America has a penny problem.

So early on, the reason I ended up pitching this story to the Times magazine was I read a report from the mint that,

casually mentioned, each penny cost the mint slightly more than three cents to produce and distribute.

Total unit cost, 3.07 cents.

And when I read that, I absolutely lost my mind.

3.07 cents.

3.0 cents for every single penny.

Is there not a cheaper way to do it?

Do we even need them? As cheap as I am, I'm equally bad at math.

But even I know that spending three cents to make something that has a face value of one cent. That math isn't working. That

doesn't make sense. Basically just what are we doing here?

Katie went on a month's long journey to try and figure out why the United States still has pennies and she's going to

tell us what she found on Today Explained.

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