Patron Hunt

StarTalk began as a dream. An idea that they could blend Science, Comedy, & Pop Culture and deliver it to the public in a commercially viable way. They did not want to be bound to a model, in which funds must be raised seasonally to operate. But they learned quickly that their show concept was so different from anything else in the marketplace that no sponsors were interested. Proceeding with the courage of their vision, they applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation to test the concept. They approved a multi-year grant for this experiment. After some follow-up “bridge” support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, they finally broke even in 2014. Today, StarTalk supports a free-lance staff of nearly two-dozen people, and their branded show and show snippets appear as Podcasts, YouTube videos, SiriusXM broadcasts, and as a TV show on the National Geographic Channel, they’ve been Emmy-nominated four times for Outstanding Informational Programming. All good news. But what they learned along the way is that the marketplace of sponsors is risk-averse. In retrospect, no surprise, But they still generate active, creative ideas on how to grow their reach further — on different platforms, with different demographics, in different media, using variations of their show model, and so forth. In nearly all those untested pathways, no sponsor awaits them. So they create this page, humbly asking for your support of their ongoing experiments in bringing the Universe down to Earth.

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