in early 2005 d. felix conjectured that, were it to ever happen, this would be 'the world's most awesomest advancement talk, ever'. this question has already been the focus of much current research, and if true, would have far reaching consequences in the theory of ph.d. getting. we will discuss the history of the problem, outline some of the known special cases, and describe some recent progress on the general problem. time permitting, we will also present some interesting potential applications to hyper-awesome theory.