Pop Culture Happy Hour - Our Favorite YouTube Channels

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Today we're recommending a few of our favorite YouTube channels. These are the ones we find ourselves returning to again and again on subjects including board games, culinary history, silly tasks, celebrity interviews, urbanism — and ear gunk.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You've heard of YouTube rabbit holes. We're recommending a few of our favorites today. These are the YouTube channels that we find ourselves returning to again and again on subjects, including board games, culinary history, silly tasks, celebrity interviews, urbanism, and ear gunk. That last one's going to require some explanation. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're recommending some great YouTube channels you should check out. Joining me is Kristen Mienzer. She co-hosts The Daily Fail, a podcast that does comedic, close reading, of the tabloids, hey, Kristen.

Hey, Glenn. Nice to see you again. Great to see you. And spoiler alert, folks. Kristen's picks are epic. We have a lot to get to here, so no shilly-shallying around. What's your first pick, Kristen? My first pick is Tasting History with Max Miller.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I love this YouTube channel. On tasting history, Max shows viewers how to make historic dishes while exploring the history around those dishes. And his research includes not just historical cookbooks, even though he does have many of those, but also newspaper clippings, print ads, menus, and other written accounts. And what I love about him is he's not a professional, but he is enthusiastic.

He's funny. He's unpretentious. He's just excited about what he's presenting. And he's really honest when something tastes good or doesn't taste good, whether it's breakfast on the Titanic. Yes, he has made many Titanic menus or 1980s school cafeteria, sloppy Joe's. By the way, we should play a clip of this because it will give you an idea not just about sloppy Joe's, but about the broader world that he talks about when he's talking about food. People referred to their messy friends as sloppy Joes.

There was even an entire style of clothing called Sloppy Joe. And it was worn by women in the 1940s because all the guys went off to fight in World War II. And so women had to enter the workforce and they realized that pants and loose-fitting clothes made life a lot easier. So as you can hear there, he really gives context to the food. He doesn't just talk about the ingredients or the time in history. He also talks about the culture about what people were doing at the time. That's whether he's talking about a Gilded Age dinner or hobo stew. So I highly recommend Max Miller's tasting history. It's so fun. It's so educational. And you might even want to make some of the stuff he cooks. Maybe, not necessarily. You might just want to enjoy watching. This is a great pick. You turn me on to this, and I am now a fan. I've been watching a bunch of this. This guy is so approachable, so knowledgeable.

And as you say, unpretentious, you just get the straight dirt from him. And I really like this channel. That is, again, tasting history with Max Miller. My first pick is also food-related dish is a British podcast where two hosts invite a celebrity guest on to interview them while they serve them a meal. It's often of their favorite foods. It's hosted by Nick Grimshaw, who is a radio and TV personality, who can make a light, bubbly, frothy small talk with absolutely anyone. And also it's hosted by Angela Hartnett, who is a Michelin-Star chef.

She actually makes the meals. When I talked about this show before, I'll say now what I said then. It's a very British show. I happen to know a lot of these celebrity guests, and I'll explain a little why, a little later in this episode. But all you need to know is you don't need to know them, because the focus is on the food. It's about their memories of the food they grew up with,

the best meals they ever had. And yeah, the guests come on to shill their projects, but the hosts get them talking about the foods their mum made, the restaurants they love, how much they hate, you know, whatever it is they hate. Everyone hates something, right? So it's cilantro. They call it coriander or fennel or truffle oil or whatever. And at one point, Angela Hartnett steps away from the table to go over and start making the recipe that she'll serve the guests.

And we watch it happen step by step and the recipes are available online. Then Nick turns on the guess and interrogates them with a series of rapid-fired questions about like, what is your favorite way to prepare a potato, right? Or an egg or what is your favorite sandwich filling? which is a very British thing. Oh, their favorite crisp flavor, or their favorite fruit, their favorite bean? I mean, how many times has Matt Damon gone on Kimmel?

I still don't know that guy's favorite bean, but I know so many celebrities' favorite bean now. If you've ever wanted to watch Natalie Portman talk about how much she absolutely hates fruit in salads, here's your chance. So in this clip I'm going to play now, Natalie Portman has just finished scorching the earth about strawberries and salads, right?

And then she gets some backup from Michelin Star Chef, Angela Hartnet, And do you ever do a recipe with a strawberry and a salad ad? Never, never. Not now. No. I don't even like it when strawberries. One time a chef put up a dish for me when he puts scallops up with strawberries.

Well, exactly. I said wrong on every level. Wrong on every level. You can see, that's the charm of the show. Two words are warning, though. A, does that mean they eat on mic? Yeah, it does. So deal with it.

I mean, I think it's easier to watch the video than it is to listen to the podcast for that reason, because you can really hear it chopping away. Two, it's produced by a British supermarket chain. They get frequent mentions on every episode. So there's that. I don't mind it so much. I mean, the whole thing is just so pleasant and soothing. And, you know, in the UK, they have this word homely,

which means here it means ugly, but there it means of hearth and home, cozy, unpretentious, simple. That is the DISH podcast in a nutshell. You can find it on the DISH YouTube channel. you should check it out, Kristen. I think you dig it. I think I would love it. It sounds like it would definitely fill that hole in my heart between seasons of bakeoff where... Right. That's the vibe. Nothing's going to be too challenging. Nothing's going to make me too upset. It's just going to be cozy.

It's going to be homely. Yes. All right. What's your next pick? All right. My next pick is City Nerd. This is a channel hosted by Urban Planner Ray Delahonti that embraces all things, cities, and transportation with a specific focus on walkability. bikeability, mass transit, community, and classism. And I love this channel so much. He relies on real data sets, oftentimes cross-referencing five or ten data sets in one video. Some of my favorite videos are his top ten list, like the top ten cities for the working class, the top ten cities with car-free access to the great outdoors, the ten suburbs that are actually more city-like and cities. But I also love his analysis videos like how Spirit Halloween transformed strip malls into vibrant wonderlands. And I love his deep dives into cities. He'll just sometimes make

visits to cities and talk about what's working, what's not working. Here's a clip from his visit to Phoenix. Phoenix, Arizona, punishing heat, bizarre traffic configurations, comically poor road design, hostile pedestrian environments, of course, but also increasing density in close to downtown and along the region's transit corridors, and also robot taxis, and yes, I did ride them, and I have thoughts. I have thoughts. I'm sure he does. He does have thoughts, and I'm not quite sure that you could hear it there, but he has a very wry sense of humor, a great flat delivery that I as a Minnesotan really appreciate. And he does not suffer fools. He has no interest in coddling people who choose low taxes over sidewalks. He has no patience for cities that are laid out where you have to

walk a full mile to get to a crosswalk. And he dives deep into why are cities set up this way. Why are suburbs set up the way they are? How do cities actually subsidize suburbs? And it's just a great channel if you want to understand why does America look the way it does. And in some cases, he goes to other countries around the world. And we come to understand, this is why Melbourne is laid out the way it is. Or this is the difference between a city that's this old versus a suburb that's this new. And so it's really educational, but also it's news you can use. I really feel like it helps me when I think about, like, if I want to visit a city and not rent a car when I'm there. What are some of the best cities in the world to visit where I can just get around on foot the

whole time? What are some of the best cities if I were to live somewhere else? And, you know, just to nurture that fantasy. Where would be a great place to retire maybe? And so it's really fun for that too. Oh, that's cool. You know, I was looking over the list of possible YouTube channels I was going to recommend here today. And a lot of them fall into the genre of both of your picks so far, which are someone who's passionate about something who just wants to explain it to people, right? Like, that's a whole YouTube genre. And maybe with an academic degree, but maybe it's just passion. Maybe it's just expertise. You know what I mean? Yeah. That is city nerd. Thank you very much, Kristen. My next pick doesn't really fall into that experts talking about stuff. In fact,

its lack of expertise is its charm. I just want to preface this by saying, I feel more strongly about this recommendation than I have in anything I've recommended in a while. I envy the people who have not heard of this, who have not watched it yet. Here is all you need to know about Taskmaster. Taskmaster is a British comedic game show. There are now 10 episodes of season. There and always used to be, but over the course of each season, five different British comedians, largely British comedians, different set every season, compete to successfully perform a series of tasks that are assigned to them

by the taskmaster. And that is Greg Davis. He spells it Davies, but he pronounces it Davis. This is a tall and very imposing dude who assumes this kind of mock pomposity and gravitas and severity, and he is assisted by Alex Horn, who puts on an act of being very kind of a to-de- in a lick, spittle, bowing and scraping.

But the genius thing about it is that it's actually Alex Horn's show. He created it back in the day at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It's his ballgame. He and his team come up with the tasks, and it's Alex Horn, who administers the task. And I do mean administer because he's got a clipboard and a whistle and a stopwatch. The important thing about this is the tasks are very low-fi, very hands-on. They're also, and I think this is even more important, really stupid, very pointless, very silly. And so you're just watching comedians and make complete fools of themselves trying to accomplish these tasks.

Tasks like build a catapult to launch this shoe into that bathtub. You have 30 minutes. Your time starts now. Or conceal this pineapple on your person or make this coconut look like a businessman. So it's all hugely dumb. And we watch their attempts, most of which take place at this little cottage called the Taskmaster House. And then we cut back to them in the studio before a studio audience where the taskmaster and his assistant proceed to kind of assign them points for their effort. make fun of their attempts, and the contestants proceed to try to defend

and why they made the bad choices they did. So in this clip, the task was draw the biggest circle. That was the entire task. And here is taskmaster Greg Davis attempting to make sense of what he just watched comedian James A.caster do. You thought, I've been told I should draw the biggest circle. Yeah. But what I'm going to do is ride around aimlessly on a bike

whilst badly spinning a hula hoop. And then I'm going to crash. accidentally noticed as another circle before, and try and claim that as part of my attempt. That's my reading of what I saw. Have you got anything different to add? My eyes are circles? Now, a lot of folks, you probably know James Acaster, right?

Oh, yes, yes. Okay. A lot of folks know James Aicaster, but if you're an American, you're probably not going to know a lot of the other comedians, but here's the thing. It is just a vehicle for discovering whole batches of very funny people every season.

You get a sense for them as people. You catch them in the actual. being themselves, you see how they handle that frustration or express their joy. I also love the fact that so many of these tasks take place outside in miserable, gray, rainy, cold British weather. You can watch every season of Taskmaster on their YouTube channel. There's a hell of a lot of them now. I would start with Season 5.

That's a great mix of guests and tasks. You're familiar with Taskmaster? I am. You know, I got to say, May Martin, I became a bigger fan of May Martin because of their season on Taskmaster and just how silly and self-effacing and awkward May Martin was willing to be on this show. And, you know, all the comedians are willing to be those things. You kind of have to be to be on the show. If you're going to be somebody who's going to get overly wound up or embarrassed, it's not really going to work. But I just thought May Martin was so charming during their season.

But all the seasons I've seen are great. Yeah. I know a lot of people out there. A lot of listeners already know about the show. if I hit even one person who doesn't, they're in for a treat. Okay, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we've got two more recommendations. There's mine, which is great and funny and warm and wonderful. And we also have Christians.

Okay, we're back. My last pick is something I've talked about before, no roles barred, R-O-L-L-S. This is a channel on which a brace, a gaggle, a brood of young Londoners play different board games with each other. found them during the pandemic and I proceeded to fall in deep, passionate, parisocial love with each and every one of them. They're all charming and funny, but they're charming and funny in different ways and their personalities play off each other's really nicely. If you have trouble as I do getting people together to play board games, watching them and they're back and forth, it's kind of like game night methadone. You know what I mean? It'll do for now.

In one episode, they were playing a game called cheese thief, where you play as mice, there's a wedge of cheese on the table, and everyone closes their eyes and wakes up at different times. and if you're the cheese thief, your job is to steal the cheese. If you're a regular mouse, your only job is to wake up, notice if the cheese is still there, and then you go back to sleep so that when everybody wakes up, you can collectively determine who the cheese thief is. In this clip, one player named Sully woke up with another player named Tom, but Sully forgot to look to see if the cheese was still there.

You couldn't see the cheese? I didn't look at the cheese. Oh, no. Have you seen his eyes? They're so kind. How can you even do that in this game? The whole point of the game is look. at the cheese.

I've got cheese blindness. I don't know if you could hear that, but Sally was saying, I forgot to look at the cheese because I was looking at Tom's eyes. They're so kind. He's not wrong about that, by the way. Also, not for nothing.

This show functions for me as a consumer reports for board games because they play such a range of games, very crunchy, like European deck builders, two party games, to social deduction games. Just figure out my friend group with like this one, not that one.

They also do a series called House Rules where they take a classic board. game and do something with it, make up very stupid rules for them. They play operation and then shock themselves if they hit the sides. So that is no rolls barred. I have just noticed that all three of my picks are British. I don't know why that is exactly, but there it is. But those are my three recommendations I made out of my sincere good wishes for you, the listener. My recommendations are intended to make a smile to feel good because the last thing I would want would be to make any kind of recommendation about something or anything that might, I don't know, disgust or horrify you.

I would feel bad if I were to ever do that. Kristen, what's your pick? I think you are trying to suggest to the listeners that what I'm going to talk about is going to be disgusting. And in fact, it is not about being disgusting. It is about a transformative before and after. It's about tidying. It's about care. It's about nurturing.

It's about medicine. It's about the higher calling of the hosts. So my pick is audiology associates. And audiology associates is not just a YouTube channel. It's also a UK-based ear care company headed up by Reese Barber. Every week, he and his colleagues post videos removing wax and other things from patient's ears. Sometimes that might be skin. Other times, it's years of accumulated Q-tip fuzz, maybe even a piece of a hearing aid.

And the videos are extreme close-ups of the inner ears being worked on with Reese. and sometimes his junior audiologist Taylor narrating step by step every tool and technique they're using. And I love that Reese in particular speak so highly of all of his patients. He refers to them as, oh, this one was a really, really sweet lady and she came in and had this issue. Or, oh, today we have a great removal from a lovely, lovely gent. He was so lovely. So the way he talks about his patients is so kind. And as a long-time viewer, I get especially excited when certain tools come out that are my favorite tools because this starts to happen watching over and over again.

Like, he just took out the St. Bart's hook. Yes. He's going to enlist that because this is an especially difficult, firm earwax. Or maybe he'll say one of his old adages. He'll say, oh, it was tough as old boots. He smiles through every removal. He's not there to gross anyone out. He's just there to make people's lives better.

I dream of having Reese Barber clean my ears someday. Here's a clip of him. Hi, everybody. This is Reese Barber from Audiology Associates. Thanks very much for watching the earwax and mobile video today. Oh, my goodness. We've got a really good one. Make sure you stay tuned for the second ear, guys, on this one.

It's brilliant. Listen to that energy. Don't you want him to clean your ears, Glenn? Okay, number one, how dare you? Number two, look, I try to be a good host. I do my due diligence. I see your three picks in the prep doc, and I go and check them out. I have never clicked away from a website faster in my life, Kristen.

That page did not last long enough on my retinas to leave an after image, but it left one in my soul on my heart that will never heal. Number three, seriously, how dare you? Number four. Okay, maybe there's some monstrous freaks like Kristen out there who go in for this Dr. Pimple Popper stuff, but this is not. This is not Dr. Pimple Popper stuff, Glenn. Oh, really? This is very different. This is not about leering.

This is about education. He originally started making these videos to help other audiologists do their jobs better because he is such an expert in ear wax removal. How often can you see a mess be cleaned up in 10 minutes flat and everything look perfect again in your world? My world, it takes way more than 10 minutes to make everything beautiful and perfect again. It's been years and it's still not there yet. So this is about aspiring to the better things in life and the kindness, the cheering, the cheering, that we're in this together. oh, it's so good. It's so good.

All right. So that's Audiology Associates. We want to know what some of your favorite YouTube channels are. Find us at Facebook.com slash P-C-H-H-H. That brings us to the end of our show. Kristen Mineser says here, I should thank you for being here. Okay. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Glenn. This has been so fun. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes, sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Jene Morris and Mike Katzif and edited by our showrunner

Jessica Reedy and Helo Kamen provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time.