Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday.  I want to be absolutely clear about something.  Back in 2006, it was my idea to start a collaborative video blog, but the thing about ideas is that on their own, they don't actually do that much.  They have to be realized.  What a word that is, by the way, realize, and you, Hank, have always been the realizer in our family.

You created our YouTube channel and designed our website and animated our 2007 intro and over the last 14 years, I have watched as again, and again, and again, and again, you make ideas real, and look, not all of these ideas are great.  Like, remember when you invented 2D glasses that render 3D movies in a crisp two dimensions?  You told me you were gonna sell like a million 2D glasses because your projections are always ridiculously ambitious, but you made them real and also, you sold a lot of them.

I thought you were gonna sell, I don't know, 12 2D glasses, but then you sold thousands, which, to you, just meant that it went okay, but I was off in the corner being like, this guy just made money selling 2D glasses.  He's the greatest salesperson of this or any time.

Anyway, thus began our long and fruitful tension of you believing that anything we did would succeed beyond all possibility, and me believing that anything we did would fail completely.  One of the most important parts of realizing an idea, maybe the most important part, is collaborating with others, and Hank, you have always had great collaborators because you are yourself a great collaborator, and so as you learned more and found more collaborators, you began to realize many more ideas.  In fact, I had to make a list.

We've got VidCon, Nerdcon, Subbable, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Truth or Fail, Crash Course,  SciShow, podcasts, Subbable, card games, t-shirts, Eons, books, coffee mugs.  It almost reads like a song.  I don't know how you do all this stuff.  Sometimes in interviews, people will ask me how do you write books and make videos, and I'll be like, have you met my brother?

A few years ago, we decided that our portion of the profits generated by these businesses should go to charity, and Hank, that's when you really kicked into high gear, because now, you could still realize ideas but with a new and more exciting mission: to provide ongoing, long-term, open-ended support to help build better healthcare systems in impoverished countries.  

So you helped Rosianna and me start Life's Library, a book club where lovely people read books together and also raise money to fight maternal mortality and then one day, you called me and said, you know what I would like to start instead of a book club? And I said, what?  And you said, a sock club.  And I said, a what now?  And you said, every month of 2021, you get a pair of socks designed by independent artists and they're good and comfortable and you don't have to worry about buying socks and all the profits go to charity, and I said, that's a pretty good idea.   I don't know how to make it real, but you won't have many other sock clubs to compete with.

But Hank, of course, you did know how to make it real, not just by working with others to find the right artists and manufacturers, but also by creating an extremely strange and effective podcast and TikTok marketing campaign.  I mean, I became a member of the Awesome Socks Club after hearing an ad on my favorite podcast, 99% Invisible.

Hank, you've put so much work into something that won't make you a single dollar, and it has been amazing to see the response.  I mean, much closer to your wildly ambitious projections than to my wildly pessimistic ones.  So let me briefly join you as a pitch person.  Only for the next three days, you can become a member of the Awesome Socks Club at awesomesocks.club/vlogbrothers, link in the doobly-doo, or sign-up a friend.  It makes for a great present.

Because sales have been so high, you'll get two pairs of socks in February and then one for each month after that, and 100% of the profits go to charity, and please do use the link awesomesocks.club/vlogbrothers so you know, Hank knows I sent you. 

Hank, you astonish me and I am left with only one question: what's next?  I'll see you on Friday.