Latest news with #EverythingisTuberculosis
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Why Oasis Management's Seth Fischer traveled across the world to do 10-minute pitches at 3 conferences in 16 days
There are road warriors, and then there's Seth Fischer. The founder of Oasis Management, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund, Fischer was at the dais at the Sohn conference's flagship New York event on May 14, pitching Japanese electronics manufacturer Kyocera. Two weeks later, the Israel Defense Forces veteran was in Canada at Sohn's inaugural Montreal event, where he presented on Round One, a Japanese arcade chain that has expanded to the US. Friday, he was back home in Hong Kong — and speaking from the Sohn podium about Round One again, calling the company's CEO, Masahiko Sugino, a wizard. In between all the presentations, he also visited Switzerland and Israel, he told Business Insider in an email. He said he's happy to help the Sohn Foundation, which focuses on childhood cancer research and prevention and is named after Ira Sohn, a young finance professional who died from cancer at the age of 29. The conference has been a staple in the investment management industry's calendar for decades, with Greenlight founder David Einhorn, Point72 CEO Steve Cohen, and D1 Capital boss Dan Sundheim among the big names who have previously spoken. Many who speak at the event pitch an investment idea, often a stock, in 10 minutes or less. The Sohn Foundation in Hong Kong works with the Karen Leung Foundation, which was started in honor of Fischer's former colleague, who died of cancer in 2012. Fischer is a cofounder of the Karen Leung Foundation. "We think it's a great cause, so really just happy to help. We're currently closed to new investors, so this is not a marketing trip," said Fischer, who declined to share the firm's current assets under management. He is equally passionate about the companies he pitched and Japanese equities in general. He wrote that corporate governance adoption should be a boon for the Asian nation's stocks. "Value is being unlocked by better management, ending related party transactions, enhancing margins, having accountability at the board level, and improving shareholder returns," said Fischer, who founded Oasis in 2002 after seven years at Glenn Dubin and Henry Swieca's Highbridge Capital. He said he gets adjusted to new time zones and cities by running — he logged miles in three different continents this past week — and by being "very serious" about sleeping on planes. "For fun, I'm running, reading, and listening to podcasts and Audible," he said. He just finished "Everything is Tuberculosis", John Green's latest book on the disease. "Maybe that doesn't make me sound like too fun of a guy, but it's been a very good listen."
Indianapolis Star
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
John Green writes a love letter to the Indianapolis 500
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.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Why ‘Fault in Our Stars' author John Green is obsessed with tuberculosis
Several years after an encounter that turned him into a self-professed tuberculosis nerd, John Green's son came home from school with a question. Did the best-selling author realise that the disease played a small role in the onset of the First World War? 'I was like respectfully, if that were true I would already know,' said Green, who is best known for young adult novels such as 'The Fault in Our Stars'. 'But I looked it up, and he was so totally right.' It turned out that three of the assassins who plotted Archduke Franz Ferdinand's death – a crucial if chaotic moment in the build-up to war – were suffering from tuberculosis (TB). Historians have posited that they were prepared to die for their cause partly because they knew already that their days were numbered. The tidbit is one of Green's favourites, but as his obsession with TB has grown, so too has his collection of anecdotes. Did you know that Ringo Starr first discovered percussion while recovering from TB in a sanatorium? Or that cowboy hats were created for the midwest sun after a hat-maker in the 1850s moved in search of cleaner air for his struggling lungs? 'I think we do underestimate the extent to which, not just tuberculosis but disease in general, has shaped human history,' said Green. 'Think of how different the world could be if Alexander the Great hadn't died of typhoid or malaria when he was still a young man… [or if] Louis XVI's son hadn't died of tuberculosis as the French Revolution was beginning.' But while the intriguing history of the world's deadliest infection may have informed the title of Green's latest book, 'Everything is Tuberculosis', it was never the driving force for writing. Instead, the story began with Henry Reider, an 'uncommonly charismatic' patient in Sierra Leone. The pair first met in 2019. Green was in the west African country on a trip related to maternal mortality when he visited a TB hospital – at the time, he had no idea that the curable disease still kills upwards of 1.2 million people every year, and infects another 10 million. 'I thought that TB was a disease of 19th century poets, not a disease of the present,' Green said, in his first interview with a British newspaper about the new book. 'Then I met this kid who looked to be about the same age as my son, who was nine at the time, and who had the same name as my son, Henry.' But as Green toured the Lakka Government Hospital with Reider, he was in for a series of shocks. Henry Reider was not nine but 17 – he'd been stunted from severe malnutrition in childhood – and his experience with TB was 'devastating'. Reider's father, distrustful of the health care system, had halted his son's treatment part way through a months-long course of drugs, allowing the infection to develop drug-resistance. Later, when the usual toxic cocktails of drugs failed him, bedaquiline – a safer treatment regimen that involves few tablets over a shorter period – was deemed too expensive. 'It was infuriating to me. You or I would receive the kind of personalised, tailored treatment that Henry was told was unaffordable without hesitation or question,' said Green. 'Meeting Henry and spending that afternoon with him really reshaped my understanding of illness.' Reider's story forms the backbone of 'Everything is Tuberculosis', where Green argues that injustice is behind the continued presence of TB – a bacterial pathogen formally identified in 1882, but which has been killing people for centuries longer. Although the airborne disease can infect anyone, today it is largely a disease of poverty. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 1.25 million people died from TB in 2023 – 81 per cent of fatalities were in south Asia and Africa, compared to just 1.4 per cent in Europe. This has impacted everything from investment in vaccine and drug development, to the accessibility of expensive treatments and specialist doctors for patients. But it wasn't until Green spoke to a renowned TB doctor that the implications hit him: even with today's imperfect tools and knowledge gaps, the disease could be wiped out.. 'I asked him, how many people would die of tuberculosis if everyone had the kind of health care that I have? And he said: 'none, zero'. And that shocked me, it means that every death from tuberculosis is optional.' Drawing attention to this reality felt essential for Green. Still, he was unsure how the book would land. 'Every time I try to market the book, I feel almost apologetic – like I have to explain that it's a non fiction book about tuberculosis,' he said. '[But] it feels like a natural progression, in the sense that I've been interested in illness for a long time… I wrote about cancer in 'The Fault in Our Stars', I wrote about OCD in 'Turtles All the Way Down'. And you know, this is also a book about a smart teenager who loves poetry.' He hardly needed to be concerned. The response has been 'wildly unexpected': since it was published last month, 'Tuberculosis is Everything' has topped the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction for a fortnight, while Green's US book tour sold out within days. Green isn't entirely sure how he captured the public imagination, but he wonders if part of the explanation lies in the timing. The book was published after Donald Trump's administration slashed the foreign aid budget and closed the USAID agency – an unprecedented move with huge ramifications for global health, including the fight against tuberculosis. The US contributed roughly half of all international donor funding for TB last year, according to the WHO, which last month warned that efforts to curb the disease are now 'in peril' as health workers funded by USAID have been laid off, testing and surveillance services halted, drug development paused and access to treatment curtailed for millions. 'I never imagined that the cuts under the Trump administration would be this severe, and that they would lead to this scale of mass death. I was a little naive, I think,' said Green. 'It is absolutely devastating… it's a massive failure of global resource allocation, and a mark of shame on all of us.' He added that it is disappointing to see the UK also reduce its aid budget, from 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent in 2027. In West Africa, Reider has recovered from TB, completed exams at the University of Sierra Leone, and launched a YouTube vlog. But Green fears for other patients – Reider's hospital is among those hit by the US aid cuts, and TB is not the only disease affected. 'A friend in Sierra Leone who has HIV called me and said: 'Look, there's two weeks left of medication, and after that they don't know'. I said Sarah [Green's wife] and I will make sure you and your mom have access to HIV medicine, of course. And he said: 'Thank you, but what about everyone else? 'The truth is, there is no way for individuals and philanthropy to set up and act at the scale that governments are acting. And so that question – 'what about everyone else?' – is a question that haunts me. I think it should haunt us all.' But although Green is less optimistic about the promise of eliminating TB than when he finished writing the book, he has retained a sense of hope that the outlook can change – especially because cheaper diagnostics, better treatments and promising vaccine candidates are in the pipeline. 'If you think of the fight against tuberculosis as a very long staircase, we've walked a long way up that staircase since Hippocrates told his students not even to bother treating tuberculosis, because it would make them look like bad healers,' said Green. 'In the last eight weeks, we've fallen down the staircase and that's devastating. But when you fall down a staircase, you get up and start walking up the staircase again.' Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
25-04-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Why ‘Fault in Our Stars' author John Green is obsessed with tuberculosis
Several years after an encounter that turned him into a self-professed tuberculosis nerd, John Green's son came home from school with a question. Did the best-selling author realise that the disease played a small role in the onset of the First World War? 'I was like respectfully, if that were true I would already know,' said Green, who is best known for young adult novels such as 'The Fault in Our Stars'. 'But I looked it up, and he was so totally right.' It turned out that three of the assassins who plotted Archduke Franz Ferdinand's death – a crucial if chaotic moment in the build-up to war – were suffering from tuberculosis (TB). Historians have posited that they were prepared to die for their cause partly because they knew already that their days were numbered. The tidbit is one of Green's favourites, but as his obsession with TB has grown, so too has his collection of anecdotes. Did you know that Ringo Starr first discovered percussion while recovering from TB in a sanatorium? Or that cowboy hats were created for the midwest sun after a hat-maker in the 1850s moved in search of cleaner air for his struggling lungs? 'I think we do underestimate the extent to which, not just tuberculosis but disease in general, has shaped human history,' said Green. 'Think of how different the world could be if Alexander the Great hadn't died of typhoid or malaria when he was still a young man… [or if] Louis XVI's son hadn't died of tuberculosis as the French Revolution was beginning.' But while the intriguing history of the world's deadliest infection may have informed the title of Green's latest book, 'Everything is Tuberculosis', it was never the driving force for writing. View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Green (@johngreenwritesbooks) Instead, the story began with Henry Reider, an 'uncommonly charismatic' patient in Sierra Leone. The pair first met in 2019. Green was in the west African country on a trip related to maternal mortality when he visited a TB hospital – at the time, he had no idea that the curable disease still kills upwards of 1.2 million people every year, and infects another 10 million. 'I thought that TB was a disease of 19th century poets, not a disease of the present,' Green said, in his first interview with a British newspaper about the new book. 'Then I met this kid who looked to be about the same age as my son, who was nine at the time, and who had the same name as my son, Henry.' But as Green toured the Lakka Government Hospital with Reider, he was in for a series of shocks. Henry Reider was not nine but 17 – he'd been stunted from severe malnutrition in childhood – and his experience with TB was 'devastating'. Reider's father, distrustful of the health care system, had halted his son's treatment part way through a months-long course of drugs, allowing the infection to develop drug-resistance. Later, when the usual toxic cocktails of drugs failed him, bedaquiline – a safer treatment regimen that involves few tablets over a shorter period – was deemed too expensive. 'It was infuriating to me. You or I would receive the kind of personalised, tailored treatment that Henry was told was unaffordable without hesitation or question,' said Green. 'Meeting Henry and spending that afternoon with him really reshaped my understanding of illness.' Reider's story forms the backbone of 'Everything is Tuberculosis', where Green argues that injustice is behind the continued presence of TB – a bacterial pathogen formally identified in 1882, but which has been killing people for centuries longer. Although the airborne disease can infect anyone, today it is largely a disease of poverty. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 1.25 million people died from TB in 2023 – 81 per cent of fatalities were in south Asia and Africa, compared to just 1.4 per cent in Europe. This has impacted everything from investment in vaccine and drug development, to the accessibility of expensive treatments and specialist doctors for patients. But it wasn't until Green spoke to a renowned TB doctor that the implications hit him: even with today's imperfect tools and knowledge gaps, the disease could be wiped out.. 'I asked him, how many people would die of tuberculosis if everyone had the kind of health care that I have? And he said: 'none, zero'. And that shocked me, it means that every death from tuberculosis is optional.' Drawing attention to this reality felt essential for Green. Still, he was unsure how the book would land. 'Every time I try to market the book, I feel almost apologetic – like I have to explain that it's a non fiction book about tuberculosis,' he said. '[But] it feels like a natural progression, in the sense that I've been interested in illness for a long time… I wrote about cancer in 'The Fault in Our Stars', I wrote about OCD in 'Turtles All the Way Down'. And you know, this is also a book about a smart teenager who loves poetry.' He hardly needed to be concerned. The response has been 'wildly unexpected': since it was published last month, 'Tuberculosis is Everything' has topped the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction for a fortnight, while Green's US book tour sold out within days. Green isn't entirely sure how he captured the public imagination, but he wonders if part of the explanation lies in the timing. The book was published after Donald Trump's administration slashed the foreign aid budget and closed the USAID agency – an unprecedented move with huge ramifications for global health, including the fight against tuberculosis. The US contributed roughly half of all international donor funding for TB last year, according to the WHO, which last month warned that efforts to curb the disease are now 'in peril' as health workers funded by USAID have been laid off, testing and surveillance services halted, drug development paused and access to treatment curtailed for millions. 'I never imagined that the cuts under the Trump administration would be this severe, and that they would lead to this scale of mass death. I was a little naive, I think,' said Green. 'It is absolutely devastating… it's a massive failure of global resource allocation, and a mark of shame on all of us.' He added that it is disappointing to see the UK also reduce its aid budget, from 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent in 2027. In West Africa, Reider has recovered from TB, completed exams at the University of Sierra Leone, and launched a YouTube vlog. But Green fears for other patients – Reider's hospital is among those hit by the US aid cuts, and TB is not the only disease affected. 'A friend in Sierra Leone who has HIV called me and said: 'Look, there's two weeks left of medication, and after that they don't know'. I said Sarah [Green's wife] and I will make sure you and your mom have access to HIV medicine, of course. And he said: 'Thank you, but what about everyone else? 'The truth is, there is no way for individuals and philanthropy to set up and act at the scale that governments are acting. And so that question – 'what about everyone else?' – is a question that haunts me. I think it should haunt us all.' But although Green is less optimistic about the promise of eliminating TB than when he finished writing the book, he has retained a sense of hope that the outlook can change – especially because cheaper diagnostics, better treatments and promising vaccine candidates are in the pipeline. 'If you think of the fight against tuberculosis as a very long staircase, we've walked a long way up that staircase since Hippocrates told his students not even to bother treating tuberculosis, because it would make them look like bad healers,' said Green. 'In the last eight weeks, we've fallen down the staircase and that's devastating. But when you fall down a staircase, you get up and start walking up the staircase again.'
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Book Review: John Green is obsessed with tuberculosis. He makes a strong case that we should be, too
So you read 'The Fault in Our Stars' or watched John Green on YouTube, and, if you're like me, you probably thought, 'I would read or watch anything this mind produced for public consumption.' Even if it's a 200-page nonfiction thesis on tuberculosis arguing why it should be Public Enemy No. 1 and on its way to eradication. Because, in true John Green fashion, there's a footnote on the copyright page explaining the reasoning behind the font choice for his newest book, 'Everything is Tuberculosis.' (Spoiler: The reason for the font is tuberculosis. Everything is.) Early on, Green establishes that the tuberculosis is the top killer of humans among infectious diseases — a longstanding status quo only briefly disrupted by COVID-19. The slow-moving TB infected over 8 million people in one year and killed about 1.25 million, according to a recent World Health Organization report. Yet, as Green shows throughout the book, TB is curable and even preventable. The text seamlessly moves through related topics, from TB's effects on history and fashion to the socioeconomic inequities that perpetuate the disease, and even the romanticization of an illness that, for a period, was associated with soulful poets and delicate feminine beauty. But this synopsis will seem bone-dry compared to the actual text, because the real magic of Green's writing is the deeply considerate, human touch that goes into every word. He uses the stories of real people to turn overwhelming problems into something personal and understandable. 'We can do and be so much for each other — but only when we see one another in our full humanity,' Green writes. 'Everything is Tuberculosis' is reflective and earnest, with a few black-and-white pictures to illustrate a point or put a face to a name. Little nuggets of personalization consistently bring us back to our shared humanity, even in footnotes. When considering 'patient noncompliance,' Green discloses his own diagnoses and wrestling with taking prescriptions. This compared with patients in Sierra Leone who, unlike Green, often struggle to get to the clinic to obtain their medication, or can't afford enough food to take it without getting sick. On the other hand, some of their struggles are the same, side effects from pills and stigma around illnesses being some of the most common reasons patients might diverge from their prescribed course of medication, regardless of access. As one might expect from Green, the book is weirdly touching and super quotable. 'Everything is Tuberculosis' is rich with callbacks that help underscore ideas, wit and humor that foster learning even alongside more somber bits. Green offers many reasons why he became obsessed with TB, but none brought tears to my eyes so unexpectedly like the stunningly apt metaphor comparing writing to the pool game 'Marco Polo.' The explanation references TB activist Shreya Tripathi, who had to sue the Indian government to get the medication that would have saved her if it hadn't taken so long to get ahold of it. Despite the death and harsh realities, it is a hopeful book overall. Green takes stock of the history, looking at the vicious and virtuous cycles that led humankind to where we are now, posing a challenge and a question rolled into one: Which type of cycle will we foster? ___ AP book reviews:
