J: Ahhhh, hello!

H: Are we live?  Are we live?  Are we live?

J: Yeah.  Hank!  

H: Hi.

J: Hold on, let me do this right. 

H: Do the thing.

J: Oohhh!  Hello, and welcome to the 2018 Project for Awesome.  It's the 12th annual Project for Awesome.  Hello, Hank, how are you?

H: I'm good.  I'm plugging in my headphones.

J: Yeah, plug in your headphones by all means.  We don't want any echoes.  Hello and welcome everyone to the 2018 Project for Awesome.  It's the 12th time we've done this.  Every year in December, Nerdfighteria gathers together to decrease the overall level of suck in the world.  I'm here with a sheep.  I don't--I--this is an inside Project for Awesome joke I do not get, but I'm very happy to be here.  

H: This is--do you know about this joke, John?  

J: No, but it's funny, I like it.  I've had more coffee in the last four hours than in the previous four weeks.  

H: I haven't had any.

J: Let's get started.  Hello.  

H: I'm only gonna start coffeeing later tonight, John, when I have the night shift.

J: The night shift.  Alright, I wanna give everybody a quick update on what's going on at the 2018 Project for Awesome.

I just said 2017 by accident.  We're so excited for you to join us.  This is a 48 hour livestream that begins now, so it's a 47 hour and 59 minute livestream at the moment.  You can go to projectforawesome.com right now to find Project for Awesome videos, to submit your own videos if you made a Project for Awesome video this year, and then you can go through and search for charities you care about and vote for them.  If you vote for a charity, that counts as a vote of support for it, and then at the end, those votes will help us determine where the grants go raised during the second half of the Project for Awesome, but here during the first half of the Project for Awesome, we're raising money for two wonderful pre-selected charities we've worked with for over a decade: Save the Children and Partners in Health.

H: Indeed.  I'm at the projectforawesome.com website right now.  

J: Yeah.

H: There have been 14 votes cast!  14, and--

J: Just getting started.

H: Voting did just open one minute ago, so that's not so bad, and we've got a lot of videos submitted and they look like for a lot of great organizations.  I see Matt Damon's cute little face there for water.org.  I don't know that he made a video himself, but it looks like someone did.

J: Maybe he did.  

H: Maybe, I don't know.  

J: Not out of the question.

H: Yeah, what's he been up to lately besides making Project for Awesome videos?  

J: I actually don't know.  I haven't seen him in anything recently.  I haven't been to the movies in months.  But listen, Hank, also you can donate to the Project for Awesome right now at projectforawesome.com/doonate.  There's never been a better time to donate, literally.  We are--hold on, Hank, you talk for a minute about some of the perks that are available.

H: Okay, I'll tell you about some of the perks that are available.  I've got--I found a bunch of old hankgames videos that had never been edited and then I edited them and they are, you know, of varying degrees of quality.  I'm very excited about one of them, which is where I play a video game I loved when I was 12.

And 39 people have claimed that.  It's $4, but you can also get it in the $60 digital download bundle, which will have everything you can get digital.  It will come to you.  So that will have, like, that will have Dear Sarah and Katherine, which is Dear Hank and John but with our wives.

J: Yes.

H: It'll have the exclusive Dear Hank and John, it will have John and I's Grease 2 commentary.

J: Very excited for that.  The canonical Grease movie.  The most important Grease film of all time.  

H: That's right, John, and it will have a number of other digital perks that have not been announced or put on the page yet.  

J: I wanna--Hank, if I can just highlight a couple of my digital perks over at projectforawesome.com/donate, by the way, thanks to everybody who's donated.  We've raised $1000 just in the last minute, so go over to projectforawesome.com/donate and keep the good funds rolling.  There's--I have a podcast called The Anthropocene Reviewed, in which I attempt to pay extremely clo--(John's audio cuts out)

H: I lost John.  I can still see him.  Can everyone but me hear him?  How would I know?  Can he hear me?  Clearly he cannot.  Can you hear me, John?  Doo doo doo, I'm gonna go check the livestream to see if it's working there!  Hank Green, singing a song, gonna check the livestream to see if it works there.  To the video!  Just--oh, you can hear me!  Apparently, John and I can't hear each other, but everyone else can hear us.  Ahh.  I don't know, maybe John could even hear me.  Could you guys hear John?  I'm going back to the website to see.  We can't hear John, so you can hear me.  That's great, 'cause I wrote a really great song, so if you couldn't, then that would be terrible.

So John, in among the perks, you can get a live episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed.  Also John will be collecting--will be collecting the tweets that he would have tweeted and he's just gonna send them to you instead of tweeting them, so you can get John's tweets that he would have tweeted.  You can also get--you can also get me playing The Stanley Parable, which is not a perk that I have told anyone is going to exist yet, but they're announcing and launching a new Stanley Parable, so once that happens, I will play that game and I will send it to you, because look, I don't need it--ooh!  Oh!  Oh my gosh, the lower third is there.  The lower third is there!  For me, because it's just me now, and apparently, (?~10:46) didn't claim anything, just donated, so thank you, Saga.  Dope!  I'm loving that the--yeah, and Bethan just got the digital download bundle, and chicagoyards just got the 2019 Pizzamas calendar, which is a beautiful thing.  So we had people, oh gosh, the donations are coming in fast.   Lisa just got the enamel pin.  Miranda just got the sticker pack, but the Project for Awesome Pizzamas calendar, I actually have one right here.  Why--why would I tell you about it when I could show it to you!  Cardi just got that exclusive Dear Hank and John, but she could have got the digital download--did you guys just see my buttcrack a little bit?  I think you did.  I think you did just a little bit.  I moved too fast.  Mary got the digital download bundle though.  So it's got beautiful things like this in it, and it's--so we got--nerdfighters sent us art, and I--we--I feel very lucky that they--that we have so much talent in this community.  This is actually a photograph of the paper cutout that they did to make this beautiful Pizza John out of a John Green book.  It's wonderful, isn't it?  Um, so that is available.  

And on the back, there are all the other pieces of Pizza John art that we did not--we were not able to utilize, but were sent to us nonetheless, many of which very nearly made the cut.  So yeah, I mean, so many of these would be amazing Pizzamas shirts, I'm just--I'm so amazed by the quality of what's going on in this calendar.  Anonymous just got that super mystery perk, there aren't very many of those left.  There are a few things that are already very close to selling out.  John's shirts, I believe, have one left, or maybe zero left.  The Dear Hank and John callouts, where we read you a personal message on Dear Hank and John, 11 of 30 of those have been claimed.  6 of the 15 Hank shirts, I don't know why people want Hank shirts less than they want John shirts, but that's the situation we're in.  Maybe it's just because John has fewer of them, but it's okay.  Anonymous didn't claim anything, just donated.  Boom!  I don't want things!   I'm Anonymous.  I just want to donate!  Culver just claimed the unreleased Anthropocene Reviewed, and people are lamenting the fact that they missed the buttcrack.  Look, you're gonna be okay.  It was just a mild--very small--look, it's the Project for Awesome, it's raw, it's real, it's got a buttcrack in it.  Emma just claimed--wait--wow, that's quite a name--just claimed--I missed it.  Oh, we've got that featured creator hoodie from VidCon, 'cause we only got a few of those.  Kelly Donovan got the Dear Hank and John.  Kelsey got that digital download bundle.  If you want me to read your name, apparently now is the time to donate.  Anonymous just got that exclusive Dear Hank and John episode that we're gonna do just for Project for--and last year, we had to do it two different times because we had a snafu that occured, so it will be like that.  Whoa, look at that total go!  I love it when it moves!  Victoria--Vittorio just got the mystery perk and Rosie just got the super mystery perk.  How many super mystery perks do we have left?  Super myster--oh, it says that they're out of stock.

I've got--I hear that they're sold out, so apparently Vittorio got the last one.  I hope that I pronounced that person's name right.  Super mystery--yeah, it's out.  No more super mystery perks, you guys.  Ooh, Bethany just got the digital download bundle.  I mean, the donations are coming in too fast for me to read them, you guys.  Caleb got the digital download bundle.  It's the thing to get!  You get everything!  You get so much good stuff and you don't--you know, we always add stuff during the Project for Awesome, so you never really know what's gonna be in the digital download bundle.  You know it's gonna be worth the money, but you don't know 100% of what's going to be in there.  Oh, I paused, I paused.  I was like, why aren't there any more donations coming in.  Melissa, thanks for getting those Project for Awesome socks!  I love them.  I didn't put on my Project for Awesome socks this morning.  I'm a terrible Project for Awesome founder.  Kieran got that gameswithhank vault, it's only $4.  You can always get something.  $4, you know, you can scrape that together, as long as it's a financially sound thing to do for you.  Let's be honest with ourselves here.  We're about to hit 20% raised to the Project for Awesome, 20% of our goal, very close.  Peggin just claimed the Project for Awesome socks because everybody needs socks and you might as well have socks for charity.  Look, you're gonna have to wear socks.  You need them.  You ne--you're gonna buy some anyway, and at some point you're gonna buy socks.  Isn't that--like, look at this.  Look at the situation.  At some point, you are going to need more socks.  That is an inevitability.  These are good, high-quality socks.   We don't mess around.  They're good socks.  They have s--there's gonna be a splash of color between your shoe and your pants.  It's gonna be super--it's gonna be 100% worth it and you're gonna get three pairs--I held up four fingers--three pairs of socks.  That's six socks!  And you get to donate to charity, too, and your money is, I think currently, at least doubled.  You know who it's doubled thanks to?  We have a bunch of matching donors.  We have matching donors for the first half of the Project for Awesome and matching donors for the second half of the Project for Awesome.

During the first half, money's going to Save the Children and Partners in Health, two organizations that are very efficient at decreasing suffering in places where there is lots of it and so, and then the second half, in the second half, we're gonna distribute money through a bunch of different charities that are all going to be voted upon by you, the community--and I ran into my microphone--and if you go to projectforawesome.com, you can find charities that you can vote on, but we have first half matching donors and second half matching donors, and right now I'm gonna tell you about some of our first half matching donors.  We've got, what is written down for me as "generous Save the Children donor" and "generous Project in Health donor", uh, Partners in Health donor.  I don't know who those people are, but thank you to them.  They're generous.  It says so right here on my list.  Also, Ben and Megan Holman, thank you.  Katie and Jessie Eicorn in memory of Jessalyn Ludwin, Alex and Ashley, Daney and Dory, John Woodbury, Jasmin, Evan and Nissa, Matt, Bryce, Jonathan in San Francisco, Kevin in (?~17:07), Alec W, the Golding family, Jason Kurtz, and several nerdfighters who chose to remain anonymous, and they are here giving you the opportunity--they're not getting any perks for this.  They might get a tax deduction, but they're not getting any perks.  They're giving you here an opportunity to get those Project for Awesome socks, to get that digital download bundle, and have your money more than doubled.  I believe it is currently being quadrupled.  Somebody should probably fact check me on that.  Just send me a text message if I'm wrong.  I need to open Skype and get in the chat, you guys.  John was supposed to be running this part but he's gone.  I wasn't ready to be in charge.  Oh, it's Slack, Slack, I need to open the Slack.  Uhh, Slack, do I--I do.  Good, we're good.  So those are our amazing matching donors and they make that--so Dean just claimed that digital download bundle for $60, that makes that money $240 to charity.  $240!  

Okay, I got my Project for Awesome core team and I'm gonna make sure that it's quadrupled.  I'm in the Slack, everybody, I'm in the Slack.  John says, "I love that Hank has no idea how the matching is working."  Look.  Just correct me.  I don't need to type that, they're listening.  Elfpuke just claimed that Project for Awesome 2018 enamel pin.  Claire Hopkins got the enamel pin as well.  Everybody wants an enamel pin.  I don't have my last year Project for Awesome enamel pin.  Can somebody get me one?  Ooh, Carol, thank you for getting that hankgames vault.  I love playing games for small communities of people.  When we did Dream Daddy last year, it was just so fun and we had such a great little community of people who were hanging out and enjoying those together.  We're at $64,000, you guys!  $64,000 right now.  Each dollar donated is now worth--okay, Maryann has confirmed the situation, four times more.  So your money is being quadrupled right now.  So if you get that commemorative coin for $20, it becomes $80.  $20 is like, it's like a substantial amount of money.  $80 is a--

J: OHHHHHH!  

H: Whoaa!

J: I'm back, I'm back.

H: You're on.

J: Hey, my wifi was out.  I am so excited.  I'm so excited mostly because I know so much more  about the Project for Awesome than you do, and it's been fun to watch you struggle to understand the matching, but I'll be able to summarize it very quickly.  Every dollar that you donate is matched by generous nerdfighters as well as by Project for Aw--supporters of Partners in Health and Save the Children, so when you donate a dollar to the Project for Awesome right now at projectforawesome.com/donate or $100 or $1000, that counts as $4 or $400 or $4000 to the Project for Awesome because of those matching donors.

We were really overwhelmed this year with people who wanted to contribute for the matching fund.  Thank you so much to all of them, and as a result of that, you--your money will go so much further than it otherwise would at projectforawesome.com/donate, so please donate.  Now is the time.  Look at Hank's...sunglasses.  They're fantastic.  

H: I decided to put on my sunglasses so that I look cooler.  

J: I wouldn't say you look cooler, I would just say you look different.

H: I--definitely look cooler, John.  Like, it's hard--no, I'm looking at myself right now.

J: Yeah.

H: I'm looking at myself and I think--

J: And I am too.

H: And I'm not saying I look cool, I look cooler and I would like this chat to let me know--

J: Ahh...I think it's--

H: You can actually change--when you donate, you can change your name to whatever you want, like, you can say your name is "Jade Walker thinks Hank looks cooler with the sunglasses on" so let me know.  

J: Yeah, yeah.  Let him know.  Let him know, guys.  Let him know just how cool he looks.  Thank you to Kearstyn, who just got the Pizzamas calendar.  I wanna go through some of the high dollar perks that I don't know if Hank mentioned.  I'm on Zulaiha's computer now and her computer is backwards.

H: What--oh, you got the natural scroll?  

J: Yeah.  (?~21:25)

When I scroll down, I want the computer to go down, and anyway.  Listen--

H: I know.

J: For if you are in a position, and I know that most of you aren't, but a few of you might be, to make a $1,000 donation to this year's Project for Awesome, which will count as $4,000 towards Save the Children and Partners in Health, you can get me to curate a bookshelf for you.  What's gonna happen is that I will do like, a five or ten minute Skype meeting with you, where I get to know you, get to know some of your interests, find out what kinds of books that you like.

And then send them to you with a letter explaining why I picked these five to ten books, so it's like a little bookshelf that I made for you.  

H: That's very cool, John.  

J: What is that, Hank?  Oh, that's the Pizzamas calendar.  

H: Pizzamas calendar.

J: Yeah.

H: Showing it off.

J: We are over--Hank, by the way, in total, because of matching donations and everything, we have now--the Pizzamas calendar is phenomenal and is available at projectforawesome.com/donate, there's no question that it's an excellent, top-quality calendar.  Hank, we're only $600 away for having raised $300,000 for Save the Children and Partners in Health, so somebody is about to put us over the $300,000 hump. 

H: Woo woo woo.  And when you're done with this calendar, you can just cut these out and frame them and put them on your wall.  Look at this beautiful print.

J: Oh, I mean, that Viva La Pizza Napoleon riding the horse one is pure unadulterated magic, Hank.  Hey, can somebody donate $700 really quickly so we don't risk hitting 666.  I know it's not rational, but I've got a thing about certain numbers.

H: Oh, man.  Danielle just got the plushie Glennnn.  Glennnn is winning by a large lead somehow.

J: Yeah, I mean, these are some extremely cute--these are some extremely cute things right here.  I'm very fond of them.

H: Do you know about Glennnn and Daaaale?

J: I highly recommend them.  What's that?

H: You don't know about Glennnn and Daaaale?  

J: Oh, Hank, somebody just donated, I think somebody just donated a tremendous amount of money, so thank you to whoever did that.

H: (blurred) get past 666, so that's good.

J: That was really cl--whoever did that so that I didn't have to freak out about the 666 issue made me very happy, thank you.  By the way--

H: Did you know that this pieces of Pizzamas art is actually ceramic?  This was like, ceramic Pizza John made in an oven.

J: Wow.  Wow.

H: Like a kiln.  I mean--

(?~23:50)

J: If you told me or Val back then that this would happen, I don't think we would have believed you.  Lots of people were asking what's going on in my background.

So as you can see, there's Chewbacca and then next to Chewbacca is Hank, wearing a Pizza John Bowie shirt, and then Hank is sort of motioning at Harry Styles, who's dressed up for the holidays, as he likes to.  He's a holiday oriented Harry Styles, and then I'm pointing at Harry Styles, just to let everybody know, hey, hey, Harry's here.  Harry came to the party.

H: John, is Harry Styles actually that small or are we just very big?  

J: Um, so I think that Harry Styles' designers knew a little something that we didn't know when we were making our life-size us-es, which is that you don't actually make them life-size.  You make them a little smaller.  

H: Mhmm, yeah.  

J: Yeah.  Because if you make them actually life-size, they look weirdly huge.  

H: I need to get my--

J: By the way, I would offer Harry Styles, our office Harry Styles, as a perk but Zulaiha would quit in protest, so we can't do that.  Some people asked about that in comments.  Unfortunately, that's not going to be possible, because we can't--we can't afford to lose Zulaiha, so--and I think that would be the consequence of selling our office Harry Styles for charity.  We're now over $68,000 raised.  Projectforawesome.com is the link where you can go to donate.  We're 20 minutes in to our one--48 hour livestream, so we've got only 47 hours and 40 minutes to go.  You can get--these inside jokes that I don't understand, Glennnn and Daaaale, these plush sheep that have slightly different head things--You can also--Hank, talk about--

H: Yeah.  You could have read the lore of Glennnn and Daaaale.  It's available.

J: I had a busy day, Hank.  Some of us were actually investigating how the matching was gonna work.

H: Hey, I got it right.  I wasn't wrong.  I just wasn't sure!  

J: Alright, so again, for those of you who don't know, we're gonna get to talk with people from Project--people from Partners in Health and Save the Children later today.  

We're gonna hear from people who work for those organizations, but their relationship with Nerdfighteria has been so important to them, to those organizations and their mission over the last 10 years.  We first worked with Partners in Health in the wake of the terrible earthquake in Haiti.  That was the first time that we were able to partner with them on a project, and since then, we've worked with them on a huge variety of projects, and the same is true with Save the Children.  You know, Hank and I have both seen Save the Children's work all over the world.  They work in the United States, as does Partners in Health, but they also work in lots of different places and the work that they're doing is really extraordinary and so you can know because the Project for Awesome is entirely volunteer run, that every dollar that you donate less the cost of processing your credit card and shipping any physical perks that you get, will go to charity.  There's no overhead here.  It all goes to the organization, so thank you for donating.  

H: $70,000!

J: What?

H: $70,000.  

J: Oh, we just hit $70,000 that fast.

H: We did, John.  

J: Oh!

H: That's amazing.  Thank you, Marley.  Thank you, Tristan.

J: Oh, I'm gonna--I'm so excited to be doing some--to be curating some book shelves.  Also, if you want, I have a couple AFC Wimbledon hospitality packages, not to brag, but they come with the sponsorship, and if you wanna take your friends on a--have an extraordinary day at an AFC Wimbledon game with your friends, where you get to meet some of the directors of the club, you get to see Seb Brown's gloves that he used to save two penalties against (?~27:41) to send AFC Wimbledon to the football league, you get to have a nice meal, have a great day out.  You can do that by donating $1,000 to the Project for Awesome.  One of those has been claimed right now, but there's still two left, so if you wanna make a big donation, you can do that.  Also, you can ge a personal message from Dear Hank & John, if you're a Dear Hank & John listener.

H: (?~28:01)  

J: You talked about that?  

H: They're running out.  There are not very many left.

J: There are not that many left, although we might do some more.  I don't know.  Maybe we'll just do two per episode.  God, those sunglasses just do not work for me.  

H: Yeah, you don't like it when I look cool.  

J: I guess that's what it is.  I guess that's what it is.  I guess that's what it is.  It's good to see HowWeGotAnts in the livestream as well as so many friends old and new.  This Star Won't Go Out is in the livestream.  Thanks, huge thanks to all of our moderators and all the people working behind the scenes.  So many people donate their time and energy and expertise to the Project for Awesome every year and we're so grateful.

H: Yeah, you can also get thanked in the Project for Awesome recap video, 5 of 47 of those have been claimed.

J: Yes.

H: And just as a reminder, if you get that perk, which is $55, your $55 becomes $220.  

J: That's really good multiplication, Hank.  That was very impressive.  I would not have gotten that right on the first try.  

H: But you're pretty sure I was right?

J: I--yeah, no, the minute you said it,  I was like, yes.  That sounds--that's Hank's great gift, is that he says things in a way that I just believe him.  We've now raised over $325,000 for Save the Children and Partners in Health.  What a great first half hour we're having.  

H: How long does the matching last? Do you know the answer to that question?

J: The matching lasts until $222,110.  

H: Oh my gosh, you do know the answer to that question.

J: Yeah.  So.  Now's the time, now's the time to donate, so, yeah.  You can maximize your donation.  We really wanna max out.  After that, there's still matching funds from donors from Save the Children and Partners in Health, but we really wanna make sure that we max out the matching fund that Nerdfighters have put up, so we're 1/3 of--I don't know, I'm not very good at math.

H: Ish.  Yeah, ish.  

J: Ish.  Ish.

H: Not gonna do that one that fast.  Thank you to Sarah Hinzman who's a name that I know, a supporter of Crash Course and helper of Crash Course.  Worker-on-er of Crash Course for getting that plushie Glennnn.  

J: Kat just got a mystery perk.  

H: Ooh, and pollytomat just got an exclusive Dear Hank & John.  Not a lot of people are commenting on my sunglasses in their donations, John.

J: It's almost like they don't want to let you know.  It's because they like you.  Thanks to Tommie who just got the digital download bundle.  The digital download bundle is the steal of the Project for Awesome every year.  You get hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of perks delivered to your e-mail inbox all through the year, so some of them come in early, some of them come in late.  I'm very excited about the one, Hank, I think you talked about it, but I'm very excited about--some of you might know that I'm quitting Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and Instagram, actually, at the exact moment that the 2018 Project for Awesome ends.  The only reason I've had it for the last couple months is--well, partly because I'm addicted, and partly because I was like, well, I can't quit before the Project for Awesome.  I have to spam everyone about the P4A, but just because I'm quitting Twitter doesn't mean that I'm gonna stop composing thoughts in 280 characters or less.  As such, I will be sending, to Project for Awesome donors, my Tweets.  All of the things I would have Tweeted and--but I'm not gonna censor myself.  I am done being super careful and polite on the Twitter that I don't use anymore.  I'm gonna go all out.  All the things that I wanted to Tweet and I will send you a document of all the things I would have Tweeted in December and January if I hadn't quit Twitter.  You can get that right now at projectforawesome.com/donate.  

H: We're now at $75,000.  I think a Pizzamas calendar got us over the hump there, John.

J: Oh, that's--that's magnificent.  

H: Um, you can also, I just found out, if you type :sheep:, it puts a sheep in the chat, which is great.

J: Oh, no way.  Oh.  Oh.  Well that--that--that's gonna be a thing.  

H: Here we are.

J: There we are.  

H: I wish that there were two different kinds of sheep, because we do have two important sheep.  I don't know if you know this about Glennn, though, John, he's got beautiful, cute eyes in his plushie form, but--oh gosh, I've caused a problem in the chat.  

J: Hank, how else was that gonna go?

H: Well, what's really interesting to see--

J: The weird thing is that Google's sheep emoji looks more like a cloud that's raining four black raindrops than it looks like a sheep.

H: It--yeah.  Oh, dear.  Oh, dear.  Sorry.  My bad, everybody.  We can--oh, yeah, you can do the crown and then the sheep for Glennn and then I don't know what you should put before the sheep for Daaale.  Whoa, John, it's still going up!  $76,862!  

J: Wow.  I think somebody just donated $1,000 all at once.  I'm sorry for all the people who are making big donations that we're not thanking or who we're not thanking.  I assume you're people and not objects, although these days on the internet, who knows.  Thank you so much for donating.  Thank you for supporting Partners in Health and Save the Children, two really wonderful organizations that are gonna use your money carefully and wisely.  They're both--they're both very highly rated charities known for their efficiency.  Every time I talk--every time I'm like, at a, you know, fundraiser or a philanthropy thing and I talk to people about Save the Children or Partners in Health, they're always like, those are two charities I would 100% support so that's always encouraging, and again, we've seen it for 10 years, Hank.  Like, we've--you know, lots of people who've been part of Nerdfighteria for a long time have seen the projects and the work that Save the Children and Partners in Health have been able to do as a result of the Project for Awesome.

We've seen continued progress in the big markers that we're looking at to see, you know, how we are doing in terms of decreasing the gap, the health and education and achievement gaps that are created by the complete lottery of where you happen to be born and in what circumstances.

H: John, you want me to read you some names of our recent donors?  For example, Hannah-Hank looks cool and also David-Hank's sunglasses are cool-Alan and also Hank's glasses make him look cool and also Hank's glasses are cool and also--

J: Well--

H: Keith-Hank's sunglasses make him look super cool, who donated two times, got both of--both Glennn and Daaale.  

J: Well, thank you, Keith, for your considerate lies.

H: And then there's also Hank-take off the glasses!  With a $20 donation.

J: Yeah, I can't even see your eyes.  Um, Sam just got the penny passport.

H: You can see what I'm looking like--looking at, though.

J: Sam just got the penny passport, which is one of my favorite things.  So, y'all might know that pennies are absolutely, like, just an astonishing insult to the political process of the United States.  Like, even by the extremely low standards of contemporary political discourse, it continues to blow me away that pennies exist despite the fact that each penny minted costs 2.1 cents to make.  However, we're gonna take the worthless, stupid, terrible, offensive pennies and we're gonna turn them into something beautiful, wonderful, just fantastic souveniers, including one that honors my late, great dog, Fireball Wilson Roberts.  I was just thinking about Willie--oh, God, I miss Willie so much, it hurts so much, but I'm gonna get those pressed pennies, because it's so beautiful to see him honored by the pressed pennies, and the coolest thing about the pressed pennies is that there's a machine in the DFTBA.com warehouse that makes them that you have to handcrank and Nerdfighters--

H: Yes.

J:--in Montana volunteer to come into the DFTBA warehouse and crank that machine to turn the pennies into pressed pennies and then you can put them into your fancy pressed penny souvenier book, so it's a great--it's a great perk every year along with the commemorative coin.  There's lots of people who like, get those every year and that always makes me very happy to see the big collections that span the years and if this is your first Project for Awesome, like, why not start a collection right now?  

H: That's how I feel about the commemorative coin as well, though I really want the older coins that I somehow lost.  

J: Oh, did you?  

H: I did, I can't find them.

J: I talked to somebody, actually, I talked to somebody recently on reddit who told me that they were missing one year of the commemorative coin and they reached out to people at DFTBA.com who, for a small donation to the Project for Awesome, solved the problem, so, you never know.

H: Maybe I should go over to the warehouse and see what's going on over there.

J: You could, you could, you could see what's going on over at the warehouse.  I think that the sheep thing has mercifully ended.  

H: Yeah, the chat has chilled out a little bit, some people were trying to see if there was a tuatara emoji.  I don't know if we can make that happen, but it would be great if we could.  

J: We should be able to talk to our friends at Google about that, you know?  

H: Well, I think that there's a way to actually introduce your own custom emojis but it might be tied to like, memberships.  

J: Ohh.

H: Also, there's a ram.  There's both a--people are back with the sheep now.  There's also a ram.  :ram:

J: Oh.  No.  Why'd you mention the ram?!  

H: So we've got an emoji for Glennn and for Daaale.

J: Don't mention the ram!

H: I think that Glennn is the ram and Daaale is the sheep, not saying anything about gender, it's just that he is the king.

J: That's just how it works.

H: And so that's the situation.  Are we gonna hit $80,000, John?  Is it gonna happen?

J: We're gonna hit $80,000 soon, but in the meantime, we've just gone past, total, thanks to matching donations, $350,000 raised for Partners in Health and Save the Children, which is amazing.  We still have 47 hours and 27 minutes to go, and we're very close to $80,000, somebody's about to put us--Heeeey!

H: There it is!

J: Somebody--who did it?  Kastnerd?  Somebody put us over the line.

H: Let's just say it was kastnerd with the Project for Awesome 2018 commemorative--

J: Let's just say it was kastnerd.

H: Commemorative nerd.  

J: Hiltonhat just got the socks, which is great, 'cause you need socks anyway and why not give to charity while you're at it?

H: You need socks.  It's great.

J: TJ also got the socks.

H: Oh, so did TJ.  

J: People love--man, people love socks, Hank.

H: They also love emojis.  Wow.  

J: Um, hahaha, yeah.  I also, every year, I love the Nerdfighter art perk, while we're mentioning perks at projectforawesome.com/donate, you can donate right now.  In fact, Maria just got the Nerdfighter art perk.  Every year, lots of Nerdfighters from around the world send art that they made into the Missoula warehouse, the DFTBA.com warehouse, and then that art gets sent out to you.  You don't know whose art you're gonna get.  You don't know what it's gonna be, but you know that it's gonna be something that some nerdfighter somewhere worked on, and I've heard so many stories over the years about people who made connections or ended up being penpals with the person who made their art and it just, it fills my heart with joy.  What were you laughing at, Hank?

H: Um, I was just--Kristian sent a superchat in the chat saying "Sheep heaven now?"  I don't know if you know about shrimp heaven now.  

J: Oh, I know about shrimp heaven now.  You know, my son, Henry--actually, the artist, Nat Russell, who made The Art Assignment background that's right here, he has a great poster that says "Snake poems now" and I like that even better than shrimp heaven now, like, it's just like, it's just insistent.  It's like a protest poster that just says 'snake poems now'.  It's my favorite work of art and Henry just thinks it's so funny and so do I.  We're finally at the age where Henry and I have the same sense of humor.  

H: Yeah?  Well, Orin--most of Orin's jokes work pretty well for me.  

J: Um, yeah, yeah, for sure.  Oh, by the way, we're over $81,000 raised now and there are lots of perks that are selling out.  This is--6 of the 10 'John Green curates your bookshelf' are gone, so thank you to all the people who have very generously donated for that.  I'll do a Skype visit with you for five or ten minutes, get to know you, get to know some of your book tastes, and then I will buy you five to ten books that I choose carefully based on who you are and send you a note saying why I picked those books, so some of those are--still a few of those left.  Also, there's still a few personal messages for fans of Dear Hank and John, and again, the digital download bundle, which now 540 people have claimed.  It's the steal of the Project for Awesome.  It's $60 and you get all of the digital perks that are mailed to you throughout the year, including--oh, I haven't talked about one thing that I'm very excited about, Hank!  l

H: What is it?

J: The Statue Got Me High.  Have I told you about it?

H: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah--I ha--you did tell me about it.  I'm excited about it.

J: So Sarah and I are doing a podcast that is only for Project for Awesome donors.  You can get it separately or you can get it by getting the digital download bundle at projectforawesome.com/donate, and we're doing two episodes of this podcast called The Statue Got Me High, which is a reference to a They Might Be Giants song with the same name, and the idea is that in every episode, Sarah and I will share with each other a work of art that blew our minds and got us high, so in the first episode, I talk about the Amsterdam Central Library, where I wrote a lot of The Fault in Our Stars and which I just think is this amazing library and I've probably visited it like 30 or 40 times before Sarah finally came and visited it too, and I'd built it up so much in her imagination.  I was like, Sarah, when you see the Amsterdam Central Library, like, your mind is gonna shift about what architecture can do and be and I'll never forget like, Sarah going up the escalator in the Amsterdam Central Library and me being like, well?!  Well?!  Well?!  And she said, "I mean, it's a library."  

So not all statues that get me high get other people high, and not all statues that get other people high get me high, but that's what it's gonna be.  It's gonna be two episodes of a married couple talking about the statues that got them high.  

H: That's great, John.  I think that it reminds me of Wonderful!, Griffin and Rachel McElroy's podcast and I am a huge fan of that, and I love to hear people talk about the things that they love.  Matthew Gaydos also does one called I Like It in which people talk about the things that they like and like, their weird interests and just like, delving in a little bit on like, finding joy in the world.  

J: Right, right, no, I think it's great.  I think we need more of that, and so you can donate at projectforawesome.com/donate to get that, or if you get the digital perk bundle, you're gonna get that along with so many other things, like Hank and I doing a movie commentary on Grease II, the greatest Grease movie every made.  

H: Yeah.  Yeah, and that $60 is gonna become $240.  What?!  

J: Yeah, that $60 will become a $240 donation.  That's exactly right, because every dollar that you donate for the first half of the Project for Awesome counts as $4 toward Partners in Health and Save the Children.  

H: Wow, the money counter is going up really fast and far.  It's going up to $84,000.  

J: It is.  It is.  I don't know what just happened.

H: Why did it do that?  

J: I don't know.  I can't keep track of who's donating to what, but whoever just donated that much money, thank you.  And thank you to Kaitlynne, for getting the Pizzamas calendar.  Lots of people excited about the Pizzamas calendar, Hank.  

H: Uh, yeah.  I think that it was Will.  Thank you, Will, for your donations.  I believe probably Will's gonna go see AFC Wimbledon with you is my guess.

J: Oh, no, it's not with me, Hank, it's not with me.  

H: Sorry.  Sorry, I don't know what the perk is.  Or maybe you're curating someone's bookshelf.  Yeah, you--

J: Okay, well, I'm excited regardless, but no, the AFC Wimbledon perk is not with me, it's with your friends.  You take your friends to an AFC Wimbledon game, you have an awesome day, you get a nice meal.  

You get to meet some of the directors of the club and you get to see Seb Brown's gloves, the greatest privilege of all.  

H: Gloves?

J: Yeah, Hank, the gloves that he was wearing when he saved two penalties against (?~44:20) to send AFC Wimbledon into the football league, including the second penalty save when he went the wrong way but that beautiful right-handed glove, it just somehow stayed just high enough to send the ball back, not go over the line, AFC Wimbledon are a football league team once again.  I can quote the commentary.  I'm gonna start to tear up.  

H: And you will also apparently write them an email before telling them your favorite things to look for at the stadium.

J: Yes, there might be a whole paragraph about Seb Brown's gloves, but there's also lots of other cool stuff at the AFC Wimbledon stadium, so if you've ever wanted to have a really great time at an AFC Wimbledon game, go ahead and check out that perk, but there's so many great perks that you can get and also there's gonna be lots of new perks coming on throughout the rest of the Project for Awesome.  There's lots of new stuff.

H: True.

J: New stuff coming up so, I would say don't spend all your money, but do.  Do spend all your money.  

H: I've got--I've got some that I'm excited to show off a little later, when it's my time.  

J: Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing that I'm gonna do, Hank, is that I'm gonna consider--my kids are so excited about, you know, all they--the only thing that my kids know about the Project for Awesome is that it's the only time of year when they're allowed to be in the basement while dad is filming and also that they traditionally get to like, cover my face in Sharpie when we reach a milestone.

H: Sure, sure.

J: But I was thinking, wouldn't it be better if it was like a beard sharpie that then became like a, like a, just a mustache?  

H: Are you gonna--you can't Sharpie in all your hairs, right?

J: I think you can.  I think you can.  I'm not su--I'm not positive, but I think you can.

H: Okay.  

J: And then, I'm just gonna have a mustache.

H: But are you gonna shave off the rest of your beard?  

J: Yeah, and I'm just gonna have a mustache.

H: Ohh, you're gonna shave your beard.  

J: I've been growing this beard for two months just so that I could have a Project for Awesome mustache.  A special commemorative Project for Awesome mustache.  I'm--this thing is so uncomfortable, you have no idea.  It's just--I--it's been miserable the last two weeks, but I've been like, God, if I can just make it to December 7th, I can have that P4A mustache that I've been dreaming about.  Thank you to Abigail who didn't claim anything and just donated.  That was very generous of you, Abigail, and indeed, you don't have to get a perk.  You can just donate right now at projectforawesome.com/donate and know that every dollar you donate will count as $4 towards Partners in Health and Save the Children.  We're now, Hank, we're near--we're at $87,000.  We have $13,000 to go before we hit $100,000 at the Indiegogo, which means that in total, this year's Project for Awesome has raised almost $400,000--

H: Can we do it?

J: $386,000, almost $400,000 for Save the Children and Partners in Health.  I wonder if we can get there before you leave at 1:00 Eastern, 11:00 Montana time?


H: John, do you know about the part where, when you were gone, I got excited about showing people the Pizzamas calendar and I stood up real quickly and showed everyone my buttcrack?

J: Oh, I heard about it.  

H: Okay.  So, I just wanna make it clear that that's not something that was done in an excitement over achieving a milestone and will not also be something that is--will be done in excitement over achieving a milestone.

J: Oh, yeah, no, well, for one thing, I think that would--I think that would violate YouTube's terms of service and also it would violate my personal--

H: Terms of service.

J: Terms of service.  Right, I only participate in this collaboration with you contingent on that not happening.

H: Yeah.  How far are we away from just referring to our own personal values as the--as like, 'my terms of service'?  

J: The terms of service!  I'm sorry, but you've violated my terms of service.  

H: Yeah, it's like, why are we breaking up?  I mean, it's written right here.

J: The terms of service, listen, I don't know if you read the 88 page document I gave you on our first date, but it is outlined on page 62.  Last night, I had to make a rule with my children--my kids love like, toys that play songs, and I love that people at Fox 2000 who made The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns movies so much.  They're such awesome people.  They are so near and dear to my heart, but they gave us these Alvin and The Chipmunk animatronic dolls that play Christmas songs, but they each play a different Christmas song, and the kids' favorite thing to do is to turn on all three of the Chipmunks playing three competing Christmas songs at the same time, and so last night, I had to make it clear to my children that it is a violation of our family's terms of service for there to be two musics happening at the same time.

H: Yeah.  

J: Like, I can't hear two musics.  I can't handle it.

H: It's not allowed.  

J: We are $11,000 away from hitting $100,000 at the Indiegogo in the first hour of the Project for Awesome, so Hank's glasses make him look cool just claimed an exclusive Delete This, which is Hank and Katherine's wonderful podcast about Hank's questionable use of Twitter.  

H: Heather D. Diego just donated as well.

J: Oh, Heather!

H: A friend of ours.

J: Heather!  Thank you for donating!  Yeah.  What a wonderful--that's so generous of you.  And it's always great to see people we know in real life donating, so thank you to all of them and also like, our YouTuber friends who donate.  Thank you so much.  And our parents!  Every year, our parents donate, which always makes me cry.  I don't know if they're here yet, but Mom and Dad, if you're looking to donate, now is the time.  We've got 15 minutes left in the first hour and it would be amazing to be able to launch the first hour at $100,000, 1/3 of the way to our goal for the 2018 Project for Awesome.  

So thank you to Amanda, who just donated to get the enamel pin.  It's a very high quality enamel pin.  We make a good enamel pin.  I don't wanna brag.  

H: We do.  We know what we're doing.  We know what we're doing.

J: But we do.  We do.  We're also very close now to $400,000, Hank.  We're at $394,981 total raised for Partners in Health and Save the Children, which is pretty phenomenal.  

H: I'm--I am trying to figure out how far behind the scroll is from where we actually are--and I just can't--I can't find Heather on the list.  

J: Oh, because people are donating so fast?

H: Yeah, I think that we--that the lower third might be very behind right now.

J: Oh, okay.  Well, that's okay.  That's alright.  David just donated to get plushie Glennn.  That was nice.  It's a great--I mean, I will say--I don't know, I don't understand this Project for Awesome inside joke, as indeed I don't understand most inside jokes in Nerdfighteria at this point because that's how old I am, but um, this is a high quality plush sheep. Like, this is a very good and you can get it with this visor and it's a nice--it's a good looking, you know, it's a good looking visor.  It's not bad.  I mean, I don't know.  I think it's good.  Also, shout out to Zulaiha for getting all of these champagne poppers.  I'm a big fan of champagne poppers even though it's a lot of work to clean them up, so when we get to $400,000 I'm gonna drop a champagne popper.  Okay, here we go.  Wait, did we do it?  

H: Did we do what?  $400,000?

J: Yeah.  

H: Not according to my screen.  We're--we're like, one--one--yep.

J: Nope.  We didn't.  I got excited for nothing.  We're $1,500 short.

H: Which is pretty close.  It's pretty close.

J: It's pretty good.  It's pretty close, and we're at over $90,000 raised total.  Skye, who I think I know, just raised 90--just pushed us over $90,000, so thank you.  Anonymous claimed the P4A sticker pack.  It's good stickers.  Good stickers.  If you've got a sticker book, there's never been a better time to get a sticker for your sticker book.

Alright, sorry, Hank and I are also like, reading background chat.  Thanks as always to all the people who are working on the Project for Awesome and work 48 hours straight.  Not straight.  Most of them take breaks, 'cause it's important to get your rest.  

H: Ooh.  Ooh.  I love it when it goes up a bunch.

J: Oh yeah.  That's a good feeling.

H: Matthew Gaydos doesn't like the sunglasses, according to 17 minutes ago--

J: His donation?  

H: Donation.

J: I saw somebody donated to say, "Hank's sunglasses, 7/10."  Which I think is generous if we're being honest, like, I think that's--ohh, we did it, we're at $401,000!  

H: Woowoowoowoowoowooowoowoowoo!

J: Huzzah!  That was a really good champagne popper, not to brag.  I don't--I'm not--I'm not usually that good at them.  Um, so yeah, we're at $401,000 raised and that means over at the Indiegogo, at projectforawesome.com/donate, we are over $91,000, $9,000 away from being a third of the way to our goal.  If you wanna donate, now's the time.  What are you laughing about Hank?

H: Alright, so, I'm laughing--I finally found--the lower third is about 20 minutes behind.  

J: Oh, really?

H: Because it has to give everybody a certain amount of time and too many people have come up, so we--

J: Ohhh.

H: It will be--it will be full queue on that for at least 20 more minutes, which is great.

J: Oh, that's great.  

H: Great, yeah.  

J: So if you donated and we haven't thanked you, it's probably because we're not going to thank you.  

H: It's just because, yeah, it'll be 20 minutes.

J: But there's a slight chance that it's only 20 minutes away.

H: There's a small chance that it's 20 minutes way.  Hank's sunglasses rock didn't claim anything, they just donated.

J: Yeah, but yeah, they might have just donated like a dollar for that one.  

H: Indeed, they donated a dollar two times.  But that turned into $8!  

J: That's a great point, Hank.  Every dollar you donate counts as $4, thanks to matching donors.  A huge thanks again to all of our matching donors this year.  Hank, can you read their names since I don't have the list because I'm not on my computer?

H: Yes, I can.  We've got a generous donor from Save the Children and one from Partners in Health.  That--those organizations brought in for the--from their donor bases.  We've also got Ben and Megan Holman, Katie and Jesse Eichorn, we've got in memory of Jessalyn Ludwin.  Alex and Ashlie, Dannie and Dorrie, John Woodbury, Jasmine, Evan, and Nissa.  Matt, Bryce, Jonathan in San Francisco, Kevin and Androny, Alex W., the Golding family, Jason Kurtz, and several other Nerdfighters who chose to remain anonymous.  Thank you to all of them.

J: So thank you.  Yes, thank you so much for having--it's so nice to have such a big matching fund this year and the number of Nerdfighters who were able to contribute to that has grown every year for the last several years, I think partly because Nerdfighteria is, on average, slightly older.  We're now at $92,156, which means we're just $7,850 away from $100,000 with 10 minutes to go until then.  Somebody had a great idea in comments, Hank.

H: What?

J: I should get a glitter beard.  Alice would love that.

H: That--that sounds like it's gonna be a problem forever.

J: No, no, no, just shave it off.  It'll be easy.  I just won't let her get the mustache.  Alice would love that.  She loves--Alice--I mean, I--I--I didn't try to raise her--we haven't tried to raise her with any set of expectations or any, you know, like, we tried very hard not to impose gender ideas on our kids, but Alice loves glitter.  I don't know what it is.  She just loves the way that it glints in the sunlight.  She's like a squirrel or something.  She just loves glitter.  All glitter.

H: Yeah, no, yeah--I think you gotta lean into whatever your kids are into, John.  That's your job as a parent, and like, Orin really likes butterflies and trucks, so.

J: Minecraft and glitter.  Yeah, yeah, Alice really--Alice and Henry both like butterfies a lot.  Alice is really into like, like, large mammals.  Deer, foxes, wolves.  She's very afraid of raccoons, though, so she won't go outside after dark because of the raccoons, and I'm like, Alice.  Like.  First off, raccoons are scared of you.  Secondly, raccoons weigh like, 12 pounds, and she'll be like, but rabies, and I'll be like, yeah, no, you're right.  You're right, we should stay inside.  Alright, we've got $93,127.  We've got eight minutes left during Hank's hour at the Project for Awesome and we've got $7,000 left to raise.

H: $7,000, yeah, ish, yeah.

J: Ish.  If we can get to--that would be amazing to get to--obviously, it's not a requirement.  We'll keep going for the next 47 hours regardless, but if you've got--to $100,000(?~57:07)

H: We're just gonna stop!  

J: That would be pretty great.  I would be excited.

H: Yeah, and if you wanna get--if you wanna get this Project for Awesome Pizzamas calendar, you can.  It has art from Nerd--this is a John bush camper.  It's so beautiful.  

J: By the way, one of the people who made a big donation to this year's Project for Awesome, I think is involved with Epic Games in a roundabout way, and I just wanna say a big thank you.  

H: Oh yeah?

J: They sent me the nicest, most, like, charming, funny note that I've ever received and also, they sent me an enamel pin of a bush.  Of a Fortnite bush.

H: Oh wow. 

J: Yeah.  But anyway, that's great.  Her name is Claire and her kid wrote me a great letter.  Anyway, that is a fantastic--all the art in the Pizza John calendar is phenomenal.  Hank, we've got $6,000 left to raise.  Why don't you go through some of your favorite perks at projectforawesome.com/donate?  

H: John, do you know how between your shoe and your foot, it's good to just have something?

J: Yep.  I've heard about that, yeah.

H: And it keeps you warm, it keeps your shoe protected from your foot gunk and you can change 'em out every day?

J: Yep.  Yep.

H: And ultimately, they don't last forever, so you always need more of these protectors between your foot and your shoe.

J: Yep.  Yep.

H: And sometimes you want some high-quality ones, with like a little pop of color and sometimes, you want three pairs.  That's six total socks and you want them for $45 but John, $45 that's going to turn into--

J: Yep.

H: Shoot.  It's gonna turn into--

J: Yep.

H: $100--

J: Hahahaha

H: $180?  

J: You did it!  No, that was it.  That was it, you got it, $180.  

H: And--and--and--and all that money is going to go--well, some of it is going to go to manufacturing socks, but the vast majority of that money is going to go to making lives better for people whose lives aren't as good as they could be, and it's gonna be spent extremely efficiently by two organizations, Partners in Health and Save the Children, who have a long proven track record of making the world better with their hard work and with your money that you spent because you need socks anyway.  

J: That's a great--that's--that's the most long-winded possible way to say that at projectforawesome.com/donate, you can get a pair of--you can get three pairs of socks for a donation and that all your donations will be matched.  You can also get lots of other things.  Unfortunately, we--the John Green curates your book shelf perk has just sold out.

H: Oh, dang.

J: You can't get that anymore, but Hank, for a $160 donation to the Project for Awesome, you can get one of my shirts, and I mean one, because all the other ones are sold.  

H: Only one left, ohh, gotta go get it quick.  

J: Or you can get nine of Hank's shirts, because they sold less quickly for some reason that I'm terrified to contemplate.  Also, just--a perk that just came up at projectforawesome.com/donate--

H: Oh, a new perk.  

J: Just went up is signed copies, hardcover copies, of my novel Turtles All the Way Down, if you make a $75 donation to this year's P4A, I will send you a signed copy of Turtles All the Way Down complete with a stamp of a spiral that I drew and I wanna really say a huge thank you to Julie Strauss-Gabel, my editor and publisher, and to Penguin Young Readers Group who have supported the Project for Awesome every year since it began in one way or another, and this year by donating all of those books, so thank you Julie and Penguin.  You can go and, if you, for some reason, don't have a signed copy of Turtles All the Way Down or if you wanna give one to a friend, or if you just want that stamped spiral, you can go right now to projectforawesome.com/donate and you can get that perk or many others.  There's four minutes left, Hank, in our first hour.  

H: Um, Jenn Marker, who is the author of the sheep lore Tumblr post--if you wanna find out all about Glennn and Daaale, just got that commemorative Glennn/Daaale.

J: Aw, that's awesome.  Awesome.

H: That was a very long sentence that did not fit on the thing, so I don't know what it said.  Emily just got the digital download bundle and Kwyn thinks I look pretty cool got the 2018 enamel pin.  

J: Pretty cool, emphasis on the pretty.

H: You know, I didn't say I looked cool.  I just said I looked more cool.

J: Jordan just got the hankgames vault.  Blink just got the plushie Daaaale.  Chrissy just got the digital download bundle.  We're only $4,000 away from $100,000 raised during the first hour of the Project for Awesome.  Hank, I think your glasses are cool, but I like your eyes more.  Renee just claimed the digital download bundle.  Ooh, that's a good looking Project for Awesome coin from years past.  

H: This is 2015 and this is uh, what do we got here?

We got--I think this is 2013, got the 2013 coin.

J: I can't--Metzgirl wanted me to put on sunglasses but I literally can't wear them because then I become blind.  Um, also if you go to projectforawesome.com/donate momentarily, you can get one of my favorite perks from last year which is a signed foreign edition of one of my books.  You don't know which one, like, which country or language, but it is one of them.  It could be Slovenian, it could be Icelandic, it could be (?~1:62:33), it could be any number of things, but I'll send you a signed copy of one of the foreign editions of my books, which there are very few that are signed because I don't, you know, I don't travel very much, so you can get that projectforawesome.com/donate now.

H: Interesting.

J: We've got two minutes left and we're at $96,690 so if you wanna donate, donate right now.  

H: I wanna donate, John.  

J: Hank, why don't you just go ahead and donate, because if this is your last minute in the first hour, although you have already donated by additing to the matching fund which I appreciate.  Thank you for doing that.  We've raised a total of $423,000 for Save the Children and Partners in Health and we're only $3,000 away from $100,000 raised at the Indiegogo so thank you to everybody who's donated here in the first hour of this year's P4A.  It's already been a lot of fun and we have 47 of these to go.  

H: 47 of these hours, John.  Currently, Glennnn has sold 68.

J: Yeah.

H: And Daaaale has sold 40, so I think we all know why Glennnn is king of the glen.  

J: Yeah, Daaaale is significantly behind.  I'm concerned about Daaaale's kind of sense of well-being.

H: It's okay.  He's come to accept it.

J: So if you wanna support Daaaale, now's the time at projectforawesome.com/donate.  

H: Oh man.  You can also get that digital download bundle.  You're gonna get it anyway, you're gonna find out so many other things--576 people have claimed it.  It's by far the most popular perk every year.  

You can get it now for $60 that are gonna turn into $1--wait, $240.  

J: That's right, that's right, because everything that you--Sheridan, by the way, in our office, just bought those sheep, so thank you Sheridan.  

H: Oh good.  Gotta have those--

J: Alright, Hank, in your last minute, is there anything you wanna say before we see you tonight?  

H: Um, I don't even think it will be night time.  I think it will be afternoon and I am excited to join everybody then, hang out, but there are other great people who are gonna be in this space, right here.

J: AND WE JUST PASSED $100,000!  

H: WHOA!  Who did that?!  

J: I don't know!  Oh, that's great, thank you to whoever just did that. Oh, that's amazing.  We passed $100,000 right before we got to 1PM.  Thank you to everybody who donated and somebody just made a big donation to put us past $100,000, that means that, in total--Hank, are you still there?  No?  Hank has gone.  Am I still here?  Great.  Well, I mean, when Hank said he had to go at 1PM, he meant he had to go at 1PM.  

H: I got so excited that we hit $100,000 that I refreshed the page because I thought it was gonna show me, just like, aahhh!  I was like, my total hasn't updated yet!

J: (?~1:65:22)  Yeah, you totally disappeared.  That's $440,000 total that we're raised for Save the Children and Partners in Health so far.  Hank, we're gonna say goodbye to you so that we can say hello to Ettore from Save the Children, so um, thank you for being here, Hank.  Thanks for helping to launch the P4A this year.  It's been good.  It's always so fun to see you for this.  It's al--this is my favorite time of year and thank you for being awesome and we'll see you in a few hours.  Bye!

H: Thank you, John.  Bye-bye.  

J: Okay.  Before we bring on Ettore from Save the Children, I just wanna say a quick thank you to everybody who's making the livestream work and makin' everything else work at the 2018 Project for Awesome.

We depend so much on volunteer support from the moderators who are in the chat right now with you to the people at dftba.com who donate so much of their time to everybody who works on this project, who volunteers on this project, who we work with and who we know, thank you to everybody.  Hello, Ettore!  

E: Hey, John, how are ya?  

J: I'm great.  How are you?

E: I'm doing awesome, no pun intended.  Well, maybe actually a pun was intended there, but I will say that it is also our favorite time of year for Project for Awesome as the calendar indicates!  

J: Oh, that's funny, that's great.

E: We've been checking it off all year in anticipation.  I'm just sayin'.

J: That is awesome.  I love it.  I love it.  That's great.  Well, we've got a new calendar this year that folks can get at projectforawesome.com/donate that's got lots of different Pizza John designs.  For those of you who don't know, Ettore has been part of the Project for Awesome with us, and with Save the Children, for many, many years, so we wanna say thank you again for letting us be part of the extraordinary work that you're doing and wanted to give you a chance to talk about some of what Save the Children has been up to.  

E: Thanks so much, John and welcome, Nerdfighteria, to the Project for Awesome livestream.  We're honored to be beneficiaries this year with Partners for Health, so thank you so much.   Yeah, so what I've been up to.  A little about Save the Children for those who don't know, right?  Save the Children was founded 100 years ago next year, so we're gonna celebrate our centennary and just like Project for Awesome is now entering its adolescent years, we work with children, even before they're born, but from maternal newborn health through early education through protection from harm in times of emergencies, every day, and in 120 countries including the United States.  

A lot of people don't know that.  We work right here in the US.  So we're honored and thrilled to be here once again and what we'd like to do is tell folks a little bit about what we do in the forms of stories and stats, right?  So regarding stats, the good news is that you're somewhat of an expert on this, John, is that the child survival figure every day, so child mortality, every day, 15,000 kids are still dying from largely preventable, treatable causes and we believe that number can and should be 0 by 2030.  In order to get there, we wanna make sure we focus on the hardest to reach kids and the most marginalized.  

J: Right, exactly.  I mean, it really is true that when we make child survival and child health a priority as a species, child survival goes up.  We've seen that over and over again because we saw that until 1990, when we weren't heavily investing in child health and child survival and maternal health to make sure that moms could safely, could have safe pregnancies and could safely deliver babies, when we weren't making those big investments, child survival was more than, you know, under five mortality was more than twice as high as it is today, but as you say, we know that it can be much, much lower and that it really, it's a shame, like, it's an embarrassment, I think, to us as a species that it's not lower.  It ought to be, whether or not you get to have a healthy life, whether or not you get to have basic educational opportunities, that should not be a birth lottery.  That should not be a function of geography or the kind of community that you're born into.  Everyone should have the chance to have a healthy and fulfilling life, and so that's what--that's why we work with Save the Children and that's why we are raising money right now.  

Because we really, we really have seen, in the last ten years, how you and the people you work with make life-saving interventions all around the world, whether that be birth scales, you know, like, scales for little kids to understand when kids are malnourished, when stunting--when there's a risk of stunting, whether it be to provide programs for early childhood care so that moms have a chance to learn how to breastfeed and they have a chance to keep their babies warm with kangaroo mothering, all the way up through adolescence.  I've seen Save the Children's work in refugee camps, providing food assistance to kids and families in times of incredible, almost unspeakable crisis and I've also seen Save the Children work to provide safe spaces for kids to play in those situations, which is so important.  It's so traumatic to be uprooted from your life and to be forced to live in a place that's unfamiliar to you and that can be so difficult for kids and seeing those safe spaces that Save the Children provides for kids to play and have structured time and to feel safe, it's just so vital and we're so grateful to you for that work.

E: That's awesome, John, yes, you're so well-informed and educated on the subject matter and you've seen it yourself and we wish we could take everyone to the field but joining the stream today is a great way to at least tell some of these stories so people, you know, think that it's not hopeless but in fact, there is hope through events like Project for Awesome.  So a lot of people don't know that we also, in times of emergency, we're one of the first there and the last to leave.  We do whatever it takes to save kids, no matter where they are in the world and in fact, we responded most recently to Hurricane Michael in Florida and so whether it's a domestic disaster, we're there for many years.  We're still in Texas responding to Hurricane Harvey, for example, so we're there for the long-term, both immediate relief and long-term development, but the--what you said about newborn child survival is so important.

What I love about Save the Children--one of the things I love about them, I've been here for 14 years and the logo right behind me is a child and this sort of circle around it is sort of the safe circle that we care for the child from when they're born through the early education years, as you point out, until they're an adolescent and then into the world as an adult, and that's what we do, and with your help and Project for Awesome's help, we can do that throughout the journey of a child's life.  But talking about refugee camps and your experience there, I recently got back from Lebanon, I just wanted to share one story with you.  So, I flew there and in the morning, saw programs on the ground.  We're dealing with taking care of Syrian refugee children who have been displaced from their homes and you know, at first, there was sort of a daycare and we set it up right next to the refugee settlements and there were, it was like a PreK class and there were white tents and we were there educating kids and it seemed like a bubble, this very circle was a metaphor for what it had felt like, that it did--it looked like normal.  Some sense of normalcy, which is a tribute to the great work that our staff is doing on the ground.  Then they took me to a middle school, the equivalent of a middle school classroom and it was innocuous and disarming at first and I walk in and there are kids between eight and 14 in the room, boys and girls, all seated properly and when the teacher went around and was translating for the American visitor, she said, "Please tell our guest your first name, your age, and your job."  In that moment, I was shocked.  I was--what do you mean, job?  

These kids, they're between eight and 13.  My kids are 13 and 16 and they're still not employed working, and that would be voluntarily.  This is involuntary employment, so and then they would share their stories and one girl, you know, she, her name is Yasmin, age eight, and she said, "I clean houses all day," and by hearing a lot of these stories, I finally had the courage to ask a follow-up question and I said, well, you know, when do you have time for school?  And she said, "Well, I get up at 4AM, I work for eight hours, and then I go to school," and another follow-up question was, well, what is your wage?  I mean, how much do you earn?  And she said, "The equivalent of two US dollars," and I said, well, what do you do with the money?  And, "I give it to my parents for medicine."  So in hearing that story, I first was really sad, but then I realized she wasn't working right then.  Why?  Because Save the Children was there, taking her out of that labor environment and into a proper school setting where a kid her age should be, and you, I, and Hank are all fathers of young kids and we can sort of empathize but just know that for the, you know, for the price of that wage, your contribution, large or small, the Project for Awesome helps kids like Yasmin be out of that situation and be in school where a kid should be.  

J: Yeah, and you can go to projectforawesome.com/donate to donate and all your donations--I think the audio is a little bit (?~1:75:46) but all your donations and support--Save the Children and Partners in Health, they do life-saving work on behalf of people who are in the greatest need in the world and I just wanna underscore one other thing that Ettore said, which is that Save the Children is known for being with kids in crisis, but also for staying.

Whenever there's a--whenever there's a crisis around the world, there often is a huge flood of resources to that area, whether, you know, it's a natural disaster or the first months of a refugee crisis, we saw that with the Syrian civil war, but there's also this, like, often, there's--when it stops being a crisis, where it stops being in the news, there's this huge kind of, I think, Ophelia Dahl at Partners in Health once described it as a sucking sound, that you can hear all of the money leaving, and the truth is that long-term problems require long-term solutions and require long-term interventions, and we know when we make those long-term commitments, when we make those long-term investments, we see long-term change, and that's why we've seen the child mortality rate go down so much, that's why we've seen child employment decrease, you know, like, children who are forced into the workforce at an early age decreased.  That's why we've seen the number of kids who are in school go up.  It's because, as a species, we've been making these investments, but I have to say, and you know this, Ettore, that some of that progress has slowed in the last couple of years and one of the reasons its slowed is because we aren't making those investments at the level that we need to and that's one of the reasons why this year's Project for Awesome feels particularly important to me, and again, you can go to projectforawesome.com/donate, or you can just donate to Save the Children directly via their website, but it feels really important to me right now because we do have this goal of seeing the end of these easily preventable child deaths by, you know, through the millennium development goal or the global goals, but without those commitments, without those funding commitments, we can't get there and so we need to be investing in this, and that both means, like, I think donating right now, but it also means talking, considering it when you vote, talking to your elected officials about it, because we've seen over and over again, when we make these commitments, it works and when we--when we don't make the commitments, there is a lot of unnecessary suffering.  

E: Totally agree, John.  You know, changing--children are our future, right, and you know, saving a child's life lasts a lifetime.  If we can change a child's life for the better, it lasts a lifetime and it's what the Earth is passed on to, to our next generation of kids, so we've been around for several generations and we'll still be around until we're--every last child is saved and served.  I wish there wasn't a need for organizations like Save the Children but there currently is.  As you point out, there's been a bit of a setback in recent years but the good news is that a caring community like the people watching the stream right now can do something about it, and it's gonna take public and private partnerships with government and corporations and foundations as well as individuals like us to be able to make that difference, but it's really important that we're here, that you're sharing our story, and if you can't donate, if you don't have the means to do so, you can use your voice, especially now in the connected economy of social media.  You can use hashtags and you can write your congressional representatives and have your voice heard and that's something that's really important that you touched upon, John.  It's just not only about the dollars, it's about volunteerism, it's about commitment, and it's about lending your voice to those children who don't have one.  

J: Yeah, absolutely.  By the way, you can go to projectforawesome.com right now and you help choose the charities that we're going to support during the second half of the Project for Awesome with your votes, and also, if you go to projectforawesome.com right now, the featured video is a video that Save the Children made for us, for Nerdfighteria, for the 2018 Project for Awesome that I'm really excited for you guys to see.  

So Ettore, thank you for organizing that.  I really appreciate it.

E: No, it's awesome, and as you know, you've met our president and CEO, Carolyn Miles and she gives the opening remarks and shows examples of some of the great work that your funds and your community have helped us do over the past year, so we're really honored to be part of this livestream this year and in the past, more than a decade and we really appreciate, you know, your support in organizing this kind of fundraiser.  This is how we can create communities and communities that can be a force for good, so we're super excited.  In fact, we are assembling something called a stream team.  I'm wearing the hoodie right here.  You know, it is essentially a small token of appreciation for raising funds, so you know, just let me know what your and Hank's sizes are, because we'd be more than happy to get you a hoodie.  It's the least we can do.  

J: Oh yeah, well, we--I'll make a donation to make sure that I've covered the cost of the hoodie, but Hank and I--I'm a large.  Hank thinks that he's a medium but he is also a large.

E: So I've heard Hank say he's a medium in hoodies on this stream in the past year, so we will keep that in mind.

J: I mean, it could be off, but I've seen him in a medium hoodie and I think he's a large.  

E: Okay.  I hope he's listening and watching but in fact, if he is, so on a personal note, I, you know, I am a brother like you and I'm an identical twin.  Angelo, he's 10 minutes older, so he's my older brother, and so, you know, you're probably compared as brothers to each other, and we are, too, even though you're not twins, so, you know, one comparison, first a shout-out to Hank for his, you know, first book.

J: Yeah.  

E: It's amazing and remarkable, I should say.  No self promotion here, but I mean, that's amazing.  My question is, like, why is his book so much bigger than yours?  I--yours are--

J: It's not the number of words in a book, Ettore.  

E: Okay.  

J: Quality of the work.  No, but Hank's book is great.  (?~1:82:35)

E: Yeah, and I'd like to also say, well, maybe it is about the size of the donation, but any donation, large or small, counts, just like any size of a book counts as well.  

J: That's very true.  That's very true.  So, again, if you donate at projectforawesome.com/donate right now, every dollar you donate will become four dollars to Partners in Health and Save the Children because of matching donors, so thank you so much to all the matching donors who made that possible and go ahead and take their money, and in some cases, my money, too.  Please take it.  Please take it by donating at projectforawesome.com/donate and making sure that we max out the donation that we can make this year to Save the Children and Partners in Health, the organizations we're raising money for during the first half of this P4A.  Ettore, I wanna give you a chance to share anything else that you'd like to share before I say thank you and go back to thanking all of our donors.

E: Yeah, I'd like to say two final remarks.  The first is, I'm wearing my Project for Awesome socks!  Right, so right here, so guys, bid on this year's socks.  Go and get them before they're gone.  I've got--

J: Ettore is like, Ettore is a legitimate Nerdfighter, guys.  Like, every time we run into each other--heyyyyy!  Hi!

E: And here's our final words!  I'm out of the way, go, go, go.  

D
F
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B
A

Alright.

J: Aw, that's amazing!  

J: That's amazing.

E: And you know what that spells!  Don't forget to be awesome!  Whoooo!

J: Thank you so much.  Thank you, Ettore.  Thank you, everybody at Save the Children for all of your support.  We really appreciate it.  Thanks for being part of this stream with us.  It's just amazing.  And don't forget to get the calendar!  Thank you, guys.  Thank you, again, for letting us be part of your mission this year.  We're so excited and we're off to raise a lot of money for you guys.  

E: Thank you so much!  Bye, everyone.

J: Bye.  Take care.  Ohh, huge thanks to Ettore and everybody at Save the Children for joining us on this year's stream.  You heard from them about some of the work that they're doing and I can't emphasize enough that, you know, we've worked with both Partners in Health and Save the Children for a really long time and so we've seen their efficiency and we've seen how hard they work and we've seen the difference that they make all round the world, so as Ettore said, Save the Children is working in 120 different countries.  They're working in ongoing challenges, responding to ongoing challenges but also responding to crises all around the world, so yeah, it's just--I--that was--made me a little teary-eyed.  Very, very grateful for the chance to have been part of their story over the last decade.  They're making--yeah, they're just doing so much good in the world, and also, I just wanna say again, every dollar you donate at projectforawesome.com/donate right now is worth four dollars to Save the Children and Partners in Health, so we're over $108,000 raised at the Indiegogo at projectforawesome.com/donate, which means that in total, and I wanna say, I guess I should say some thank yous to the people who've donated recently, because there are so many who donated during that last 15 minutes, including Annabel and Kira and Laura and Sonya and Ben and Valentin and Cristin and William and Ben donated again.

Thanks for donating twice, Ben, and William and Erica and Hank?  I think that is Hank Green.  Um, I think Hank was getting sheep, and Ashley and Hanna and Milan and Degan and Lena and Bojiana and James and Heather and Kira and Charlotte and Hailey and Hank Green and his cool glasses.  Hank has been donating while he was off the screen, so thank you, Hank, for donating and matching your own donations via the matching fund.  That's very generous of you. 

Again, thanks to everybody who's donated, and I know that lots of you don't have money to donate to this year's Project for Awesome and that's okay.  I don't think you should feel guilty.  We're not always in a position to donate in our lives.  Sometimes we're in a position where we have to take care of ourselves as best we can and that is fine.  There are still lots of ways that you can help with the Project for Awesome.  The most important way is that even if you don't donate, you have a huge say in where the money raised during the second half of the Project for Awesome goes.  You can go to projectforawesome.com right now and if you go there, you see that there's lots of videos that people have made about charities that they would like for us to support.  Your responsibility and privilege and opportunity is to go and vote for the videos that represent the charities that you think we should support, whether that's Save the Children or This Star Won't Go Out, the wonderful organization that Esther Earl's family set up in her memory to support families who have kids with cancer, or it's the Wildfire Relief Fund or I just saw that itsradishtime made a video for the Lawyers Committee Election Protection.  There's all kinds of different, different organizations that we can support and your votes at projectforawesome.com help decide which charities we're gonna support this year, so please, regardless of whether you can give, please watch lots of Project for Awesome videos, support them by liking them, by commeting on them, by thanking the people who made them for making them, and vote.

Vote for the organizations that you want us to support.  I think it's just--that really is the core of what the Project for Awesome is about and right now we're raising money for Save the Children and Partners in Health, but in the second half of the P4A, you're gonna be deciding which charities we're supporting and so I hope that you will do that by voting at projectforawesome.com and thank you. 

We're over $110,000 raised by the Indiegogo and we're really, really close, we're $22,000 away from half a millon dollars raised total, which is just--I--it's incredibly exciting.  We're really close and I can't believe that we've hit half a million dollars just one hour into--or, we haven't--we have $20,000 to go, one hour and 24 minutes into the 48 hour Project for Awesome livestream.  Very grateful to everybody who's donated including Mahima who just didn't claim anything but just donated and merle who just got the commemorative coin.  I have to go get a Diet Dr. Pepper because my mouth feels like a desert but I'll be right back.  You know what, I wonder if I can get Sarah on the line.  Let's see here.  Let me give Sarah a call.  See how she's doing.  I'm just gonna try to see if I can get Sarah to join the stream.  I know she's busy working on a project but, maybe.  No, so far no.  She's, you know, she's probably like, why is he calling me at 1:25 PM when I'm working on my--the thing.  

Sarah's voicemail: Hi, this is Sarah, please leave a--

J: No.  Ahh, thank you, Sheridan.  That was very cool of Sheridan.  She donated to the Project for Awesome and got me a Diet Dr. Pepper.  Mmm.  

Ohh.  By the way, congratulations to my brother, Hank, on being the first Green brother to get a sponsorship of a brand that he likes just by Tweeting about it.  I've tweeted about delicious Diet Dr. Pepper--mmm, oh--so many times, but do the folks at Diet Dr. Pepper end their ridiculous (?~1:90:23) advertising campaign and hire me to be their spokesperson?  No.  No, they don't.  Let's stop talking about that and we'll just go--we'll start talking about the, what's happening over at projectforawesome.com/donate.  I'm not bitter.  I'm just aware.  That's all.  I just--I just want it to be stated for the record that Hank got an actual brand deal with Metamucil while I continue to have to buy my own Diet Dr. Peppers.  Mmm.  That is a high quality Diet Dr. Pepper. 

I also wanna say thank you to--so you might be wondering, how come we have raised $111,000 via the Indiegogo but we've raised $483,000 in total, now just $17,000 away from half a million.  The answer to that is that we raise money all year round, so there are lots of different ways that people can support the Project for Awesome all year round.  One of them is Tab for a Cause, this amazing web tool that allows you to raise money for charity while you're browsing the internet, something that a lot of us do many hours a day.  It kind of runs ads in the background and then takes the revenue from those ads and donates them to charity.  Also people use Amazon Smile and--to benefit the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck.  People use their like, workplace corporate giving programs, and so, and also, half the ad revenue from the vlogbrothers YouTube channel goes to the Foundation.  So then we split that money in half, and the first half goes into the first half of money, which is right now, so that's the $36,000, and then the other half will go into the second half of the Project for Awesome, the portion where we're raising money for charities chosen by you in the Nerdfighter community.  

That half will start on--at noon tomorrow.  So, that's why the numbers don't exactly line up.  Also because you can get a Project for Awesome calendar--the calendar and the t-shirt can also be bought through DFTBA so it's a little complicated, but that is--that is the basics of why the number is so relatively big.  We're just $16,000 away now from $500,000, which is pretty exciting.  Oh wow.  We only have three bookshelves.  We put more bookshelves up, a $1,500 donation, there's only a couple left.  So there's never been a time--there's never been a better time to donate because there's so many perks that won't be available later.  Of course, different perks will be available in their stead, some of which will be better, but you don't--that doesn't matter for you now, because I don't care about raising money in the future.  I only care about raising money during my three hours hosting the Project for Awesome.  We're over $113,000 raised now.  

I--Rosianna wants me to highlight a couple of perks.  By the way, thank you to Rosianna for the last--for just um, crushing it the last few days.  It's been some sleeplessness for all involved, but I'm very grateful.  Um, okay, so a couple perks I want to highlight.  You can get a signed copy of my book, Turtles All The Way Down.  It's a hardcover, it's nice, it's pretty.  It's heavy.  They used really nice paper.  Thanks to my publisher, Julie Strauss-Gabel, for that incredibly high quality paper.  You can also get a signed foreign edition of my books.  There's--11 of those are gone.  If you make a $75 donation to this year's Project for Awesome, which counts as $300 to Save the Children and Partners in Health because of matching donors.  You don't know what language it's gonna be, you don't know what foreign edition it's gonna be, you don't know which book it's gonna be.  

But it's gonna be great.  It could be Slovenian.  It could be the--it could be Swedish.  It could be (?~1:94:10).  That's the Swedish title of The Fault in Our Stars.  "Sooner or later, I will explode", beaten only by the Finnish title for The Fault in Our Stars, which I literally can't repeat on the stream because it contains an F-bomb.  You can also get--if you get the digital download perk, you're gonna get so many digital wonders throughout the year, but one of them will be an unreleased episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed that I wrote. 

So The Anthropocene Reviewed is this weird podcast I have where I review different facets of the human-centered planet on a five star scale an before I started The Anthropocene Reviewed, I actually was working on something similar for like, two years, and along the way, I wrote a lot of reviews that I ended up not using for the podcast, and two of them are going to be in an unreleased episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed which you can get now at projectforawesome.com/donate.  One--so I'm reviewing jogging, the human practice of jogging and also the movie Die Hard 4.  Now, many of you probably haven't seen the movie Die Hard 4.  You don't need to have seen it to enjoy my review of it, but I'll just say this.  Die Hard 4 is so overwhelmingly the best Die Hard movie and maybe the best action movie of all time that it was a real pleasure to write about it and to try to pay extremely close attention to it and to treat it as if it is, you know, like a work of proper art to try to imagine it that way.  It's been great fun to work on.  So, um, hold on, I'm gonna take a sip.  Ahh, someone in comments has corrected me that it's not the Finnish version of The Fault in Our Stars that contains an F-bomb in the title, but the Norwegian version.  

I'm sorry and I know that there's nothing that annoys Finnish people and Norwegian people more than being confused with each other, so my apologies.  Yeah, okay.  So, that's the--I'm really excited about the unreleased episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed.  That's for Project for Awesome only.  I'm also really excited about the podcast I'm making with Sarah, The Statue Got Me High.  I think we're gonna have a great time with that.  We had a really good time coming up with our different things that we're gonna be doing for The Statue Got Me High, like the different kind of artworks that we love and yeah.  Okay.  Some people are saying that The Anthropocene Reviewed is good, which is nice.  

Wait, did we get to $500,000?!  Did we?  Or are you guys lying to me?  $499,649 according to my projectforawesome.com.  Oh, no, whoa, we blew past it.  Somebody made a huge donation.  Wow.  Ohh!  I mean, I crushed it with the champagne poppers today.  I have been on it.  Wait, I think I can hit you guys.  I feel so good about my aim right now.  I think I'm gonna hit you.  Ohh, it was close.  It was close.  I'm not that good.  I'm not that good yet, but I had this stuff on my head and then I took it off to talk to Ettore from Save the Children because it seemed like it would be inappropriate, you know?  Although I guess I still had Chewie and Hank Green in the background, so.  Yeah.  Alright, let me give you--I wanted to say hi to some people in comments.  Oh, somebody just donated a large amount of Swedish money in the superchat, so thank you.  I don't know how--Lee, I don't know how many dollars that is, so I'm gonna assume that it's a billion dollars.  I--I have no awareness of--extremely unsophisticated--oh, Anonymous just donated $1,500.  Thank you, Anonymous, jeez.  

That was incredibly generous and also incredibly kind of you to do it anonymously.  That's--takes a level of--takes a certain amount of courage.  I wanna--ahh, (gagging sounds), alright, that's enough.  I got it in my mouth.  I almost aspirated on champagne poppers and that would be a bad way to go.  Like, I would be so bummed out, you know?  If that's--if it all ended on a livestream from aspirated champagne poppers.  (laughs)   I mean, I would make the news, but that's not how I want to get to a New York Times obituary.  Um, ahh, there's still a little bit in my mouth.  Okay.  

Right, thank you to Svenja and Anonymous and Jake and Anil and Amber and Dan and Sarah who all donated in the last minute.  That's incredible and Zack and Nikki and Sarah and Valeria and Seamus and John and Baha and Ann and Jonathan and Sara and Victoria and thank you again to Anonymous for donating $1500 and also to MCM for donating $1500.  Wow, the $1500 donations just keep rolling in.  That is astonishing.  Of course, most of us cannot afford to donate $1500.  I, of course, understand that and I think a $2, a $1 donation is also amazing, because if you can donate $2 or $10 to the Project for Awesome, that counts as $8 or $40 to Save the Children and Partners in Health because we've built up such a big matching fund thanks to the very generous people who participated in that.  

Rosianna, can--or Zulaiha, can somebody put in chat, in the Slack chat, the list of the people who I should thank for adding to the matching fund?  Also, the thing where I curate your bookshelf is sold out, which is a bummer, but it's great in the sense that we raised a lot of money for charity, but you can't do that anymore.  Now you have to figure out something else to do, but thank you to everybody who got that.  I'm very excited to curate bookshelves for you.  

Oh, that is just delicious.  I don't mean to--I don't mean to brag.  I know not everybody can enjoy a delicious Diet Dr. Pepper that's just ice cold.  There's a lot to--there's a lot of problems with our office refrigerator but one thing it does do is deliver a beverage right at 32.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which I think is one of the great things in the world.  Okay, um, lots of people thought it was funny that I almost--oh, somebody--oh, it's $110 US dollars, that Swedish donation, so thank you.  

Is there a 100 Days perk?  Yes.  Is it up?  Uh, but it's a digital perk, just get the digital download bundle and it will come free with the digital download bundle along with the billions of other wonderful perks that you get with the digital download bundle that you can get right now at projectforawesome.com/donate for a $60 donation and then you're gonna get perks all year round.  I've never had somebody complain about the digital bundle.  It's an incredible--it's a great deal.  724 of you have claimed it, thanks to everybody who's gotten that perk. 

As you can see, John just got the Dear Hank and John.  Ryan just got the digital download bundle, so I talked somebody into donating.  Also, I wanna emphasize the pressed pennies over youtube.com--youtube.com--over at projectforawesome.com/donate.  Every year, nerdfighters come to the dftba.com warehouse in Missoula, Montana and they take pennies and they turn them into these beautiful souveniers that are far more valuable than the pennies themselves, which includes this year--

Oh, it's Sarah!

Sarah: Hi.

J: Hey, how's it going?  

S: Did you call me?  

J: I did call you.  Why didn't you call back?  Why didn't you answer?  Were you busy?

S: I was on the phone.  I'm an artist.

J: Were you just doing stuff?  

S: Important stuff.

J: Can you hang out for a minute?

S: Sure.

J: Great.

S: Where--which computer?  

J: This one.  Hi.

S: Hello.

J: Why don't you have a seat?

S: I look pale and (?~1:102:23)

J: You look great! 

S: Yeah.

(?~1:102:24)

S: $121,000 already?

J: Yeah.  (?~1:102:31)

S: It's 1:30.

J: I know.  It's actually much more than that, if you go to projectforawesome.com, Sarah, you can see that the total raised after matching funds is $521,000 for Save the Children and Partners in Health.

S: What?!  Wow, that's so cool.

J: I know.  

S: That's great.

J: Not bad.  You wanna set off a champagne popper to celebrate?

S: No, no.  I don't.  

J: You sure?

S: No.  

J: Okay.  Do you want to talk a little bit about some of your perks including Dear Sarah and Katherine?

S: Oh yeah.  So last year, I don't know if you missed it, but there was an amazing perk that was Katherine and I sort of following the format that John and Hank have pioneered.  

J: It's kind of you to--both kind and inaccurate to say that we have pioneered it.

S: Yeah.  That's really not your forte, is pioneering new formats.

J: No, our forte is like--

S: Taking an existing format--

J: That one.

S: --and making it better.

J: That one.  Welcome to The Show with Ze Frank, I mean, John Green.  Yeah.  

S: But Katherine and I are going to be answering questions and giving, you know, your podcast--

J: Oh, this is the microphone?

S: Oh, nobody can hear us.

J: Oh.  

S: You have to unplug it.

J: Oh.  Oh.  Hold on, I'll unplug it.  Well, that seems dangerous.

S: Why?

J: The sound is great. 

S: Okay.

J: Okay, we'll just keep doing it this way.

S: You're just gonna hold the microphone strangely in the air?  Here.

J: I'm just gonna.

S: There.  That way it's off screen.  Huh?  Oh.  Do you need the headphones?

J: Well, but there's nothing to hear, is there?

S: I wish it were a two-way conversation.

J: I don't think it is.

S: But it's not.

J: It's not.

S: Okay.  

J: We'll just hold that.  Sorry about all of this.

S: So anyway, if you get the Dear Sarah and Katherine podcast, you'll get to hear our advice and you and Hank, I was gonna say, give, you know, "dubious advice".

J: Yeah.  That's the brand.

S: But I felt like last year with our podcast, that our advice, you know, really wasn't dubious.

J: I thought it was very--

S: I have trouble giving dubious advice.  I take other peoples' problems very seriously.  

J: I thought that Dear Sarah and Katherine was not only really good, but better, let's be honest, than Dear Hank and John.

S: Well, better is relative.  We get--we might give more solid advice.

J: Yeah.

S: But uh, I don't know, maybe there's no but.  

J: And then also, if you get the digital download bundle at projectforawesome.com/donate, you can get our podcast that we're only doing for the Project for Awesome.

S: Right.

J: What's it called?

S: It's called Statue Got Me High.

J: And what's it about?

S: It's about how, when John and I go see art or experience architecture, John tends to look at everything like an innocent newborn babe who's just really psyched about everything and--which is wonderful.  You appreciate what you see in an unreserved kind of way.  

J: Yes.

S: And often, I am in the role of saying, "Ehh.  It's okay."

J: "It's not that great."

S: "It's not that great."

J: "It's a library."

S: "It's a library."  Well, you'll have to--to hear that story, you'll have to get the digital download perk, but in this podcast, we'll be talking about these moments where our kind of jaded approach to everything we see, we see so much visual input in life that it's easy to be jaded and unimpressed when you see things, but every now and again, even I, who see artwork all the time, really like it.  

A statue gets me high and so we're gonna talk about those moments.  

J: Yeah, we're gonna make a podcast about those little moments when the statue gets--the statue makes you high.

S: Yeah.

J: Yeah.  We're now over--almost to $125,000 at the Indiegogo.  Sarah, can you talk for like, 45 seconds while I pee?

S: Um, if you give me a topic.  

J: Uh, your topic is uh, what is a good topic?  I--what--

S: Oh, look, there's Harry.

J: There's Harry Styles.

S: And Hank.  And Chewie.  

J: Harry Styles, Hank, and Chewie.  

S: What should I talk about?

J: Yeah, um, you should--I don't know.  

S: Will you guys tell me?

J: Yeah, yeah, just talk about the importance of going to projectforawesome.com/donate and donating.

S: Okay, yeah, I think it's obvious to talk about the importance of donating but the topic is soup.  The topic is soup.  I don't really know what to do with that.  Soup.  Um, oh, art cooking, yes!  So I haven't made a soup for The Art Assignment art cooking before, but I don't know--some of you must know from the comments that I, as part of my webseries The Art Assignment, have a subseries called Art Cooking, where I talk about the moments in history where art and food have intersected and I've done things like make a giant tower of crayfish from one of Salvador Dali's cookbooks.  

I just recreated a Dutch still life that was a stack of cheeses, but anyway, why are we here?  What am I doing?  The point of this is that, you know, we are here to give money to charity and to support the charities that we respect and admire but we're also here to get some amazing perks.

J: I'm back.

S: So--

J: I'm back.

S: Everybody wins.

J: Hi.  How's it going?  Great job.  I could--I heard most of what you said and it was all great.

S: Okay.

J: Are you gonna go back to work?

S: I am.  

J: Okay.  Go back to work.

S: But I'll come back later.

J: We'll see you later.  

S: Maybe we can do a cooking demo later.

J: Oh, maybe.

S: You know what we have is a lot of cheese.

J: We do, from Art Cooking.

S: Left over from my last Art Cooking Dutch still life that's a giant stack of cheeses.

J: Art Cooking Dutch still life.  

S: And we still have a lot of it.  We've eaten a lot.

J: I kinda wish I had--

S: So maybe we'll make some things out of cheese.

J: You know what I--

S: A cheese sculpture.

J: Ooh.  That'd be pretty cool.

S: Like at a state fair.

J: I would love to see a cheese sculpture.

S: Would anybody like to see us carve cheese into sculptures?

J: Can you do that?  Can you really do that?

S: Tonight.  It's Friday.  

J: Um, also, hey, do we have any glitter?  Like or gliittery stuff, like uh--

S: Uh, I can't answer that because I don't wanna clean it up.

J: Well, but I mean--

S: It can happen here.  I don't have any glitter here and it's not gonna be available to you at home. 

J: Oh, don't you think that Alice would like to put glitter in my beard, though?

S: Yeah.  But maybe we could bring her to the office.  

J: Alright, thank you, Sarah.

S: Bye everybody.  

J: We're now over $126,000 raised.  Sorry about the microphone troubles, by the way, that was entirely my fault.  

It was explained to me how to do that properly and I still messed it up.  Hello, Chewbacca.  No need to aim that weapon at me, sir.  These are backwards, okay.  That's gonna be better.  Hello, again.  It's 1:45 PM, one hour and 45 minutes into the 2018 Project for Awesome, just 46 hours and 15 minutes to go.  Oh, excuse me, I was having a delicious taste of not-sponsored Diet Dr. Pepper. 

I miss Hank's sunglasses, they made him cool just donated $39.  Thank you, obviously-Hank-Green.  Thanks also to Erin, Sawami, Alon, Anonymous, Adam, Lydia, and Ryan and Anna and Saffron, all of whom donated in the last minute.  I just wanna give you an update on where we stand in the 2018 Project for Awesome.  We're raised--we're very close to $550,000.  We've got $8,000 left to raise to get to $550,000 by 2:00 which would be amazing.  The Indiegogo is over $126,000.  We were at $100,000 at 1:00 so we've raised $20--over $26,000 this hour.  If we could get to $30,000, that would be great and we're gonna be joined in 15 minutes by a special guest.  I don't know if I should say who they are yet.  I'm sure that Rosianna will tell me if it's a good idea or not to say who they are.  

Yes, we will do cheese sculptures later, but only if I get to put glitter in my beard.  It's gonna--we're gonna work it out with Sarah but yeah, I think a cheese sculpture would be perfect and we do have 15 lbs of cheese in the house  I've been eating a lot of cheese but man, when you get like a wheel of cheese, it's a significant amount of cheese.  Yeah, so I'm definitely excited.  I'm definitely excited, I'm definitely excited about all of it and special guests are gonna be a surprise, so I'm not gonna say anything.

I'm not sure that you should spam Elon Musk's Twitter asking him to donate to the 2018 Project for Awesome, but I guess you do you.  I'll tell you what, I don't like it when people spam my Twitter asking me to donate to charity.  It never results in me making donations but that's just me.  Maybe Elon Musk is different, I don't know.  He certainly uses Twitter very differently from how I use it.  

Speaking of which, if you go to projectforawesome.com/donate right now, one of the more ridiculous perks that you can get is all of the things that I would have Tweeted in December and January if only I had not quit Twitter, which I am quitting.  For those of you who don't know, I'm taking a year away from the social internet, starting at noon on Sunday.  So I have like, 46 hours left in my social internet life for the year.  I'm gonna drink from the fire hose in those 46 hours, um, and you can donate to the Project for Awesome and I will send you a document of all the things that I would have Tweeted in December and January.  Every time I have a thought that is 280 characters or less, I will write it down and instead of sending it to the masses via Twitter and just letting anyone respond, I will send it to you and I will not--I will not censor myself in the way that I have, you know, I try to use Twitter carefully, although God knows I fail often, but I'm not gonna censor myself at all on these Tweets.  These are gonna be straight from the heart, both @johngreen Tweets and @sportswithjohn Tweets.  Everything I would have Tweeted in December and January at projectforawesome.com/donate.  It comes free with the digital download bundle, with 757 of you have claimed, which is also the name of an airplane. 

Also, a new perk that we have up is that Chris and I, you may remember my best friend Chris and I did a 100 day fitness challenge a couple of years ago that--and then we made a YouTube channel about it.  

We're gonna do a check-in where we let you know how things have been going since 100 Days.  I have to say, I still work out twice a week with my trainer, Laura, the same trainer I used during 100 Days.  I still run a lot.  It's still really good for me.  It still makes me feel good.  I'm still really happy about it.  I still struggle with my diet, so it's mostly gonna be like, Chris and I telling jokes and repeating everything that, you know, repeating all of the problems and the victories and failures that we had during 100 days, but it'll be fun, I'm excited about it and if you want to get that check-in, you can donate right now at projectforawesome.com/donate and thank you to everybody who has donated.  There are so many donations coming in.  It's impossible to thank all of you by name.  I wish that I could, but thank you.  Thank you, thank you. 

We're at $547,000 raised now.  Oh, no, we got--ahh, ahh, no!  There's a 666 number.  Why do I care?  Why does it bother me?  Why do I--why am I so heavily invested in like, certain digits and not other digits?  What a weird, what a weird problem to have.  Anyway, let's move on.  The important thing is that we are uh--at some point, someone's gonna donate to get us off this $127,666 number.  I can't--it can't be soon enough as far as I'm concerned.  Um, but thank you--to Jack for just getting the plushie Glennnn and thank you indeed to everyone who's donating.  Megan just got the digital download bundle.  Maybe we're gonna be stuck at this number forever.  Jenny just got the digital download bundle as well.  I wonder if it was Sarah--Sarah who made the case to you--KyZaK just got the digital download bundle.  I wonder if--I wonder if--ohh, we're fine.  It's over.  It's over.  Thank you.  Ash just got the Project for Awesome 2018 t-shirt.  What a magnificent t-shirt that is, by the way.  I picked one of those up.  And Rachel just got a John Green curates your bookshelf which tells you how delayed the lower third is because those have been sold out for about 30 minutes.  

We've got nine minutes left in the second hour of the Project for Awesome.  We're at $127,925 which means that all told, we've raised nearly $550,000, $548,385 raised.  If we can raise $2,000 here in the last nine minutes of this hour, that will take us to--what was said about Chris?  I don't know.  I--I--I didn't think I said anything mean about Chris.  He's my best friend.  I got the idea for the curate your bookshelf thing from Chris, actually, because I was curating Chris and Marina's home library over the weekend because that's my hobby, is going to my friends' houses and asking them if I can rearrange their libraries.  

If we can raise another $2,000 here in the last--well, now just $1500, in the last eight minutes of the 2:00 hour, that would be $30,000 that we've raised in the second hour of the Project for Awesome.  Again, thanks to Ettore from Save the Children who joined us during this hour and to my lovely and amazing and brilliant wife, Sarah, who is just, just the best, for all of her support and for donating some really wonderful perks this year, and thanks to everybody who's donating, including Kyle and Cassandra and Rebecca and everyone else.  

If you want, I think we're gonna watch, right before the 2:00 hour, I think we're all gonna watch a video together, which is something we haven't done yet during the Project for Awesome this year, but I think it's a really lovely thing to do, so we're gonna set a new featured video at projectforawesome.com and we're all gonna watch it together and then we will kind of reconvene for the 2:00 hour but we are very close now to $130,000 raised at the Indiegogo which means that we're closing in--I would love, I'm just gonna say it, I would love to leave this at--when I have to go at 3:00, my three hour shift ends, I'll be back this evening.  

Can't wait to hang out with you guys more, but I would love when I say goodbye at 3:00 to halfway to our P4A goal of $300,000 raised at the Indiegogo.  I would love to leave it in the capable hands of those who will come after me at 3:00--halfway at $150,000 so let's try to get there, but to get there, we've gotta get $130,000 by 2:00 so that's why I'm asking you to donate.  Thank you to Daphne, who just donated and didn't claim anything, and by "just" I mean, like, 45 minutes ago.  Oh, and Sahil just claimed John Curates Your Bookshelf.  I know Sahil, so thank you, that's very generous of you and very kind. 

Alright, so we're gonna go to projectforawesome.com.  I'm gonna try to get us--I'm gonna try to take us, 'cause we're really close now, we're less than $1,000 away from getting to--and I, not just--it's not just the number, but we're less than $1,000 away from getting to $130,000 raised at the Indiegogo at projectforawesome.com/donate but we've also had 2,864 backers to this year's Project for Awesome already so thank you to everybody.  Shawn, Marian, Aiden, Sabrina who just made a donation, Emily and Gayle and Connor just made donations as well as Emily and uh, Abigail, thank you to everybody who's donating right now, and lots of you are also repeat donors which I really appreciate.  So you can go to projectforawesome.com right now, well, let's get it to--oh just $800 away, we can do this.  We've got five minutes.  I'm gonna take a sip of Diet Dr. Pepper.  

J: That's good.  There's just nothing like it on Earth.  I mean, it really does have all those different flavors that, you know--it's just an amazing, it's just an amazing accomplishment.  $129,624.  We've got $350 left to raise to get to $130,000 at projectforawesome.com/donate and over at Project for Awesome, we're at $553,000 raised for Save the Children and Partners in Health, thanks to matching donors, so that's just amazing.  So we're all gonna go to projectforawesome.com and we're gonna watch the featured video once we get to $130,000 and, which will be, I think, very shortly.  We're gonna watch the featured video together, which is about wildlife relief, which is about the Wildlife Relief Fund.  It's such an important cause, especially right now with the, you know, with the tremendous destruction that we've seen from wildfires, so let's get that last, let's get that last $300 raised before the 2:00 hour and we'll watch that video and then we'll be joined by a special guest on the other side of this, but first, you gotta go to projectforawesome.com/donate!  Will you be the person who puts us over $130,000?  You could be!  Um, oh, thanks to Justin who just donated $2.79 Canadian cents to say, "John, your beard is epic."  Well, if you think the beard is epic, wait until it's just a mustache, my friend.  

We did it!  We're at $130,000!  Amazing!  With three minutes to spare, no less.  Alright, we're gonna go over to projectforawesome.com right now and all watch a video together about the Wildlife Relief Fund.  Let's watch that video now.  Again, it's so helpful to YouTube creators if you like the video and give it a thumbs up and comment on it and also you can vote at projectforawesome.com for that charity.  Alright, let's watch it together.

Oh yeah, we're back now.  That was such a great video.  Thank you to (?~2:124:38).  If you wanna vote to support the Wildlife Relief Fund put together by the California Community Foundation, you can either do so directly at the link in the description or you can support it by clicking vote.  You have to go through CAPTCHA and then you click the red button that says 'vote' right next to that video and that's the case for any Project for Awesome video, so if you go to projectforawesome.com, you can search all of the Project for Awesome videos that have been submitted, find causes that you care about, causes that you're passionate about, vote those charities to support those charities.  Those votes help us determine what charities we're gonna support with the money raised during the second half of the Project for Awesome.  It's so important, and regardless of whether you can donate to this year's P4A, you can definitely help us and help decide where the money during the second P4A gets raised, but--where the money that gets raised goes.  Alright, we're gonna be joined by a very special guest quite shortly.  That's Vanessa!  

Vanessa: Hi.  

J: Hi.  It's Vanessa Zoltan from Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.  Hi.  How's it going?

V: Pretty good.  This is my hotel room in Eugene, Oregon.

J: Oh, it looks lovely.  I feel like I've stayed, not in that hotel, certainly in one identical to it.  

V: Maybe in this exact room.

J: It's possible.  It's possible.  So for those who don't know, Vanessa co-hosts my favorite podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, in which Casper and Vanessa read Harry Potter as a sacred text.  It's fascinating and beautiful and weird.  

V: It's very weird.  Every time I (?~2:126:21) to someone who doesn't know what the podcast is, I have to tell them that the baby sacrifices are optional.

J: Yeah, that's a great intro.  So tell people a little bit about that as well as the other podcast that you've been working on, if you're able to.  

V: Yeah, yeah.  So, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, we believe that you can treat anything that you love as if it was sacred and so we're going through the Harry Potter books as if they were our liturgy, just like you would in an episcopal church or a synagogue or any other denomination and we just use Harry Potter as our liturgy, so we read a chapter.  We're going through all 199 chapters of the Harry Potter books and--

J: Is that how many chapters there are?  

V: Yes.

J: Did she do that on purpose?

V: I--I mean, I think she did everything on purpose.

J: Yeah.

V: Except for the time turner.  I don't think she did that on purpose.  I--everything else, I think she did, and um, yeah, so we're a little more than halfway through now.  We're in Order of the Phoenix and Umbridge is carving into Harry's hand.

J: Oh yeah, oh man.

V: It's brutal and yeah, I'm in Eugene right now, in Tacoma tomorrow, to be treating Hermione Granger, that series, as if it was sacred, which is a better series, and then our new podcast is gonna be about treating romance novels as sacred, so we've invited people to write romance novels with us, 'cause we think writing is a sacred practice just as much as reading, and romance novels--you like romance novels, too, I've learned.

J: I do, yeah.  I reviewed romance novels for Booklist when I was in my 20s, when I worked at Booklist, and that was when my interest in romance novels was kindled, but I have continued to read them in--throughout my life.  I think that like, a great romance novel is just fascinating to me.  I find them fascinating, I love like, the great successful romance writers of my generation but I also like to read all kinds of romance.  Like, I just finished reading like, a self-published romance novel set in 15th century Spain and I loved it.  I found it extremely enjoyable.  

V: It's such a fun way to learn about history.  I find myself knowing a lot about weird things like Scottish clans and people are like, why do you know that?

J: Yeah!  (laughs)  

V: And I'm like, because I have my PhD in Scottish clansmen or 'cause I read a lot of romance novels.

J: Totally.

V: And yeah, the New York Times, like, best books of--100 best books of the year had three romance novels on it this year, including the first African-American woman romance novelist, Elyssa Cole.  

J: Oh, that's really exciting.

V: It's like, it's a very exciting time for romance novels.

J: Yeah, for sure, so it's gonna be a great podcast.  In the meantime, please check out Harry Potter and the Sacred Text if you wanna have your mind blown every week.  Also, Vanessa and Casper have given us some perks.

V: Yes.

J: Including for a $5 donation to this year's Project for Awesome at projectforawesome.com/donate, you can get Casper and Vanessa talking about their Harry Potter ships.  That's right, it's a special podcast, the ship special, available only to Project for Awesome donors.  I--I mean, I'm gonna--I have the digital download bundle and I'm excited to find out both your and Casper's ships.

V: Do you have a ship?

J: Yeah.  

V: I don't mean to put you on the spot.

J: I mean, I do.  I feel like any time--I admire you guys for doing this, because I feel like anytime I talk about my ships in the Harry Potter universe, I am exposing myself to a lot of judgment.  

V: Yes.  Oh, for sure.  But I think talking about Harry Potter in general is that.  

J: That is true, that is true.  But yeah, I do.  I don't--I'll put it this way: I ship Hermione with someone that is not Ron.  

V: I mean, don't we all?  

J: Well.  Not all of us.  Not all of us.  Yeah.

V: Here's the thing.  Here's the thing.  There's no one who deserves Hermione.  

J: That's true.  True.  Too good for this world.

V: I ship Hermione with Hermione.  

J: Yeah.  No, it's like Katniss.  It's like everybody who was on like, Team Peeta or Team whatever, Gale, and I was just like, guys, the clear team is Team Katniss.

V: Yeah.  Yes, exactly!  So, it's--yeah.  I don't know who's good enough for Hermione.  All women, right, we have to settle.  I'm sure your wife is too good for you, right?  

J: Pffft.  I mean, yeah, boy, did she have to settle.  You can--projectforawesome.com/donate right now, and you can get that by getting the digital download bundle or you can get it for a $5 donation which, because of all the matching donors that we have lined up, counts as $20 toward Partners in Health and Save the Children.  Also, for a $15 donation, you can get a signed Harry Potter and the Sacred Text bookmark, which is really cool, so you can get a signed bookmark if you make a $15 donation with the signatures of two of your very favorite podcasters, Casper and Vanessa, and for a $22 donation, there is a very cool Harry Potter and the Sacred Text cellphone wallet that allows you to attach your Harry Potter and the Sacred Text like, it's like a wallet that attacches to your phone.  Is that correct?

V: Yeah.  Yep, it just sticks right to your phone.  You can keep your credit cards, a little key in there.  

J: Yeah, I should get that.  This wallet--this wallet is done.  It's finished.  

V: But aren't you--

J: This is in the past.

V: I have mixed feelings about it.  I'm always like, but if I lose my phone, then I lose everything, but I don't lose my phone.

J: Yeah, but isn't that the case already?  I feel like--

V: Yes, I know.

J: If I lose my phone, I lose everything.  So go right now to projectforawesome.com/donate and you can get those Harry Potter and the Sacred Text perks and you can also get the digital download bundle that'll include not only Vanessa and Casper's secret ship podcast, but also so many other wonderful digital perks, so that's--right now, projectforawesome.com/donate.  Vanessa, were we gonna do a sacred practice here?  

V: We were.  So I have two options for you.  

J: Okay.

V: I thought we could do like (?~2:132:46)

J: Alright, I like that.

V: Which is a sacred reading practice, but we can do it with the first sentence of Harry Potter or I brought the current romance novel that I'm reading.  

J: Hmm, what's it called?  

V: It's called A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole.  

J: Good title.  Oh!  The woman who wrote the New York Times notable book of the year.

V: Exactly.  

J: Oh, let's do that.

V: I'm going through all her books right now.  So for--okay, so for (?~2:133:09), we pick a sentence at random.

J: Yeah, okay, so just a little bit of background.

V: Yeah.

J: This is like a, this is a sacred practice that people traditionally have done with the Bible, right?

V: The psalms, yeah.

J: It comes from Christianity and Judaism?

V: It comes, so, yes.  It's based a Jewish practice called (?~2:133:30) which is a medieval reading practice and then (?~2:133:32) was developed about 50 years later and (?~2:133:36) the second is the person who really popularized it.

J: What a great name.

V: Isn't it?  He was a Cartesian monk and he believed that through reading, you could see God, but that you had to really slowly work your way through these four stages and he talked about it as climbing a ladder but I sort  of prefer to think of it as lowering a ladder into the text in order to see the depth of a text.  Who am I to correct him, but.

J: So we're gonna pick a sentence at random from this book--

Like Hal in A Space Odyssey.

J: Which is a legitimate--yeah, that is a legitimate reason to be surprised. 

V: Yes, I agree.

J: Okay.

V: So, "Did your chair just talk?"  What allegories does this remind us of?  What other stories does this remind us of?  

J: Well, I think the thing that it reminds me the most of, and people in comments should be doing this, too, by the way.

V: Yeah.

J: It reminds of like, when I was a kid, or in the case of my own kids, how they can--how they--they're able to experience empathy toward objects in a way that's really moving to me.

V: Yeah.

J: So when I--I remember when I was a kid, like I had this teddy bear.  I talk about this in the new episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed but I had this teddy bear and I remember like, worrying about it when I wouldn't play with it for a while--

V: Yeah.

J: I would be like, oh man, and that's what the, you know, The Velveteen Rabbit's about.  There's lots of children's stories about that, but, so I guess it kinda reminds me of The Velveteen Rabbit, of the idea that like, our objects can have--the objects in our life can have these like, these loaded meanings and that those meanings change over time, the way that they speak to us, the way that those objects speak to us over time can change so much, like, if I were to see that teddy bear right now, I would feel so--the way it would be talking to me would be so different from the way it talked to me when I was 10, which was itself so different from the way it talked to me when I was 5.

V: Yeah.  Yeah, I--my first visual was PeeWee Herman.  Didn't that chair talk?

J: Oh!  Yes.  

V: That chair talked, right?

J: Yes.

V: PeeWee Herman was like, a great show and also like, a nightmare that I worry that I had sometimes, but yeah, so I thought about that talking chair and then I also thought about that, the like, the expression, "If these walls could talk."  

I love thinking about all the different things walls have seen, not so much in hotel rooms.  That I don't like to think about.

J: No, no, no, but like, walls in homes and stuff.

V: Yeah.

J: I remember, the apartment we lived in in New York was this old, very--it was a bad apartment, you know, and it had like, it had mouse holes.  Like, you couldn't ever get--you couldn't ever cover all the mouse holes so the mice could always get in, so every night for two years, I dreamt of mice, but I don't know if I was dreaming of them or if they were actually walking across my body, which isn't relevant here, but the thing that's relevant is that there were so many layers of paint on the walls, like, the paint--you know, like every time a new tenant would move in, they'd just like, paint over the walls and there were so many layers of paint that like, sometimes, the paint would chip off and you'd see like, six or seven or eight layers of paint in when it used to be a different color, and that was so weird and beautiful to me.  Like, you could see there was, like, a smoke stained layer, you know, where there'd been somebody who smoked cigarettes all the time, it was kinda yellowed, and then there was a blue further in and it is amazing to me the, like, the history that walls contain.

V: Yeah.  Paul Oster tells a great story in his recent memoir about his father hid in Paris as a Jew during the Holocaust and hid with a fake passport but couldn't really go out of his apartment and then Paul Oster, after college, decided to move to Paris and try writing for a little while and mailed his father saying, hey, this is the address, this is the apartment that I rented, and it was the exact apartment.

J: Wow!

V: That his father had hid in, and his father was like, I hid something in this brick above the mantle, and it was still there, and Paul Oster uses the story to talk about his atheism and how he truly believes that this is a coincidence but it's just one of those things where like, crazy!

J: That is such a Paul Oster thing to have happen to Paul Oster.  

V: I know!  I know.

J: That's like, it's right out of one of his novels.  

V: Yes, absolutely.

J: That's wild.

V: It's like (?~2:140:08) dying of rabies.  You're like, that's exactly how they should die.  He would write it like that.

J: Totally.  Alright, so what's the third step?

V: So we've--yeah, so we've sort of started doing it.  We ask ourselves what it reminds us of in our own lives.  So "Did your chair just talk?"  So, yeah, I'm--I feel like now, if my chair could talk to me, it would judge me for how much time I spend on Twitter.  Right?

J: I'm about to quit Twitter!

V: I feel like--I know!  I'm so--you're a brave person.

J: Well, I don't--I mean, Vanessa, I've been talking a big game.  I haven't quit it yet, but I think that I'm--I have promised to so many people that I'm gonna quit Twitter that I have to.

V: Yeah.  You at least have to lie about it.  

J: Yeah.  Right.  I at least have to create a new identity that nobody knows about.  But that reminds me that if you go to projectforawesome.com/donate, one of the things you can get is all the things I would have Tweeted in December and January, but yeah, there's lots of great perks at projectforawesome.com/donate.  All the money we raise right now is for Partners in Health and Save the Children, but yeah, I guess the thing that--I feel like if my chair could talk, it would probably tell me to like, stand up and interact with the world more.

V: Yeah.

J: And that it's a little tired of holding me and that I'm a lot to hold at the moment, on every possible level, but I think if my chair could talk, it might also be a little more generous to me in some ways that I would be to myself, I think, like there's something, like, soft and encompassing about a chair, like, the way that it holds you is a way that I kind of struggle to hold myself sometimes, you know?  Like, I struggle to show that same sense of softness and kindness that my chair shows me, so in that sense, maybe there's a lesson for me in the way--in what my chair might say that's not so much like, you suck, get out of me.  

V: Right.  I mean, what if your chair was like your teddy bear when you were a kid, that like--

J: Yeah.

V: It missed you.  

J: Yeah, like, heeey!  I haven't seen you in a while!

V: When you weren't there.  Yeah.  

J: So, you know, Vanessa, I have this, actually I'll take you back there.  I have this chair, this is the same chair that I got--my mom got it for me on my 24th birthday.  I've written like, parts of all of my books in it, and when we lived in, like, when I lived in Chicago, it was my main chair, and then when I moved to New York, it was kind of like in a secondary--it was in the other room, not our main room, but the other room, and then when we moved to Indianapolis, it was in the basement, and then eventually, Sarah was like, you have to put the chair in the office because the chair is so hideous--and it is really ugly, like, the Wall Street Journal called it "oatmeal colored" and the New Yorker called it "dingy".  Those are the two adjectives that the press has used about the chair, but like, this chair--

V: Okay, I'll be the final judge.

J: This chair right there is so, it is, God, it is gross, now that I look at it, but it is so comfortable and it holds me, and I do think that like The Velveteen Rabbit it does miss me when I'm gone.  

V: Yeah, I believe that.  My favorite chair, which I can't show you right now, 'cause I'm in Eugene, Arianna, our amazing producer and my best friend Julia fight over who will get it if I die.  I'm not dying!

J: Yeah, I hope not.

V: Yeah, no, I'm very healthy these days but no, they like, we want the dog and we want that chair, so, and it's really ugly, but it's, yeah--

J: Yeah, but it's yours!

V: So many good things have happened in it.  It's like we've brainstormed, we've talked.  

J: Yeah, no, I mean--yeah.  I mean, I still have--I have a vivid memory of finishing Looking for Alaska in that chair at 3:00 in the morning the night I had to turn it in and just like, sobbing in that chair and thinking like, oh God, it's done, it's done, it's done, it's done.  And that was 15 years ago, so that chair and I have been through some, some good days and some bad days together.  

So what is our fourth step?

V: This is our last step, yeah.  So now we ask ourselves what we feel called to based on this sentence and based on this conversation, because we believe that these conversations are just as sacred as any text.  So "Did your chair just talk?"  What do you feel called to?

J: I do--I feel called to, uh, to be out in the world.  I feel called to, like, inter--you know, to try to do good in the world and not just from my chair, but I also feel called to be a little more generous to myself and to try to hold myself the way that my chair holds me.

V: Yeah, I was very moved by you saying that as well, and I also think I'm--I feel called to welcome other people the same way that my chair welcomes me, right?  Chairs are very hospitable.  They are always there to welcome you.  

J: Right.

V: I wanna be as hospitable as a chair.  Right?  But, anyway.

J: Yeah!

V: So that's what I feel called to, so that's (?~2:145:14) and you can do it with any sentence from any book, any song lyric, et cetera.

J: There you go.  (?~2:145:20), it's magical.  It really--it really does work incredibly well.  Since learning about it on Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, I wish I could say that I knew about it from the fact that I was, you know, briefly enrolled in divinity school and was a hospital chaplain and everything, but no, no, I learned about it from your podcast.  I have used it a lot and I find it very helpful and like, at times, kind of revelatory.  

V:  Yeah, it's a--and it's a lovely way to talk to like, kids, if you read a sentence together and you're like, let's read this again a few times, and it's--it's a special--it's a special container, right?  Casper calls it a spiritual technology that can hold space and allow you to have more in depth conversations than you would usually have, so.

J: Yeah, I love that.  That's really cool.  So, if you wanna donate to the Project for Awesome right now at projectforawesome.com/donate, Vanessa and Casper from Harry Potter and the Sacred Text have very generously offered up some perks that you can get, including a signed bookmark for a $15 donation, as well as finding out their secret Harry Potter ships.  

You can either just donate to get that, which some people have done, or you can donate--you can get it through getting the digital download bundle, which now 828 of you have claimed.  Every dollar you donate to projectforawesome.com/donate counts as $4 towards Save the Children and Partners in Health because we have matching donors to help us there, and in total, Vanessa, I just want to give you an update on where we are in total.

V: Yes!

J: With the 2018 Project for Awesome.  For Partners in Health and Save the Children, we've raised $581,000.  

V: That's amazing.  

J: It's a lot money.

V: Yeah.

J: There's no doubt about it.  I wonder if you can stay for like, five more minutes?

V: Yeah, of course, I would love to.

J: So Vanessa and I talked earlier, or I guess we didn't actually talk, but we communicated through--

V: Communicated.

J: Rosianna, through a third party.  That's how I have all of my communications now.  There's no more straight conversations.

V: That's how I like to talk, too, through Rosianna.

J: But we decided that we would both tell--we would both tell a joke.  So the idea here is that whoever has the better joke, if--it will be decided by your comments at--in the livestream.  There's now 2,691 of you watching in the livestream.  Your comments in the livestream and also by your donations.  So when you donate to the Project for Awesome at projectforawesome.com/donate, you can include your name.  

You can also include like, a little message within your name and you can either just say 'John' or 'Vanessa' based on whose joke you think was better.  I have a joke.  Do you have a joke?

V: I have a joke.  I thought the competition was whose joke was lamer, not better.

J: Nope.  Oh.  I can do that, I can do that.  I have tons of bad Hank jokes.

V: No, no, no, no, no.  Whichever you prefer.  I have one of each.

J: Uh, yeah, no, let's do bad jokes.  Let's do bad jokes.

V: Okay.  I have several.  Tell me when to start.  I can go all day.

J: Alright.  You start.  

V: Okay.  What are the strongest days of the week?

J: What are the strongest days of the week?

V: Mhmm.  Saturday and Sunday.  'Cause the rest are weak-days.  

J: Oh, God.  That's very bad.  

V: I know.  I know.

J: Ugh.  Why.  Why.  Why do you and Hank like these jokes so much?

V: Why do you think you're too good for them?

J: I know!  I obviously am a bad person for being too good for them.  Go to projectforawesome.com/donate right now.  Alright, this is my--

V: And vote for me!  Okay, go.

J: Vote for Vanessa.  This is my bad joke.  Hank told it to me.  Some of you have heard it before but I--of the terrible jokes Hank has told me, this is the one that I've found the least reprehensible.  Vanessa, did you know that the Norwegian navy now puts barcodes on the side of their battleships?  

V: No, I didn't.  

J: Yeah, no, they do it so they can Scan-da-Navy-In.

V: That's the one you found least reprehensible?!  I remember funnier Hank jokes.  

J: Scan-da-Navy-In.  Scandinavian.  

V: Well, did you hear that there was a man who was hit in the head by a can of Sprite?  He's okay, it was a soft drink.

J: I--(laughs)  I can't--I can't compete with that.  You know my favorite joke in the whole world?  And then I'll let you go and thank you again for joining us.  My favorite joke in the whole world--

V: Thank you for having me.

J: --it can be any length.  I'll tell like a medium length version, but I have like a 14 minute version that I like to tell at Thanksgiving.  So a moth walks into a podiatrist's office--

V: Yeah.

J: And--do you know this joke?

V: No, I'm just--I'm just eagerly listening.

J: Oh, great.  You're just being encouraging.

V: I'm just being a good audience member.

J: Thank you.  A moth walks into a podiatrist's office and the podiatrist says, "What seems to be the problem, moth?"  And the moth says, "Ohh, God, doc, if only there were just one problem.  My father, he's uh, he's dead and I think, I think that he was murdered.  I think that he was murdered and--but I don't know, and I don't know if I can trust my friends and I was in love with this woman, or maybe I wasn't, it's so hard to know, but she's just--she doesn't even know my name anymore.  I--I don't feel like I can--like, I have anybody in my life that I can trust.  I don't know what's going on.  I don't know left from right, I don't know up from down, and the worst of it is that my mother, just immediately after the death of my father, has taken up with my uncle.  I feel--I feel completely lost, doc.  I've got no idea what to do with myself."  And the podiatrist says, "Aw, jeez, moth, those are very serious problems, but you know, it seems like you need a psychiatrist.  I'm a podiatrist.  What brings you here today?"  And the moth says, "Oh.  The light was on."  Sheridan laughed!  I heard Sheridan laugh next door.  

V: No, I didn't hear that, everyone.  I didn't hear that.

J: I did.  

V: Nope.

J: I heard you--who, was it Mark?  Mark laughed.  Somebody laughed.  

V: I thought you were going to a Hamlet joke.  

J: It was--yeah, that's the misdirection, Vanessa!

V: Yeah.  

J: It builds toward Hamlet, but then it delivers--

V: I fell for it.

J: It delivers that the light was on.  

V: Well.  Well done.

J: I look forward to everybody voting for Vanessa in the joke contest.

V: I do too.

J: Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for all your great work.

V: Thank you for having me.  Thank you for everything you're doing with Project for Awesome and we're really excited for--to watch over the next two days.

J: Awesome, well, thanks.  Take care.

V: Thanks.  You too.  

J: Bye.  Thank you again to Vanessa Goldham for joining us from one of my favorite podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.  If you haven't listened to it or if you think you won't like it because you're not interested in religion, it doesn't matter.  It's so good.  You're gonna love it.  It's life-changing.  We've now raised over $137,000 through the Project for Awesome which means we have $13,000 to go if we wanna get to halfway.  There's some perk updates that Rosianna wants me to share.  $13,000 to go if we wanna get to halfway by 3:00, halfway to the $300,000 goal.  That would be awesome.  I would love to be able to hand this off at 3:00 PM knowing that we are halfway to our goal and by then, we will have raised over $600,000 for Save the Children and Partners in Health, which is just incredible.  What a--what a amazing start to this year's P4A.  Thanks to everybody who's donated already.  The perk update is that there are only eight Nerdfighter teas left.  What is a Nerdfighter tea?  Like, actual tea?  Rosianna will tell me, but also there are only 29 of my foreign editions of my books left.  If you go to projectforawesome.com/donate and you make a donation, you can get a foreign edition of one of my books signed by me.  

You don't know which book!  You don't--or which language--it probably won't be a language you can read.  God knows it's not a language I can read, but it will be cool and weird and you can tell your friends about it.  Katie Hambler of nerdfelt.net put together another Nerdfighter inspired tea!  Oh, the tea!  Like from last year!  You'll get a tin of loose-leaf tea, enough for 10-12 cups.  I got it last year and it was great.  Also, there's only four left now, so there has never been a time--a better time to get Nerdfighteria tea than right now at projectforawesome.com/donate.  I want to thank some of the people who donated recently and also say hi to everybody in the chat.  Whoa.  This has been--what a fun first two hours and 30 minutes we've had.  Is there gonna be peanut butter face this year?  Probably.  Sarah wants to make a cheese sculpture later.  Orthwine says that my moth jokes is from Scrubs, but it's much older than Scrubs.  That moth joke goes all the way back, Orthwine.  It goes back to the creation of moths.  It was the first joke that a human being ever told another human being upon discovering podiatry.  We've now raised almost $138,000 at this year's Project for Awesome.  

I wanna thank recent donors, including Nathan and Parker and Eleanor and Rich and James and Taryn--Taryn!  Long-time member of Catitude, friend of Esther's, just donated.  Thank you, Taryn.  It's nice to see your name and I hope that you're well.  Mark and Sarah just donated as well as did Kaitlyn, James, another name that I recognize.  Thanks for donating, and Landon and Amy and Erin and John's Joke for the Win, thank you.  Thank you for your one dollar, John's Joke for the Win and then, yeah, and Zulaiha, thank you, Zulaiha.  Is she here?  Thanks!  

Zulaiha just donated as well from literally 12 feet away from me, so thanks to Zulaiha for donating to this year's Project for Awesome.  That is certainly not a requirement for working at Complexly but we appreciate it!  We've raised $138,000, $12,000 to go.  That tea is sold out.  So there is no more Nerdfighter tea, but thank you again to Katie for doing that, because that Nerdfighter tea last year was great and I'm sure it's gonna be great again this year, but you can't get anymore, which just goes to show you, you gotta pounce on the perks!  Speaking of which, you can also get--I have, actually, I have a copy right here, hold on.  Let me go get it.  (scats)  

You wanna know the funniest thing in our office?  I think it's this one, isn't it?  Yeah.  Do you wanna know the funniest thing in our office?  It's that, there's this, we have this Tom Clancy book.  Stan and I did this like ten years ago, I don't know, whenever we started Crash Course.  We have this Tom Clancy book called The Bear and The Dragon and then you open it up and it's a flask.  I don't even know if there's--oh, there's something in it, but I bet it's--I mean, it's like, I wonder if it's, I wonder what it is.  It's fully ten years old.  Oh, like smoke just came out!  Oh my God.  

Will you drink it if you get to $150K?  I don't know that it's safe.  But yeah.  I guess.  Zulaiha, is there like a clear cup anywhere?  'Cause I don't--I kinda wanna make sure it's not like, black, before I drink it.  What's that?  

Ah, it's fine.  I think alcohol disinfects itself.  I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.  Anyway, we're trying to get to $150,000 raised at the Indiegogo.  We've got $11,500 to go.  Right, so this is my book, Turtles All the Way Down.  It, look it, it's a beautiful hardcover designed by--thanks--designed by Rodrigo Corrall and I will send you a signed copy of this book if you make a donation to the Project for Awesome at projectforawesome.com/donate.  Is this one signed?  It's not.  In fact, on the inside, it's not Turtles All the Way Down.  On the inside, it's Paper Towns.  Now, I remember what this book.  Before, before Turtles All the Way Down was published, Julie Strauss-Gabel, my publisher, sent me a copy of Paper Towns wrapped in the cover of Turtles All the Way Down so that I could show it in a video and pretend, and be like, look, this is what my book is gonna look like, but it's not actually my book.  Well, it is my book, it's just one that I wrote 10 or 11 years ago, so there's that.  

Alright, if we get to $150,000 within the next 26 minutes, I will drink--ahh, I mean, I'm a little hesitant.  Before I promise, I, 'cause, it's just 'cause that smoke came out, is the thing that freaked me out about it, Rosianna, to be honest with you.  I'm just gonna pour it in here and, ah, you know what it--AH.  It's a little dark  I mean, it smells weird.  Ahhh.  I don't know.  I'll, yeah, I'll do it.  I'll do one sip, and then if it's good, I'll do another sip.  I, I mean, I don't want it to be dangerous.  Ah, whatever, I'll do it.  Lots of people saying don't drink it, but, you know, somebody stop him, that smoke is mold spores.  Wait, is it really?  Is the smoke really mold spores?  

Uh, if the smoke is mold spores, I'm a hard out.  I'm out if the smoke is mold spores.  Okay, I'm out, I'm out.  I'm out.  I'm out.  I'm out if the smoke is mold spores.  Okay.  Then I'm out.  I'm out.  I can't.  I can't.  I can't.  I wanna go back in time to before somebody told me that the smoke was mold spores.  That's--the fact that I smelled it is extremely distressing to me.  I wanna go back in time to the part before I smelled it.  Is it--it doesn't look like it's moldy?  It looks--it looks mostly fine, but I mean, I have--I like, yeah, I haven't opened that flask in nine years and I would imagine that the alcohol has corroded--it's not like this is the highest quality flask.  This is made by Top Shelf Flask Company in China.  I don't know, Top Shelf Flask Company sounds pretty good actually.  Top Shelf Flask, as good as they get, you know?  

$593,000 total raised for Partners in Health and Save the Children.  The money that you're raising right now is gonna do so much good and we are so grateful to you for joining.  We have 25 minutes left to raise $11,000 so that I can leave the stream and hand it over at 3:00 halfway to our goal of $150,000 so I wanna thank some recent backers including Kate Votes for Vanessa, Michael, Chelsea, Caleb, Sarah, Vanessa's Was Best--I agree--Jennifer, Emily, Ryan, as well as Sophie and Daniella and Megan and Alyss and Teryn again, thank you, Teryn, and Nadia and April.  Thanks to everybody who's donating.  

I wanna just go through a couple of my favorite perks that are still available.  Some people in the chat have been lamenting about the disappearance of some perks, but, you know, it's the nature of the Project for Awesome.

We're only 46--we still have like 46.5 hours to go.  45.5 hours to go, and um, so there's always gonna be things coming and going.  Oh, I have Hank talking to me in my earphones.  He's very loud.  So, obviously, I think the best deal of the Project for Awesome every year is the digital download bundle. 

Can somebody confirm for me whether or not there are mold spores in my--in that bourbon?  Because that's gonna decide whether I drink it.  I'm not a mold spores person.  It's gonna surprise you, those few who know anything about me or my anxiety, that I'm not crazy about the ingestation of mold spores.  Anyway, the digital download bundle includes so many great perks that you can get for a $60 donation and they come like, all year round.  It's a really--it's really lovely to do every year.  Another one of my favorite perks is the Nerdfighter Art perk.  Every year, Nerdfighters from around the world send in artwork that they've made to the DFTBA.com warehouse and then you can claim that perk and you will get art sent to you by someone at DFTBA.com and it will connect you to someone else in Nerdfighteria who has made something beautiful for you and I've heard so many stories over the years about people who became penpals with their Nerdfighter art match and it's just--it makes me very happy, so I always think that's good.  There's a beautiful, Ash designed a beautiful Project for Awesome poster this year, which you can get for a $25 donation.  It's totally frameable.  It's really gorgeous and also it originally was going to ship in June of 6201, but we decided to just move that forward and ship it in June of 2019.  You can also get--that's my favorite typo that we've ever made in the history of the Project for Awesome.  There's also a wonderful Project for Awesome Pizzamas calendar.  Nerdfighters designed so many crazy Pizzamas designs that you can spend a whole year with me with a mustache. 

Also you can donate and get three pairs of Project for Awesome socks.  They're really good socks.  Rosianna, are you looking into whether the--that bourbon contains mold spores?  I don't love its color.  It's a little like, blacker than I would like it to be, but you know, if there's no danger, I'm open minded.  If you wanna make a huge donation to the Project for Awesome, and remember, every dollar you donate right now counts as $4, so you can, you know, really increase the size of your donation, but if you wanna make a huge donation, you can get a day out at AFC Wimbledon.  I sponsor a third-tier English soccer team called AFC Wimbledon and as a result, you know, I know some people there.  I have some ins and it'll be an amazing day for you and seven friends.  You'll get to, before the game, you'll get to have a lovely meal.  You'll get to meet some of the people who work for the club.  You'll get to tour lots of cool stuff, including getting to see Seb--it's uh, bourbon.  Including getting to see Seb Brown's gloves that he used when he saved two penalties against (?~2:165:05) to send AFC Wimbledon back into the football league.  It's, you'll have an amazing day out, and then you'll get to see an AFC Wimbledon game.  Good seats.  There are no bad seats, not that many seats, and you'll have a great time, so if you wanna make a huge donation, that's one thing you can get.  You can also get a personalized message, if you're a Dear Hank and John fan, Hank and I will read a message, subject to our approval, don't make it weird, that we'll read on an episode, a future episode of the pod.  We did that last year, it was great fun.  Yeah, so those--there's lots of different things that you can get that are available right now.  There's a lot of fighting in the Slack chat of the people running the Project for Awesome about whether all bourbon is whiskey or all whiskey is bourbon.  Tessa just donated $3 to get me not to drink the moldy bourbon.  Okay.  Yeah.  Alright.  I'm not, I'm not--somebody asked how much to--how much they would have to donate to get me to have a mustache all year, and the answer is there is no--there is no such sum.  

That's--I'm not, I can't.  I can't.  I can't do that.  We have 19 minutes left to go and $10,000 left to go, We're $10,000 away from $150,000.  We've--somebody's about to make a donation that's gonna send us over $600,000 total raised in the 2018 Project for Awesome.  We've raised $597,037.  Clarke just got the Project for Awesome enamel pin.  Thank you very much.  It's a good looking enamel pin.  James just got the Nerdfighter tea.  This is obviously lagged since now the Nerdfighter tea is gone, but it was great while it lasted and thank you again to Katie for donating it this year.  Yeah, I mean, reading the chat, I think the chat feels pretty strongly about me not drinking--not drinking it, although uhhh, Rosianna says that everything is fine.  I--hm.  You guys.  There's a lot of inconsistency.  I'm just gonna say it.  It's almost like we don't have a ton of experts in the comments but we all have an opinion.  I guess that's the nature of things.  

Rowan just donated $4.99 in pounds, or four pounds, 99 cents, which I think is worth like $700,000,000.  Oh, I've been informed that since Brexit, it's only worth $3.50, but yeah, I guess I could--eh, I mean, I could just--it doesn't--ehh, it doesn't smell great.  It doesn't matter though, because it's only a matter of, let's see.  I don't even know if we're gonna get there.  We've got 17 minutes left in my three hours of hosting.  

Thanks to everybody, by the way, who's joined me for those magical three hours.  It's been so much fun.  I really, like, every year the Project for Awesome reminds me of what I love about Nerdfighteria and what I love about this community and being part of it.  It reminds me why we do all, really all of the work that we do, because it all feels really connected and it all feels like it culminates every year in this.  Like, all the people who work at DFTBA.com, I know that this is such an important thing for them and everybody who works at Complexly pitches in. 

One thing I should say about the Project for Aweome is that because it's 100% volunteers, all of the money that you donate, lest the cost of any physical perks that we have to manufacture and ship to you and less the cost of Indiegogo's credit card processing, all of the money goes to charity because there is no overhead, so right now, all of the money that you're donating is going to be split between Save the Children and Partners in Health and, I mean, we know from a decade of working with them how efficient they are with their money and how hard they work to really bring big, lasting change to the lives of people who are the most vulnerable people in the world, so we're really proud to be able to work with them and be able to support them.  The Project for Awesome in the last several years, I think since 2012, we've donated more than 7.5 million dollars to charity.  We're already, this year, over $600--we just passed $600,000, actually!  We're already this year over $600,000.  PA-POW!  

That's--I--you'll notice that I didn't put it in front of my face, because when I put it in front of my face, I aspirated part of the champagne popper, which I'm imaging is not like, you guys are worried about the like, consequences of drinking this bourbon.  

What about the champagne popper that I inhaled part of?  I mean, that's gonna--that's gonna make a lasting difference.  Lots of people superchatting different perspectives on whether I should drink the bourbon/whiskey.  Um, uh.  People have extremely strong opinions.  You know what I'll do?  I'll definitely do?  I'll drink some bourbon at home out of a regular bottle.  Would that interest anyone?

We have $8,500--we're $8,500 away from getting to $150,000.  Jennifer just got the Hankgames vault.  You can donate and get some Hankgames stuff that Hank forgot about, including a game that he loved when he was 12.  Sara just got the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text discussions of their Harry Potter ships.  Anonymous just got a commemorative coin, we're--yeah, so we're $8,500 away and Patrick just got the Hankgames vault.  We're $8,500 away from being halfway to our Project for Awesome goal.  

"Unlike wine, whiskey does not--"  What?  There's a lot of--I, in the Slack chat, even, like, the people who work on the Project for Awesome, are giving me lots of conflicting evidence in re: whether or not I should drink this, so.  I--I'm leaning toward no, but I also don't think we're gonna get there, 'cause we only have 14 minutes and we still $8,400 to raise, so maybe that's like the best thing going for me is that we maybe won't get there so it's not an issue, but yeah.  Rosianna reports, "I've read a lot about fungus sooo..."

But yeah, I don't know, the science of bourbon drinking is fascinating apparently and we've all learned something today.  But yeah, oh.  Somebody says I should microscope it.  If I was Smarter Every Day and I had a microscope here, I would totally microscope this bourbon and find out.  

I mean, it honesly, it smells like it doesn't even have alcohol in it, so yeah.  "Is it bad to leave liquor in a flask?  The recommendation is that you do not leave liquor in a flask for more than three days."  Mm.  I mean, this has more than three days, it's been more like eight years, so, yeah.  Alright, Hank's gonna join me in eight more minutes.  We've got eight--it's just eight more minutes of me time, and then you're gonna get, uh, just a big dose of Hank Green returning to your ears and your eyes in just a few short minutes, so thanks again to everybody behind the scenes, to Zulaiha and Rosianna and Julie and all of the chat moderators who are working so hard in chat.  Please thank your moderators and please don't spam the chat and thanks also, yeah.  I don't know if I thanked Zulaiha but thanks to Zulaiha as well.  Every year the Project for Awesome works because there are so many people who work on it and dedicate so much of their time to it and stay up until weird hours and et cetera.  

$7,500 to go to get halfway to um...uh...to get halfway...to um...my brain just emptied.  To get halfway to the Indiegogo goal of $300,000 so we're--$7,500 away, we've raised $142,325 during the first three hours, which is pretty incredible.  I think when the Project for Awesome officially started, two hours and 49 minutes ago, we were at about $55,000, so we've raised almost $100,000 just in the last three hours, which is incredible, so thank you to everybody who's donated and also, again, I wanna emphasize that if you can't donate to the Project for Awesome, which is totally fine, like we have all been in a position at times in our lives when it's not realistic for us to donate.  You have to take care of yourself, and when it's even often a challenge to do that.  

There are still ways that you can help the Project for Awesome and the biggest, most important way is by going to projectforawesome.com and voting for the charities that you want us to support.  That is so, so important because those votes are gonna help us decide which charities are supported during the second half of the P4A.  We raise money during the second half of the P4A for charities that are chosen by you, the Nerdfighter community and by the people who make Project for Awesome videos, so please, spend some hours watching P4A videos.  That's what I'm gonna do in 11 minutes when I stop hosting.  I'm gonna go watch some P4A videos and vote for the charities that I want us to support in the second half, and I hope that all of you will do the same.  Like, that, it just makes such a big difference.  There's only a few thousand--only a few thousand votes can decide which charities get tens of thousands of dollars and we wanna be thoughtful and careful stewards of the money we're raising during the second half of the P4A and we count on you to help us do that, so regardess of whether you can donate, please, please do continue to be part of the Project for Awesome and vote.  

Before I go, also, I wanna thank the people who are matching in the first half of the P4A.  So right now, every dollar you donate counts as $4 to Save the Children and Partners in Health and that's because of the incredibly generous people who contributed to the matching funds this year.  There were so many of them and we're so grateful so I wanna thank them one more time.  There were generous Save the Children--there's a generous Save the Children donor and a generous Partners in Health donor, both of whom contributed to the match for those organizations, and then also Ben and Megan Holman, Katie and Jessie Eicorn, in memory of Jessalyn--I wanna make sure I say her name right--Ludwind?  Ludwine?  In memory of Jessalyn Ludwine, I think.  

Alex and Ashley, Dannie and Dory, John Woodbury Jazzman, Evan and Nisa, Matt, Bryce, Jonathan in San Francisco, Kevin and Idrani, Alec W, the Golding Family, and Jason Kurtz.  Many of those people have joined in the matching funds for several years during the last few Projects for Awesome, so special thanks to you, but thanks to everybody who's participated in the matching.  We're now at $142,981.  We have $7,000 left to raise to get halfway to the P4A goal of $300,000 raised at the Indiegogo.  Somebody still has an opinion on Hank's sunglasses so many hours after I hope he has taken them off.  Jemz just got the exclusive episode of Dear Hank and John.  Lots of people donating with opinions about whether or not I should drink this bourbon that just looks worse and worse to me the more I wait, like, now there's like, particulates suspended in it, so I'm--I'm leaning toward no.  Pzam! didn't claim anything, they just donated.  Thank you, Pzam!  Now we're over $143,000 raised.  Karyn just got the exclusive episode of Dear Hank and John.  If you're a fan of Dear Hank and John or The Anthropocene Reviewed or Delete This, Hank and Katherine's podcast, you can get special episode of each of those podcasts by getting the digital download bundle or by selecting them individually at projectforawesome.com/donate.  You can also get one-off podcasts that don't otherwise exist, including Dear Sarah and Katherine, in which our wives will answer your questions and provide you with less dubious advice than Hank and I do. 

So the way that works is that everybody who submits--everybody who gets that perk or gets the digital download bundle will have a chance to send questions in to Sarah and Katherine.  Obviously, they won't be able to answer all of them, but they'll answer a section of them and you can also get a one-off podcast where my best friend Chris and I talk about fitness and health and the two years that we've had since our--for me, anyway, life-changing experience of 100 Days.

I think Chris was like, always pretty healthy, and now he's still pretty healthy, but for me, it was really a game-changer.  In fact, I might spend part of this three hours that I have off going for a quick run, even though I'm a little tired.  I find that sometimes that's good for me.  

We're now like, $6,500 away from $150,000.  We're getting pretty darn close and I just wanna highlight a couple--before I go, I feel like I should note a couple of the perks that are relevant to me.  You can get, there's still 26 signed copies of my foreign editions available.  You could get the Finnish edition of Paper Towns, you could get the Japanese edition of Looking for Alaska.  You never--you don't know what you're gonna get.  It could be, what's a good example?  There's a very good looking Arabic edition of Turtles All The Way Down.  Maybe it'll be that.  I don't know.

Also, you can get one of Hank's t-shirts.  It's the weirdest perk every year, but they sell out, so we keep doing it.  You can donate to the Project for Awesome and you can get one of Hank's actual t-shirts, complete with a signed certificate of authenticity.  So, if you wanna donate during my three hours, you only have six minutes left at projectforawesome.com/donate.  Thanks again to everybody who's donated, now more than 3280 backers total for the 2018 P4A.  Always blows my mind.  It's not just the amount of money that gets donated, but the number of people who donate, even the people who can only donate $5 or who can't get every perk that they want, but still donate, means a lot to us and thank you for being part of the story with us, including Mary Amelia and Henna and Mason and Janna, Janna?  Anjanna?  

Oh, I'm so bad at pronounciation.  A great name, though.  Sean, Kevin, Cornelia, Sophia, Balaz, Serge, aaaand Anonymous and Sarah and Sushmita, oh, and Hank is getting setting up now.  Hank is gonna be joining us at any moment.  Very exciting!  Colin, Sarah, Chris, Katherine, Cole, Kristen, thank you all for donating to the 2018 Project for Awesome and actually, thank you for like, getting like, $145,000 before 3:00 but not getting all the way to $200 because then I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm failing all of you by not drinking this swill.  So maybe you should just like, wait until 3:02 and then give.  But yeah, thanks again and I'm excited to turn it over to Hank and go to projectforawesome.com and watch some P4A videos and vote for the videos that I wanna support with this year's Project for Awesome funds, but again, right now, we're raising money for Save the Children and Partners in Health, so we do this, we do the pre-selected charities portion because we know a lot of people, they wanna know where their money is going, they wanna understand what causes they're supporting, and you can look at really any charity ranking site, any like, you know, Charity Navigator or whatever, and see that Save the Children and Partners in Health are both known for being very efficient in very difficult working circumstances so you know, Save the Children and Partners in Health both work in lots of areas with very poor infrastructure where it's very difficult to get stuff done but they do a great job and they have a really good reputation both globally and in the communities where they do their work, so you can be confident that the money that you're donating is gonna be spent in ways that, you know, help the most vulnerable among us get healthcare and educational opportunities and the chance to lead a healthier, better life, so please, if you're gonna donate, you can know that your money is gonna be spent well.  

All, I mean, we try our best to make sure that via our votes, the money is also spent well in the second half of the P4A, but yeah, that's why we do the pre-selected charities now.  We're at $145,000, just $5,000 away from our total goal for, or the first half of our goal.  Three hours in to the P4A, it's incredible!  Oh, wow, lots of people have made big donations.  "I love you, please don't drink spoiled bourbon."  Eh.  I mean.  We don't know for sure if it's spoiled.  It's just probably spoiled.

Eve says, "kisses from Switzerland" and P. says, "Can humanity solve climate change?"  I think humanity can limit climate change, to answer that question.  I have complete confidence in our ability to limit climate change.  20% of the signed copies of Turtles All the Way Down have gone, so if you want a signed copy of Turtles All the Way Down, complete with a little--Rosianna, I draw these spirals, and Rosianna turned one of my spirals into a stamp and I'll stamp it as well as signing it.  The stamps are really beautiful, in my opinion.  Of course, I'm biased.  I like the way that my spirals look, because they look like spirals look in my--in my head.  But yeah, you can hear that my voice is already going, which is a big problem, guys, because I've got 45 hours left of this magic.  We've gotta--(clears throat)--there we go.  There's--it's coming back.  But yeah, thanks to everybody who is--I--but yeah, to go back to climate change, I do, I do think--we're bad at solving long-term problems.  We're bad at kinda slow motion disasters.  We're really good at responding to emergencies.  

We're bad at long-term problems that require long-term solutions.  That's one of the reasons why we focus the giving of the Project for Awesome, this part of the Project for Awesome, the way that we do, because when Hank and I look at issues of global health and poverty, we see a lot of long-term problems that need long-term solutions but we also see a lot of focus on emergency response, and emergency response is, of course, tremendously important.  It's really, really vital but I also think, like, we're better at that as a species than we are slow motion responses or long-term solutions and so we kinda have to tack against that in the way that we think, but yeah, I really do, I really do believe that we can limit the effects of climate change.  I don't think that climate change won't have an effect on the next hundred thousand years of human history, hopefully we have a hundred thousand years of history in front of us, but I do think that we can work hard to lower global carbon emissions dramatically over the next 30 years.  

Alright, we made it to $145,000 by 3:00 so no spoiled bourbon for me, which (?~3:185:12)

Hank: Hey, John, how's it going?  

J: Heyyy!  How are ya?  

H: Can you hear me?  I can't hear m--

J: I can!

H: Okay, great.

J: You look great.

H: Thanks.  I put on my coat.  I got my Project for Awesome shirt.  Everything is--everything is good.

J: Yeah, you look--your headphones are a little silly, but I like it.  

H: Well, they're not mine, so--

J: Oh.

H: --you just criticized someone else's headphones.

J: Oh God, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I hope you show off that shirt.  It's such a good shirt.  I feel like we should be--I feel like people should see this shirt and love the shirt and wanna buy it.

H: See how classy you can look in this year's Project for Awesome--oh, sorry, Nicole.  Have a good work day.  I'm about to get loud in here.

J: Yeah.  

H: See my Project for Awesome balloons?  

J: It's pretty great.

Alright, Hank, I'm gonna give you an update before I go.  We are--we have raised $145,767 through the P4A Indiegogo.  That means that, at total, we're at $620,000 raised for Save the Children and Partners in Health.  There's lots of great perks still available at projectforawesome.com/donate and also, people should go to projectforawesome.com and watch videos and I'm gonna go now because my voice is already shot even though there's 25 hours left.  

H: Well, that's fine, John.  You'll--