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Auntie Anne's logo is a pretzel wearing a halo. This is probably supposed to connote a pretzel that's good for you. Or heavenly, maybe? But when you look at it long enough, it makes you think: Pretzels can die. And there's an afterlife for them.

Is pretzel heaven the same as people heaven? Where do bad pretzels go? These are the things that go through your head when you're waiting for your Pretzel Dog — a hot dog wrapped in soft pretzel.

Ian: This is indistinguishable from a Nerf Blowgun.

Eva: I think this is just what a hotdog looks like after the holidays.

Robert: You know, if you put two of these together, it steps down the voltage to 120!

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Robert takes the bite less traveled by. NPR hide caption

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Robert takes the bite less traveled by.

NPR

Ian: What?

Ian: It looks like a pretzel boa constrictor is trying to kill a hot dog.

Eva: Isn't the idea that a pretzel is bread in a knot? This is a pretzel that can't touch its toes.

Miles: You know, people are taking workplace safety too seriously when they start foam-padding the hot dogs.

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My pretzel is not fully cooked. D'ough! NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

My pretzel is not fully cooked. D'ough!

NPR

Robert: See, a transformer works by placing two electrical coils with different windings side by side, allowing different input and output voltages. This pretzel looks like an electrical coil.

Miles: This is just a hot dog with a bun that's a little too clingy.

Lorna: If you're in a rush, attach it to a drill for faster consumption.

Robert: These coils are inside every computer and phone charger you own. Trust me, this is killing it with the electricians. Killing it.

[The verdict: It combines two things that are good and creates one thing that is good.]

Sandwich Monday is a satirical feature from the humorists at Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!

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The euro fell today to a nine-year low against the dollar amid continuing doubts over Greece's future in the currency union and renewed prospects of monetary easing in the eurozone, the club of 19 EU countries that share the common currency.

The euro fell 1.2 percent against the dollar to $1.1864 — the lowest level since March 2006; it later recovered to $1.19370.

Here's why this is happening:

Political Instability In Greece: Greeks vote in elections Jan. 25, and polls show the left-wing opposition Syriza party with a lead. The group opposes the IMF- and EU-mandated austerity plan imposed after Greece's economy was bailed out. This is prompting fears a Syriza victory means Greece could exit the eurozone. The euro's slide today came after an article in the German news magazine Der Spiegel that said Germany could allow Greece to drop out of the currency union.

Possible Quantitative Easing: Europe's economy has struggled to recover from the global recession, and there is speculation the European Central Bank could introduce quantitative easing to stimulate the eurozone. The ECB has already lowered interest rates to record lows, and it could now embark on a program to buy billions of euros in bonds to spur the economy. This usually has the effect of currencies losing ground, which is what is happening with the euro. But news reports note the situation in Greece could persuade the ECB to hold off on any announcement until after the Greek election.

The Dollar: The U.S. Federal Reserve introduced quantitative easing in 2008, lowering interest rates to near zero and buying trillions of dollars of bonds and mortgages to boost the economy. The dollar fell against major currencies, making U.S. exports cheaper. But since those days, the U.S. economy has become stronger. In the third quarter of 2014, it grew by 5 percent and created jobs. The Fed has eased the policy of quantitative easing and is now considering when to start raising interest rates. All this is making the dollar stronger against other major currencies – another reason for the euro's decline.

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Columbia? Taken. Mississippi? Taken. Sacramento? El Nio? Marlin? Grizzly? Sorry, they're all taken.

Virtually every large city, notable landscape feature, creature and weather pattern of North America — as well as myriad other words, concepts and images — has been snapped up and trademarked as the name of either a brewery or a beer. For newcomers to the increasingly crowded industry of more than 3,000 breweries, finding names for beers, or even themselves, is increasingly hard to do without risking a legal fight.

Candace Moon, a.k.a. The Craft Beer Attorney, is a San Diego lawyer who specializes in helping brewers trademark ideas and also settle disputes. Moon tells The Salt she has never seen a brewery intentionally infringe upon another's trademarked name, image or font style. Yet, with tens of thousands of brands in the American beer market, it happens all the time.

"There are only so many words and names that make sense with beer, so it's not surprising that many people will come up with the same ideas," Moon says.

A frequently recurring issue, she says, is different breweries thinking they've coined the same hop-centric puns and catchphrases for their beers. A quick Google search reveals multiple beers named "Hopscotch," and at least three India Pale Ales with the name "Bitter End."

Name overlaps may not matter as long as the beers are sold in different regions, but in such cases, Moon says, would-be conflicts often go unresolved.

When two large breweries with broad distribution are involved, the matter is almost always settled, sometimes amicably.

For example, when the brewers at Avery in Colorado and Russian River in California discovered that they each had a beer named Salvation, they met at an annual Colorado beer festival to talk it out. Vinnie Cilurzo, co-owner and brewmaster of Russian River Brewing Company, says that neither he nor Adam Avery knew who first coined the name. Nor were they particularly worried about it. Still, they took the opportunity to come a clever conclusion. They combined their beers in a blend and named it "Collaboration Not Litigation."

Other cases get ugly. In July 2013, Lagunitas Brewing Co.'s owner, Tony Magee, received a cease-and-desist order from SweetWater Brewing Co. in Atlanta demanding that the Northern California brewing giant stop using the marijuana code "420" in the cryptic artwork and messaging found on many Lagunitas beer labels. Since the 1990s, SweetWater had made a beer called 420 Extra Pale Ale. Magee, who responded to the demand with a volley of Twitter jabs at SweetWater, quickly agreed to the demand.

"I decided, 'You want to own 420, fine, you can have it,' " Magee says. "And it's true: They legitimately owned it."

Magee admits he has called out others — like Knee Deep Brewing Co. — when they printed IPA labels too similar to his own. The Lagunitas IPA label features three stencil-style letters, bold and black, in serif font and without periods in between.

"It's not that we trademarked the alphabet, but we trademarked the arch presentation of those letters," Magee explains. "From a design standpoint, I found the most elegant way to put 'IPA' on a label, so it's likely that others would have landed on the same design."

American trademark law lumps breweries together with wineries and distilleries, making the naming game even chancier. A widely circulating rumor has it that Yellow Tail Wines, of Australia, came after Ballast Point Brewing Co., in San Diego, for naming a beer "Yellowtail." Ballast Point's pale ale is now conspicuously lacking a fish-themed name (a signature, if not a trademark, of the brewery), though an image of a brightly colored yellowtail still resides plainly — and legally, it seems — on the label. A spokesperson for Ballast Point said the company could not discuss the matter.

Even imagery can be trademarked and protected in court. San Diego's Port Brewing Company, for instance, applied several years ago for a trademark on using Celtic cross-shaped tap handles at its brewpub, specifically for its Lost Abbey label. When Port, which first installed its stylized tap handles in 2008, discovered that Moylan's Brewery and Restaurant, near San Francisco, was serving beer with similar handles, Port sued Moylan's.

"I'd been using Celtic crosses for 16 years when [Port's owner] came after me," Brendan Moylan tells The Salt. Moylan says he lost time and money fighting the lawsuit—but not his crosses. He thumbed his nose at the San Diego brewery and kept his tap handles.

Moylan's has been involved in other trademark battles, too. Moylan says he was the first brewery to name a beer Kilt Lifter. However, he didn't trademark the two words. Over the years, other craft breweries put the same name on their own beers—often dark and malty Scotch-style ales. Moylan, who says he isn't a "trademarkey kind of guy," wasn't concerned.

Then, as Moylan tells it, a brewing company in Arizona called Four Peaks not only adopted the name but applied for a trademark on it. Foreseeing legal troubles, Moylan voluntarily took the name off bottles of his beer that were shipped to states where Four Peaks' beers are sold. Four Peaks' representatives could not be reached for comment.

Moylan says the owners of Four Peaks recently visited his brewpub with a peace offering: a Four Peaks T-shirt and some beer. Moylan drank the beer and has even worn the shirt. It might not have been the happiest ending for his Kilt Lifter, but it wasn't a, um, bitter end.

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What do a woman freed from a religious cult, a crooked lawyer and TV's longest serving late-night host have in common?

That's not the setup to an oddball joke. Instead, they're all part of the hottest trends coming to television in 2015, when a deluge of new shows combined with a boatload of new platforms threatens to transform the TV business over the next year.

And one of the most unique fictional characters among 2015's crop of new shows is Kimmy Schmidt, a bubbly young woman who survived years in a dehumanizing cult that told her the world was destroyed by nuclear fire.

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Ellie Kemper, right, stars with Tituss Burgess in the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Eric Liebowitz/NBC/Netflix hide caption

itoggle caption Eric Liebowitz/NBC/Netflix

Ellie Kemper, right, stars with Tituss Burgess in the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Eric Liebowitz/NBC/Netflix

But surviving her first interview on the Today show after she and her friends were rescued from the cult? Well, that might be even tougher.

"Ladies, you've been given an amazing second chance at life," Today host Matt Lauer tells her in the opening moments of Netflix's comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. "People have donated thousands of dollars to the Mole Women Fund."

"And we are so grateful," Schmidt says, "but, honestly, we don't love that name."

"So, Mole Women, what happens next?" Lauer answers. "What do you do now?"

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a new series from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who worked together on Fey's NBC series 30 Rock. The program was made for NBC but sold to Netflix, which picked up the canceled show before it even aired on the network.

It's a growing trend: TV shows moving online from more traditional starting points. Yahoo will continue to produce new episodes of NBC's canceled comedy Community. And a show originally developed for FX, the superhero series Powers, will debut not on FX but on The Playstation Network.

Yes, there will be an original TV series made just for a videogame console.

But the biggest sea change in television this year comes courtesy of David Letterman's surprise announcement last year.

"I said when this show stops being fun ... I will retire 10 years later," he joked, just before letting the world know he was retiring in 2015 after more than 30 years in the game.

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Dave Letterman Signals He'll Soon Put Down The Microphone

Letterman, TV's longest-serving late-night host, officially retires on May 20. But he's already changing television, prompting Stephen Colbert to leave his Colbert Report to take over Letterman's Late Show, which made room at Comedy Central for a new voice: Larry Wilmore.

"I'm Larry Wilmore, host of the new Nightly Show," he tells a disbelieving senior citizen in one teaser commercial for the show. "Who?" she shoots back, confirming Wilmore's status as a guy who doesn't yet have the profile of the comic he's replacing at 11:30 p.m. weeknights.

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Larry Wilmore Knows: Heavy Lies The Late-Night Mantle

Wilmore, best known as The Daily Show's "senior black correspondent," takes over Colbert's timeslot with The Nightly Show on Jan. 19.

Wilmore's show was originally called The Minority Report, but Comedy Central changed it after learning the 2002 film of the same name would be made into — you guessed it — a TV pilot.

Still, Wilmore will be the only African-American hosting a late-night entertainment show in 2015. Along with Colbert and new Late, Late Show host James Corden, he's expected to bring lots of fresh voices to a big block of TV's late-night neighborhood.

And there are some other big goodbyes coming in 2015.

NBC's critically beloved Parks and Recreation begins its final season Jan. 13. It's among several TV shows taking a final lap this year, including CBS' Two and Half Men and AMC's Mad Men.

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'Justified' Brings Back Raylan Givens, Another Working-Class Man From FX

But I'm really going to savor the final season this year of FX's show about a gunslinging federal marshal, Justified — mostly because of the way producers bounce hero Marshal Raylan Givens off his bitter rival, bank robber Boyd Crowder.

In one scene from the second episode of this season, Givens is facing down Crowder, who was trying to use stolen documents to blackmail a property seller. Crowder, a silky-tongued charmer, insists he was returning the documents out of the goodness of his heart, "following my instincts, kinda like a higher power slipping me a word."

Givens' response: "Well, I slip a Glock [handgun] in my holster every morning. So when you hand me those items, do it slow. Or I'll shoot ya."

In a TV world filled with Honey Boo Boos and Duck Dynasties, it's a pleasure to watch a show set in the South with sharp, smart characters.

That's not, however, the best description for a guy at the heart of another series, which just happens to be cable TV's most anticipated new show: Better Call Saul.

Saul Goodman, also known as Walter White's shady lawyer from Breaking Bad, gets his own spinoff series on AMC. It debuts over two nights on Feb. 8 and 9, showing how small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill transforms himself into the full-on sleazebag Breaking Bad fans love, with a real talent for recruiting new clients.

"I'm No. 1 on your speed-dial, right next to your weed dealer," he tells one potential client in a teaser ad for the series.

"I think I'd look guilty if I hired a lawyer," another possible client tells him.

"It's getting arrested that makes people look guilty," Goodman replies.

Who could say no to that?

Ultimately, the word which best sums up TV in 2015 is: more.

More new series in unexpected places, more new voices in late-night and more high-quality shows than anyone can keep up with — except maybe a highly motivated TV critic.

So if you thought TV was good last year, you might want to buckle up.

Because the pace only gets faster — and more fun — in 2015.