Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 1: What's that? Will?
Speaker 2: All right? So when somebody offers you a penny for
Speaker 2: your thoughts, they're actually using a phrase that's over five
Speaker 2: hundred years old. And you know how much I love
Speaker 2: old stuff, so I was super excited about this. It
Speaker 2: was first documented in fifteen twenty two in philosopher Thomas
Speaker 2: Moore's treatise. It was called The Four Last Things, and
Speaker 2: here's what he writes.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: It often happens that the face shows the mind walking
Speaker 2: of pilgrimage in such a way that other people suddenly
Speaker 2: say a penny for your thought. But if you want
Speaker 2: to be historically accurate, which I know you do, you
Speaker 2: have to account for the fact that a penny in
Speaker 2: Thomas Moore's time was worth more than it is now.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was worth about three dollars and sixty
Speaker 2: three cents in today's money.
Speaker 1: Somehow, three dollars and sixty three cents for your thoughts
Speaker 1: doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't, but it would make it much more
Speaker 2: worth it to offer those thoughts. But it is annoying
Speaker 2: when inflation ruins a catchy's saying, here's the good news, though,
Speaker 2: We've got eight more fascinating facts all about pennies, and
Speaker 2: you really can't put a price on that, So let's
Speaker 2: dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 2: I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my
Speaker 2: good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and over there in the
Speaker 2: booth wearing a truly terrifying clown costume. That is our
Speaker 2: pal and producer Dylan Thing, And I almost couldn't look
Speaker 2: over there because it really is so scary close. I
Speaker 2: think he might have misunderstood when I told him we
Speaker 2: were doing an episode about pennies, and I think he thought,
Speaker 2: you said, penny Wise, what do you think's going on here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I fully expected to walk in and
Speaker 1: see him dressed up like Abraham Lincoln or like once
Speaker 1: in candies all over the place. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never actually read a Stephen King book, and I
Speaker 1: actually haven't watched that much Stephen King. But it's crazy
Speaker 1: how my kids, who have also never watched like it,
Speaker 1: are somehow obsessed with penny Wise. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: how they know it. They love the reference for some
Speaker 1: reason as a punchline.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely true, same same with mine. But anyway, we've
Speaker 2: got a great show today, all about pennies. But Mango,
Speaker 2: I have to ask, why are you recording inside a
Speaker 2: pillow fort?
Speaker 1: I know, so if the sound here sounds a little awkward,
Speaker 1: it's because I brought my family to tennis camp, where
Speaker 1: you figure out how much your family dislikes tennis over
Speaker 1: the course of two days.
Speaker 2: Or each other for that matter.
Speaker 1: Whatever. Day one has been pretty successful, but finding a
Speaker 1: place to record has been a little dicey. So this
Speaker 1: is me and a pillow fort.
Speaker 2: That's fun, though, and I know you guys are having
Speaker 2: a great time, and how much fun do we all
Speaker 2: be together and playing a great sport.
Speaker 1: But we should get to our next fact. So this
Speaker 1: one is about the United States Mint and it was
Speaker 1: established in seventeen ninety two after Congress passed the Coinage
Speaker 1: Act and George Washington signed it into law. Now, the
Speaker 1: Act authorized the Director of the Mint to purchase up
Speaker 1: to one hundred and fifty tons of copper and turn
Speaker 1: it into circulating currency. In seventeen ninety three, the newly
Speaker 1: minted US Mint released its very first coins, a series
Speaker 1: of eleven thousand, one hundred seventy eight copper pennies. Now,
Speaker 1: these were a lot bigger than modern pennies, closer to
Speaker 1: the size of almost like a modern silver dollar, and
Speaker 1: the face of these early pennies featured a woman's profile
Speaker 1: with long, wavy hair. Today, this incredibly rare coin is
Speaker 1: known as the seventeen ninety three Flowing Hair Large cent,
Speaker 1: and if you're lucky enough to own one in flawless
Speaker 1: uncirculated condition, it could be worth as much as one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty five thousand dollars. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2: Wow, that is a lot of money for a penny.
Speaker 2: But believe it or not, Mango, that's not even close
Speaker 2: to being the most valuable penny out there. That was
Speaker 2: one of the things I was most eager to look up.
Speaker 2: But that honor goes to the nineteen forty three d
Speaker 2: Lincoln Bronze wheat penny, which is worth two point four
Speaker 2: million dollars when it is in ment condition, but only
Speaker 2: in men condition. You're like, I get it. If it's
Speaker 2: in ment condition, I get why somebody paid two point
Speaker 2: four million dollars.
Speaker 1: Two point four million dollars. Is so much money for
Speaker 1: a penny? How is that po possible?
Speaker 2: I did not know the answer to this, but it's
Speaker 2: actually because of an accident. So during World War Two,
Speaker 2: the United States began making pennies out of zinc coated steel,
Speaker 2: and this was in order to save copper for the
Speaker 2: war effort. But at some point in that transition, a
Speaker 2: few copper pennies actually got made because there was copper
Speaker 2: left behind in the men's presses. Now, this happened at
Speaker 2: all three mint facilities that existed at the time. These
Speaker 2: were in Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco, but the ones
Speaker 2: from Denver are especially rare because they're marked with a
Speaker 2: D on the face. Only one nineteen forty three d
Speaker 2: copper cent is known to exist, but it's actually believed
Speaker 2: that there are a few others out there. However, a
Speaker 2: word of warning, though, because they are so valuable, these
Speaker 2: pennies are one of the most frequently counterfeited US coins.
Speaker 2: Be a real bumber to pay two point four million
Speaker 2: dollars and realize that it was not real. But luckily
Speaker 2: there's an easy way to tell if your nineteen forty
Speaker 2: three penny is one of those rare copper accidents, So
Speaker 2: you hold it up up to a magnet. If it sticks,
Speaker 2: it's steel. If it doesn't, it's copper. Now there's one
Speaker 2: other thing to be aware of. Some scammers have actually
Speaker 2: taken nineteen forty eight Denver pennies and filed down the
Speaker 2: eight so it looks like a three. So whatever you do,
Speaker 2: don't give someone millions of dollars for an old penny
Speaker 2: unless it has truly been authenticated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember my grandmam telling me the same words
Speaker 1: a long time ago.
Speaker 2: So wise.
Speaker 1: So you may be wondering when Abraham Lincoln first appeared
Speaker 1: on the penny, and the answer is in nineteen oh nine,
Speaker 1: which would have been his one hundredth birthday. The iconic
Speaker 1: design was the work of Victor David Brenner, a Lithuanian
Speaker 1: sculptor and engraver who emigrated to the US as a teenager. Now,
Speaker 1: he arrived in New York City and support himself with
Speaker 1: the engraving skills he'd learned from his father, and then
Speaker 1: he continued his studies and friends. He kind of became
Speaker 1: this expert medallist, and that's an artist who designs coins,
Speaker 1: medallions and other small items with raised designs. Anyway, nineteen
Speaker 1: oh seven, Brenner made a portrait of Lincoln on a
Speaker 1: bronze plaque, and President Teddy Roosevelt happened to see it,
Speaker 1: and he decided it would be the perfect thing to
Speaker 1: grace the new penny, and of course Brenner jumped at
Speaker 1: the opportunity. He designed the reverse of the coin to
Speaker 1: feature wheat stocks with the words one cent and the
Speaker 1: United States of America between them, and of course he
Speaker 1: signed his work placing his initials VDB below the wheat.
Speaker 2: Now this is the same Lincoln portrait that's on pennies today, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's hard to imagine a penny without it. But
Speaker 2: when they were first released, Brenner's pennies got a lot
Speaker 2: of criticism. Some people in the South were angry that
Speaker 2: Lincoln was on their money. Other people complained that Brenner's
Speaker 2: wheat stocks weren't botanically accurate, which is both wonderful and larrious,
Speaker 2: but perhaps most insulting of all. Some people thought Brenner's
Speaker 2: initials were just too prominent. I mean, I feel a
Speaker 2: little bad for the guy. He just wanted to make
Speaker 2: a nice penny, I.
Speaker 1: Know, a nice wheat penny, but President Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: bowed to pressure and had Brenner's initials removed, and then
Speaker 1: they were restored in nineteen nineteen and stayed on the
Speaker 1: reverse of the penny until nineteen fifty eight, when the
Speaker 1: wheat was replaced with an image of the Lincoln Memorial.
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing somebody was like, that Lincoln Memorial doesn't
Speaker 2: look architecturally accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's always a critic when it comes to arden
Speaker 1: coins and things like that.
Speaker 2: Very true. All right, Well, here's a quick fact that
Speaker 2: I find absolutely fascinating. So you've heard of a halfpenny, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like the old timey British coin.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and as the name implies, it was
Speaker 2: worth one half cent. Half penny coins started being made
Speaker 2: in the UK sometime in the thirteenth century and they
Speaker 2: were in use until nineteen sixty nine. Actually, but before
Speaker 2: the coins were produced, people with di wyatt, so they
Speaker 2: would cut pennies in half to make half pennies, or
Speaker 2: in quarters to make farthings, which literally means a fourth thing.
Speaker 1: Huh, that's so weird. I had no idea that's what
Speaker 1: a farthing meant. But also it feels like so much
Speaker 1: work to get a half cent, to actually have to
Speaker 1: cut a penny in half.
Speaker 2: No, it does, which is probably why the Royal Meant
Speaker 2: began making normal round coins called half pennies and farthings.
Speaker 2: But I also learned that the US had its own halfpennies.
Speaker 2: They were one of the original currencies designated in the
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety two Coinage Act that you mentioned earlier. They
Speaker 2: stopped being minted in eighteen fifty seven, which turned the
Speaker 2: penny into our smallest currency at the time.
Speaker 1: Well, we've got to take a quick break, but when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll tell you why you shouldn't swallow
Speaker 1: a penny and why you should put one into your loafers.
Speaker 1: So don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we've gotten halfway
Speaker 2: through an episode about pennies without using the phrase common sense.
Speaker 1: Get it? So?
Speaker 2: I think we do this as there are some applause
Speaker 2: for that, now, don't you mango?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dylan, can we get some applause soundtrack? You like?
Speaker 2: That might be a little bit canned, but it is
Speaker 2: still rewarding reward. Before the break, you promised listeners that
Speaker 2: we would tell them why you shouldn't swallow a penny.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious how this constitutes a fact like it
Speaker 2: goes without saying, right, don't swallow pennies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I know our audience is too smart to
Speaker 1: do something like that, But there is a fact here,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with pennies chemistry. So in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, rise and copper prices forced the US
Speaker 1: Mint to change the way it made pennies. And those
Speaker 1: World War Two era steel pennies you mentioned weren't in
Speaker 1: production for very long. They actually caused a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: For one thing, penny vending machines were designed with magnets
Speaker 1: to catch fake coins, and that meant steel pennies got caught.
Speaker 1: Two plus people kept mistaking steel pennies for dimes. So
Speaker 1: the Mint went back to a mix of ninety five
Speaker 1: percent copper and five percent sinc. But in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: copper became costper hit, so the ratio actually got flipped
Speaker 1: and pennies became mostly zinc with a thin layer of
Speaker 1: two point five percent copper to give them their characteristic
Speaker 1: color and charm. And that's when they became seriously toxic.
Speaker 1: So researchers at Duke, a school you might be familiar with,
Speaker 1: found that swallowing a post nineteen eighty two penny meant
Speaker 1: that the zinc combined with stomach acid to form a
Speaker 1: mixture that is quote as corrosive as car battery acid hikes.
Speaker 2: All right, now, hypothetical question, what if I have a
Speaker 2: penny from nineteen eighty two, Like, did they make this
Speaker 2: composition change exactly on January one? Or are there some
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two pennies that mostly are copper and not zinc.
Speaker 1: So again, if you're thinking of eating a penny, don't right,
Speaker 1: that's the first piut. But if you have a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two penny, it could be either type and you
Speaker 1: can't really tell by looking at it. Apparently, though, if
Speaker 1: you flip the penny in the air and it makes
Speaker 1: a high pitch whistling sound, it's mostly copper, and if
Speaker 1: it's silent, it's zinc. And then when it lands on
Speaker 1: a table, a copper coin might make a higher pitched
Speaker 1: ting while zinc makes a heavier thud.
Speaker 2: I love all these rules that we're learning about which
Speaker 2: ones will attach to magnets, which ones This is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, I told you earlier I love stories
Speaker 2: about old stuff, but you know I also love stories
Speaker 2: about space, so I was excited to find this next fact.
Speaker 2: This goes back to November twenty six, twenty eleven, when
Speaker 2: the Mars Curiosity Rover blasted off from Cape Canaveral and
Speaker 2: along with its lasers, high tech cameras, and particle spectrometers,
Speaker 2: it carried a single nineteen oh nine penny, one of
Speaker 2: the first from a series designed by Victor David Brenner. Now,
Speaker 2: the historic scent was mounted on the rovers calibration target,
Speaker 2: and this was sort of an homage to the field
Speaker 2: of geology. One of Curiosity's main tasks was to explore
Speaker 2: the Martian landscape and examine rock samples there, and in geology,
Speaker 2: it's common practice to include a coin in specimen photos
Speaker 2: to show how big an object is.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's really cool. You know. This is a total aside,
Speaker 1: But my favorite thing about the Curiosity Rover is that
Speaker 1: someone at NASA programmed it to play Happy Birthday to
Speaker 1: itself one year after landing on Mars, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: it's so great and so lonely.
Speaker 2: That is terrific.
Speaker 1: But something that's even crazier is that the rover only
Speaker 1: played the song once and never played it again on
Speaker 1: subsequent birthdays because it actually took so much power and
Speaker 1: the rover has this finite supply, so it didn't have
Speaker 1: the power to like sing itself again, which is kind
Speaker 1: of crazy, so.
Speaker 2: Weird, like I wouldn't guess that something like that would
Speaker 2: take that much power. But that also makes it even sadder.
Speaker 2: It just never got to sing Happy Birthday in the future.
Speaker 1: So back to pennies. My next fact is about as
Speaker 1: far from space as you can get. It's about pennies
Speaker 1: on your feet aka penny loafers. So apparently, the first
Speaker 1: penny loafer was designed by a Norwegian shoemaker named Neils
Speaker 1: Tehranger who worked in the US as an apprentice in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, and when he was here he
Speaker 1: noticed moccasins made in the Iroquois style with no laces,
Speaker 1: low heel and gathered stitches at the toe, worked something
Speaker 1: he appreciated, so back home he combined that inspiration with
Speaker 1: a laceless shoe popular in his hometown of our Land.
Speaker 1: The result was this simple, unisex design that could be
Speaker 1: dressed up or down, and the new shoe became popular
Speaker 1: with American and European tourists who visited the region, which
Speaker 1: was also famous for its salmon fishing. Now, pretty soon
Speaker 1: loafers went from our land and the valley there to
Speaker 1: the pages of Esquire magazine. In fact, Esquire founder Arnold
Speaker 1: Gingrich liked them so much that he brought a pair
Speaker 1: to John Bass, head of the American shoe company gh
Speaker 1: Bass and Company, and he suggested that he manufacture them.
Speaker 1: But Bass actually thought the original design wasn't sturdy enough,
Speaker 1: so we added a thicker sole and a strap across
Speaker 1: the van for top of the shoe, and he called
Speaker 1: this updated style Ruegian, short for Norwegians. And as the
Speaker 1: loafers caught on, especially with young people and college students,
Speaker 1: folks realized that the slit in the strap was the
Speaker 1: perfect size to store a penny, so if you put
Speaker 1: one in each shoe, you'd actually have two cents, which
Speaker 1: at the time was a great solution because it was
Speaker 1: exactly how much you'd need to make a call at
Speaker 1: a payphone.
Speaker 2: Actually, well, speaking of things that are obsolete, we cannot
Speaker 2: talk about pennies without talking about the push to get
Speaker 2: rid of them. I knew we had to talk about
Speaker 2: this at some point, and the date, several countries have
Speaker 2: eliminated their pennies, including Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, even Canada,
Speaker 2: which stopped using pennies in twenty thirteen. Now anti penny
Speaker 2: ciniment has been brewing in the United States too, of course,
Speaker 2: and in February of twenty twenty five, the President ordered
Speaker 2: the US meant to stop making them.
Speaker 1: So I feel like this has been a long time coming.
Speaker 1: We've read about this in the news. But the knock
Speaker 1: on pennies is mostly that they cost more to produce
Speaker 1: than they're actually worth.
Speaker 2: Right, that's exactly right, And according to Treasury statistics, each
Speaker 2: one cent coin costs about three point seven cents to make.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing that's true of nickels too. In fact,
Speaker 2: five cent coins cost almost fourteen cents to make, and
Speaker 2: halting penny production wouldn't necessarily mean a huge windfall for
Speaker 2: the government. So in fiscal year twenty twenty four, the
Speaker 2: Treasury minted about three point two billion pennies at less
Speaker 2: than four cents per That works out to a total
Speaker 2: cost of one hundred and eighteen million dollars so when
Speaker 2: you consider the six trillion dollar federal budget, it's a
Speaker 2: drop in the bucket, but you know they are coming
Speaker 2: out with some savings there. But a better antipenny argument
Speaker 2: is that people don't like using them, so a lot
Speaker 2: of us just leave them lying around in coffee cans
Speaker 2: or on the ground, so as currency, they've actually kind
Speaker 2: of become almost worthless.
Speaker 1: You know, I totally get that, and I understand, like,
Speaker 1: ioretically the reason why you wouldn't want pennies, but the
Speaker 1: idea of a pennyless world is like kind of a
Speaker 1: little sad to me. And I also feel like, wouldn't
Speaker 1: there be some impact on prices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've actually seen this in countries that get rid
Speaker 2: of their pennies, so prices just get rounded to the
Speaker 2: next smallest currency, which in our case would be the nickel.
Speaker 2: So a seven to twenty three latte would cost seven
Speaker 2: to twenty five. But what's really interesting to me was
Speaker 2: the effect that this would have on charm pricing, which
Speaker 2: is the term for all those prices that end in nine.
Speaker 1: Oh, because you're more willing to buy something for four
Speaker 1: ninety nine than five dollars right the.
Speaker 2: Second Oh, Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, and so consumer
Speaker 2: research has consistently shown that this kind of pricing has
Speaker 2: a big impact on sales. This goes back decades. There's
Speaker 2: even a chain of stores called ninety nine cents Only.
Speaker 2: This began in nineteen eighty two and was valued at
Speaker 2: one point six billion dollars by twenty eleven. Another example
Speaker 2: that some of us are old enough to remember is
Speaker 2: the iTunes store, which made a fortune selling songs and
Speaker 2: movieers for ninety nine cents each forgotten, Yeah, for real.
Speaker 2: And if you look at your app and software subscriptions now,
Speaker 2: you'll find a lot of them ending at nine. The
Speaker 2: psychology is simple. People see four ninety nine and they
Speaker 2: think four, not five, and that one penny actually makes
Speaker 2: all the difference.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, so we've reached the end of this episode.
Speaker 1: But instead of one of us deciding who gets today's trophy,
Speaker 1: I think we could do something a little more fitting.
Speaker 1: Why don't we flip a penny for it? Oh? I
Speaker 1: like that?
Speaker 2: Okay, can I guess? Can I take heads?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, you can take heads, and I'll take tails obviously,
Speaker 1: And here goes it is heads. So congrats will.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. That feels really good and thank
Speaker 2: you to the Penny, which may be on its way out,
Speaker 2: but it's given us plenty of stories to remember it
Speaker 2: by now. If you like this episode, be sure to
Speaker 2: subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a five
Speaker 2: star rating and a review. We love to hear from
Speaker 2: you. You can also find us on Instagram at part Time Genius,
Speaker 2: where we read every comment that we get, every single comment,
Speaker 2: every single one, and from Dylan Gabe, Mary Mango and
Speaker 2: me thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongaishatikler,
Speaker 1: and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
Speaker 1: media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: Another