Good morning, John! One of the things that I am very passionate about, is the idea that understanding something is a lot more valuable than just knowing that it exists.

Like, this kind of got us into a bit of a mess when it comes to Pluto, for example. We taught a whole lot of people that Pluto was a planet, and now we're teaching a whole lot of other people that Pluto isn't a planet, but this is confusing. Even a little upsetting because we gave people a lot of information without any understanding.

We taught people that Pluto was a planet, but not why Pluto was a planet. Because when we spotted it, we didn't know all of the things there were to know about the solar system, and maybe we thought that it wasn't that complicated, but it turns out it's actually very interesting.

Pluto is a part of the Kuiper Belt, just like Ceres is a part of the asteroid belt, except we didn't know that the Kuiper Belt existed until I was twelve. That is very interesting, but I think sometimes we avoid that story and instead just say 'Pluto isn't a planet.' Like that's the whole story somehow, this is like textbook 'knowing is as important or even more important than understanding,' and that's just wrong. Understanding is more important than knowing.

But I often forget that this extends way beyond just science stuff, which is where I spend a lot of my time thinking. In fact, I remember very explicitly being told what the proper structure for an essay was without ever being exposed to the idea of like, why that's a good structure for an essay, or even, what the purpose of an essay is. Turns out, lots of purposes for essays. Right now, I am basically performing an essay that I wrote earlier today. I have just finished the introduction, but when I was writing it I didn't think to myself, 'I need to write an introduction', I thought, 'I need to hook people in, grab their attention so that I can do some work with them. That introduction's gonna hook you in but it's also going to provide you with some context for the work that we're gonna do in the body of the essay, which we have now entered. 

See, making a great video to promote a charity is hard. Making a great video at all is hard. The main thing you need though is to capture and hold people's attention, and I did that with the hook that contained two things that people are passionate about: education, and doing it right, and Pluto, a dwarf planet. You need a similar hook when you're making a Project for Awesome video promoting a charity. And then you need this part, the body, where you're actually getting the work done. Right now, we're getting the work done.

It doesn't have to be long, in fact it's nice if it's not too long because it's not going to be 'hooky' because you need to be doing work during the body. For example, in this case I just gave you information on how to write a good Project for Awesome video, and if this were the body of a Project for Awesome video it would be talking about why the work that the organization does is important, why they are good at doing that work, and how they do it.

And look, that wasn't that complicated, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. In fact, as I am speaking right now, we are transitioning into the conclusion. Can you feel it happening? It's happening right now.

The conclusion is a lot of restating the case, but it can also be some new information, like that making a Project for Awesome video is a way to have some real significant impact. Now of course not every charity featured in a Project for Awesome video is going to get a portion of the money that we raise, but a lot of them are. And that money can have real significant impacts for those organizations. And even if it doesn't have that impact that organization might use your Project for Awesome video to promote the work that the. But you do have to make a good video, and that means capturing and holding onto people's attention with some kind of introduction that might be about something completely different. Like, this video's about how to make Project for Awesome videos but the introduction was about Pluto.

I've had fifteen years of practice doing this so I'm not saying that it's easy, but it's but not magic, it's just work. And I just have to say that I deeply appreciate anyone who takes the time to make a Project for Awesome video, I'm really excited to see what you come up with.

Submissions are open now, they close forty-eight hours before the Project for Awesome starts on the twenty-fifth. Capture and hold attention however you can, make a clear, simple case, don't overstay your welcome, and John, I'll see you on Tuesday.