Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's that will? So did you know
Speaker 1: that when Abe Lincoln created the Secret Service, they actually
Speaker 1: weren't meant to be presidential bodyguards. Then why were they created? Well,
Speaker 1: their whole reason was to suppress counterfeiters, which is of
Speaker 1: course ironic. It was actually the day of his assassination,
Speaker 1: or that morning that Lincoln signed the legislation to create
Speaker 1: this department. But the Secret Services job was actually to
Speaker 1: go after all the fake money that was in circulation,
Speaker 1: and in the process of this, they were targeting groups
Speaker 1: like the KKK. You know, these guys were perpetrating financial
Speaker 1: frauds against the government just left and right. And they'd
Speaker 1: also go around training law officials and educating consumers about
Speaker 1: things like fake bills. That's pretty crazy. So their focus
Speaker 1: actually shifted over time. Yeah, so their duties changed when
Speaker 1: McKinley was shot and there was this clear need to
Speaker 1: protect the president, so Congress asked them to take that on.
Speaker 1: But you know, for decades, the Secret Service was actually
Speaker 1: part of the Treasury Department. In fact, at the time
Speaker 1: they launched, it's estimated that between one third to one
Speaker 1: half of the American money in circulation was counterfeit so
Speaker 1: it's obviously one huge problem. Yeah yeah, But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: just the first of nine facts we've got today about money.
Speaker 1: So let's dive in. Y Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my good friend Manges Ticketer and sitting
Speaker 1: behind that soundproof glass, organizing his monopoly money, but organizing
Speaker 1: it in a billful that I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: ever played monopoly with Tristan. He honestly thinks the only
Speaker 1: way to carry around and organize his monopoly money is
Speaker 1: with this fancy billful that he has. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: our friend, then produce her Tristan McNeil, So I go.
Speaker 1: I know we're talking about strange currencies and and things
Speaker 1: that are tangentially related to cash. But when we were
Speaker 1: talking earlier about how we were trying to raise money
Speaker 1: as kids, I forgot to ask you, did you actually
Speaker 1: collect an allowance as a kid? I didn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: how like my family functioned. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that many Indian families and and kids that got allowance
Speaker 1: growing up, but I do know that my friends were
Speaker 1: always interested in like money, making schemes, which doesn't surprise
Speaker 1: me or I can imagine you doing this, but I'm curious, like, what,
Speaker 1: what are some examples of your your get ridge schemes?
Speaker 1: I mean, there were so many bad ideas that dog
Speaker 1: magazine newspaper. I started with one of them. I remember,
Speaker 1: like when I was in second grade, my cousins and
Speaker 1: I always used to write plays and we'd force our
Speaker 1: parents to sit and wash them. But then we'd also
Speaker 1: ask for like money for the tickets, and that just
Speaker 1: feels like doubly bad for the parents who had to
Speaker 1: sit through these awful plays and I had to give
Speaker 1: us a quarter to watch or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: my friend Howard and I had the ski and this
Speaker 1: is later, when we were in sixth grade, we saw
Speaker 1: that um Reader's Digest used to pay like fifty dollars
Speaker 1: or hundred dollars for jokes that they published, and we
Speaker 1: had this whole idea that, you know, we're these sophisticated
Speaker 1: sixth graders. Our jokes were far too good. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe if we appirst the fourth graders got them to
Speaker 1: tell us their best jokes, then we could just turn
Speaker 1: around and sell those direaders Digestros and Men's Profit. You know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of too wazy to actually enact it. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about it, it's not like
Speaker 1: Reader's Digest was just thinking, you know, we really need
Speaker 1: a lot of jokes about underwear and broccoli, and people
Speaker 1: submitted will just pay for all of them. So it
Speaker 1: really wasn't a well thought out scheme. Yeah, but pretty
Speaker 1: funny actually. You know, our our friend Joe did that
Speaker 1: episode of Committed where the stories about this woman who
Speaker 1: falls in love and marries this homeless gentleman, and it's
Speaker 1: a great story, but you know, one of the parts
Speaker 1: I found most memorable was that he was always on
Speaker 1: the hunt for loose change. I remember them talking about
Speaker 1: this in the episode, that when they'd go on the walks,
Speaker 1: he'd always be looking down or looking around in different places,
Speaker 1: and that's because he was always hunting for money. And
Speaker 1: he said he'd find something like eighty euros a week
Speaker 1: that way. So I was actually looking up a fact
Speaker 1: about this, and Americans actually throw out over sixty million
Speaker 1: dollars in coins every single year, which is staggering, Like,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how rich we'd all be if we
Speaker 1: went home and searched our couches today, no kidding, Well
Speaker 1: that is my second fact this morning. So I think
Speaker 1: it's time to give you a turn. So what do
Speaker 1: you want to kick things off with? Well, how about
Speaker 1: sticking with your counterfeit idea, and let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about super notes, which are a series of counterfeit
Speaker 1: fifty and more often hundred dollar notes. And these are
Speaker 1: super impressive. They're printed on this cotton fiber so they
Speaker 1: feel like money, and according to Slate, they have just
Speaker 1: the right amount of blue and red fibers in it.
Speaker 1: These are the features that the government uses for security,
Speaker 1: so it ends up being really hard to spot in
Speaker 1: the wild. And you know, the government now has ways
Speaker 1: of detecting these, but for a while in the nineties
Speaker 1: and two thousand's it caused a lot of chaos, and
Speaker 1: the reason there in exist stince has been debated. So
Speaker 1: some people actually think it goes back to some printing
Speaker 1: equipment that the Shah of Iran bought from the US
Speaker 1: in the nineties seventies, and somehow that equipment was sold
Speaker 1: off to a different country and then duplicated elsewhere and
Speaker 1: the government isn't sure where this started. But what we
Speaker 1: do know is who profited from the supernotes, and clearly
Speaker 1: that's North Korea. Officials actually believed that the rogue nation
Speaker 1: has made over twenty five million dollars by printing and
Speaker 1: circulating the fake currency. And in fact, just last year
Speaker 1: there were these newly printed notes discovered at a South
Speaker 1: Korean bank and it's made authorities nervous that the North
Speaker 1: Koreans are added again, Well, I'm gonna stick with that theme. Actually,
Speaker 1: just read this an article about this that Adobe Photoshop
Speaker 1: actually detects if you're trying to edit an image of
Speaker 1: currency and it won't let you manipulate it or or
Speaker 1: print it, which is, you know, actually pretty smart. And
Speaker 1: apparently the website hyper Allergic discovered that when they tried
Speaker 1: to scan a Canadian five dollar bill into the system.
Speaker 1: This was a few years ago, they did this story.
Speaker 1: They even detect the bill where a minister on the
Speaker 1: note was altered to look like spock and so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't let the author pull the image in And actually
Speaker 1: this is true for a lot of international currencies. That's
Speaker 1: really cool, Like, I don't think I realized that that
Speaker 1: software in particular was capable of deciphering what you're working on.
Speaker 1: But I do feel like if you're a dumb criminal,
Speaker 1: like photoshop and Xerox machines are the first place you're
Speaker 1: gonna go, right, Definitely, definitely. So speaking of international currency,
Speaker 1: here's a cute one. So a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: there was this petition online that was circulated to rename
Speaker 1: the Australian dollar and people wanted to call it the
Speaker 1: dollar we do, which I can is based on a
Speaker 1: Simpsons just Simpsons, yeah, and I love it, but you know,
Speaker 1: the Australian site nine dot com pointed out that this
Speaker 1: actually isn't the first time that the Australian government has
Speaker 1: ignored suggestions for renaming the money, even though they got
Speaker 1: fifty signatures. So way back in the sixties, Australia stopped
Speaker 1: using the pound and they switched to a new currency
Speaker 1: and at the time, the government decided to crowdsource ideas
Speaker 1: a currency name, and the public came up with a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas and here's part of the list. They
Speaker 1: wanted to call it the oz, the koala, the emu,
Speaker 1: the boomer, the kanga, the rue of course, the dinkum,
Speaker 1: which is my personal favorite, and the quid spelled k
Speaker 1: w I d for some reason. I guess that's Australian
Speaker 1: for Quinn. But the government, of course, in the end
Speaker 1: just settled on Australian dollar. I'm glad they did such
Speaker 1: a big brainstorm to come up with the Australian dollar.
Speaker 1: But all right, well, I gotta really gross one here.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm kind of a germophoe. But this was
Speaker 1: a two thousand seventeen study and researchers were taking these
Speaker 1: one dollar notes and they would swab them, and they
Speaker 1: got these from a bank in New York City, and
Speaker 1: what they were trying to do was just to see
Speaker 1: what was living on these bills. And they found hundreds
Speaker 1: of species of micro organisms, which isn't that shocking, But
Speaker 1: they found things like E. Coole I, Salmonella bacteria from
Speaker 1: people's private which is I don't really know exactly all this,
Speaker 1: the clubs all these one time, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know where they're coming from. But anyway, one of the
Speaker 1: most abundant was actually the strain that causes acne. Oh
Speaker 1: that's so gross. Also, money is so dirty. I think
Speaker 1: about this all the time because, uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: used to work as a cleric and video store and
Speaker 1: and people are always hand you change and I remember
Speaker 1: just counting quarters. At the end of it, my hands
Speaker 1: would be filthy. It was so gross. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty gross. So you know, the research shows that
Speaker 1: bank notes that use plastic polymers, and these are like
Speaker 1: the ones they use in Canada and also Australia. I
Speaker 1: think they end up being much cleaner than the US bills,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. I I do wonder if people
Speaker 1: have clearer skin in those countries as a result, if
Speaker 1: they're not typing, don't have to conduct a study. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the fact that I like, have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of brook shares burke shares? So this was a currency
Speaker 1: that got started in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and this
Speaker 1: was in two thousand and six, and the idea was
Speaker 1: that they wanted to have their own regional currency to
Speaker 1: encourage people to buy locally. So you can actually take
Speaker 1: your federal currency, which is U S dollars and and
Speaker 1: then go to one of the five regional banks there
Speaker 1: that supports this and exchange for one Berkshire and the
Speaker 1: idea is that you'll spend more in one of the
Speaker 1: four local shops that accepts it. The idea is to
Speaker 1: promote I don't know, like like buying from your local
Speaker 1: toy store over Amazon, or supporting like the farmers markets
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then foster community in the process. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a really fun idea. But another
Speaker 1: aspect of it that's interesting is because the money's new, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can put whatever you want on it. So some
Speaker 1: of the bills have Mohicans on them. Uh, they've got
Speaker 1: a W. E. B. Du Bois, Norman Rockwell is on
Speaker 1: the bill. I don't know, I haven't seen these, but
Speaker 1: but they seem really fun. Huh. All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: know we've got a couple more facts to go, but
Speaker 1: why don't we take a little break first. You know,
Speaker 1: during the break you and I were talking about how
Speaker 1: we both have so many one line facts that belong
Speaker 1: in this category. So I feel like we should change
Speaker 1: the format a little bit here. I hope it doesn't
Speaker 1: make listeners too dizzy if we do this, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna abandon that commitment to just nine facts and maybe
Speaker 1: do a little rapid fire back and forth. What do
Speaker 1: you say? Yeah, I'm totally for this, So why don't
Speaker 1: I kick it off? Do you know that Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: hated putting the phrase in God we trust on money.
Speaker 1: He actually thought it was sacrilegious. Well. Ben Franklin, I know,
Speaker 1: would agree because the first coins he printed were engraved
Speaker 1: with the phrase mind your business. I love the idea
Speaker 1: of mind your business, our money. So some of the
Speaker 1: first American coins, known as half times a k Nichols,
Speaker 1: were made from Georgie and Martha Washington's recycled silverware. Isn't
Speaker 1: that amazing? That's pretty cool? Yeah, do you know you
Speaker 1: can actually help reduce the national debt by donating money
Speaker 1: to the US Department of the Treasury. They actually accept donations,
Speaker 1: and every year, believe it or not, a lot of
Speaker 1: people actually donate. Do we do We need to like
Speaker 1: link to a ghost fund me so that people can
Speaker 1: know how to donate to the to the Treasury. I'm
Speaker 1: sure people will be racing to give money to the Yeah.
Speaker 1: So US bills used to be considerably larger, and people
Speaker 1: often referred to them as horse blankets. So I know
Speaker 1: you're probably curious about this. If you want to use
Speaker 1: in a sentence, you might say something like, do you
Speaker 1: have any horse blankets on you? I need to get
Speaker 1: some fredos from the vending machine. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what you would say. But all right, Well,
Speaker 1: the highest denomination of US currency that's ever been produced
Speaker 1: is the one hundred thousand dollar gold certificate, and they
Speaker 1: made it for a very short time in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: you know, around the time of the Great Depression. Seems
Speaker 1: like a great time to make a one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar gold certificate. So Larry Summers, who used to be
Speaker 1: the Treasury Secretary, I'm sure you remember him from his
Speaker 1: work at Harvard, He's pushed this idea that the government
Speaker 1: should discontinue the hundred dollar bill because it makes agal
Speaker 1: transactions so much easier. So there's people pushing for removing
Speaker 1: the penny from circulation and the bill. That's interesting, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: apparently the bill with the shortest lifespan of any denomination
Speaker 1: is the ten dollar bill, and that's because it gets
Speaker 1: handled the most. So a typical ten dollar bill will
Speaker 1: only stay in circulation for about four and a half years.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. I've actually read that it takes something like
Speaker 1: four thousand double folds on a bill for it to tear.
Speaker 1: But uh, how's that compared to other bills, which is
Speaker 1: actually just think about that. That's one more reminder of
Speaker 1: just how many people are touching a bill over some
Speaker 1: period of time. You know, it surprised me a little
Speaker 1: bit because I didn't realize that the ten dollar bill
Speaker 1: was the most handled until I saw that fact recently,
Speaker 1: or you know, passed around the most. I would have
Speaker 1: thought it would have been the one, but the one
Speaker 1: last for about a year long or so, about five
Speaker 1: and a half years in circulation. Uh. Well, here's what
Speaker 1: I like about Rembrandt and how gullible he was. Apparently
Speaker 1: his students used to regularly punk him by painting fake
Speaker 1: coins on the floor just to watch him try to
Speaker 1: pick them off. I have to wonder, like how long
Speaker 1: did this work for? I mean, I understand being gullible
Speaker 1: and falling for it once maybe twice, but then you
Speaker 1: start to get in there like why are you still
Speaker 1: falling for this territory? But anyway, that's an amusing fact.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I want to give this round
Speaker 1: to you terrific. And actually I was gonna ask for
Speaker 1: more money facts from our listeners, and we just got
Speaker 1: one yesterday by coincidence from the wonderful Beverly Macintosh, and
Speaker 1: this is what you wrote in In Britain, wealthy people
Speaker 1: were usually buried inside the church under the stone floor.
Speaker 1: As the bodies gassed off, the smell would come up
Speaker 1: through the floor, thus instigating the phrase stinking rich. So
Speaker 1: I love that. I feel like phrase origins are always
Speaker 1: a little murky to to, you know, decipher, but I
Speaker 1: really like that story and just how disgusting it is.
Speaker 1: So that's a great story. Everly check your mail because
Speaker 1: we want a pony express you something fun And for
Speaker 1: the rest of you out there, keep sending in those
Speaker 1: facts from Will Tristan, me and the rest of us
Speaker 1: a part time genius. Thank you so much for listening
Speaker 1: to the