John Green writes a love letter to the Indianapolis 500

Indianapolis Star

01-05-2025

One of Indianapolis' most popular writers and one of the city's most beloved traditions are uniting this year.
John Green, author of "Everything is Tuberculosis" and "The Fault in Our Stars," has rolled his admiration of the Indy 500 into a 250-word essay that celebrates what the Circle City loves about the month of May: the community that forms throughout a blossoming spring full of tailgating reunions, discussions about IndyCar drivers and bike rides to Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The essay's text, and Green's reading of it, will be relayed across YouTube, social media, an IndyStar ad and more starting May 1:
John Green's essay on the Indianapolis 500 and month of May
"It's spring in Indianapolis. Everything's in bloom, and the air is bright with birdsong and re-emerging life. 'Spring is like a perhaps hand coming carefully out of nowhere,' ee cummings wrote, and after a long winter, the burst of spring indeed astonishes.
But you can hear something else downtown, or rumbling along the banks of the White River: The Greatest Spectacle in Racing is coming. They call the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the Cathedral of Speed, and for me and 400,000 annual pilgrims like me, that distant roar we hear brings a smile that lasts the whole month of May.
The Indy 500 is not just a race — it's community. For me, it means long bike rides along our city's beautiful canal paths down to the Speedway. For others, it means tailgating with friends and family, some of whom you only see once a year. It means backpack coolers and headphones and decades-long arguments over who's the greatest driver of all time.
But the Indy 500 is also a car race, and the best one in the world — a race so thrilling and wondrous that it brings together more people than any other sporting event on Earth.
This is Indianapolis. All around town, the checkered flags are out. Porch parties abound, and everyone's invited.
And this is the Indy 500, where we see what humans can accomplish in concert with twin turbocharged V-6 engines and Firestone tires. This is the Brickyard, where they've been racing since before any of us were born.
This is Speed City. Welcome to May."
Green, who has lived in Indiana since 2007, has long documented his love for the Indy 500. In a 2019 episode of his " Anthropocene Reviewed" podcast, he discussed humanity's progress as it relates to Indy 500 race cars before sharing his own race day routine.
"I think about none of this on race day — I am not thinking about the ever-diminishing distinction between humans and their machines, or about the anthropocene's accelerating rate of change, or anything. I am, instead, merely happy," Green said in the podcast.
"My best friend Chris calls it Christmas for Grown-Ups."
Green brought up the race again in his 2021 book " The Anthropocene Reviewed," which contains essays about multiple topics he first talked about on the podcast. The author previously told IndyStar that he reworked his piece on the 500 during the pandemic as a way to process the new normal.
'I wanted to write about my experience of suddenly being unable to go to the race, and how it felt to go through all the same rituals that I always go through on that Sunday, and to bike to the race as I always do and to arrive at an empty Speedway, with the gates locked shut," he said in 2021.