STEM creators are working with researchers in all 50 states to showcase ‘Science Across America’

The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer, and a group of creators is turning that milestone into a celebration of science. A nonprofit called the Independent Media Initiative (IMI) is behind 50×50: Science Across America, a coast-to-coast “YouTube project” that will pair influential STEM creators with scientists from all 50 states.

50×50‘s mission is ambitious: Across ten days, the participating creators and their scientific collaborators will produce 50 original videos, which will be set in locations like labs, field sites, hospitals, factories, and research institutions. Those videos will arrive on YouTube in the fall of 2026.

To pull off its cross-country tour, the IMI has recruited some of YouTube’s biggest science creators. 50×50 participants will include Vlogbrothers Hank and John Green, former Mythbusters host Adam Savage, Xyla Foxlin, Emily Graslie, Joe Hanson, and Destin Sandlin of SmarterEveryDay. The participating scientists, as well as other creator contributors, will be announced at a later date.

“The United States has built a system for supporting and conducting science that has profoundly shaped the course of human progress,” Hanson said in a statement. “50×50 is an extraordinary opportunity to highlight that.”

You might expect a project like 50×50 

to live on PBS, but its distribution on YouTube recognizes the video platform’s strong gravitational pull. When innovative moments in scientific history occur, YouTube is where people go to watch the events unfold. We saw that phenomenon in action earlier in April, when NASA reached nearly four million concurrent YouTube viewers with its live stream of the Artemis II moon mission.

According to a YouTube blog post, NASA’s Artemis II stream tallied more than 79 million views between April 1 and April 13. “As America approaches its 250th anniversary, YouTube is taking its mission to give everyone a front-row seat to the world’s most important stories one step further by turning historic milestones into immersive, interactive learning experiences,” reads the post.

The IMI, alongside partners like HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Winn Family Foundation, and the Shanahan Family Foundation, has recognized YouTube’s potential as an archive of scientific wonderment. 50×50‘s contributions to that archive figure to be extraordinary, especially when you compare them to those other 250th birthday celebrations that will be going on around the same time.