YouTube History Gems (August)

While family history TV is a regular subject on the blog (see also Tuesday's post), I am a big fan of YouTube, and more often I find myself watching shows or documentaries on that platform rather than "long form" television or streaming series - although the new Chief of War on Apple TV+ is so good. This will probably become a periodic feature to share links to interesting videos too.

A few recent (or new-to-me) videos from this week in mid-August:

• A Last Ride in New York City's Disappearing Horse Elevators (Bloomberg). This video is really interesting, and hits the sweet spot between brief and short enough (12 minutes). I had not thought before how many horses might have been kept on upper floors of buildings in the early days of elevators in NYC. Now there's less than a handful of these elevators left, and by next year, maybe none.
• Continuing with the theme of New York history, author Russell Shorto has a recent book (from March 2025) called Taking Manhattan; the Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America. I've ordered it, and here's a talk about the book called Taking Manhattan with Russell Shorto with The New York Historical (6:52 minutes). I'm cheating a little, this talk is a few months old, but it's new to me! With my own Dutch connection to New Amsterdam, this book should be a very relevant read and one that connects to my own family's experience during the time.
• Crossing the Pond; Finding your immigrant ancestors (Ancestry) - an hour-long virtual Wednesday event by Ancestry's Crista Cowan, focusing on immigration to the US and Canada between 1850-1950. Super interesting and timely.
• Why Spinning Meat Tastes So Good (Andy Cooks). It's food history from a New Zealand chef, and now I'm hungry for al pastor tacos, döner and shawarma. This definitely hits as I like döner, love al pastor tacos, and meat cooked via this method across so many cultures is always good. I've had döner in Türkiye and Germany (it's great) and I can definitely see the line from döner to shawarma to al pastor. This reminds me to mention the Netflix series the Taco Chronicles, which isn't on YouTube but is a great mix of food and cultural history and is very relevant to this thread of sharing links to shows & series worth watching.
• The One Song podcast is amazingly great (so so great, please like & subscribe, I get no sponsorship from it.). I listened to probably 14 or more episodes while driving up to Ithaca & back this past weekend, and I've listened to about as many other episodes on earlier long drives (they have about 100 as of this post). The episodes can be streamed on Spotify (video and audio) and watched on YouTube. These aren't just about a single song but weave in music history, geeky musicology, cultural connections, and more. I learn something new every time, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. This month they've had a two-part series on Jimi Hendrix, a fascinating breakdown with Lil Jon on his mega hit Get Low (who I've seen at The Grove in LA with my parents and kids back in 2010 when Jon went shopping at the Apple Store), and most recently a 90s flashback on the Chemical Brothers' Let Forever Be. I highly recommend it (typed that twice). It's so good and I'm a big fan of this podcast.