Name: The Penny Is More Than Just Currency, It's A Symbol Of America
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T16:57:42.000Z
Duration: 5 min 38 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Give one for Louis Cator, the great big joy machine.

Adverbs of degree

Folks, so many beloved cornerstones of American life are disappearing, like the Kennedy center, the East Wing of the White House, and

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 value, the United States government would stop production of the penny.

Yes, making this the worst thing to ever happen to Abraham Lincoln's head.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mr. President, thank you so much for coming back from the dead to do jokes about pennies.

Mr. President, we would love you to press the very first pen.

Mr. President, what image was pressed onto your penny?

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.