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A normie made a video about the Trump administration declaring the necessary quantity of pennies minted to be zero. (proxy frontend for youtube)
Not just any normie; Hank Green, OG vlogger, educational youtuber, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, and novelist, with 4 million subscribers to the channel he shares with his brother (where this video was posted) and 2.8 million subscribers to his "personal" channel, plus however many followers on however many other platforms. He's been fairly transparent about his politics, in the past, but only in generic "good mainstream liberal" ways, so far as I know; I don't know of him showing deep curiosity about the "nuts and bolts" functioning of government, before 2025. Him making a video contrasting Obama saying he couldn't discontinue penny production, without Congress, and the Trump administration doing it through executive policy processes, titled "The End of The Penny (and of Congress??)" suggests the topic has legs with smart people and this particular smart person has a big, very engaged audience (the Green brothers run an annual philanthropy event based on viewer participation).
Is this good or bad? Green raises the point towards the end of his video that Congress refusing to legislate can legitimize strongman-style claims about the Presidency. As these issues get increasing recognition among progressively less engaged voters, will those voters want to restore the role of Congress or will they accept claims from Presidential candidates that "Only I can fix it?"
I don't follow him, but I don't have him filed in under "normie" or "less engaged". I distinctly remember him wading into just standard politics (around the time of the 2008 crisis) and culture war (women aren't worse in sports, it's just that the way we do sports is sexist... because of the way the ball moves...). I suppose they're dispersed enough that you could say he's smart enough to stay out of it for the most part.
You're thinking of Adam Conover. He said this on Joe Rogan. Hank Green would probably never accept an invitation to be on Rogan, to Conover's credit.
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I don't keep track of their branded educational content (though IIRC, they contribute to PBS Space Time, which is good), but I've seen that it's SJ-influenced enough that I'll presume there's a kernel of truth to the sports thing, for our purposes. The politics-politics Hank Green has done, that I know of, are:
2008 primaries: Endorse Obama - I'm calling this "normie," because, Green being a college educated then-20-something, endorsing Obama was as basic as Starbucks and fleece.
2015ish: Accepted a WH invitation to be one of a handful of youtubers interviewing Obama - so did Destin from SmarterEveryDay, who tacitly said he wasn't a supporter; who wouldn't interview the sitting POTUS, given the chance?
2018: Interviewed Steve Bullock - Green is a Montanan and Bullock was then the sitting governor, so this is similarly not something that indicates a great deal of political engagement, in and of itself. (I rewatched this, to check if I remembered it correctly - he doesn't come across as being knowledgeable)
2022: Something with a state legislature candidate - like endorsing Obama in 2008, college educated middle-age people wanting politics to be more local in 2022 was pretty basic.
He's been a public figure for almost 19 years, so he of course has done stuff, but I think paying attention to nuts-and-bolts governance is as good as any distinction between "normie" and wonkish, making Green's burgeoning wonkishness an example of these issues getting increasing attention by the masses.
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If he's the brother of John Green, that guy got chased off Tumblr for being Problematic a few years back, so Hank is probably being careful not to step over any lines.
(John Green was the classic Milkshake Duck meme: extremely popular for a good while, then of course the inevitable backlash).
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