facilitated discussions between the speaker and a Drake or Des Moines leader. Kelly Bruhn, the chair of the Bucksbaum Lectureship Committee, said Green’s talk, though, will likely be a prepared remark focusing on his latest novel.
“I was looking on his ‘Everything Is Tuberculosis’ site, and it looks like he’s got a series of talks, or book signings, or maybe book readings that he’s doing at bookstores and other locations — every single one of them is sold out, even through March,” Bruhn said. “So I’m really excited that this is not a ticketed event. It’s a first come first serve event.”
Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the lecture will begin at 7 p.m. Like all years past, this year’s lecture is open to all community members, free of charge.
“[The Bucksbaum family] really understood the importance of strong universities and the connection to the community,” Bruhn said.
Before Green addresses the audience inside the Knapp Center, he will first meet with Drake students for a roundtable discussion, then head to the Schickler Club for a VIP reception with the committee members. After his lecture, there will be a book signing.
The committee begins planning the next Bucksbaum lecturer a year out.
“After Green, then we’ll start planning for next year, next April’s visitor,” Bruhn said.
One of the ways the committee landed on Green was by hearing from students via suggestions on a wheeled board in Meredith Hall.
“I know students have followed John Green for a long, long time and appreciated his work,” Bruhn said. “I anticipate there’s going to be a little bit of fangirling going on because people are going to be very excited to see him. But I also know that Drake students are special. And I am excited to show our students off to the visitors.”
In a smaller corner of Drake’s campus, a section of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will read “Everything Is Tuberculosis” in anticipation of Green’s visit.
Lori Blachford facilitates the OLLI book club as one of the volunteer teachers. When she first heard Bruhn announce that Green would be the next speaker at the Bucksbaum Lectureship in Business in the fall, she jumped at the opportunity to read one of his works in the club.
“OLLI is for lifelong learners. So folks tend to have a lot of experience in a lot of different things,” Blachford said. “The YA novels John Green does are fabulous. They’re for everybody. But I really, I’m always challenging them. We do something different. If we have an author, we usually don’t take their most well-known thing.”
Blachford plans to attend Green’s lecture herself and encourage her OLLI students to do the same. She particularly commends the online viewing option of the lecture through livestream, comparing it to the flexible hybrid structure of her OLLI classes.
“The way they’re live-streaming, I think about that and the Zoom piece of what I teach,” Blachford said. “Somebody who can’t get out easily, who can’t leave the house. You can still learn. You can still engage with Drake in these ways that Drake makes possible.”
On top of accessible costs and viewing options, Blachford appreciates the way the lecture opens Drake up to the broader community, much like OLLI.
“I can’t say enough about Bucksbaum. What I will say is OLLI acts in a lot of ways like Bucksbaum in terms of bringing the community onto campus,” Blachford said. “As soon as you step onto campus, it feels like your little learning hat comes on because it’s just the atmosphere. And there’s a chance to ask questions.”
As the former Peggy Fisher/Larry Stelter Chair of Magazine Journalism at Drake, Blachford is particularly drawn towards “Everything Is Tuberculosis” and the nonfiction side of Green’s work.
She explained, as she currently reads the book, that his writing style “doesn’t feel like a textbook,” even though it is nonfiction. It feels like an experience that he’s sharing with the reader, she said.
“He’s talking about a disease that kills more than a million people a year, that since 1950 we’ve had a cure for, and still a million people a year keep dying,” Blachford said. “He wouldn’t have to step out and do the hard work of raising awareness, but he has a voice… and he’s using it for good.”
