Betty Boop, Excel Olympics, Penny-isms: Our 2026 Valentines
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 30.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An iconic cartoon character liberated from copyright, journalism from the world of competitive spreadsheeting, a controversial piece of US currency. Each year the Planet Money team dedicates an episode to the things we simply love and think you, our audience, will also love.
In this year’s Valentine’s Day episode:
- The Public Domain Day list from Jennifer Jenkins’ of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain and her colleagues.Â
- Jesse Dougherty’s article “Between the sheets at the college Excel Championship” which is behind a paywall. Here is Jesse’s substack.Â
- 404 Media’s excellent journalism on the tech that ICE is using
- An ode to the language of the penny, including songs like Pennies from Heaven.Â
- The only self-check out that doesn’t waste your time.Â
- And we made public domain Valentine’s cards.Â
Download THE OFFICIAL Planet Money valentine here.
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This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Kenny Malone. It was produced by James Sneed with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, engineered by Cena Loffredo & Kwesi Lee, and edited by our executive producer Alex Goldmark.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:06.1 | So Jennifer, you got what I sent you, yes? |
| 0:08.8 | I did. It's the greatest mystery of the year so far. |
| 0:14.0 | This is Jennifer Jenkins, lawyer, professor. You may have heard her before. |
| 0:17.9 | She's become sort of our unofficial trademark and copyright attorney here at Planet Money. And what I sent her is inside a large yellow envelope. You want me to guess. You want me just to open. No, just go ahead and open. I love surprises, Kenny. So just this is like, oh, this is loud. |
| 0:35.2 | Every year, we at Planet Money send Valentine's to the things we love this year to innovative reporting on ice, to the sport of competitive spreadsheeting, to perhaps the only beloved self-checkout system, and more. |
| 0:51.0 | And typically these are not physical valentines. |
| 0:53.2 | They're shoutouts in a Valentine's episode, such as this, chock full of big ideas and |
| 0:58.3 | recommendations that we want to share with you all. |
| 1:00.6 | But for my first Valentine to Jennifer Jenkins, we had, in fact, made a bespoke physical |
| 1:07.0 | Valentine. |
| 1:08.6 | What? |
| 1:08.9 | What? |
| 1:10.0 | Yay! Yay! Yay! physical Valentine. What? Oh my God. |
| 1:11.6 | Yay! |
| 1:12.6 | Do you want to describe it? |
| 1:15.6 | I need a moment. |
| 1:17.6 | Oh my God. |
| 1:18.6 | Okay, fine, I'll describe it. |
| 1:19.6 | Red and black font that's a little tattoo motorcycle style. |
| 1:24.6 | It says official Planet Money Valentine. And then a famous cartoon character that, |
| 1:30.7 | for reasons, we are not going to get sued for using. And that character also happens to be one |
... |
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