Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. So every year at VidCon, I try to make pretty good choices, until Saturday evening, when I traditionally celebrate the end of VidCon by participating in a YouTube show called Beer and Board Games. This year, there was a significant emphasis on the beer part of Beer and Board Games, so full disclosure, I'm a little bit hazy on the details of how this all went down. Semi-related story, I lost my video camera, so I have no VidCon footage, which is also why we're stuck with the old camera this week.

But right, so after Beer and Board Games, I ran into Minute Physics Henry and Smarter Every Day Destin and CGP Grey Grey, and somehow we got to talking about Iceland. Hank, I am a huge fan of Iceland. It just contains so many things I love: hot baths, an improbably excellent football team, Bjork, etc. There's really just the one problem with Iceland which, you know, is that it's located in Iceland.

Like, Sarah and I visited Iceland in August of 2008, and we went on this bus tour, and our tour guide, reading from a script, said without any irony, "Iceland may have ice in its name, but as you can see, the weather is quite mild here year-round. Perhaps we should switch names with Greenland, haha." And then we got off the bus and that August afternoon it was perhaps half a degree above freezing, and because of the howling winds, the rain - it was of course raining - appeared to be coming up from the ground, which, for the record, was not green, it was brown on account of it being recently dried lava.

So okay, the four of us discussed problem 1, the Iceland being in Iceland problem for a little bit, and then we pivoted to a seemingly unrelated problem, which is that currently, there is no convenient midway point on the Atlantic side between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia. Like, on the Pacific side, you have Hawaii or if you're feeling adventurous, the Cook islands, but on the Atlantic side, pretty much nothin'.

Until, that is, we relocate Iceland. Our proposal, Hank, is to move Iceland from here, where it is constantly raining and spewing lava, to say, here, where it would be a lovely stopping point between continents. Quick side note, Hank, I honestly think if we'd had a better located Iceland in the first place, humans probably would have had earlier and more robust trade between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia, which in turn might have mitigated some of the horrors of the Colombian exchange both on a human and a biodiversity level. So you know, not to criticize plate tectonics or anything, but I think this could have been handled better from the beginning. That said, the world is what it is, or at least it was, until we learned to build islands.

Right, so we formed a coalition to create New Iceland, a nation with 1) great weather, 2) Bjork, and 3) apparently a better soccer team than England has. Plus, 4) it's only a two hour flight from New York, Madrid, or Marrakesh. Destin assigned Henry with the job of actually moving Iceland, which, you know, I'm not a scientist, but it can't be that hard, I figure we just get a big tugboat or something and pull it south. CGP Grey was given the job of designing a flag for New Iceland. Destin assigned himself something having to do with rockets. And I was tasked with the political problem of getting the people of Iceland to agree to move their country, you know, about 3,000 miles South-Southwest of its current location. So, here we go.

People of Iceland! Hello. You may have noticed that your nation is very cold and rainy in the winter, and then very cold and rainy in the summer. Also, remember in January, when the sun rose at noon or rather would have risen if it weren't perpetually overcast? I'd like to solve those problems, and give you beaches, warmth, sunshine, and joy, all while allowing you to keep your Bjork. So what do you say, Iceland? I imagine you're gonna say no, that you like your country where it is despite its geographical shortcomings. Maybe that says something about Icelanders, or maybe it says something about change, that dangerous and beautiful force that drives and defines the universe. Still, I'm hoping you'll say yes, because I could really use a vacation in sunny New Iceland.

Hank, congratulations on a great VidCon. I'll see you on Friday.