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YouTube Guide: Answering life’s big questions

Learn how make guy friends, what causes a hangover, and how to pronounce “Uranus.” 

 

Chase Hoffberger

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Posted on Jun 22, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 3:24 pm CDT

With over 72 hours of footage uploaded every minute, it’s physically impossible to keep track of the content on YouTube. But in YouTube Guide, the Daily Dot will curate its five favorite finds for each workday.

1) Cool Kids’ Table, “Regina Spektor”

Kenzie and Blake watch over the afternoon lunch crowd and reel in a new member for their über-exclusive clique: endlessly creative songwriter Regina Spektor, who pops in to chat about high school fashion, Christian Bale’s jawline, and the ways in which Anne Hathaway makes pale look cool. “Not to sound like a serial killer, but I want her skin. So bad,” Spektor quips.

2) asapScience, “What Causes a Hangover?”

Everybody knows that a night of drinking and revelry is likely to result in a splitting headache the next morning, but does anybody actually know why? Thanks to Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, the answer’s more clear. Using smart-board animation and a few not-to-scale human anatomy illustrations, the asapScience team explains what happens to your enzymes—those tiny molecules that help break down nutrients and remove toxins—when you drink and how their temporary uselessness allows the alcohol you drank transforms into acetaldehyde (a chemical 10-30 times more toxic than alcohol itself) and travels from your stomach to your liver to your blood stream.

“Is there anything we can do about it?” the team asks. You’ll have to tune in next week, when asapScience explains what you can do to help cure those pesky hangovers.

3) Mark Johnson/ESPN, “Cleveland Weatherman Can’t Help But Show His Frustration”

LeBron James is now an NBA champion. And while his star-studded Miami Heat may have defeated the upstart Oklahoma City Thunder four games to one, there’s another city that can’t seem to shake the throes of defeat. Cleveland, Ohio—the city that raised James and watched him mercilessly skip town two years ago, can’t seem to get over the loss—and it’s having a bad effect on the weather. Thursday, as James celebrated his victory by rapping 2 Chainz verses in Miami with LMFAO, meteorologist Mark Johnson was back in Cleveland, explaining to his city that they were about to see a wave of heat, with just a little hint of thunder. “If we could have used some thunder, it would have been tonight, huh?” Johnson asked.

4) CGPGrey, “How to Pronounce Uranus”

Uranus, Youranis, Your Anus. The seventh planet from the sun has had a harder time growing up than the fat kid or “four eyes,” but as CGPGrey explains, the kids making fun of the planet are simply potty mouths. The planet’s actually pronounced “You-Rain-us,” and the London-based educator wants kids to know that.

“The tragedy is that it didn’t have to be this way,” Grey says. As he tells it, the planet Uranus was the second planet humans discovered after Earth, and William Hershum originally named it The Georgium Sidis (The Georgian Star) after King George III. Space observers in the rest of the world objected to the name, and in 1789, two German scientists settled on calling it Uranus, which stuck, likely because they failed to consult any U.S. born 8-year-olds sitting in the back of the class.

5) Gringotone, “Making Guy Friends”

What’s the hardest part about being an adult white male? Is it the workload, the wife, the waning hairline? No, man, it’s making some damn friends. We’re grown up, we’re tough, and we’re not supposed to show our feelings towards people. And when our social circle runs short, we’ve hardly got a clue what to do. The guys at Gringotone (remember last month’s CSI Facebook Creep video?) get it, and with “Making Guy Friends,” they’ve captured that trying, fruitless process perfectly. Wanna watch the big game together this weekend? Nah, man. Got plans to be elsewhere. Heard it all one too many times before.

Photo via YouTube

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*First Published: Jun 22, 2012, 6:32 pm CDT