Time Off in December

Hello lovely patrons!

I'm amazed at what a year it's been! Since January I've made eleven very solid videos (plus one that was absolute gibberish), broke through a quarter of a million AND THEN half a million subscribers, launched a merch store, and raised just shy of $140,000 for charity by marathon-reading the complete works of Shakespeare on Twitch. That's just the YouTube stuff - my life as an actor and my personal life in 2019 would make that lot look easy!

After all this I'm very tired and I need a break, so I've decided not to release a video this December; instead I'm going to go home, spend some time with my family, and take a well earned rest. Thank you for a spectacular year - I did a livestream looking back on it all, talking about my favourite and least favourite moments, which you can see here. I have some exciting ideas for videos in 2020 - none of these are set in stone, but here's some avenues I'm curious about exploring:

- A short film about algorithms, security, and privacy
- Something about the philosophy of religion, with particular attention paid to the A-Level Philosophy syllabus. Maybe wrapped up with something about Evangelicalism?
- Something about Charles Darwin and how his work changed philosophy? Maybe as a follow up to the one about religion?
- Anti-Semitism: An Analysis?
- Something about beauty and ugliness, maybe through the lens of the work of Vladimir Nabokov?
- Something about the philosophy of theatre and acting?
- Something about facts Vs feelings: expressivism, emotions, the Frege-Geach Problem...?
- Something about expertise and what it means to be an expert?
- Something about Chomsky and linguistics?

I like to be as transparent with you as I can be about my finances, so here's the overview at the end of the year - 

Money comes in from you patrons, from advertising, and from sponsorships. The amount I make from merch is negligible and I've given the majority of it away to charity already. The biggest slice comes from you - most videos of mine don't get sponsors or end up getting demonetised. The amount pledged is kept private because once I started getting enough to make this my job I was bombarded by companies, journalists, and in a few cases sexual harassers (bizarrely!) wanting to muscle in, which made me very uncomfortable. Money coming in is spent on the show, which is very expensive to make (I hope you're pleased with how the production value has increased!): the main costs are studio and equipment hire, locations, props, music, costumes, and research materials, which all vary from video to video. There are also my living costs, which are considerable because I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and being an actor more often costs money than pays money! If there is ever any left over I save it and put it towards the next video. Thanks to your support this year I've been able to properly pay the people I've brought in on an ad hoc basis: musicians, camera operators, producers, consultants, and artists. It means a lot to me that I compensate people for their time. (For all these reasons, the amount pledged isn't really a useful number anyway because it's nowhere near the amount I actually get to keep!) 

Thank you again for a wonderful year, I hope you all feel like being a patron of the show has been worthwhile! If you celebrate Christmas then have a very Merry Christmas, and I will see you all in 2020!

Olly XXx