Speaker 1: Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: Well, so you may have heard this before, but did
Speaker 1: you know there's actually a law that states that only
Speaker 1: dead people can appear on us currency.
Speaker 2: You know, I had heard that before. But what's funny
Speaker 2: is like why did that become a law? Like why
Speaker 2: was that important enough to put into writing?
Speaker 1: It really is, it's weird, And I was wondering the
Speaker 1: same thing. So I decided to look back at this,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that I did because it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a weird and fun story. But it goes back
Speaker 1: to this superintendent of the National Currency Bureau, and it
Speaker 1: was a guy named Spencer Clark, and this was back
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty six, so a long time ago, and
Speaker 1: he oversaw the creation of what we're called fractional bills.
Speaker 1: And I didn't remember a whole lot about these, but
Speaker 1: these were bills that were not as big as regular ones.
Speaker 1: They were five cent, ten cent, twenty five cent, and
Speaker 1: these other denominations. But they were actually made because the
Speaker 1: nation was dealing with a coin shortage. This was just
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, and so Congress had asked the
Speaker 1: Bureau to make a new fractional bill in honor of
Speaker 1: William Clark. Now this is the Clark from Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark fame. But the document that was passed along to
Speaker 1: Spencer Clark only said Clark. Now you may notice that
Speaker 1: he had the same last name. So as a joke,
Speaker 1: Spencer Clark decided to interpret that as being about himself,
Speaker 1: and so he actually had the five cent bill made
Speaker 1: with his own mug on it.
Speaker 2: This is not a joke, Spency. That's pretty gutsy. How
Speaker 2: did this joke go over well? About as well as
Speaker 2: you could imagine. Congress was not at all please.
Speaker 1: So Congressman Russell Thayer successfully pushed to have a law
Speaker 1: passed that stated that hereafter, no portrait or likeness of
Speaker 1: any living person shall be engraved or placed on any bond, securities, notes,
Speaker 1: or postal currency of the United States. So that is
Speaker 1: why only dead people can appear on money for now.
Speaker 2: Because of Frank, I kind of love that.
Speaker 1: I do too. And you know, that's really just one
Speaker 1: of many fun facts about the things that we see
Speaker 1: on our money, and that's exactly what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: So let's dive in. Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 1: part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always, I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the soundproof glass showing off one
Speaker 1: of the world's weirdest piggy bangs. It's this green pig
Speaker 1: and for some reason it says dill piggle on it.
Speaker 1: I don't really, I don't get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't get it either, And apparently he isn't
Speaker 2: alone in this. Like you can actually buy these on eBay.
Speaker 2: They're marketed as the perfect piggybangs for foodies. For some reason.
Speaker 1: That's another weird one from our friends and producer Tristan McNeil. So, Mango,
Speaker 1: are you ready to talk money?
Speaker 2: I am. I was thinking about money this week and
Speaker 2: I immediately started thinking about Alex p. Keaton from Family Ties.
Speaker 2: You over him, of course more than like Scrooge McDuck
Speaker 2: or Richie rich or Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, Like,
Speaker 2: this is the character I associate with money. And it's
Speaker 2: all because of one scene that's somehow like stuck in
Speaker 2: my head. It's uh. He was talking about how much
Speaker 2: he loved money, and some other character would throw a
Speaker 2: coin into a jar and he'd just identify it by
Speaker 2: the sounds, so he'd be like nickel Quarter doing an
Speaker 2: episode on money made me think of that, plus saying
Speaker 2: Kristen's dill pickle bank.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I do want to pick up where you left off,
Speaker 2: and that's what people we find on our dollar bills
Speaker 2: and specifically presidents. To me, it's pretty interesting that the
Speaker 2: earliest coins and bills didn't actually have any presidents on them,
Speaker 2: and that was partially because of George Washington and who
Speaker 2: he was. He made it clear he didn't want his
Speaker 2: image on any currency, despite other people pushing for it,
Speaker 2: and this actually made sense because the US had obviously
Speaker 2: been rebelling against the country that liked putting their heads
Speaker 2: of states on their money, and instead the founding fathers
Speaker 2: decided to use imagery that they felt symbolized the type
Speaker 2: of government that they were aiming to build. So they
Speaker 2: used things like an American eagle on one side and
Speaker 2: then a Goddess of Liberty on the other, which is
Speaker 2: super interesting because you know, while men and mostly white
Speaker 2: men are on faces of money right now, like at
Speaker 2: one point, women were better represented on some of our
Speaker 2: earliest currencies.
Speaker 1: So when exactly did president start appearing on our money?
Speaker 2: If I tell you this does account as one of
Speaker 2: my facts.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. I'm looking over Tristan and he
Speaker 1: is nodding pretty aggressively, and he sets the rules around here,
Speaker 1: so I guess it has to but I feel like
Speaker 1: it's worth sharing anyway.
Speaker 2: So the first president didn't appear on US currency until
Speaker 2: nineteen oh nine, and that's one hundred and thirty three
Speaker 2: years after the country was created, and right around one
Speaker 2: hundred years after Lincoln was born. And that's actually how
Speaker 2: it all got started. So Teddy Roosevelt was president at
Speaker 2: the time, and he wanted to find a way to
Speaker 2: celebrate that anniversary. He'd actually always a close connection to Lincoln.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember this, but he'd attended
Speaker 2: Lincoln's funeral procession as it moved through New York City
Speaker 2: when he was a boy. I think he was six
Speaker 2: years old at the time. When he became president, he
Speaker 2: wore a ring that had strands of Lincoln's hair in it.
Speaker 2: So when he actually had the power to do so,
Speaker 2: he had a series of commemorative pennies made in Lincoln's honor,
Speaker 2: twenty two million of them in fact, and the American
Speaker 2: public seemed to like them so much that they just
Speaker 2: stuck around and everyone kept making.
Speaker 1: Them, and so that's what started at all, and presidents
Speaker 1: just started showing up left and right on these coins
Speaker 1: or what you know.
Speaker 2: Surprisingly, it wasn't the floodgate you might imagine. It was
Speaker 2: actually another twenty three years before another president appeared, and
Speaker 2: that was Washington on a commemorative quarter in nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 2: which of course was also a big hit. So the
Speaker 2: mint just kept making them.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting, all right, Well, I want to talk
Speaker 1: for a minute about the ridges on our coins, you know,
Speaker 1: the ones along the kind of the edge of the coin.
Speaker 1: And I think most of us have heard that they're
Speaker 1: there to help prevent counterfeiting, and you know, because it
Speaker 1: makes it that much more detailed and hard to reproduce.
Speaker 1: But there's actually a slightly different origin to these ridges
Speaker 1: that I've never heard about. So in the earliest days,
Speaker 1: the US meant coins were actually made of their actual
Speaker 1: value in gold or silver or whatever precious metal, and
Speaker 1: so that meant that a five dollars coin was actually
Speaker 1: made of five dollars in gold. The problem was that
Speaker 1: this metal was so valuable that people started just kind
Speaker 1: of filing it down on the smooth edges of these coins,
Speaker 1: and then they would sell off the shavings, and this
Speaker 1: became known as clipping, and so those who were really
Speaker 1: good at this could actually shave off just enough where
Speaker 1: people wouldn't notice, and then they could still use those coins.
Speaker 1: But that became much harder to pull off as the
Speaker 1: ridges were put into place, because you know, if somebody
Speaker 1: shaved off any coin, it would no longer have those ridges.
Speaker 1: And so you know, even though those coins are no
Speaker 1: longer made of these same precious metals, some still have
Speaker 1: these ridges. And it actually turns out that preventing counterfeiting
Speaker 1: isn't the only reason for that.
Speaker 2: Is it just tradition then?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's definitely one reason, because it was something
Speaker 1: that was put in place a long time ago. But
Speaker 1: one of the others is that it's actually another helpful
Speaker 1: way for the visually impaired to tell what coin they're holding,
Speaker 1: because some coins have the ridges and others don't, So
Speaker 1: for example, you know, dimes have reeds, pennies don't, so
Speaker 1: it you know, it makes a lot of sense when
Speaker 1: you think about it, all right, Mengo, So what do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about next?
Speaker 2: Well, I do feel like we have to address the
Speaker 2: fact that pretty much every bill we get our hands
Speaker 2: on is disgusting.
Speaker 1: And oh, so we do. We have to address this.
Speaker 2: So there's this one two thousand and two report in
Speaker 2: the Southern Medical Journal, and it showed that more than
Speaker 2: ninety percent of bills tested have some form of a
Speaker 2: harmful pathogen on them. So we're talking about stuff like
Speaker 2: staphylococcus and other gross things. And the same study actually
Speaker 2: showed that most bills have at least trace amounts of
Speaker 2: fecal matter on them, which is also wonderful.
Speaker 1: I'm never using anything but a credit card ever.
Speaker 2: Again, it feels like it whised to like wash your
Speaker 2: hands after using dollar bills. But that's not all it's
Speaker 2: it's wild that one study back in the late nineties
Speaker 2: found that somewhere around eighty percent of bills in circulation,
Speaker 2: eighty percent had trace amounts of cocaine on them.
Speaker 1: Oh that is wild. So of like all bills they
Speaker 1: have this. That's so disgusting.
Speaker 2: It is, but you know, it's definitely more some types
Speaker 2: of bills than others. It turns out, if you really
Speaker 2: want to avoid a hint of cocaine on your bills.
Speaker 2: It's best to use ones and fives over tens and twenties.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that's something I'll keep in mind. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: here's something I hadn't paid much attention to. But have
Speaker 1: you seen the spiky circle that's on the right side
Speaker 1: of Washington on the one dollar bill. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: actually the seal of the Treasury, and it's one part
Speaker 1: of the dollar bill that has actually had to change
Speaker 1: a little bit over the years because the number of
Speaker 1: spikes is intended to match the number of states in
Speaker 1: the Union. So they're now, of course fifty there. But
Speaker 1: this is definitely not the number you find most represented
Speaker 1: on our bills. So have you noticed that there is
Speaker 1: a bit of an obsession with the number thirteen? So
Speaker 1: the shield and the Treasury seal that I just mentioned
Speaker 1: has thirteen stars to represent the thirteen original colonies, but
Speaker 1: there are so many more reminders that we have these
Speaker 1: thirteen original colonies. There are thirteen stars above the eagles head,
Speaker 1: thirteen stripes on the shield in front of the eagle,
Speaker 1: thirteen arrows in one of the eagles talons, thirteen leaves
Speaker 1: with thirteen olive branches, and something I had not heard before,
Speaker 1: and that's the fact that there are thirteen letters in
Speaker 1: Eploribus Unham.
Speaker 2: That is strange. You know, as soon as you said
Speaker 2: the number thirteen, I wasn't thinking thirteen colonies. I was
Speaker 2: just thinking, like, how unlucky the number thirteen is. And
Speaker 2: it is funny that it's just like blasted all over
Speaker 2: our bills. That's crazy. So here's a weird one. We
Speaker 2: all know. Andrew Jackson is on the twenty dollars bill.
Speaker 2: There's been all this hubbub whether he should be there,
Speaker 2: like or whether we can take him off. I know
Speaker 2: we've talked about replacing him with Harriet Tubman recently, or
Speaker 2: someone just less horrible than he is. But there's this
Speaker 2: weird thing about having Jackson on the bill, and also
Speaker 2: that people are fighting to keep him there. And it's
Speaker 2: that Jackson didn't believe in paper money, Like, yeah, he
Speaker 2: actually used his farewell address as president to blast the
Speaker 2: idea of paper currency, claiming it had no intrinsic value
Speaker 2: and that it would quote render property insecure and wages
Speaker 2: unsteady and uncertain. So, you know, having him on the
Speaker 2: twenties almost like having Richard Nixon on your soup labels,
Speaker 2: which I know is a weird reference, but he didn't
Speaker 2: believe in soup and he had a band from the
Speaker 2: White House. Wow.
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting you to bring soup into this. But
Speaker 1: all right, well we've each got one more fact to share,
Speaker 1: but before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2: Welcome back part time Genius, where we're talking about things
Speaker 2: we find on our money. So far, we found cocaine,
Speaker 2: we found the number thirteen a lot. But yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: during the break you mentioned that you had a fact
Speaker 2: about that Latin motto e pluribus unham, which I think
Speaker 2: we all learned in school means out of many one.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't your last factor, was it.
Speaker 1: Well, no, mago, come on, I got better stuff than that.
Speaker 1: But all right, well this is just one more reference
Speaker 1: to the original thirteen colonies, as we mentioned. But what
Speaker 1: I found funny was that the founding fathers may have
Speaker 1: actually borrowed this phrase from a popular magazine. It wasn't
Speaker 1: something that they actually came up with themselves. So there
Speaker 1: was this British periodical that started back in seventeen thirty
Speaker 1: two and it ran for nearly two centuries, and it
Speaker 1: was called gentleman's magazine, and it's not as dirty as
Speaker 1: it sounds. So anyway, on every issue was this phrase
Speaker 1: e pluribus unham. But in this case, this was actually
Speaker 1: referring to the fact that so many articles were coming
Speaker 1: from so many different sources but all brought together into
Speaker 1: one publication. So it kind of makes sense why they
Speaker 1: would say this. So as gentlemen's magazines started gaining popularity
Speaker 1: in the colonies, it seems very possible that they were
Speaker 1: actually inspired by this phrase, and so that may be
Speaker 1: where it came from. Anyway. All right, mango, so what
Speaker 1: is your last factor of the day.
Speaker 2: Well, I like that you spotted plagiarism basically on our
Speaker 2: bellor bills. That's pretty amazing. So I think I'm gonna
Speaker 2: end with the fact about the two signatures you see
Speaker 2: on every print bill here in the US. One is
Speaker 2: from the treasurer of the United States and one's from
Speaker 2: the Secretary of the Treasury.
Speaker 1: Wait, so those aren't the same thing.
Speaker 2: No, So the treasure actually advises the Secretary about various
Speaker 2: currency but it's the Secretary that makes the final calls.
Speaker 2: And the current Secretary of the Treasury is Steve Munuchian,
Speaker 2: He's actually the seventy seventh person to hold this title,
Speaker 2: and every one of them has been a man. But
Speaker 2: this is the more interesting part. The current treasure is
Speaker 2: Jovita Kranza or Jovita Karanza. I might be pronouncing that wrong,
Speaker 2: but she's actually the forty fourth person in this position,
Speaker 2: and it's actually only been held by women for the
Speaker 2: past seven decades, dating back to Harry Truman appointing the
Speaker 2: first female in this role.
Speaker 1: That's so weird. So only men in one role and
Speaker 1: only women for the past seven decades. It feels like
Speaker 1: just another reminder of how weird people are about gender stuff,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, Jennifer Lawless, who's the director of the
Speaker 2: Women in Politics and Student at American University, she actually
Speaker 2: said this about it quote. Once there's a woman appointed
Speaker 2: in a position, it's easy to assume that position is
Speaker 2: one that could be filled by a woman. Once an
Speaker 2: initial ceiling is broken, once an initial piece of progress
Speaker 2: is made, there's a tendency to continue down that path.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's to a woman holding the position
Speaker 1: of Secretary of Treasury at some point in the not
Speaker 1: too distant future. I feel like mego for that little
Speaker 1: reminder of just how weird people are. I feel like
Speaker 1: I need to give you today's trophy.
Speaker 2: Well I will take it because I feel like I
Speaker 2: haven't earned a trophy in a little bit. But from
Speaker 2: Tristan Gabe Wilhelmy, thank you so much for listening.