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- [00:01]
A
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B
Hey, everybody. You're listening to the Late Show Pod show with Stephen Colbert, and I'm joined with the very guy. Hi, Stephen.
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A
Oh, hey, Becca. How are you?
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B
I'm doing great.
- [01:12]
A
How are you? Look at us doing our jobs.
- [01:14]
B
We have pennypress on the podcast tonight.
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A
Oh, I'm so happy about this.
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B
I want to talk to you about pennypress.
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A
Sure.
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B
Tell us the concept.
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A
Well, for many years, there has been a movement to eliminate the penny from being manufactured or being minted. I guess I should say they'll still be acceptable as currency. They'll still be in circulation forever, as long as they last. But the penny, the present penny, which started in 1909, goes to 1909 to 2025. Actually, the American penny is 1789 to 2025 because the 2025 is a law. Got passed last year. They're getting rid of the pen manufacturing of the pennies, which has got to upset the people in Illinois.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Why? Tell them why, Becca.
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B
Well, because it's Abraham Lincoln.
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A
It's the land of Lincoln.
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B
It's the land of Lincoln.
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A
It says right there on the license plate.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
And in Illinois, for the record, pennies must be accepted as payment for anything. You can go pay for a car with pennies.
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B
I actually have a fact check on you. This is one of the Mandela effects of the late show. Brandon assured me that that actually research has done a ton of research on finding that law, and they haven't been able to find It a single day.
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A
Well, they're not very good at their jobs then. I mean, there's two chances here. Yeah, there's two things could be possible. One, I'm wrong. Two, they're wrong. Until May 21st. Place your bets.
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B
Okay. Okay. Okay.
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A
Okay. Okay.
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B
I mean, I love it.
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A
Here's what I love. Well, of course you love it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But what I love is that you can pay for the bus with pennies. I mean, come on, where else can you pay for the bus entirely in pennies? And I did it sometimes when I was younger. I remember walking around Chicago being really depressed and going, oh, wait, why am I depressed? And then I went, oh, I paid for the bus with pennies this morning. I'm poor. And I wouldn't have remembered that I was poor. I would just remember that I was sad.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And anyway, so I love pennies.
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B
Was that like 35 cents? What was that bus? Yeah.
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A
Oh, no, it was like 85 cents or something. A lot of pennies.
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B
Yeah, that's a lot of pennies.
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A
I mean, people hated it because it. But they had to accept it because there's a law in Illinois that says you can pay for anything with pennies. Okay, we've established that, right?
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B
Yes, it is.
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A
Okay. And so. And it also had a penny collection. When I was a kid, I loved. I had like one of those, you know, those foldable blue books. I had the penny. I had the 19. 1909 to. I think it's 1909 to like 1945. 1945 to present day.
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B
So you collect by year for pennies.
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A
You collected by years. But also every year has multiple. There was the Philadelphia Mint and there was the Denver Mint and the San. And there's the BVD. The 1909 BVD is like the rarest of all pennies. Like the million dollars, if you can find one. I was always like, I'm gonna find a 1909 BVD, but I don't know what BVD stands for. I don't even know if I've got those initials right. But there was. But there was at Denver, in San Francisco, in Philadelphia with a D and S or a P and still, like, if you had a penny. If I had a penny, they'd still see it. And then starting in like 1982, the. They stopped making them out of copper. They're copper coated, basically slugs of zinc. But that's not the best thing about pennies, obviously. The. Well, also in the war, steel pennies.
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B
Oh, really?
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A
Because copper was. They had a lot of steel. They didn't have a lot of copper. We needed the copper for the war effort. So pennies were made out of steel for a couple years, which was kind of fun. And I had the full set of the steels nice and then. But the thing that's best about pennies is penny press machines, which on the Jersey Turnpike, like at the Clara Barton rest stop or whatever, there'll be a penny press machine. Everybody knows you put two quarters in, then you put in one penny, and you crank first, and you pick on the dial what you want the design to be, which might be like, I don't know, Niagara Falls or something like that. And then you crank the little big wheel. And it's a lot of fun, especially for a little kid, because it's pretty hard for a little kid. And it takes a lot of spins. And then it crushes the penny into an oval shape, and then it imprints on where Lincoln's head in the Lincoln Memorial or the Wheatback, if you got one from before 1958, I think it prints out the pattern. And there'll be a pattern on one or both sides. And we got a penny press machine made to commemorate the end of the show and the end of the penny at the same time. And so in the lobby, and we're installing it today, people can put in two quarters and a penny if they have one. And they'll get a pressed penny that has the band. The headshots of the band on it. The outside of the Ed Sullivan theater with our, you know, Colbert logo on it.
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B
I think your face.
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A
Maybe my face is on one of them. And then my favorite is it presses the penny into a commemorative oval, like, little ingot that has a penny on it. A smaller penny.
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B
That's great.
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A
And on the top, it says the penny. And then it has the 1789-2025. So it's a penny being crushed into a commemorative penny.
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B
That's awesome.
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A
And I love it. It's stupid. That's like. That's the caviar of stupid as far as I'm concerned.
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B
No, totally.
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A
That's right down. That's right up our alley.
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B
It's beautiful.
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A
And we're installing. It's on today. And I interviewed. It's the vending industry that's been pushing to get rid of it.
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B
Really?
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A
Yeah. They don't want to have to accept pennies for anything. The vendor people put in pennies thinking it's a dime, and the vendors have been doing it.
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B
Dang. Yeah. Vending lobbyists.
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A
Penny also Costs more than a penny to produce.
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B
Oh, really?
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A
Yeah. Maybe Brandon can shoot down that joy. The little joy I have left. Take it away.
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B
Okay. Okay.
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A
Okay.
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B
No, that's great. I can't wait to collect them all. I'm gonna make them a. Or something. You know, get a little pinch on it.
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A
Oh, yeah.
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B
Enjoy some ornaments or something. I love penny pressers. I'm really excited. Great fun. And, you know, the guests coming in for these last final shows, it's a nice special treat. We don't have a. You know, we don't sell tote bags in the lobby, so it's a nice little souvenir for them.
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A
That's right.
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B
But yeah. So this is penny press. I wanted to do just a quick round of Late show vocab with you as well.
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A
Oh, sure.
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B
This is something that you guys say a lot, and I actually don't totally know what it means. Late show vocab. We come here, I ask Steven to explain, you know, shorthand or slang that we have here at the show that maybe the outside listener doesn't know and
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A
probably doesn't apply to other shows.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because it's show bizlingo that just kind of grew up, either from our Chicago improv days or for our sketch days or just the last 20 years. We don't know where some of these come from. So hit me. What's the phrase?
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B
Joking the joke.
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A
Oh, joking the joke. Hat on a hat. You heard that? No, that's a hat on a hat. You're joking the joke. And sometimes Tom will say, you're gilding the shorts, and it means that you are telling a joke while you're telling the joke, and it's getting in the way of the joke. You're blocking your own joke by over joking the joke. You don't need to wear a hat with a hat.
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B
Okay?
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A
Just. Just. Oh, and here's another one. You're stacking the whack. Okay, you don't need to stack. You don't need to stack the whack. I mean, sometimes stacking the whack is good. If that's part of the game, is all. The stack of the whack and tonnage is part of it. But sometimes you get too clever by half into how you're gonna set up a joke. And basically, you haven't told the audience the premise of what the eventual joke punchline payoff is gonna be because you thought there were extra points for being clever.
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B
Oh, okay.
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A
Do you know what I mean? And there aren't extra points for being Clever. There's only. The point is for the. For the punchline.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so if you. If you're joking the joke, that means you didn't take a straight line at your. At your punchline. And it's not. It's not like it's impossible to do, but you have to kind of economical to it, because after you write jokes for 30 years or whatever, it ends up being your default. It can end up. One of the pitfalls is it can being able to make jokes about anything. You can actually make jokes about your joke. And only other comedians will enjoy that.
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B
Totally.
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A
You know what I mean? They'll go like, oh, that was well crafted. But the audience doesn't care about that.
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B
Yeah.
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A
They want to laugh.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so that's what joking the joke is, is that you got a little. You got a little up your own heiny in how you delivered that joke or set up that joke.
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B
Yeah. What would you say? Would you say at that point, once you've identified something as joking the joke, would you say that joke is now dead?
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A
No, you just.
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B
Or you just clean it up.
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A
You just de joke it a little bit.
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B
You de joke it.
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A
You just want to go like. Well, no, just drive straight at. Just drive straight at the joke. I mean, joking the joke. One of the ways you can get away with it is that if the delivery of the joke is a joke. So at the Colbert Report, I started off as a joke before I opened my mouth because I'm in character. So that's a layer of. God, this is so boring to talk about comedy. Please. No, I know to you, but to humans, it could be really. That's a compliment. You're not a human being. And I love. Some of my best friends are humans. But because I could do it in character, I could lay down a base coat of joke before I ever got to the joke. You know, just behaviorally, if you know what I mean. And so. And over there, we used to say that the Daily Show. Cause we're basically talking about the same things. Often on a night, we tried not to overlap too much, but it was unavoidable that John would be doing a half hour before me, and sometimes we'd be doing the same story, and he'd be driving straight at the joke. You know, they would do a full deconstruction of what the news was, and then as they deconstructed, they would joke along the way as they laid the pieces out on a lawn of what the story was, whereas we would have deconstruct the story and go, oh, I kind of see what this is made of. And then we would falsely reconstruct it from my character's point of view. So we would reframe that story from my character's point of view. So that was one joke. And so we said we didn't drive straight at. The joke is that we drove down the highway halfway, and then we backed up an 18 wheeler at highway speeds to get to our punchline. And that. That sometimes, because there was joke behavior in the character, sometimes we would over joke the joke because we would call it. We would jackknife, you know. Cause we were trying to back up this 18 wheeler back toward this joke that we thought was our character's destination, his intention, while still trying to keep in mind what our deconstruction had been and what the actual story was. And so we got our fingers caught in the joke machine a little bit sometimes, and we over joked. We stacked the whacked. We wore a hat with hat.
- [12:11]
B
That also leads to one of my favorite phrases that I do know, which is, but enjoy the view. You know, when you. There's a big setup, kind of big, long, long joke, you say, it's a long walk, but then the destination of whatever that final punchline is.
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A
Yes, it was a long walk, but what a lovely view.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I'll say that sometimes in the middle of the monologue, that was a long walk, but, you know, look at the view.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. And it's also you kind of saying like, I didn't know where that was going, but it is good.
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A
Well, there are times, especially if there's been a serious rewrite, because sometimes we'll come in and the monologue is essentially the monologue, and we have to get it to time. And sometimes we come into rehearsal and it's not, and we go like, okay, what are we really gonna talk about today? And that's a massive rewrite. And even harder than the rewrite, so much is a reorder of what the priorities are, what we're talking about. We can't talk about this first. That has to happen first. We have to flip it around. Oh, we have to call back to that story, whatever. And I like to go into the monologue like, I don't need to read it. Not that I have it memorized, but I have a map in my head of basically what the stories are and how they're going to kind of cascade into each other, Even if there's not a clean segue or a Natural segue. I kind of know the order. There are times when we've rewritten this show so much up to the very last minute before I walk on stage that I don't really know. I don't have the map. And so there are a lot of blind corners for me. And that'll happen. I'll go like, wow, that was a long time without a joke. When we rearrange that script, like, we'll take big blocks and we'll move around. Sometimes we'll not realize that what we did is. Gave me 45 seconds of just telling the news to the audience, which is what we're not here to do.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
And then, thank you, God. At the end of it, there's like, oh, there's a McDonald's arches coming over the horizon. It's like when you're like, you're driving late at night, you just need a Coke to stay awake, and you see that McDonald's sign. That's what that joke feels. I feel the joke coming over the horizon of the highway.
- [13:57]
B
It's like the energy of the audience, too. They're, like, waiting and waiting.
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A
When is there going to be a joke?
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B
And then like, oh, fireworks. Top of the mountain.
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A
I hope. Fireworks. Yeah, anything, even a lit match will do sometimes.
- [14:10]
B
All right, well, this is Penny Press. Please enjoy on the Late Show POD Show. Thanks for listening, guys.
- [14:21]
A
Folks, so many beloved cornerstones of American life are disappearing, like the Kennedy center, the East Wing of the White house, and forever. 21. I guess the old saying is true. Nothing lasts 21. And now another American classic has bitten the dust. Because last year, we learned that by executive order and citing the fact that a penny costs more to make than its actual United States government would stop production of the penny. Making this. Yes. Making this the worst thing to ever happen to Abraham Lincoln's head. Our penny. Don't applaud. You can laugh. You can't applaud that one. Our penny was the brainchild of the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, a fact covered in the smash hit Broadway musical Hamilton 2. This one's about the Coinage Act. The original penny design featured a woman with flowing hair symbolizing liberty in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. The chief among our riots are life, liberty, and the pursuit of beachy waves that stay bouncy between washes. It's woven into our very language and culture. Penny pinchin. Penny Annie Pitching pennies. Pennies from heaven. The good luck penny. And older audience members might remember back in the day, you could fix a blown Fuse by sticking a penny in the socket, which to this day remains the most cost effective way to burn your house down. Don't do it. Also, say goodbye to the iconic take a penny, leave a penny tray. I gotta confess, as a kid, when the clerk's back was turned, I would sometimes eat a whole handful. But no one seems to be talking about the biggest loss of all. And that's the penny press machine, an American institution. You want memories? You want excitement? Well, for just 51 cents, you could have an oblong flattened memento of Myrtle beach or the sunset in Petoskey, Michigan, or the great blue heron of South Carolina. Sure, you could just take a picture, but then you'd never be able to look down from heaven as your grandkids rummage through that little tray on your dresser and say, wow, Grandpa once went to the Cincinnati Zoo. He truly lived a rich life. Penny presses were introduced at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Which sounds dull today, but in the 19th century, the only two pastimes were pressing pennies or delicately coughing blood into a kerchief. And to this day, penny presses are built right here in America, folks like at the Penny Press Machine Company in Little Canada, Minnesota. Good people at Penny Press. Good folks there. What are they supposed to make now? Machines that press dimes? I think that's enough from you. There are up to 300 billion pennies still in circulation right now. And more than ever, people are going to need somewhere to crush them. So I commissioned the folks at the Penny Press Machine company to build us a custom made late show penny press. Bring it. There you go. There you go. Mr. President. Mr. President, thank you so much for coming back from the dead to do jokes about pennies. No problem, Steve. I just love going to the theater. Good man, good man. This is the late show penny press, sir, which makes four custom designs. Four score. Mr. President, we would love you to press the very first penny in it. Would you do the honors, sir? Okay, here we go. Very exciting. Mr. President, what image was pressed onto your penny? It's a little penny. That's right. One of the design options. That's right. The design options are me, the band, the Ed Sullivan Theater, or a tiny image of a penny on this penny commemorating the fact that there will be no more pennies. This penny press machine will be in the lobby of the Ed Zolvan Theater. Until now, until the end of the show, when it will be shoved off the Triborough Bridge. Until then, our audience members can make their own late show penny and everyone here is going to go home with one tonight. Thank you Mr. President. Thank you Stephen. Thank you for listening to the Late Show POD show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to the late show you YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives. Is life more difficult than you'd like? Is something keeping you sad, sick, stressed or stuck in the life Changing Art of self brain surgery Dr. Lee Warren, neurosurgeon and trauma survivor, shows you how to rewire your thinking and radically change your life. Using the power of neuroscience and faith, learn how to overcome anxiety and depression, break free from negative patterns and step into a more empowered, hopeful life. The Life Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery available wherever books are sold. Your business is digital. 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