Though Green hosts the majority of episodes, the show has alternate hosts; Michael Aranda has been with the show since its inception, and Olivia Gordon of the Missoula Insectarium joined in June 2016. Prior to her move to Chicago, Emily Graslie of The Brain Scoop, also occasionally hosted on the channel. There have also been guest appearances by Lindsey Doe, who hosts Sexplanations, another channel launched by Green; and by longtime SciShow staffer Stefan Chin, who since 2017 has been a regular host. SciShow has grown since its 2012 launch; since then it has employed a full editorial, production, and operations staff. SciShow Space has three rotating hosts: Hank Green, Reid Reimers, and Caitlin Hofmeister. Similarly, SciShow Psych rotates hosting between Hank Green, Brit Garner, and Anthony Brown. SciShow Kids was primarily hosted by Jessi Knudsen Castañeda, host of AnimalWondersMontana, before taking a hiatus in December 2018.
Promotion and funding
The channel was launched as an "original channel", which meant that YouTube funded the channel. The show's initial grant was projected to expire in 2014, and in response, on September 12, 2013 SciShow joined the viewer-funding site Subbable, created in part by Green. In 2014, the channel landed a national advertisement deal with YouTube. The educational program was featured on platforms such as billboards and television commercials as a result. Green details that the advertisements had a positive effect on SciShow, stating, "My Twitter exploded, our followers and subscribers exploded." After Patreon acquired Subbable, the channel switched over to Patreon where it continues to receive support in exchange for various perks. SciShow currently has over five thousand patrons.
Content
Several different scientific fields are covered by SciShow, including chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, entomology, botany, meteorology, astronomy, medicine, psychology, anthropology, and computer science. The videos on SciShow have a vast variety of different topics, such as nutrition, and "science superlatives". As of April 2020, SciShow has released over 2250 videos. A spin-off channel, SciShow Space, launched in April 2014 to specialize in space topics. A second spin-off, SciShow Kids, launched in March 2015 to specialize in delivering science topics to children. Kids went on hiatus in late 2018, returning in April 2020. A third spinoff channel was announced in February 2017, SciShow Psych, which debuted in March 2017, specializing in psychology and neuroscience. A podcast, SciShow Tangents, was launched in November 2018; it features entertaining exchanges of scientific facts among many of the shows' staffers, and is directed at a mature audience.
In November 2018, a co-branded podcast titled SciShow Tangents was launched as a co-production with WNYC Studios. It consists of a panel format where Hank Green, Ceri Riley, Stefan Chin, and Sam Schultz share facts about science on a weekly theme; each episode has multiple segments, several of which are competitive.
Reception
As SciShow has amassed a large following, the channel has been featured on several media outlets. As for the channel's success on YouTube, it was documented that by October 2014, the channel amassed over two million subscribers and earned over 210 million video views. As of August 2019, the channel has over 5.8 million subscribers and has over 1 billion views. SciShow has been criticized by fellow science YouTuber Myles Power for presenting biased and incorrect information about genetic modification. Criticisms were later responded to in a separate response video. In 2017, SciShow won Complexly's People's Voice award.
