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Stop Making Cents - The End of the American Penny · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I have an idea, Kelly.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love ideas.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: What do you got?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do a dead end.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, let's do that.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we do people every other week, and then on the other weeks we do dead ends.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when we talk about people, I try not to do people that have passed too recently.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why not?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I usually like to let it everything, the dust settle.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and literally.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I usually like to uh wait um until people are kind of almost forgotten and then we come back with like remember this guy or remember this lake?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um but here I'm taking a different tact.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about something that is recently Deceased?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Deceased.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think we might be doing the same thing.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you want me to guess?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Are you talking about the U.S.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: penny?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: I am.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's mine too.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a dead end, man.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this'll be quick.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Or it'll be long.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or it'll be long, yeah.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I mean, think about it.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: 232 years of continuous production in the U.S.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: mint down the drain.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, never officially called the penny.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right, it was the one cent piece.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, still like that's and the penny, penny came from uh the word feneg, I think, in Germany or uh Denmark or something like that.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: But it was the British called their one cent piece a penny, and I think we borrowed it from them, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, and of course we had the half penny also the half cent.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Which when was that?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was discontinued quite a while back, right?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: 1857.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's the last time something was discontinued before last week.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And you think about the penny as being sort of outdated, the half penny.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that would be maddening to have to pay with half pennies, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I'd love I don't think I've ever seen one though.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it should be I think a half penny should be like a half a penny.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Look like a half a penny, like you where you put two of them together.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they should be magnetic, they should just click together.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the first penny, um, 1793, right?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and I think it was much bigger at that time.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was like the size of a quarter or a half dollar.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I didn't know that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was called the Flowing Hair Scent.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and it had Miss Lady Liberty on it, not a real person, but a depiction.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: I did, I did.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was the uh but scent was spelled S-C-E-N-T.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I had the flowing hair scent.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was a Lady Liberty with wild flowing hair, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it was criticized back then.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: They actually said that her hair looked like it was, quote, in a fright.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh that was that was the terminology they used in the 70s.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the one thing they kept messing with was the hair on Lady Liberty.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because nobody liked it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's kind of funny.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was the heads part.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: The tail was just said one cent.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it and I think part of the reason that they ended up making the coin smaller was to save on raw materials because the value of the coin it makes sense that the higher value coins should be bigger and thicker, don't you think?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: It should it should have some kind of rhyme or reason, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like the dime shouldn't be the smallest.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: It should be bigger than a nickel.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: They should reverse those two hundred percent or the other way, but just make it consistent and not jump around, right?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, you were asking how much it costs at the end, like as of last week, it cost 3.69 cents to make a penny.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So if you just made it one third as small, if you made it one third the size, that'd be pretty small.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not that big though.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's still, I mean, it's a penny, it's like the size of a um like a mint.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So for the last 19 years, it's cost more than a cent to make a cent.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, it has.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: But do you know how much a nickel costs to make?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's like 11 cents or something.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: 14 cents.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: 14 cents, yeah.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's do you think there's a there's a school of thought that thinks that by getting rid of the penny, now we're just gonna make nickels um more um scarce and more in demand, and that we're just gonna have the same problem with nickels, especially since nickels cost so much to make.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, don't you think we're just gonna get rid of cash altogether eventually?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was wondering.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like that that's whether you like it or not, that seems like it's the answer.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so the um most they say most people are sitting on about 60 to 90 bucks in coins, just sitting around their house.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you if you went into every uh mattress and every couch cushion and every coffee cup um and every um little center console in the car and put it all together, you know, one of my favorite things to do with my kids, and even before I had my kids, um the credit union, the UFCU here in Austin, um, they have a free coin counter, but it's only free up to$100.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Once you hit$100, they charge you 5%.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: They charge you$5.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I had a Gatorade jar that invariably would hold about$96.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like I it doesn't matter what I filled it with pennies, nickels, quarters, um, silver dollars, 50 cent pieces, but I could almost always count on that to pour it all out and to end up just under$100.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, cool.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Most people have about$7 in pennies laying around.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's$700 pennies.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about that CoinStar type of machine.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they have those in the Yeah, yeah.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, those cost money no matter how much it is.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a guy who collected 1,308,459 pennies and took them to Coinstar.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's one, it's 4.5 tons of pennies.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: It took them over seven hours to put all the stuff into Coinstar.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but but that was really stupid because Coinstar does take a big chunk, five, ten percent.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Should have gone to your credit union, yes, yes, and this done done it a hundred dollars at a time.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it's thirteen thousand dollars that he, you know, over thirteen thousand dollars, but you know, every hundred dollars.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: You said it weighed a ton, four point five tons.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: I I did I did actually calculate the size of a penny.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: So if you were to take every penny that was ever uh created, and I'm talking about the Lincoln penny, the Lincoln cent, you know, for for a uniform size, there's an estimated five hundred and thirty-five point seven billion pennies made from 1921 to 2025.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: And if you were to lay them all out side by side, you could wrap around the equator of the earth 255 times.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: That'd be tough when you hit the water, though.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: It would well, even tougher is you could go to the moon and back 13 times at 238,000 miles.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever pay for anything all in pennies?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I've paid for a lot of things in change, including pennies, but I don't see to be a jerk or like to be efficient.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: No, just because that's what I had, you know.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're talking like four or five dollars worth of change, and sometimes sometimes actually um stores or vendors appreciate it when you do that.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they nowadays they don't even know how to count change.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they really appreciate it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: From the um uh flowing hair scent, um we had one with an eagle, I think for a little while, the flying eagle scent, which was 88% copper and 12% nickel, and then the Lincoln Penny, um which started in 1909, it went through a differ several different blends.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: So from 1909 to 1942, it was 95 copper and 5% zinc, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they released that one because of Lincoln's hundredth birthday.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, and then in 1943, you had your um your steel penny.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Steel penny.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a couple of those.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever seen one of those?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, but it was a terrible idea because people confuse them for dimes.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, yeah, and they were magnetic because they were steel, they only lasted one one year.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then from 1982 until uh 2025, the penny was actually made of 97.5% zinc with a thin copper plating, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: But from 1963 to 1982, it was 95% copper.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if you get a penny from the 70s or 80s, early 80s, it's like solid.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: It feels heavier, it probably is, but yeah, it feels heavier, and in fact, did you know?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, change is filthy, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just carries everything.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like so you put it in your mouth to clean it, you just kind of get it in there and switch it out.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the worst thing you can do, is you put it in your mouth.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it, I mean, pennies can carry E.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: coli and staph infection and listeria and mold and like thousands of microbes per square inch, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the penny is the dirtiest of all of them.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it the dirtiest?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it is I don't remember.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because you made that up.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, I didn't make it up.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's the dirtiest one of all.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but no, check it out though.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Listen to this that copper is naturally antimicrobial.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then wouldn't it be the cleanest?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, pre-1982.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so old pennies are cleaner than new pennies.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Old pennies, you can put them in your mouth, swish it around, nothing's gonna happen to you.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I've done it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of those, one of those, I'm sure you have.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: After 1982, I wouldn't mess with that.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh okay.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're getting mostly zinc.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so the um motto in God We Trust, it it debuted in 1909.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: But do you know about the 1787 penny?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what it said?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, it said, and this was a tread a attributed to Ben Franklin.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: It said, mind your business.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: It did not, it did, yes.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was called the Fugio Scent.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Fugio Scent.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Ben Franklin, as we've talked about, he was funny.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, had some really good ideas and some you know harebrained ideas.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I kind of like mind your business better than in God We Trust.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's it's it's very uh yeah, it's very business like it's very snarky.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: It is kind of snarky, coming from our founding fathers.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't mean what mind your business means now.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: I I think what it meant was um you know that we should prosper as a nation because of business, but also to mind the business of growing a new nation.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this was 1787, so it didn't mean quit reading my penny.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Keep your penny, keep my penny out of your mouth.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was asking if you had ever bought anything with pennies.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um in 1978 besides a gumball machine.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There was a night a guy in 1978 who bought a new car with pennies, with pennies, wow, 433,000 pennies.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it was like you kind of wonder too if maybe some of those pennies were some of those missstamped pennies, or you know, like the ones with the the double double eagle, you know, something that was some sort of mistake that makes them worth thousands of dollars.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I wonder if they were okay with that, or if they really were like really come on the car dealer, yeah.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I could see that going either way.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: They just took it down to the coin star after that, and they should have taken it to your credit union, yeah.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um people throw away three point seven million dollars a year in fountains in pennies or in coins.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and like the Trevi, have you ever been to the Trevi Fountain in Italy?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's the famous in Rome.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's the famous fountain where um people it's four thousand dollars a day they they fish out of that fountain.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Four thousand dollars a day in Euros and coin America, uh money from all over the world.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most of the fountains around the world where people and including like the Bellagio and Vegas, they donate that to charity.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I always heard was done with it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Disney, it's about twenty thousand dollars a year that go into Disney fountains and they donate that stuff to um to charity.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what pennies have become, right?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Good for wishing.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, not really, which is I guess why they got rid of them, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, or they end up on a train track getting mushed.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's there were three billion pennies produced last year, and there's a hundred and fourteen billion pennies out there in circulation, but only about a third of those are actually being circulated.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: The rest are just sitting in piggy banks.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: I I kind of wonder about that.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is it good to hold on to the pennies I have, or is it better to just take take them and you know it will take hundreds of years for those pennies to be worth anything.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, uh what about but what about the half penny?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look at that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's gone.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any of those?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, I don't.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um so you know, everybody knows who's on the front of the Lincoln Penny, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know who's on the back of the Lincoln Penny?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um is that the wheat?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm talking about the the when it was changed in 59.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's a building.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the Lincoln and yeah, Lincoln Memorial.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was the only coin that had the same guy on the front and the back.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's you can see a tiny statue of Lincoln uh on the back.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: So he's on both sides of the coin, actually.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that was for his hundred and fiftieth birthday.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: They released that one.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do have some wheat pennies.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not bad.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: In 2009, for his 200th birthday, they released a bunch of different backs, a bunch of different tails.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know about that?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of every state.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, that was the quarters.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was a quarter.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, in 2009, they released four different, let's call them the tails, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So Lincoln's on the heads, and then on the tails, one of them met was a log cabin.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Another one was him sitting on a log reading, another one was him standing in front of the Capitol, and another one was the um the Capitol dome.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they were each, there are four different, but that was only for 2009.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: No pennies.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I just never look at the backs of I probably haven't used a penny since 2009, frankly.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you don't have pennies sitting within 15 feet of you.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, I just don't.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know about penny loafers?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: You would put a penny in the in the top part of the shoe, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's a loop.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, you never had one, did you?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: I did not wear penny loafers, but why?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: What was the point of it?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so the design comes from a Norwegian slip-on shoe called uh called the Arlen Moccasin, and then Bass, the shoemaker bass, you know?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they adapted that in the 30s, they marketed it as the Oijan W-E-E-J-U-N, like a Norwegian, like Norwegian, but just the last part.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's a slur or not.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then in the 30s, people actually put in started putting pennies and pennies in the slots, they had little slots in them.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now the story is, and I'm not sure this is true because um, but the story was that a phone call back then cost two cents.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so you had two shoes.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like emergency phone money.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: But there's people say that actually it cost five cents back then when the penny loafers were possible were were were popular.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I like this story that it's like an emergency phone money.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and some people put guitar picks in there instead of pennies, some people put or if you needed a gumball, two gumballs, you could get two gumballs out of a machine.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Some people put subway tokens in there, and nowadays, you know what people put in there?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Air tags.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and they're penny loafers, so you don't lose your shoes.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the the whole idea of us getting rid of them, what do you think about that?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel like that's a practical thing that needed to happen and you're glad it happened, or do you feel like it's something that um we shouldn't be doing?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like on the face of it, it sounds like, yeah, probably this is something that especially since it costs more to produce, nobody's really using them.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're mostly digital economy.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I worry that that we haven't thought about what the unintended consequences might be with respect to like the nickel, is everything gonna go up, like get rounded up?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um well that I think that's the official thing is if if it's uh you know if it's four dollars and ninety-two cents, you pay four dollars and ninety cents with cash.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And if it's four dollars and ninety-three cents, you pay four ninety-five.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you should still get the three cents back until all the pennies are gone, though.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're just not they're still gonna be in circulation.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I feel like does does a does a you know, let's say a convenience store where you might use cash, do are they obligated to use pennies to to give you change?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: They better.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean we still have to get away from the city.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Share a penny.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Just because they're not making them anymore doesn't mean I don't get my three or four cents back.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Or or would you rather they just always round it in the customer's favor?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Round down?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we'll never do that.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So if something was$4.94, I would only charge you four ninety.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I still think it's shady that they give gas prices that are one cent lower than they actually are by using the nine-tenths of a cent, which has never existed.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that is shady as hell.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that means nobody talks about that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: That means for every for every ten gallons you buy, you pay nine more cents or something, right?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or nobody ever talks about that.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: When you say, Oh, what's gas price, and you go, it's two eighty-nine, it's really not.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's two ninety.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you're saying two eighty-nine, you're just because you don't see that little tiny nine tenths.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I see, I see it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's all it's all, yeah, you're you're you're pretty in con and I'm sure you drive like 10 extra miles to save nine to nine tenths of a cent on your gas, do you?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's time has come, and while there are going to be unintended consequences, other countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, they've all phased out their low-value coins, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of feel like we should get rid of the penny and bring back the two dollar bill.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, not a two-dollar bill.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get rid of the penny, but get but bring back the half penny.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or let's just chop all the existing pennies in half.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's a wonderful idea.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: That wouldn't cost any money.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um send them all back in.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Nickels make less sense than pennies, no pun intended.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: The more sense, but they make less sense.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because they cost 14 cents to make, so it's about the same, three times as much.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they're just as useless.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we should we should reduce the size and material.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Are are nickels made from nickel?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Probably not.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: We should reduce the size and material of the nickel to be smaller than like the the here's what we should do.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: We should promote the dime to the size of the nickel and reduce the nickel to the size of the dime.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in eighteen fifty seven they made pennies out of nickel.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, this is so confusing.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know, I like the half dollar.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: The sheer size of the half dollar is so like obnoxious.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: And they're super they're super cool though.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean when you get one.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or have you ever have you ever had but can you imagine having a pocket full of those?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, have you ever had um like a Canadian loony or a toonie in Canada?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Or or or the um the big as that half dollar though.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: The the loony and toonie are pretty close.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh are you you're talking like the the John Kennedy?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a silver dollar.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's a silver dollar you're thinking of.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: The half dollars are a little smaller.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, I'm talking about the silver dollar.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: That thing is obnoxiously big.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Then there was the uh Susan B.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Anthony dollar and the Jacazoia dollar, which I think those dollar coins are super cool.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I wish that I remember when the Susan B.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: Anthony came out and we went to the uh this is my same grandparents that had the Johnny Cash records and the Ray Stevens records.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: We went to the bank and we got some Susan B.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Anthony dollars, and I think it was like 1978, 79, something like that.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember my grandmother and my grandfather, one of us, one of them telling us that you know, like dollar bills are very inefficient because they are they wear out so quickly, like they actually have to be shredded over way, way faster than a coin.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: Coins last a lot longer.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so once you make a coin, it stays in circulation a lot longer than a bill will, usually.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think Canada has a dollar bill anymore.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think they only have coins.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: So for that reason.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, here's here's the big question, Alex.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: How many times have we picked the same thing?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: We we did this with uh Dr.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Seuss, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Seuss.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the only time that we've accidentally picked the same one.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we're doing.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: This was this I was a little worried that we would.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: You were?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because you were such a big like public dead end.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um we'd love to hear what you think, audience, about the end of the penny, the end of an era.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Should we cut them in half?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Should we clean them in our mouths?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Should we collect them or get rid of them?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Should we melt them all down, put them all on train tracks?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Let us know.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have a question for the Canadian that you live with.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know that in Canada do they play quarters with loonies and tunies?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I will find out.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Their drinking games four times more expensive than ours are.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Probably more expensive and probably more um more uh potent.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: And more polite.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: And more polite, yes.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Penny Brian in copper sheen bought my dreams in a gum machine.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: A nickel's too much for the fun I've seen.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just one cent.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh how you glean penny for your thoughts.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh penny divine slipped in my loafers.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: You shine so fine.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: No more jingles in my pocket line.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh penny, oh penny.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: The loss is mine.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: You danced through markets, paid my fare in soda fountains.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: You found me there for a candy stick or a chocolate square.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now you vanish like a whisper in the air.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: A copper heart a nation's thread.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, where will we toss wishes instead?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Penny for your thoughts, oh penny divine, slipped in my loaf as you shine so fine.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: No more jingles in my pocket line.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh penny, oh penny, the loss is mine.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: No more spinning you to decide my face.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: No more scratches on your tarnished face Heads or tails the games erased a little coin gone without a trace.