General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

SciShow

SciShow is an American science-education YouTube channel that explains scientific topics, news, and history in short, accessible videos. It was conceived of and created by Hank Green and launched on January 2, 2012 as part of the YouTube Original Channel Initiative, the platform's program of funding professionally made channels intended to compete with television programming.¹^•² The channel is produced by Complexly, the educational media studio founded in 2012 by Hank Green and his brother John Green, and it has grown into a family of channels including SciShow Kids, SciShow Space, SciShow Psych, and the podcast SciShow Tangents.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Launch	First episode posted January 2, 2012, funded under the YouTube Original Channel Initiative²^•¹
Creator	Conceived of and created by Hank Green; produced by Complexly, co-founded with John Green¹^•³
Format	Short explainer videos; average runtime about 8 minutes, with four to five new episodes published each week⁵^•⁶
Audience	About 8.4 million YouTube subscribers and roughly 2.27 billion total views as of October 2026⁷
Spinoffs	SciShow Kids, SciShow Space, SciShow Psych, and the podcast SciShow Tangents⁴
Production cost	Roughly $500 per minute of finished video, with production mostly in-house over six to eight weeks per episode⁶
Ownership	Produced by Complexly, which became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in early 2026³

Origins and launch

SciShow debuted on January 2, 2012, with an episode in which Hank Green explained how non-Newtonian liquids work. The Daily Dot reported that YouTube promoted the show on its front page and that the first episode had collected fewer than 10,000 views at the time of writing; Green's vlogbrothers channel with his brother John, started in 2007, gave the new show an existing audience of more than 600,000 subscribers.² A WIRED profile from March 2012 described SciShow as a thrice-weekly education channel covering subjects from Jupiter's moon Europa to epigenetics.⁸

The launch was part of the same YouTube original-content funding round that backed Crash Course, the history and science course channel the brothers had started in late 2011.⁹^•¹⁰ A Google case study published in 2014 credited the launch's speed to Green's existing fan community, the Nerdfighters: the channel attracted more than 40,000 subscribers in the two weeks before its first upload, passed 1 million views within a month, and reached 2 million subscribers and 215 million lifetime views within roughly two years.¹¹

Format and content

SciShow covers a broad range of scientific disciplines, including biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, psychology, and the history of science, mixing topical science news with evergreen explainers and historical narratives.¹²^•⁴ Episodes typically run about 8 minutes, though the channel also publishes longer-form videos; a 45-minute investigation of the Dyatlov Pass incident uploaded in October 2026 drew more than 1.4 million views.⁵^•⁷

While Hank Green has been the channel's signature host, SciShow uses a rotating cast of presenters; TVDB credits list hosts including Kathleen Yale, Kindra McQuillan, Dave Loos, and chief editor Blake de Pastino alongside Green.⁵ The channel also runs occasional formats such as SciShow Quiz Show, a trivia game in which contestants play on behalf of fans.¹¹^•¹³

Spinoffs and related series

The SciShow brand has expanded into several properties. SciShow Kids explains science concepts for young children, SciShow Space covers astronomy and astrophysics, and SciShow Psych unpacks psychology studies and debunks myths.⁴^•¹⁴ The podcast SciShow Tangents, hosted by Hank Green with Ceri Riley and Sam Schultz, is a lightly competitive knowledge showcase; the team recorded more than 240 episodes, and from May 2022 the show was also posted on YouTube as a video podcast.¹³

In January 2026, HHMI Tangled Bank Studios and Complexly launched SciShow Field Trips, a series that takes the channel out of the studio and into working research labs in the Boston area. The first three episodes visited Feng Zhang's CRISPR lab at the Broad Institute, Hannah Yevick's lab at Brandeis University, and Beth Stevens's glial-cell lab at Boston Children's Hospital, with hosts Hank Green and Jaida Elcock interviewing researchers on location.¹⁵

Production and funding

SciShow is expensive by YouTube standards. Complexly CEO Julie Walsh Smith told an industry podcast in April 2026 that the channel costs roughly $500 per minute to produce, publishes four to five episodes per week, and takes about six to eight weeks to move each episode from pitch to publication, with production done mostly in-house.⁶ Funding has combined advertising revenue, Patreon support (the SciShow Patreon reported 16,525 members, of whom 4,428 paid), merchandise, and philanthropic grants.⁴^•¹⁶ In 2013, Green built Subbable, a crowdfunding platform that let viewers fund the channel and other creators directly; it was later folded into Patreon-based support.¹¹

In early 2026, Complexly converted from a for-profit company into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Montana. Hank and John Green gave up their equity, the studio kept a staff of roughly 80, and the change was framed as a way to keep content free and independent of advertiser interests; Complexly reported receiving $4.8 million in philanthropic funding in the prior year, with supporters including YouTube, PBS, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.³^•¹⁶

Reach and reception

By October 2026 the main channel had about 8.4 million subscribers, more than 4,200 uploaded videos, and roughly 2.27 billion cumulative views, with a typical new long-form video drawing about 151,000 views on its first day.⁷^•¹⁷ The channel also maintains a TikTok presence of around one million followers.¹² Teachers frequently cite SciShow and SciShow Kids among science videos used in classrooms, and a 2022 Indian government survey of science-communication channels listed SciShow among the leading English-language science channels on YouTube.¹⁸

The channel has also drawn criticism. In 2025, Hank Green acknowledged using an AI-assisted line in a video script, an episode that Scientific American reported as raising broader questions about AI's role in science communication, and viewers have disputed the accuracy of individual videos on topics from fiber arts to hormone therapy.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Early English-language web series (1997–mid 2010s)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?