R.I.Penny </3 (seriously, this is actually news)

This week, we are live from the recent past to tell you about the news that you may not have heard on November 12th, 2025: the final death knell of our dearly hated coin the penny. We've been on the right side of history regarding this topic for a long time, and today, at long last, we bring you

The Euology of the Penny.

Tune in to the broadcast at 6pm over at wuml.org

If you can't tune in, here's the show transcription (brought to you by our semi-sentient overlords and proud new sponsor THE AI SINGULARITY)

SHOW TRANSCRIPTION

Segment 1:

Ben: Well hey there folks, you're listening to WUML LOL. This is Off the Rails on the Airwaves, coming to you slightly from the past. This is our show this week. We are here and I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm not alone. There's two other people in the room with me.

Kyle and Vicki: - The show is coming from inside the house. (laughing) - From inside the house.

Ben: - I don't know if you're familiar with Sartre, hell is other people.

Kyle and Vicki: - Whoa, that's edgy.

Ben: - Yeah.

Kyle and Vicki: - Very. - I think, I think, so I think here's what's happened. I think that there is some grand. Conspiracy to make everybody tired and sad and a part of that is that they shifted the clocks Arbitrarily. Yes So that there's less sunlight during the day and also It's getting darker sooner and that doesn't seem correct. Yes. I feel tired. I feel sad because everything is sad outside it's dark so I think that's what's happening and I think someone is benefiting from it and I'm guessing it's dude this is what I always wonder cuz like as someone who does wake up silly early for work or whatever like I usually wake up when the Sun is rising type of thing I don't need that you know like it's kind of nice to wake up when the Sun is rising not after it is up you know yeah and so I'm just curious like back to Kyle's point who is this benefiting yeah I would way rather it be dark in the morning than have it be dark in the evening yeah I don't I don't know who this is benefiting like if it's big clock it benefits yeah bulb it benefits

Ben: Are they trying they're trying to make us use our light bulbs more because it's dark outside

Kyle and Vicki: Well i i was actually reading about this the other day so apparently um daylight savings time so like in the uk one of the reasons they started doing daylight savings time is because to um to save and ration uh electricity and power during the war. Yeah. So by having it- by do- when you do daylight savings time you get more light in the evening and so people use less electric light. Well in the summer, right? Yeah. So is this- is this what the normal clock would be? And then we change it for the summer. That's, that's my understanding. Yeah, so like what it is in the summer is is daylight savings time and then what it is now is standard time.

Ben: Yeah.

Kyle and Vicki: I also have to be honest, um, this would not be an issue if we did not live in the Northeast. Okay, this is what's so annoying is because especially in like the Boston area, we are basically the first time in the Eastern time zone, and so if we lived in Ohio, which, you know, there's pluses and minuses with Ohio, we're not gonna get into this this episode. oh my oh we would be fine it would basically be setting at like a quote unquote normal time right but we're stuck here right in the beginning we're on the very worst yeah so I don't know it's kind of annoying also being at the end of the time zone in the summer doesn't set the Sun doesn't set till like 10 p.m. yeah which is like or like even later because I feel like here it's like 9 10 right or like 9 9 30 there's like even later I'm like wow that's crazy yeah well we never have more we should have more time zones there should be a time zone for every 10 minutes I was going to say, like, do we fall back spring forward for a half hour? Do we need to add additional time zones on the half hour because right now we have like Eastern Central Mountain, Western or Pacific. Maybe we need to split that in half. I would go even further. One every 10 minutes, one every five minutes.

Ben: So Ohio. Ohio had sunset 45 minutes later than Boston today. Boston sundown was 424. Ohio sundown was 516.

Kyle and Vicki: It's a huge difference. That makes a huge difference. Yeah, because if it's dark. like yeah you could get out of work and still have it be light out yeah so i just think that it's it's a combination of where we live yeah and also the clocks change i think that it probably matters less if you are near the end of your time zone but if you're at the beginning yeah all that off you know we elect to follow a different time zone yeah oh yeah what if we just do New England own time zone I don't know how you feel down in New York but New England Standard Time yeah I mean there's like the perfect line where New York hits like Connecticut and uh yeah massachusetts that's a good line you know so how about this instead of trying to change the

Ben: Clocks we change how the sunlight arrives so like if you're on the ocean you can see the sun all the way down to the horizon but if you're in like a hilly area the sun sets even sooner because it's going behind the geography

Kyle and Vicki: so you're saying cut it down i'm saying flat earth oh and everything i like that or or counterpoint just the opposite of that put mirrors in the sky oh Kyle my head also went mirrors because Ben started talking I was like what are you trying to do funnel it with a mirror like to like point you know a little but flat earth is more attainable at least with technology as it is these days. Yeah I feel like we launch a geosynchronous satellite

Ben: Tracks Kyle's location and it has a small mirror array. It doesn't need to be that big. It just needs to only light up Kyle. Right. You know we're talking like

Kyle and Vicki: Probably like two or three square meters of reflectors. We can fund it, right? I'm sure the cancer industry will be happy to pay. so tan dude you're gonna have sunlight all the time covered in burns and moles and i'm gonna have to go to the dermatologist every week

Ben: Like i don't know you know how much it would also just get a oh go on it just you would get like an extra mile of height you know like

Kyle and Vicki: You're saying he grows from the light?

Ben: Oh, no, no, no, like the extra time.

Kyle and Vicki: Oh, yeah.

Ben: You can see the sun because obviously the sun is still gonna be blocked sometimes.

Kyle and Vicki: You know what, Kyle? I agree with Ben's point. This is actually a good idea. I think that every cure also has a side effect, you know, and when it's dark, you get sad. You know, there's like antidepressants side effects. You know what also side effects giant mirror in the sky and mirror might give you cancer. It's kind of like a toss up, you know, but giant mirror in the sky following you. Like imagine you just have a spotlight on you all the time. Now that's flashy. that is ingenuitive just are always sunbleached I can't have any saturated colors on me you'd be a vision and white it would be like red and white you know skin and then the yeah it'd be good constantly be wearing sunglasses well you could turn it off like you'd oh okay

Ben: so you could you just decide when sunrise and sunset is for you that's

Kyle and Vicki: Crazy I actually this sounds like a great idea imagine Kyle walking on it forgets his like I don't know flashlight or something yeah you can't find your car has a button in his pocket you know kind of like those like old people life assist things and he just clicks it and all of a sudden flashlight comes on it's not even a flashlight it's a spotlight We should start this product, right? We could sell it to people, right? And then the sky will just be littered with personal sun reflectors.

Ben: You can only have a limited quantity. It's a very good business opportunity because there's a finite amount of space up there.

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah. So you got to be the company that gets up there first. we'll attack the Starlink satellites mm-hmm yeah we can use the sunlight as a weapon it's kind of like Mad Max for space we have like spikes on the side Vicky what um what kind of seltzer are you drinking I can see the can raspberry lime one of my favorite flavors I'm really partial to ginger lime mule I my in rotate my like the thing that I constantly keep stocked is ginger lime mule and mandarin mandarin orange

Ben: Guess what my favorite flavor of seltzer is.

Kyle and Vicki: I can't, and you don't. Wait what?

Ben: I said plain.

Kyle and Vicki: Plain? Yeah. Is it? Water flavored. Is it? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Ben: The bubbles naturally have a taste.

Kyle and Vicki: That's just a simple guy. It's just a simple guy. It's just a simple guy. It's just a simple guy. It's just a simple guy.

Ben: It's just a simple guy.

Kyle and Vicki: It's just a simple guy. okay the bubbles have a taste i know him really well yeah the carbonation brings out the mineral flavors of the water exactly my guess is gonna be that you don't drink seltzer i also don't drink seltzer he also doesn't drink salt okay so we're both right but my my main reason for refusing

Ben: People offering me seltzer is that no one ever offers me plain seltzer and I'm like, oh, sorry, I only drink plain.

Kyle and Vicki: - See, here's the thing, I'm gonna get plain seltzer for the next time you come over and then you're gonna be forced to drink it.

Ben: - Yeah, that's fair.

Kyle and Vicki: - Yeah. - Plain, plain seltzer. You know what, I buy it. My problem is that I can no longer. smell or taste most things, and so for something to be tasty to me it needs to be a crazy flavor. Pungent. Like, it needs to really kick in order for me to get anything from it.

Ben: You know, I had the most delicious dragon fruit I've ever had this past week. It was really nice. That would be a good seltzer for me.

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah. They probably, they have to have that. That sounds too trendy not to. Somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many seltzer brands now. Do you guys want to know something I learned about recently? Huh. So Red Bull in the U.S. and Canada is carbonated. You know busy more like don't tell me this dude. I'm already upset keep going But Red Bull and Asia is not carbonated horrible Just rancid Red Bull. That's so they don't really drink carbonated things over there So it's like they just don't carbonate it over there. Oh It's just like you might have just buy engine degreaser. It's cheaper. I Know bubbles it still comes in a can but I said they can being long and skinny. It's short that what? Yeah, but even even more fascinating red bullet is actually

Ben: Actually the derivative of the Asian, um, like it's from Thailand originally.

Kyle and Vicki: It can't, oh, yeah, the name, I mean, I don't, I don't know how to pronounce this, Krating

Ben: Deng.

Kyle and Vicki: Krating.

Ben: Uh, Deng, maybe, uh, means red bull, but like it's from Thailand in 1980. 1976 and then that's early to the world That's really early, okay, and yeah, it's non carbonated Yeah, like they actually made it carbonated to bring it elsewhere

Kyle and Vicki: To me to get Americans to drink it. Yeah. Yeah now curious if it's carbonated in Europe I feel like it must be, but I mean, maybe, but maybe not, you know, I feel like soda is kind of a distinctly American, um, I guess, yeah, that's the Thai product is from a different

Ben: Company than the global brand, uh, Red Bull, which was founded by an Austrian. He worked for a German toothpaste company. When he visited Thailand in 1982, he discovered that krating dang helped to cure his jet lag. He worked in partnership with a pharmaceutical company to adapt the formula and composition to Western tastes.

Kyle and Vicki: That's so wild.

Ben: - So they, yeah, so they sort of are, they're different companies.

Kyle and Vicki: - Oh, okay.

Ben: - One of them, like, took the original recipe and, like, made it global.

Kyle and Vicki: - How did they get the original recipe if they're not the same company? Maybe they just came up with the formulation separately.

Ben: - Or they stole it, or maybe they worked together. But, yeah, and then, The original Thai Red Bull was introduced as a refreshment for rural Thai laborers, and it was quite different from others in the marketplace, and they focused first on upcountry markets rather than in the cities.

Kyle and Vicki: That's cool it's a down-home country drink non-carbonated and then the ones

Ben: Available in China are spin-offs by Chinese companies under license yeah

Kyle and Vicki: Yes the more you know a short fat can is kind of crazy right yeah also i did read that um the original creator of red bull from thailand partnered with the person from austria to bring the flavor to the global market okay good i don't think it's the exact same yeah Um, I like to think that the global market one is slightly more gasoline, but, um, you know, that's so funny. Yeah.

Ben: Oh man. That's fascinating.

Kyle and Vicki: I can't imagine getting a mixed drink that has Red Bull in it and having the entire thing come out flat. wild to me. although i guess a lot of mixed drinks with with red bull they would like squirt seltzer in it too like or club soda. yeah but i mean we can make flat red bull. i'll crack a can you come over next week. we'll have the asian experience in my living room.

Ben: Pour it into a stubby can though

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah, yeah, I can I'll figure it out I'm creative. Just yeah, pour it in an empty high-life pony bottle and Yeah Ideal well, well, we should probably let the listeners stop hearing about about non-carbonated Red Bull go ahead and take that and have night you know just dream about about the non-carbonated Red Bull we'll give you some music in the meantime but yeah you're listening to 91.5 FM WUML Lowell

SEGMENT 2

Ben: Well, hey there folks. This is WML LOL. I love it when they introduce the show and I'm kind of also sounding surprised that we're on air.

Kyle and Vicki: They want me back! They can't keep me! Guys, guess what? We're still here.

Ben: We've been here this whole time, actually. This is off the rails on the airwaves, your somewhat weekly snapshot into fun facts, murder mystery dinner parties, matador skating, and truly disturbing bits of knowledge that you didn't know you needed to know until you heard them, like the flat red bull from Thailand with no carbonation. I know. But that's not all. This show contains more than that. You're also about to learn about something potentially even more earth shattering to your psyche, which Vicky is going to tell us about now.

Kyle and Vicki: Okay, it's not earth shattering. I just, um, I Okay, so technically not to age the show because sometimes we want it to be timeless. This is November of 2025. A lot of stuff has happened in the past month. A lot of news headlines have occurred, but one news headline has simply been overshadowed by the chaos of society, and that is the fact that on Wednesday, November 12th? 13th? I'm sorry, dates are hard. The U.S. has officially stopped minting the penny.

Ben: What?

Kyle and Vicki: What? How did that not cross my radar? How did that not fall over the place? - This is why I was like, we have to pre-record this show because we have to talk about this. We literally have to. It's the only thing I've been talking about for days now. - How am I only just now learning about this? That's so wild. so much else going on in the world right now the penny is the underdog of the coin okay so yeah okay let's dive into it so we're we're on the right side of history on this issue i just

Ben: Want to make you start lead with that we have discussed this on the show several times let's

Kyle and Vicki: Let's recap right why the penny is bad vicki do you want to just die dive into it, just ram it, give it to us. It's not so much why the penny is bad, but the reason that they've stopped minting it is because the penny has been deemed a sort of useless coin. So what happens is that you go to the grocery store, you buy your apples. it uh turns out that they owe you 97 cents back and so they're gonna give you like 95 cents and two pennies you know and then you're gonna take those coins and what you're gonna do is you're maybe gonna spend the dimes and like the quarters or whatever but those pennies largely just end up in a jar in someone's house and so what happens is that the pennies never go back into circulation and so um the US has to print I think it was like look I don't even know a lot I'm like like a lot like I think it's like a billion pennies like yeah like imagine millions

Ben: of dollars in pennies yes

Kyle and Vicki: um so a truck full of pennies and they're and they're always they're always leaving they're never coming back they're just always going yeah yeah um approximately 3.2 billion pennies per year at least that was in 2024 that's a lot of pennies and so it because they never come back into circulation and so they just kind of end up between sofa cushions in a jar in a cup in someone's house and they they never go back into the like money circuit of the united states when you spend things so anyways um the penny has been around for uh i think it's like 232 years yeah thank you it was like 17 something or other or not 17 17 18 18 something other i can't remember it's a very old coin but anyways so um let me find that yeah i i have a lot first of all. 1792. 92 yeah okay I thought it was the 1700s. Okay I'm right. Good. Yeah so anyways there's a lot of things I'm thinking right now. There's been controversy about how to correctly round things for consumers because in certain states like massachusetts it's illegal to charge cash payers different amounts than credit card payers yeah and so like if the cash person gets back additional change like a nickel then technically um they're being undercharged than the credit card payment or vice versa if it happened And then that's like the whole legal debate right now, but mostly I have this idea that I really wanted to put into action in the next week or so, and so I'm trying to convince a few of my coworkers to do it for our team building exercises that I've been hosting. But, okay. and this is an idea that other people can steal I'm not gonna be like you know holding it everyone okay it's like a social idea everyone writes a eulogy for the penny and everyone brings a penny in with them and you vote with your penny so whoever wrote the best eulogy you give the penny to and this solidifies generational wealth because the penny is going to be worth a lot of money, you know, down the line, of course, because coin collectors love scarcity, and you know what? There'll be no more of pennies. So yeah, there's only 3.2 billion of them. This is me telling you to hold on to your coins that you've been hoarding. This is me telling you. write a eulogy for a penny um and also uh i i don't know i don't know but anyways do you guys have any eulogy ideas this is a very very long-winded way for me to source eulogy ideas because i'm trying to win all the pennies so i can be wealthy i just in 50 to 60 years Can we point out? Okay, all right. All right, hold on I'll just learn about the let's step let's step back your plan is to become rich by hoarding pennies of which Billions are in circulation currently So your plan is for billions of pennies? to disappear between now and 2075. Kyle, the issue is that they go missing. That's the whole thing. It's like because they print billions per year is because they never recirculate, and so these pennies are just they're lost. Okay, they're gone. I know. No, I don't think they're lost. I think they're in a jar. I think everybody has the same amount of pennies in a jar somewhere. I feel like the collectors - I - I'll buy it. You know what? Yeah, you're gonna - so you're gonna - okay, cool. So you're gonna make millions on - This is generational wealth, okay? So maybe I will not get wealthy in my lifetime. Oh, okay. Maybe not my kids. But my grandkids are gonna have a collection of like a hundred pennies So and when they run into rough times, they sell one of those bad boys for like, you know Actual money. It'd be crazy. It would be crazy. It will be worth 100,000 times its initial value and now be worth $10 Okay, anyways, right now I'm thinking like I want to go to the bank to get pennies because like imagine having the last minted year of a penny, you know?

Ben: The Secretary of the Treasury definitely took the last one home.

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah, well I have the second to last one or whatever. But like, I think we're missing the point, okay? I love- no, no, no, this is great. Cause I love the, I love the image of you enforcing this generational burden of like five pounds of pennies that every one of your descendants has to carry. I love the idea that, that, yeah, you're, you're saying here's a chore that you need to give to your descendants because we need to wait for billions of pennies to disappear. I love it. I love this plan. It's really good. Thank you.

Ben: Thank you. There's like a classic stereotype of the grandparents not understanding inflation, being like, "Oh, Timmy, here's like a nickel, go buy yourself some candy at the store." You're just perpetuating that.

Kyle and Vicki: But, okay, think about it this way, like we used to have like gold, like gold was like the currency, and then all the- currency was backed up by gold and now gold is worth so much because like we don't do that anymore you know uh-huh right but we don't make pennies anymore there's there's a there's a concept if in in in economics right so it's like supply and demand right so so in order never mind hold on actually that's a bad you guys probably don't remember this because you weren't there except you were there just not in the exact location Okay, so last January, we were all in New York, and for one night, I sit at this other hotel, and I woke up the next day, and it was like a big convention. I was like, what is going on? It was the largest coin collectors convention in the country, potentially the world at this like star hotel that i was staying because my friend's work was paying for it whatever anyways i was talking to this guy because i was like what is going on he is hired as a personal collector for a rich guy he goes to these conventions to buy coins for this dude who wants rare coins. There is a market for this. We are forgetting that there is a market for this. Some guy in like a hundred years is gonna send his pawn to a coin collectors convention to get pennies, okay? This is gonna be huge. I am ahead of my time. This one more archive episode is going to come out once the radio floats above people's houses and just broadcasts around Lowell in like a weird dystopian way. It's going to be a pre-record, you know, like a rerun and people are going to be like, oh man, if I had only listened to the radio in November of 2025. Or my grandparents would have done this we could have been rich, you know, and it's a PSA I'm doing a service to the listeners right now This is my soapbox

Ben: Hold on. Yeah. Well, so

Kyle and Vicki: Okay, so here's here Yeah, here's where I want to come in right so let's look at the half penny okay because that is a coin that existed I'm looking at this website now I'm trying to just determine how much a half cent is currently worth so there's there's three

Ben: 3.2 billion of these coins just last year per year. Yeah, each of those coins it cost the mint 3.69 cents to make But they're only worth one cent legally Yeah, and they will continue to be worth one cent legally in perpetuity it costs the mint about 56 million dollars per year to make these

Kyle and Vicki: so much so okay so the half cent right it looks like in total There were just under 8 million in total, half cents, minted. So let's see. So if the condition of the coin is good, and it's from 1793. um that specific year so so there were eight million yeah just under eight million in total made right right in like just from the year 1793 it's unclear how many half cents were minted that year right but if you have a good quality coin it's worth $3,400 if it's extremely good it's worth $15,000 right so that's from 231 years ago that coin so Vicky would need to generations right so so you're so you're gonna have to hang on to these coins for at least five generations but the penny is far more there's far more of them right so you're probably gonna have to wait a little longer for them to become rare so we're looking at what call it conservatively ten generations is that so you know in the DaVinci code when

Ben: There's like the like they're like running around looking for the secret or Poli, whatever, and they like go to a random Swiss bank and they're like, "Oh, we've held this account "for 500 years." And there's like a code at Cryptex or something, and there's a special code that they have to solve, and then they open it up and it's just full of pennies.

Kyle and Vicki: - I love it. - I'm not seeing anything wrong, you know. expensive half penny. In total, there were approximately 365,000 of them made.

Ben: Yeah, the other problem with this is that the mint is still going to issue like collector edition coins, because they still do that. Oh, you know, they release special editions of coins for collectors that are more special.

Kyle and Vicki: No, I'm I'm in I'm in on it. So so alright ten generations probably like a thousand years of Descendants, right? We'll have to hold on to these coins. I'm totally fine I buy it like where it's gonna be worth. Oh, it's gonna be worth a lot of money at some point in the future Eulogies to get back on track, right? right yeah yeah eulogy for the penny is I think my eulogy for the penny would start like I think right off the bat I would say that I didn't like you from jump right like it at no point in my life was I thrilled about the penny Okay, well, some of us have always been thrilled on The Penny. This show is just Ben and Kyle come on and hit Vicky with a stick for 30 minutes about Penny. It's just beat down her very, very happy and go. - What's the word? - Okay, other things you guys have to think about, copper being finite.

Ben: - They're made of zinc.

Kyle and Vicki: - Okay. (laughing) - I thought it's copper. - It's copper plated. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's a very little amount of copper. Yeah. Whatever. Eventually, the AI is going to take over, and they're going to need more circuits. You know what's a good conductor? Copper. Pennies are going to be worth something. Yes. They cost more to make than they're actually worth. Yes. So, yeah. It's all about the raw materials. Yeah. Once again, back to the gold standard. We're going to get into the gold standard. We're going to get into the gold standard. We're going to get into the gold standard. We're going to get into the gold standard. We're going to get into the gold standard. coin thing, gold, material, copper, material, I just think it could be 10 generations on the coin to have value. But like the material value. Yeah, see this, this is a business I'm in on. Let's go door to door collect everyone's pennies illegally smelt them down. Thank you, Kyle! You're finally getting it. First we have to sort through all the pennies, make sure none of them are collector's editions. Because, if they are, we do have to get that money. Yeah, I'm in on this. Yeah, I buy it.

Ben: I think the problem is it costs them 3.69 cents to produce the penny, but that doesn't mean that it's worth 3.69 cents.

Kyle and Vicki: Point six nine cents right now material cost is not yeah you know but like the materials involved

Ben: Are not the value it's the cost of transportation and the machining and stamping and distribution

Kyle and Vicki: Like so you're saying the value of the raw materials might still be less than a penny yeah i don't i don't know what it is but like you know um it ai says that a modern us penny is worth less than a cent in raw materials yeah so i mean we can find out like what amount

Ben: of weight it is of zinc you know because it's mostly zinc

Kyle and Vicki: Which i think is not that valuable yeah but it's a good supplement like i'm okay so it's 38 grams

Ben: 38 grams of zinc how much that's a lot of zinc worth daily metal price here we go so zinc per gram is worth three one-thousandths of a dollar okay so so this number times 38 is $0.11. $0.11 and a half cents.

Kyle and Vicki: That can't be right.

Ben: So theoretically, if it wasn't illegal, and you could somehow thaumaturgy all of this, you could get $0.11 for the one penny's worth of zinc.

Kyle and Vicki: It's all about money! removing the copper plating from the zinc. I think we're also forgetting the markup of zinc as a supplement. You put that baddie into a capsule, mark it as a vitamin, so you get way more than 11 cents. I love this plot to melt down pennies and turn them into vitamins and then get like some some health culture hustle going get a pyramid scheme in there to work it in why not i love this it could be called like money zinc or something

Ben: Like you could somehow market it as special zinc because of its source you know like yeah it's like the equivalent of a blood boy But for metal

Kyle and Vicki: Because this metal is from a better source a Merriman's Once again, I don't know Wait, okay, so Ben, let's start with you. You obviously knew that the penny stopped being minted. What was your reaction? Because I've just gone on for 15 minutes at least.

Ben: My reaction was one of relief. My concern, my responsibility, the weights that I carry have all been lifted. I feel free from this burden of knowledge and responsibility of 3.2 billion coins every year raining down upon me.

Kyle and Vicki: I have nightmares about the penny. Okay, okay, Kyle. 15 minutes ago, about. - Yeah, I think we're on a roll. I think we should do the nickel and the dime next. - Yeah. - Wow, okay. - We should do it right now. I want them both gone. - Ranking coins from favorite to least favorite, go. - Just in reverse order of value, right?

Ben: - Can we get the dollar coin back also? Let's get that dollar coin.

Kyle and Vicki: Back. Oh sure yeah. What about the half dollar? Yeah yes. It's really big. Higher value higher value coins good lower value coins bad. Everything below the quarter should go and and I think quarters I think quarters got like another 10 to 20 years, and quarters should be downsized

Ben: so that they're the size of the dimes.

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah like well i feel like dimes are too small to be the size of a nickel then sure yeah but

Ben: Like we need to make all the coins smaller also so they don't cost as much to make and they don't take up as much room in my wallet or my pocket i think or my jar for that matter i think if we

Kyle and Vicki: Really want to wreck the country um and cause it chaos we should introduce a $2 coin like Canada.

Ben: What if the coins were made out of paper? So they were really light and easy like stack and you could and you could like wrap them

Kyle and Vicki: in like a leather case that you could put in your pocket carry them around that way

Ben: Way less space they wouldn't weigh as much it'd be easier to print yeah be way

Kyle and Vicki: Easier to print and finally we could get people to stop swimming and dropping all their coins in the water we should get this is actually a good point you have the lucky penny you have the wishing well yeah like now you you have to spend more money yeah vicky this is what you do that's inflation start inflation you have to start a special wishing well

Ben: That's where you like this is the wishing well where the pennies wish to be buried, and everyone brings their pennies, which are no longer being circulated and throws them in the well, and you make it like a landmark, you know, somewhere in a Midwestern state, where you have to drive 16 hours to get there, and there's just this magnificent wishing well.

Kyle and Vicki: - Sounds like a great roadside attraction.

Ben: - Right? And then people throw, they bring their pennies from country and put them in there and then you're just that's how you get all these pennies that you want

Kyle and Vicki: Stop i might do it i just need land land in a big hole yeah yeah i can dude that's actually my expertise so and then you're there wells okay yeah um you're there just scooping them out every night i love it yeah it's great i yeah this is great i think i need to buy an old abandoned vitamin factory and then put a well on i love the idea of a never actually have to score - Can we, yeah, like, I love the idea of something being old and abandoned that is recent, like a recent modern day invention, vitamins, like an old abandoned Care Bear factory, right, is like. - I'm sure it exists. okay I'm sure I love it I can't yeah I can't wait for Vicky's coin mass coin grave and vitamin and borium yeah okay every you know 10 to 20 years I do have one good idea I gotta be honest and this is mine at least for the next decade so

Ben: a total accumulated weight of the pennies from the last year of production would be 8,800 tons

Kyle and Vicki: if you've got all 3.2 billion of them that's a lot how many football fields would that fit in

Ben: oh i i wish that i could tell you i'm looking up a capacity of an oil tanker right now let's see see what we can get can we get these on the board

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah what's the what's the volume of okay so another another thing that we're neglecting to account for with these like penny scarcity measures is population growth increasing yeah So, how does that factor in? Well, I mean, if the global population keeps growing, statistically, there are more coin collectors now with less pennies. The penny per capita is much smaller. yeah yeah so you know eventually the half penny will probably you know become in vogue and then then the penny I mean this is still a very long-term thing but um for the other thing you guys are forgetting it's the nostalgia factor right so fall into two groups. There's like the historical enthusiasts, and then there's essentially the beanie baby, you know, nostalgic collectors, right, and so at some point, we're gonna hit retirement age, and there's gonna be a group of people that goes, Oh, man, I remember when I was X years old and we had pennies, it'd be so fun to have pennies again, you know? Yeah. Yeah. All those, all the aging millennials, right? Well, they'll, they'll sell, they'll, yeah. Well, the, the, the problem is that this assumes that aging millennials are going to have any money to their name this is our real estate market the penny market is our real estate market

Ben: so yeah the you could fit these on an oil tanker you would need about one oil tanker per year of

Kyle and Vicki: Pennies that you had collected wow that's a lot you could get a small one of the small ones

Ben: oh that's incredible and if you stacked them on their ends uh let's see that's inches oops

Kyle and Vicki: But you weren't stacking the

Ben: Pennies. No, that was just the weight. That was just the weight of them. Oh, I see. 5,280. So we're talking 3,000 miles of pennies per year. Oh, that's just like across the U.S. Yeah, yeah for per one year

Kyle and Vicki: You know.

Ben: So if you wanted to, you could stack them on their ends, and then put a big mirror at the top, and use that to light up Kyle.

Kyle and Vicki: Now we're, now we're talking. Good riddance, Penny. Vicky, what's your, what's- you're running eulogy idea so far I I think I was gonna read like a poem like an ode to the penny okay I like talk about it being shiny or not shiny you know so Yeah, you got to talk about like all the different things pennies can be covered in right like The weird penny that that got green. They're you know rust Soaking pennies and coca-cola to clean them. Did you all ever do that thing where you smushed them?

Ben: Maybe don't maybe don't say it because it's technically illegal but definitely not I've definitely never

Kyle and Vicki: Actually done that are you talking about when you go to a tourist trap and you

Ben: Like press a penny yeah those or when you put it on the train tracks and the

Kyle and Vicki: Train runs over it oh that's way more legal for sure yeah well train pennies the the ones in like I'm surprised that the ones in oh my gosh how are you supposed to press a penny anymore you just press a quarter it's inflation it costs more now

Ben: Yeah or yeah but technically they have to accept the pennies is legal tender so you could pay for it with pennies but you'd have to use a different coin

Kyle and Vicki: do you think that those like pressed pennies of i don't know the statue of liberty or whatever it is uh they're worth so much money you should collect them all immediately i know i know Oh, wait, this is going in the eulogy. I feel like, man, there's so much to talk about.

Ben: Vicky's eulogy is going to end with, "And therefore, bring all of your pennies over to me, and I will cherish them."

Kyle and Vicki: I will cherish them. I have like a whole jar of them at home already.

Ben: We can design a really good...

Kyle and Vicki: Jar for you. I think he's great. Fill it up. Great, great granddaughter is going to inherit like 20 pounds of pressed pennies from various tourist attraction. I just feel like all the coins are silver looking and like the penny is just so special, and we're just we're getting rid of that we have monochrome paper money monochrome coin money yeah where's our rose gold coins come on apple where's our space black coins we need something we need something okay i can't find foreign currency has so much pizzazz they have color they have different types of coins

Ben: This is true. In other countries, the monies are different colors, and they're also different sizes.

Kyle and Vicki: All we had was the penny. All we had was the penny! I love the idea of a matte black coin. Just as soon as it goes in your pocket, you will never find it again. just yeah untraceable money could we make a coin out of glass so it's entirely transparent that sounds even worse a glass penny yeah that feels like like what's it called the saying or something, right? Like, uh, you know, people in glass houses, right? There's gotta be some saying about it. - They only buy stuff with glass pennies. - I think, um, I can't remember if it's, like, bismuth or which metal mineral it is, when it's in regular room temperature air, it's solid, and then when you hold it, your body... heats so much it becomes liquid can we make a coin out of that yeah liquid coins yo like solid when it's in your wallet but not solid when it's in your hand that would be so much easier to store

Ben: in jars there'd be no extra air gap yeah yeah and then instead of a wallet you would just have a

Kyle and Vicki: Yeah, I'm actually trying to go back to renaissance era, you know, you have your little coin purse dangling off and also your vial.

Ben: You just have a Nalgene full of spare change that you're carrying around.

Kyle and Vicki: You pour it on the counter and it just like starts clinking.

Ben: You have to pour it, you have to bring like little molds. with you to make the different denominations like well that's cool

Kyle and Vicki: Though right because then the more expensive coins can just be

Ben: Proportionally larger volumes of money fluid that would be fart money fluid

Kyle and Vicki: - It's not bismuth, it's gallium. - Gallium. - That's right, yeah.

Ben: - Mm, mm.

Kyle and Vicki: - Yeah. - Yeah, that's a good one.

Ben: Wow, well, if we haven't been shut down by the federal mint yet, for the things we've said on air, I think we should go ahead and shut ourselves down. We came up with money fluid, and our work here is done.

Kyle and Vicki: I just, it's just such an exciting topic for me, and I really appreciate everyone who did not change the dial, because we still got good music. You're tuned in to On the Rails Off the Airwaves here on 91.5 WUML

SEGMENT 3:

Ben: Well i think we did it again yeah it's it's been two hours of radio and here we are on the other side of it

Kyle and Vicki: All and and we're better for it we've we've grown down the penny yeah we successfully we stopped the penny yeah you can thank us for that a lot of good business ideas. A lot of good business ideas. Which really goes back to

Ben: Our roots of monetization at all costs. Absolutely. I mean, what's what's more monetized than

Kyle and Vicki: Legal tender? Uh-huh. Yeah, literally. can't be more monetary than that yeah then the money money yeah we all turned

Ben: Into a bit bit of a numismatist today a coin collector is that what they're

Kyle and Vicki: Called oh yeah a new say it again numis numismatist a numismatic

Ben: Numisma is the root and numismatic is the study and numismatist is the person who does it.

Kyle and Vicki: Numismatist? Uh, that sounds like... Yeah, I mean that sounds like a stage show.

Ben: It very much is, yes.

Kyle and Vicki: It's regal, that's for sure.

Ben: - Yeah. and if you buy collectors coins they'll be called numismatic often numismatic

Kyle and Vicki: For the collectors yeah man i got all i bought all these steam pistons and this coal engine because i've got some numismic say it again i'm not gonna remember numismatic yeah numismatic i have a numismatic contraption to build numismatic that word is not staying in my head there's no way I'm gonna be able to say that ten minutes from now you've just gotta meet one like Vicky did a numismatist yeah I was convinced that it's the future you know and so now I have to seize the day and seize all the pennies.

Ben: - Seize the penny.

Kyle and Vicki: - Yeah.

Ben: - Carpe penny.

Kyle and Vicki: - Carpe penny. - Carpe penny.

Ben: - That's a good closing line for your penny eulogy.

Kyle and Vicki: - Carpe penny. I'm writing that down. Thanks. I really appreciate you guys helping me with this.

Ben: - Yeah, of course.

Kyle and Vicki: - It's been an inspiring show. Yeah.

Ben: - This is what we provide on WML, content like this all the time, 24 hours a day.

Kyle and Vicki: - Well. It's time. Thank you, everyone. But stay tuned, as always. There's always more programming, 24/7.

Ben: Let us end, not with a shout, but with a small moment of peace, just like the penny, a piece coinage, and a piece of our hearts. We'll be back next week.

Kyle and Vicki: whimper