Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday.

So earlier this year you and I had a photo shoot with the brilliant long-time Nerdfighter Ashe Walker and I was under the impression this photo shoot existed to get, like, a semi-professional picture of us that we could send out for formal media stuff so we didn't have to keep sending out this picture although it is by far my favorite picture of us.

But then at the end Ashe was like "Now make a bunch of funny faces." And Hank, as you know, I cannot make funny faces or do anything else that even vaguely resembles acting. I am such a bad actor that my cameo in the film adaptation of my book was cut from the move although they did let me keep my wardrobe and you're darn right I'm wearing it. That's right, Hank, I'm cosplaying girl's father right now, the role for which I was inexplicably denied an Oscar. 

But anyway, Ashe told us to make some funny faces and I tried and then Ashe used those faces to make the 2020 Project for Awesome calendar which is, to borrow a phrase, "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius." Each month we are transmogrified in great and terrible ways into various animals. Lemurs? We got lemurs. Elephants? Heck yes we become elephants. Oh my god this one is like the trailer for the movie Cats, only self-aware and for the benefit of charity.

You can get the 2020 calendar right now at projectforawesome.com/donate where there are also lots of other amazing perks. My favorite is our spouses' incredible spin off podcast "Dear Katherine and Sarah," but we also have a Project for Awesome poster, a Project for Awesome t-shirt, a commemorative coin. You can also get a limited edition, signed vinyl of The Anthropocene Reviewed. And also you know how the United States continues to mint one cent coins even though they cost more than one cent to make and do not facilitate the exchange of goods and services, which is the point of currency? Well at the DFTBA warehouse in Missoula Montana, we're crushing hundreds of these reprehensible coins and turning them into beautiful souvenirs for you and or your friends. 

And most importantly, less the cost of producing and shipping any physical perks you buy, one hundred percent of the proceeds go to charity. During this first half of the Project for Awesome, we are raising money for Save the Children and Partners in Health. 

Akward transition to the serious part of the video. I think it's really important to understand where that money is going and the good that it's doing. I mean in the last ten years, the Project for Awesome has raised over ten million dollars for charity and to site just one example what's happened in that decade, Partners in Health has been able to help build and support the Butaro Cancer Center in Rwanda. Seventy percent of cancer cases occur in poor countries and because access to care is so difficult, outcomes are far worse. 

For example, in the United States, many types of childhood leukemia have cure rates over eighty percent, while in poor communities, those same cancers are virtual death sentences. And the Butaro Cancer Center offers real hope and it hasn't just treated thousands of people with cancer, it has also helped to train many healthcare workers in oncology.

Save the Children, meanwhile, has helped reduced stunting due to malnutrition and help to build safe spaces for kids in refugee camps amid the greatest refugee crisis since World War 2. 

PIH recently released a video about a Sierra Leoninan woman named Maybel who was diagnosed with HIV while she was pregnant. "That day, I felt the world was over for me." But Partners in Health helped her get access to anti retroviral therapy and eventually to become a community health worker; one of over 11,000 supported by PIH around the world. Now Maybel helps people with HIV and tuberculosis get the care they need and reduce the risk of transmission and because she's paid a salary, she's been able to send her kids to school and that is the kind of generational change we're trying to support with the Project for Awesome. 

Also, right now every dollar you donate will be matched by Nerdfighters who contributed to a matching fund and by donors to PIH and Save the Children so every dollar you donate counts as four dollars to those amazing charities. 

So yeah, go to projectforawesome.com/donate now to donate. The P4A will officially begin on Friday at noon eastern time. There will be a 48 hour live stream extravaganza at projectforawesome.com/live. 

Hank, I will see you then. 

PS! Hank, we are going on tour in January also for charity. Link in the doobly doo for tickets. Bye.