John: Gooooooooooood morning, Hank! It's Tuesday. Today we'll be discussing gastrointestinal hypermotility as a cause of post-prandial bowel movements in Tuatara. So Hank, as you know, the Tuatara is the oldest extant reptile species in the world with a temporal range stretching back 250 million years -- that should do it, right?

Hello! So listen, over the last month we've had TWO DIFFERENT VIDEOS get over a million views which is extremely uncomfortable and also, like, a real challenge for our comment moderators. I mean, Hank, we are niche YouTubers.

We make stuff for an 18-year-old internet community called Nerdfighteria, we're not Mr-Flipping-Beast! We can't go trying to make videos that get a million freaking views so, I picked a title that no one would casually click on. Anyway this video is not actually about gastrointestinal hypermotility in Tuatara which isn't a problem for them actually because they don't do anything fast including digestion.

This video is about the Project For Awesome. So Hank, since way back in 2007, we've worked with Nerdfighteria on the Project For Awesome, an annual charity fundraiser and THIS YEAR I really needed the P4A. Like, I've had a rough month both professionally and personally.

In general I would say I'm feeling... discouraged, like it's difficult to rouse myself into courage right now. And so the P4A arrived at a bad time in the sense that I'm already tired and overwhelmed, but the perfect time in the sense that I really needed a pick-me up and one thing about a pick-me-up is that you never ACTUALLY pick yourself up, you are picked up by people around you. Seeing over 10,000 people people come together and raise $3.6 million and counting, while having a good time and being good to each other, reminded me of something, which is that we do not need a "them" in order to create a strong "us" and that the alleviation of suffering is a noble and worthy goal and can also be a fun one.

And that's true if we're like alleviating loneliness together by creating community and cheering on Silly Ray Cyrus or if we're raising money to build stronger healthcare systems in impoverished communities. So Hank, as a person I am never particularly far away from despair and lately, I have been consumed by fear which has made it hard to, like, get out of bed and promote my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, which comes out a month from today. Why am I promoting my book in a video called gastrointestinal hypermotility in Tuatura?

Y'all have already pre-ordered it! Signed copies available wherever good books are sold. Anyway, the problem with despair is that it's extremely unproductive.

Despair just wants me to sleep all the time and feel it kind of hollowed out anger and disgust at the state of things. Despair doesn't want me to do anything because despair is telling me there's nothing to do. Like what's the point of bringing your little bucket of water to the fire?

It's not like you can put it out. But of course all I have is my bucket! My bucket of attention, my bucket of resources, my bucket of time!

And of course I feel like right now is the last moment of human history, it's the last moment I've lived through! It's the culmination of everything up to now the inheritance of all the horrors and kindnesses we have visited upon each other. When you're watching like a soccer game or a play, you know approximately how much time is left in the show, you know when the action is reaching its climax.

But when you live amid history, you don't know, you can't know! The Project For Awesome gives me hope because it reminds me that yes, I only have my little bucket to bring to the fire, but other people also have their buckets and what we can accomplish together is vastly greater than what we could accomplish alone. In the Project For Awesome's history, Hank we've now raised over $25 million for charity, a number that none of us could have achieved achieved alone, unless there is a billionaire watching this, in which case email me because I've got a tuberculosis that I'd like to cure.

The P4A's frog memes, and Silly Nelson, its "Hard Pivots To Beef", and uh... this guy? But it's also years of memories stitched together, it's the same names in chat, and wondrously, sometimes new ones. In short it's community, and of all the things we've built together over the last 18 years, that's the one I'm proudest of.

Thanks for making it happen Nerdfighteria. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.