[Opening Credits]

Hello there and welcome to the first, and possibly only, video in the SciShow pledge drive.

SciShow has a goal that not a lot of people thought would work. That goal is to share the truth about our world in an objective and deep way. We don't try to make it all about explosions or sharks or freaking Bigfoot, we're here to talk about how fascinating the world is because the world is fascinating. It doesn't need all that extra spice. With over a million subscribers now, it appears that a lot of people agree with us, so thank you for supporting the show and the idea that science is interesting on its own, by enjoying SciShow.

A television network, of course, would never fund SciShow - we actually talked to some television networks about it and some of them literally laughed at us. YouTube, however, gave us a grant to do our first two years of content, and we are extremely grateful to them, but that money had to run out eventually, and it does run out soon.

That leaves us with a few options.
1. We could sell SciShow to a major media company - you could probably guess who the highest bidders would be - and then we will be at their mercy as to how to make our content more successful - by which I mean more appealing to the masses.

2. We could work our butts off selling ads which would interrupt your viewing experience - with me being forced to say things like "This new car is a scientific masterpiece of engineering and stuff, and you can talk to it, and it tells you when you're about to run over a puppy. You can tell I really like it, because they paid me to say this."

3. We could start laying off staff, starting with Stefan.

or 4. You could help fund the show at subbable.com.

subbable.com is a voluntary subscription platform. You go to subbable.com and subscribe to SciShow for however much you'd like to per month. That can be $0, it can be $100.

Your monthly subscription goes into a perk-bank, so if you subscribe for $5 a month, after a year you'll have $60, and at any point you can trade in your credit for perks - like a poster signed by the whole cast and crew of SciShow, or you can sponsor a graphic and when an image comes up and I'm telling you about something crazy cool, it'll also tell the world that you are responsible for us being able to pay for that graphic. You need a signed Trilobite fossil, an embroidered SciShow lab coat, or you could sponsor a whole episode and instead of me sharing a message from a car company, I'll share a message from you and say Happy Birthday to your dog.

Also, we got a fish tank. There is currently one fish in there, hiding right now, you can't see it. Its a Red Dwarf - its name is Hank. Now Red Dwarfs do okay by themselves but I'm sure the fish would prefer some company. For $75, you could provide our tank with a freshwater tropical fish named after you, and you can keep up to date on the fish's adventures on a Tumblr we're going to start, all about the adventures of our fish in the fish tank, which could be named after you.

What we're asking basically is that if you find this content valuable and are able to support it, you can pay. You get to help support the show so it will remain free for all people. If you can't pay, you still get the same great SciShow that you always had, you just don't get a fish. Thanks to all of you who support by watching and to all of you who support by paying what you can and what you think is fair.

We shall keep making SciShow for as long as we can. Thank you for caring about how cool the world is and from the whole SciShow team, thank you for supporting us.

[Closing Credits]