Planet Money - Groundhog Day 2024: Trademark, bankruptcy, and the dollar that failed

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

It's Groundhog Day, and the eyes of the nation have turned to a small town in western Pennsylvania. And, just like last year, all anyone can talk about is Punxsutawney Phil! It is impossible to find a news story that is not about one furry prognosticator.Well, almost impossible...Once again, our Planet Money hosts find themselves trapped in the endless Groundhog Day news cycle, and their only way out is to discover an economics story from Groundhog Day itself interesting enough to appease the capricious Groundhog Gods! So rise and shine campers (and don't forget your booties) as hosts Kenny Malone and Amanda Aronczyk scour the news of February 2nds past, to try to find the perfect story.This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Amanda Aronczyk. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Keith Romer, and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. It was fact-checked by James Sneed. Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark.Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

On It's Been a Minute, we talk to up-and-comers and icons of culture. From Barbra Streisand. You're such a wonderful interviewer. To Tracee Ellis Ross. Your questions were so wonderful. And Christine Baranski. Oh, thank you for your wonderful questions. Hear the questions these icons loved to be asked.

Listen every week to It's Been a Minute from NPR. This is Planet Money from NPR. And Amanda Aronchik has entered the Zoom. Hello, Kenny. How are you? Thank you for coming, Amanda. I don't know why I'm here. All I know is it's a meeting, and I was invited, and it's a little mysterious. You know it's Groundhog Day, yes? Yeah.

and it's a little mysterious. You know it's Groundhog Day, yes? Yeah. And you may be aware, Planet Money suffers under an ancient curse where every year on this day, we have to report stories only about things that occurred on Groundhog Day. Vaguely recall this?

I do. And if they're good enough, big enough, important enough economic stories, then we break the curse? That's how this works. And I have very exciting news for you. Yeah.

You're in the episode. I'm in the episode. That's what this is. That's the mystery meeting. I see. Okay. And Erica, what about Erica? She was the host last year with you.

Yeah, no, no one's seen Erica since last year. Kenny, I'm here. I'm here for it. I'm here for Groundhog Day. Bring it. Great. So, quick reminder of how this works. We will start presenting a Planet Money episode

about, I mean, I don't know, the great Groundhog Day train robbery of 1906. Kenny, is that a thing? Just roll with it. So, you know how our show usually starts? We play some chill music. Yeah, yeah. Then we say something like, hello and welcome to Planet Money.

Today on the show, the great train robbery of 1906 was not just an example of how money... This is Planet Money from NPR. So yeah, that's what happens. If the fickle groundhog gods don't like our story, in this case, I'm guessing the problem is that I did literally make that story up. The little coin drop thing sounds, and we have to start all over. Yes, right. This is like the movie Groundhog Day. Bill Murray keeps waking up on the same day over and over and over and over again until he is able to break his time loop curse.

It's all coming back to me. Yeah. able to break his time loop curse. It's all coming back to me. Yeah. And what is great about only looking for stories that happen on some February 2nd in history is that it lets us, as a show, tell stories about the smaller, everyday things

that actually add up to make the economy. There's real value here. All right. That is today's episode. I'm Amanda Aronchick. I'm Kenny Malone. After the break, we go Groundhog Day story a-hunting. This message comes from Wondery.

Milli Vanilli set the world on fire. But when their fans learned about the infamous lip syncing, their downfall was swift. Blame It On The Fame dives into one of pop music's greatest controversies. Follow on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Throw on those boots, grab your cowboy hat, and settle up that horse. Beyonce's new album, Cowboy Carter, is here. Beyonce says this is the best music she's ever made, but is she knocking down the doors of the country establishment or looking for validation? We're talking all about it. Listen to the Pop

Quoture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. From the campaigns to the conventions, from now through Election Day and beyond, the NPR Politics Podcast has you covered. As Joe Biden and Donald Trump square off again, we bring you the latest news from the trail and dive deep into each candidate's goals for a second term. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast every weekday. Okay, so last year, the story that got us closest to being able to break the Groundhog Day curse was one that we did about the invention of the ice cream scoop. Because the patent for the ice cream mold and disher was issued on February 2nd, 1897. Yes, and that story got us close. So this year we were like, okay, we've done patents.

We've looked at that. So what if we go sifting through a different kind of intellectual property? What if we look to see what trademarks were created on February 2nd? How's this? That's perfect. One, two, three. This is Jennifer Jenkins. You may have heard her on the show before. She's our, she's our, like our planet money phone a friend when it comes to intellectual property stuff. Right. Because Jennifer is a lawyer, she's a professor at Duke, and she's also a leading scholar in IP. And we explained to our very smart, leading legal scholar friend, you know, the usual stuff. How we needed to find a story that happened on some February 2nd,

and because of an ancient curse laid upon our podcast by mysterious groundhog gods, etc., etc., she got it. Oh, this is great. Well, I love Groundhog Day. So happy Groundhog Day. But I didn't know you were breaking a curse. This is news. This curse is good. I think this one's pretty good. Sure. It's not cursed for demon spawn or something. I guess I see. Yeah. That would be a very different Groundhog Day. Just saying. Yeah, no, that's right. Now, we are hoping that Jennifer can help us break our curse with trademarks. Yeah, trademarks, of course, are a way for companies to claim as property all the special names or sayings or really all kinds of things that identify their brand. Think of the Nike swoosh, the scent of Play-Doh.

Jennifer says even the sound of a certain cartoon father. Dope! Which is Homer Simpson. Wait, is doe trademarked? It is. Doe! Yeah, I can't, I don't sound like Homer. Yeah, for real.

So can we go through some of these? Let's look at some trademarks. Together, we pull up this searchable trademark database that, as far as we can tell, contains all federal trademarks filed since the 1800s. And there are so many trademarks filed on Groundhog Days throughout history. February 2nd, 1924, some chemical company filed a trademark for the name Malitol, which apparently was a malaria medicine. February 2nd, 1970, the Lacoste Company, yes, that one, files for a new logo, we believe, a pretty angry-looking

version of their alligator logo to put on their, quote, all-weather coats for men. And then we see it. February 2nd, 1976. A trademark filed by General Mills. The Mugga Lunch. I mean, it's so 1970s. I love it. Mugga Lunch? Muggo Lunch?. I love it. Mug-a-lunch?

Mug-o-lunch? Mug-o-lunch. Mug-o-lunch. I mean, honestly, my first thought was a sort of Harry Potter thing. But then I was like, oh, no, no, wait. It's a lunch. It's a lunch in a mug. It's a lunch in a mug.

It's a lunch in a mug, right? So it's a combination of pasta and sauce that comes in a box. And then you can put said ingredients from said box into your mug and enjoy a Mug-O-Lunch. Now, I know this just sounds like some kitschy product, but the more we thought about Mug-O-Lunch, the more we were like, no, no, no, there's something here. Yeah, because why might General Mills be offering up quick and easy lunch solutions? Well, the answer is likely that by the end of the 1970s, for the first time in history,

more than half of women in the U.S. had jobs outside the house. So time to make your own lunch, kids. Yeah, grow up. Put it in a mug. Pour some water in a mug. I don't care what you make. Just make it yourselves.

And we did actually find an old 1970s commercial for Muggo Lunch. Wow, macaroni and cheese. Mine's spaghetti. Look at that. The trick is new Muggo Lunch from Betty Crocker. Three tasty hot dishes you make in a mug, one helping at a time.

Just add boiling water. Oh, God. Oh, it does not look good. Yeah, between the color and the texture. It isn't magic that makes them disappear. Muggo Lunch, new from Betty Crocker. Okay, okay, perhaps not the most attractive product, but I think worth our first offering to the Groundhog gods here. Let us see if they will let us do a story about this. All right, I'm going to try.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Amanda Aronchik. I'm Kenny Malone. Today on the show, the Mug-O-Lunch. It's not just reconstituted brown beefy noodles. No, I mean, it is that. But today on the show, just add a little water and you get an entire story of perhaps one of the greatest employment and social changes in U.S. history. Because Mug-O-Lunch was... This is Planet Money from NPR.

Oh, all right. No Mug-O-Lunch. We've got to find somethingPR. Oh, all right. No muggle lunch. We've got to find something else. Got to start over. Oh, those fickle, capricious groundhog gods. Now, I know it feels like we have failed to please the groundhog gods. But, Amanda, what really even is failure, I would ask you? Failure is just a point of time on the road to success.

That's right. That's the right attitude. Thank you. Because if you think about it, the economy, it is sort of just a cycle of success and failure. And so maybe for our next idea to offer up, we should go looking for more failure, perhaps the kind of failure that is bankruptcy. There's two real types of bankruptcy if you're a business. Kate Waldock is a lawyer at the firm Wachtel Lipton, and she's our first call whenever we want to talk about bankruptcy.

The kind where you go defunct and cease to exist. That's chapter seven. Unlucky seven. That's how I remember that one. Yeah, that's a good way to remember it. And then there's chapter 11, which is where you get a second chance at life. Right, where you try to restructure your debts and attempt to stay alive as a company. Kate pulls up a database that anybody's allowed to use.

It's called PACER. It's for legal filings. And for our purposes, it has pretty much all the bankruptcy filings ever in there. So you can search here by chapter. I'm going to put in chapter 11 because I'm optimistic. I like to think about the companies that have a hope of survival. This is the Phoenix from the ashes bankruptcy. Exactly.

But let me see. So Groundhog Day, February 2nd. And there are hundreds of companies that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on February 2nd. Yeah, there's some company called USA Log Carriers, another one here called Caltech's Swabbing Company. We got Almost Heaven Ribs filing for bankruptcy in West Virginia. Yeah, I'm pretty devastated about that. But it's Chapter 11, Kate.

I hope they emerged. They might have emerged. I hope they emerged. We did poke around a little bit, and Almost Heaven Ribs appears to have ascended to actual heaven. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have made it, RIP. So there's one here, Movie Gallery Inc. Ooh, Movie Gallery Inc. I think that that was kind of like a blockbuster.

I'm going to have to double check. Let's check, yeah. Movie Gallery Inc. So yes, Movie Gallery was the second largest movie rental company in the U.S. and Canada. This is after Blockbuster. They also owned a chain called Hollywood Video. And it appears that Movie Gallery was stuck in their own little time loop curse because on Groundhog Day 2010,

they were actually filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time. If you file for Chapter 11 twice, academics like to call that Chapter 22. It's cute. 11 plus 11. Oh, but you know, February 2nd. They filed their second Chapter 11 on February 2nd. Is that true? Is that what happened here?

It's true. And I personally think that I broke the curse for you guys. I hope so. If it's broken, I'm going to take credit for it. That's fair. So, okay. I don't know. I feel like there's something here. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. You know the

saying, Amanda, file chapter 11 once, shame on you. File chapter 11 twice, valuable economics lesson for all of us. Today on the show, it is the story of movie guys. This is Planet Money Of movie go- This is Planet Money from NPR. Oh! Oh, again. I will say, I had this whole thing I wanted to do about the method by which movie rental companies used to acquire videotapes in order to rent them out. Yeah, I don't know, Kenny. I don't think the Groundhog Gods want it.

They're wrong, because there are actually three ways that movie rental companies could acquire videotapes. No, no, no, I don't know if anyone wants this. Number one is they buy them outright. Number two is to buy at a discount, but agree to give back or destroy a bunch of those videos when you're done renting them out, presumably because studios don't want to compete with the flood of used movies entering the market. This is Planet Money from NPR. That is fair.

But number three is to straight up do a revenue share with the movie studios or the video company this is planet money from npr kenny i feel like it's clear what's happening here i'm done i'm done i'm done but amanda silver lining silver lining getting cut off all those times and having to listen to the coin spitting over and over, it does give me one last idea. Last idea for sure. Okay, here we go. Well, I came across this story when I was stuck in last year's cursed time loop, and I will say it is better than a story about a failed lunch in a mug. If that's possible. It is better than a story about a failed movie rental company, which does have three genuinely fascinating ways of acquiring the

films that they rent out, but I don't want to go on about that. Okay, we get it. This one is a story about the time the U.S. dollar itself failed. That's after the break. God's willing. Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail and beyond. They don't just tell you what happened. They tell you why it matters.

Join the NPR Politics Podcast every afternoon to understand the world through political eyes. There's a lot of stuff to watch out there. politicalize. There's a lot of stuff to watch out there. Pop Culture Happy Hour, a four-day-a-week, 20-minute-a-day podcast helps you pick out what's worthy of your next big binge. Whether it's a new show, a buzzy book, or a movie that we can't stop talking about, Pop Culture Happy Hour is here with a recommendation you'll want to snuggle up with, guaranteed. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour every day, only from NPR. On Bullseye, Jenny Slate reveals her favorite noises. I love, like, noises of tension.

I love noises of embarrassment. I love noises of, like, pressure, pressure, pressure. You know, I just, like, I love that. All that and more on the Bullseye podcast from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Here at Shortwave, we look beyond the usual famous scientists we learn about in school. Einstein and Newton and Schrodinger. They're all men. To the rule breakers and boundary pushers expanding our horizons.

Women scientists like particle physicist Bipat Chaudhary. Hear her story and other brilliant women on Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, so our next and final Groundhog Day story idea, well, it is about money itself. Yes. Now, Amanda, you know that the U.S. dollar is one of the most prized currencies in the entire world. And yet, this is a story about a time in recent U.S. history when the U.S. government made money that basically no one wanted. And for this story, we need an expert with a particular set of skills. Do you want to start by introducing yourself? Yes, my name is Dennis Tucker, and I'm the publisher at Whitman Publishing. You know some things about coins. A little bit.

Dennis is being a little modest here because his company publishes what is sometimes called the Bible of Coin Collecting, named a guidebook of United States coins. He's here to tell us a at the entirety of U.S. coinage and make recommendations. Yeah, so, you know, a study where they survey people who work with coins a lot, run models, look at coinage around the world, and then make recommendations for ways that U.S. coins could be better. You know, there were some weird things. I believe they recommended getting rid of the one-cent coin. Ah, yes. And replacing it with a two-cent coin. Oh, no, no, no.

That's not the fix. No, get out of here with that. That's worse. But this study had one huge recommendation that, unlike the weird two-cent coin thing, got traction, got implemented, and, hello and welcome to Planet Money, became a full-on coin fiasco. A proper cointastrophe.

A national cointroversy. Not getting cut off by the groundhog gods? No? All right, let's do this one. Now, the big recommendation from the big coin study was a dollar coin, or rather, specifically, a smaller dollar coin. Right, America had the Eisenhower dollar coin, the Ike dollar. They were big.

They were meaty. Apparently, too big and too meaty because no one was using them. Yeah, there were like loads and loads of Ike dollars just sitting around in people's houses, in bank vaults, in government storage. The solution, as the great coin study had said, was for the U.S. meant to start making smaller dollar coins. And so the coin people got to work. They picked a design featuring famous 1800s women's voting rights activist Susan B. Anthony. And then, barely two years later... Today is Groundhog Day and Pennsylvania's Puxatawney Phil.

That's right! Groundhog Day, 1979. Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal was at the U.S. Mint in San Francisco today to witness the first production of the new dollar coin featuring the face of suffragette Susan B. Anthony. The very first Susan B. Anthony dollars. Now, technically, the very, very first of these Susan B. Anthony coins were minted in Philadelphia, like a month earlier. But,

I mean, come on. On actual Groundhog Day, we've got the actual Treasury Secretary watching these coins pouring out into the world. This is a Groundhog Day story. Yeah, it's fine. And you have to imagine the monetary strangeness of 1979. All of this brand new currency that hadn't existed before, it was suddenly going to flood into the country. We wondered if we might be able to recreate the feeling of that strange moment. And so we went to a coin shop, bought their entire available stock of 52 Susan B. Anthony dollars. And then? So I have the package here. Sent them to our producer, Sam Yellow Horse Kessler. Go ahead and pull that out of there. Okay, all right, so it's a bag which is filled with coins.

Yeah. Kenny got me money. I got money. Do you know what those are, Sam? These are coins. They look like quarters, but slightly bigger. They're $1 coins. They're $1 coins. We told Sam that for one day, he was going to have to transact exclusively in Susan B. Anthony dollars. Okay.

I do need to eat today, so I can run out and purchase. Listeners may not know this about me. I eat exclusively sandwiches. I will purchase my sandwiches. Okay, so while Sam is off purchasing his sandwiches with his Susan B's, let's go back to our 1970s coin drama. Dennis Tucker, publisher of the Coin Bible, he was just a kid when this coin finally started to flood out into

the world. Believe it or not, I remember friends at school, even though we were very young, talking about the coin, I think because they were in the news at the time. Perhaps because the U.S. government was spending all this money on a Susan B. Anthony Dollar public relations campaign. Among other things, they printed a series of cartoons. And, Amanda, I have not shown you these yet, but here is one. Oh, that's sort of a Charlie Brown looking kind of guy. Yeah. So we've got a kid who's holding a coin.

Huge smile. Why? Well, here's the caption. Happiness is a dollar that won't blow away. Yeah. Of course. That's what happens to my dollar bills all the time. Just the wind takes them.

But to be clear, the propensity of paper dollars to like blow away everywhere was not really the reason the U.S. Treasury wanted us all to switch to a dollar coin. They'd figured out that coins were in fact cheaper in the long run than paper bills. They estimated that they would save $50 million a year making dollar coins rather than having the BEP print dollar bills. Because paper dollars are made of paper. They wear, they tear, they catch on fire. Should you light them? I'm not suggesting you do, but you could. Don't light them on fire.

Coins, they simply last longer. Yeah. And the Treasury said at the time that paper bills last about 18 months, a coin 15 years. So the Treasury and the Mint went big. They made millions of the Susan B's and then released them out into the world. Well, we don't know if it will catch on or not, but they're telling us it will save the country money in printing costs for those flimsy green dollar bills we carry around. Almost immediately, there was backlash. The federal government is attempting to peddle a product for which there is no demand.

Seriously, do you know anyone who is dissatisfied with the paper dollar? This is an NPR commentator, and he was also apparently annoyed by the government's big PR campaign, which had included a bunch of suggestions for how Americans could help the cause. My favorite is the following. Quote, stage a Susan B. Anthony party to brighten up the summer. Offer Susan B. Anthony dollars as a door prize. Wow. Sounds like fun. I mean, that does actually sound like a little bit of fun.

Are you kidding? We could dress up like Susan B. Anthony and give coins? This is exactly what we do at Planet Money. But yes, a variety of like kinds of complaints started to emerge. So some of the complaints were about the government pushing this coin when people actually liked the paper dollar. Yeah. And then some of the complaints, honestly, from even before the coin came out, had this like not great tone to it. So, for example, here's Delaware Congressman Thomas B. Evans Jr. on the House floor. I, for one, don't want to carry around a purse, at least not yet, with a bunch of coins jangling around. And I think it would be a mistake.

Yeah, there seem to be a lot of angry men with angry things to say about this new coin that happened to have a woman on it. But perhaps the biggest problem for the Susan B. Anthony dollar was honestly one of the simplest things you could imagine. It looked an awful lot like a quarter. It's true. It's basically the same color as a quarter.

Also has the same little ridgy lines on the outside edge. And the size, says our coin expert, Dennis Tucker, it is so close to a quarter. Yeah, it's like two millimeters wider than a quarter. Is that like a fingernail? Is that a fingernail? What's two millimeters? Yeah, just tiny. It's tiny. It's, you know, you would be hard pressed to even be able to visually make that difference. This was a real problem. And in a radio moment that we at Planet Money will be jealous of for the rest of our existence. The Susan B. Anthony dollar is not a silver dollar.

This is NPR founding mother Susan Stamberg. And she invited the director of the U.S. Mint, Stella Hackle, on to all things considered to do a dropping comparison between a quarter and the Susan B. Anthony dollar. All right. That was the new Susan B. Anthony dollar. Here's a quarter. I didn't hear much difference. The dollar is 43% heavier. Oh, it is. Yes. Ah, so NPR. Not sure that Susan Stanberg was convinced there.

No, and not sure America was either, because Dennis Tucker says three years after they started, the U.S. Mint stopped making the Susan B. Anthony dollar. As a circulating U.S. coin, the Susan B. Anthony dollar was a failure. And, you know, as with the Ike dollar, tens of millions of them ended up just sitting in storage in government vaults. Yeah, pretty much no one used the Susan B. Anthony dollar. It's not ideal.

I mean, the purpose of coins is to circulate and to serve commerce, you know, to help oil the machine of industry and commerce. You know, there was this quote from the news coverage of all of this stuff that really has stuck with me. Quote, it seems a shame the name of Susan B. Anthony is somewhat associated with this problem that she has nothing to do with, really. And it also seems a shame that complete failure is where our story has to end, too, I think, Amanda. But, you know, it's not like the Susan B. Anthony dollar just went away. Susan B's are still legal tender in the United States of America. And so on this Groundhog Day, we are here to FET, to celebrate and circulate the Susan B. Anthony dollar.

I'm looking for a place to spend my 52 Susan B. Anthony coins. We rejoin our very Philadelphian producer, Sam Yellow Horse Kessler. So I think first stop is to find myself a nice cheesesteak to fill my belly. And so, Groundhog Gods, as our final offering, we present to you the sounds of Susan B. Anthony dollars, not in a vault, but in the world. And is it okay if I pay in coins? Is that all right? Oiling the machine of industry and commerce.

Is that like a challenge? You have to pay in coins? So yes, it is a bit of a challenge. And so here is Sam using Susan B.'s to buy one Philly cheesesteak. Perfect. Classic wiz wit and fried onions, please. One Philadelphia Eagles dog leash. There's a large leash for $20.

$20, that's perfect. And one business book about beloved regional convenience store and gas station chain, Wawa. Wawa way,

okay. While Sam was busy paying for things, One, two, three. One dollar coin at a time.

Eight, nine, ten. He also got to experience firsthand the joy that a Susan B. Anthony dollar can bring. This is so cool. I haven't seen these in forever. These are interesting looking quarters. I don't think I've seen these before. Have you ever, as far as you know, seen those before? No, I have not. Okay.

They were minted just around the corner over at the Philadelphia Mint. The head looks different. And do you recognize who that is? Is she... Give me your guesses, yeah. Because I'm not really great on historical white women. I don't know, the suffragette? Yeah, that's right. That's Susan B. Anthony.

And by the end of the day, 52 bucks worth of Susan B. Anthony dollar coins were no longer collecting dust in a coin shop, but instead, they're now out there circulating again as money. A numismatic triumph-amanda. And in conclusion, the Susan B. Anthony dollar is a worthy Groundhog Day story. It shows us that a new dollar asks people, nay, a nation, to remake their relationship with money, to rethink what a dollar can be, and in this case, yes, to also stop and double-check that they're not accidentally spending a dollar when they only need to spend a quarter.

And, I believe, what the Susan B. Anthony dollar shows us is that in the end, this country was simply not willing to accept change. Get it? Accept change. This is Planet Money from NPR. I'll be honest, if we got reset because of the pun, worth it. 100% worth it. Wait, is that going to mean that we have to do this again next year? Well, yes, yes, but it will be easier next year because our audience, I know, will flood our inbox

with small, strange Groundhog Day story ideas. You can send those to planetmoneyatnpr.org. Coming up on the next episode of Planet Money, when we face a big problem in society or in our lives, economics can offer helpful tools for decision making. But sometimes those tools might lead you to solutions that feel kind of wrong. The idea is that sometimes economists have perfectly good ideas that other people don't think are perfectly good. When our gut reaction repels us from what might be the optimal solution. That's on the next Planet Money. This episode was produced by Sam Yellow Horse Kessler. It was edited by Keith Romer and engineered by Valentina Rodriguez-Sanchez. It was fact-checked by James Sneed and our

executive producer is Alex Goldmark. I'm Amanda Aronchik. And I'm Kenny Malone. This is NPR. Thanks for good. Harvard. On the next It's Been a Minute, I talked to one influencer who was handpicked by Harvard to battle misinformation when it comes to mental health. Listen to It's Been a Minute from NPR. On the TED Radio Hour, when a city wants to be more walkable, they call urban planner Jeff Speck. Interestingly, I work in a lot of red cities, Grand Rapids, Oklahoma City, where the local business leaders are saying, geez, how can we become more walkable so that we become more desirable?

Ideas for a more walkable world. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.