Hello, SciShow!
 
This is going to be a little unusual.
 
So, you know how on public radio sometimes they're like, "Instead of having content this week, we're just going to bug you to give us money"? Well, this is like that, except more rare, and also more weird.
 
SciShow takes quite a lot of work and money to make. All these people back here are working on graphics, and editing, and prepping scripts and stuff, and they keep asking me to pay them. And one of them's actually shooting the video behind the video but you cannot see her, because no matter where she turns the camera she's always behind the camera.
 
But you see her sometimes in front of the camera - Caitlin, Caitlin is behind the camera.
 
Now, we feel extremely lucky and happy and grateful to have jobs making content about how fascinating the world is, and not being under the thumb of some gigantic media company that might be a little more interested in profit than science.

Part of the reason we can do this is because two years ago, we made a video asking people if they could, and felt compelled, to give us money as a kind of voluntary subscription through Subbable.com.
 
Well that system has worked, and it's worked very well. Those Subbable subscribers have helped SciShow grow and share more in-depth, thoughtful, and contextualized information about the world. Now, with two and a half million subscribers here, and over three hundred thousand on SciShow Space, we're confident that people are liking the things that we do.
 
Now for the weird news. Subbable uses Amazon Payments, and Amazon recently told us that the payment system Subbable uses won't exist any more in a few months, so we were stuck searching for new payment systems.
 
As part of that search, we talked to our friends at Patreon about their systems, and they gave us some advice, but they also said, hey, like, as long as people are going to have to re-input their credit card information, maybe we could look into becoming one company instead of two.
 
Patreon is very similar to Subbable. Patreon patrons make monthly pledges to support content that they love and want to exist, just like Subbable, and we've been buds with them ever since the platforms launched.
 
Then, they were all like, also, we will match every dollar pledged to you in the first month and a half, and we were like yeah! Okay, yeah that sounds good, let's do that! So Patreon is acquiring Subbable, and SciShow is moving to Patreon.
 
Which means, first if you have money in your Subbable perk bank, and you want to get a perk, you need to do that in the next few months, or if you wanna just let us keep that money, that would be great.
 
Second, if you're a current Subbable subscriber, there's a simple system you need to go through to convert your subscription to a Patreon pledge. So yeah, please, follow the link the description to do that.
 
Third, if this is the first you've heard about any of this, please consider going to Patreon.com/SciShow to see some of the benefits of becoming a Patreon patron which, of course, include us being about to continue exploring and sharing the peculiarities of the universe.  
 
Beyond that though, there are lots of rewards available to you. They include access to our patron-only activity feed, where we'll post pictures and updates on what we're doing in the studio, uncensored blooper videos, the patrons-only Quick Questions inbox, a digital calendar designed by the SciShow team filled with important dates and interesting facts, and, for the big spenders, you can still become President of Space.
 
These are all just ways for us to say thank you for supporting SciShow. We want all people to have access to SciShow, even the ones who can't pay for it. But the people who CAN pay, we ask that you consider a monthly pledge to keep us going and growing.
 
And whether you can give or not, thank you to all SciShow viewers for spending your time with us. We are honored, and we will continue to strive to be the very best SciShow that we can be. So yeah if you're a current Subbable subscriber or you want to check out how to become a Patreon patron, follow the instructions down in the description.
 
And from all of us here at SciShow, thank you!