9 Fascinating Facts about Money

From the strange reason Abe Lincoln started the Secret Service to how to use the phrase Horse Blanket in a sentence (we know you've been wondering!) to the weirdest prank people used to play on Rembrandt, Will and Mango are making it rain with money facts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango, what's that will? So did you know
that when Abe Lincoln created the Secret Service, they actually
weren't meant to be presidential bodyguards. Then why were they created? Well,
their whole reason was to suppress counterfeiters, which is of
course ironic. It was actually the day of his assassination,
or that morning that Lincoln signed the legislation to create

(00:21):
this department. But the Secret Services job was actually to
go after all the fake money that was in circulation,
and in the process of this, they were targeting groups
like the KKK. You know, these guys were perpetrating financial
frauds against the government just left and right. And they'd
also go around training law officials and educating consumers about
things like fake bills. That's pretty crazy. So their focus

(00:43):
actually shifted over time. Yeah, so their duties changed when
McKinley was shot and there was this clear need to
protect the president, so Congress asked them to take that on.
But you know, for decades, the Secret Service was actually
part of the Treasury Department. In fact, at the time
they launched, it's estimated that between one third to one
half of the American money in circulation was counterfeit so

(01:04):
it's obviously one huge problem. Yeah yeah, But anyway, that's
just the first of nine facts we've got today about money.
So let's dive in. Y Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome

(01:36):
to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always
I'm joined by my good friend Manges Ticketer and sitting
behind that soundproof glass, organizing his monopoly money, but organizing
it in a billful that I don't know if you've
ever played monopoly with Tristan. He honestly thinks the only
way to carry around and organize his monopoly money is
with this fancy billful that he has. But anyway, that's

(01:59):
our friend, then produce her Tristan McNeil, So I go.
I know we're talking about strange currencies and and things
that are tangentially related to cash. But when we were
talking earlier about how we were trying to raise money
as kids, I forgot to ask you, did you actually
collect an allowance as a kid? I didn't. It wasn't
how like my family functioned. And I don't know if
that many Indian families and and kids that got allowance

(02:21):
growing up, but I do know that my friends were
always interested in like money, making schemes, which doesn't surprise
me or I can imagine you doing this, but I'm curious, like, what,
what are some examples of your your get ridge schemes?
I mean, there were so many bad ideas that dog
magazine newspaper. I started with one of them. I remember,
like when I was in second grade, my cousins and
I always used to write plays and we'd force our

(02:43):
parents to sit and wash them. But then we'd also
ask for like money for the tickets, and that just
feels like doubly bad for the parents who had to
sit through these awful plays and I had to give
us a quarter to watch or whatever. But you know,
my friend Howard and I had the ski and this
is later, when we were in sixth grade, we saw
that um Reader's Digest used to pay like fifty dollars

(03:05):
or hundred dollars for jokes that they published, and we
had this whole idea that, you know, we're these sophisticated
sixth graders. Our jokes were far too good. But you know,
maybe if we appirst the fourth graders got them to
tell us their best jokes, then we could just turn
around and sell those direaders Digestros and Men's Profit. You know,
we're kind of too wazy to actually enact it. But

(03:26):
you know, when you think about it, it's not like
Reader's Digest was just thinking, you know, we really need
a lot of jokes about underwear and broccoli, and people
submitted will just pay for all of them. So it
really wasn't a well thought out scheme. Yeah, but pretty
funny actually. You know, our our friend Joe did that
episode of Committed where the stories about this woman who
falls in love and marries this homeless gentleman, and it's

(03:49):
a great story, but you know, one of the parts
I found most memorable was that he was always on
the hunt for loose change. I remember them talking about
this in the episode, that when they'd go on the walks,
he'd always be looking down or looking around in different places,
and that's because he was always hunting for money. And
he said he'd find something like eighty euros a week
that way. So I was actually looking up a fact

(04:10):
about this, and Americans actually throw out over sixty million
dollars in coins every single year, which is staggering, Like,
I can't imagine how rich we'd all be if we
went home and searched our couches today, no kidding, Well
that is my second fact this morning. So I think
it's time to give you a turn. So what do
you want to kick things off with? Well, how about
sticking with your counterfeit idea, and let's talk a little

(04:31):
bit about super notes, which are a series of counterfeit
fifty and more often hundred dollar notes. And these are
super impressive. They're printed on this cotton fiber so they
feel like money, and according to Slate, they have just
the right amount of blue and red fibers in it.
These are the features that the government uses for security,
so it ends up being really hard to spot in
the wild. And you know, the government now has ways

(04:54):
of detecting these, but for a while in the nineties
and two thousand's it caused a lot of chaos, and
the reason there in exist stince has been debated. So
some people actually think it goes back to some printing
equipment that the Shah of Iran bought from the US
in the nineties seventies, and somehow that equipment was sold
off to a different country and then duplicated elsewhere and
the government isn't sure where this started. But what we

(05:15):
do know is who profited from the supernotes, and clearly
that's North Korea. Officials actually believed that the rogue nation
has made over twenty five million dollars by printing and
circulating the fake currency. And in fact, just last year
there were these newly printed notes discovered at a South
Korean bank and it's made authorities nervous that the North
Koreans are added again, Well, I'm gonna stick with that theme. Actually,

(05:39):
just read this an article about this that Adobe Photoshop
actually detects if you're trying to edit an image of
currency and it won't let you manipulate it or or
print it, which is, you know, actually pretty smart. And
apparently the website hyper Allergic discovered that when they tried
to scan a Canadian five dollar bill into the system.
This was a few years ago, they did this story.
They even detect the bill where a minister on the

(06:01):
note was altered to look like spock and so it
wouldn't let the author pull the image in And actually
this is true for a lot of international currencies. That's
really cool, Like, I don't think I realized that that
software in particular was capable of deciphering what you're working on.
But I do feel like if you're a dumb criminal,
like photoshop and Xerox machines are the first place you're
gonna go, right, Definitely, definitely. So speaking of international currency,

(06:24):
here's a cute one. So a couple of years ago,
there was this petition online that was circulated to rename
the Australian dollar and people wanted to call it the
dollar we do, which I can is based on a
Simpsons just Simpsons, yeah, and I love it, but you know,
the Australian site nine dot com pointed out that this
actually isn't the first time that the Australian government has

(06:46):
ignored suggestions for renaming the money, even though they got
fifty signatures. So way back in the sixties, Australia stopped
using the pound and they switched to a new currency
and at the time, the government decided to crowdsource ideas
a currency name, and the public came up with a
lot of ideas and here's part of the list. They
wanted to call it the oz, the koala, the emu,

(07:08):
the boomer, the kanga, the rue of course, the dinkum,
which is my personal favorite, and the quid spelled k
w I d for some reason. I guess that's Australian
for Quinn. But the government, of course, in the end
just settled on Australian dollar. I'm glad they did such
a big brainstorm to come up with the Australian dollar.

(07:30):
But all right, well, I gotta really gross one here.
You know, I'm kind of a germophoe. But this was
a two thousand seventeen study and researchers were taking these
one dollar notes and they would swab them, and they
got these from a bank in New York City, and
what they were trying to do was just to see
what was living on these bills. And they found hundreds
of species of micro organisms, which isn't that shocking, But

(07:52):
they found things like E. Coole I, Salmonella bacteria from
people's private which is I don't really know exactly all this,
the clubs all these one time, I don't I don't
know where they're coming from. But anyway, one of the
most abundant was actually the strain that causes acne. Oh
that's so gross. Also, money is so dirty. I think

(08:13):
about this all the time because, uh, you know, I
used to work as a cleric and video store and
and people are always hand you change and I remember
just counting quarters. At the end of it, my hands
would be filthy. It was so gross. Yeah, it's pretty
it's pretty gross. So you know, the research shows that
bank notes that use plastic polymers, and these are like
the ones they use in Canada and also Australia. I

(08:34):
think they end up being much cleaner than the US bills,
which is really interesting. I I do wonder if people
have clearer skin in those countries as a result, if
they're not typing, don't have to conduct a study. Well,
here's the fact that I like, have you ever heard
of brook shares burke shares? So this was a currency
that got started in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and this

(08:56):
was in two thousand and six, and the idea was
that they wanted to have their own regional currency to
encourage people to buy locally. So you can actually take
your federal currency, which is U S dollars and and
then go to one of the five regional banks there
that supports this and exchange for one Berkshire and the
idea is that you'll spend more in one of the
four local shops that accepts it. The idea is to

(09:17):
promote I don't know, like like buying from your local
toy store over Amazon, or supporting like the farmers markets
or whatever, and then foster community in the process. And
I don't know, it's a really fun idea. But another
aspect of it that's interesting is because the money's new, Uh,
you can put whatever you want on it. So some
of the bills have Mohicans on them. Uh, they've got

(09:37):
a W. E. B. Du Bois, Norman Rockwell is on
the bill. I don't know, I haven't seen these, but
but they seem really fun. Huh. All right, Well, I
know we've got a couple more facts to go, but
why don't we take a little break first. You know,

(10:05):
during the break you and I were talking about how
we both have so many one line facts that belong
in this category. So I feel like we should change
the format a little bit here. I hope it doesn't
make listeners too dizzy if we do this, but we're
gonna abandon that commitment to just nine facts and maybe
do a little rapid fire back and forth. What do
you say? Yeah, I'm totally for this, So why don't

(10:26):
I kick it off? Do you know that Teddy Roosevelt
hated putting the phrase in God we trust on money.
He actually thought it was sacrilegious. Well. Ben Franklin, I know,
would agree because the first coins he printed were engraved
with the phrase mind your business. I love the idea
of mind your business, our money. So some of the

(10:46):
first American coins, known as half times a k Nichols,
were made from Georgie and Martha Washington's recycled silverware. Isn't
that amazing? That's pretty cool? Yeah, do you know you
can actually help reduce the national debt by donating money
to the US Department of the Treasury. They actually accept donations,
and every year, believe it or not, a lot of
people actually donate. Do we do We need to like

(11:08):
link to a ghost fund me so that people can
know how to donate to the to the Treasury. I'm
sure people will be racing to give money to the Yeah.
So US bills used to be considerably larger, and people
often referred to them as horse blankets. So I know
you're probably curious about this. If you want to use
in a sentence, you might say something like, do you
have any horse blankets on you? I need to get
some fredos from the vending machine. Yeah, I'm pretty sure

(11:30):
that's that's exactly what you would say. But all right, Well,
the highest denomination of US currency that's ever been produced
is the one hundred thousand dollar gold certificate, and they
made it for a very short time in the nineteen thirties,
you know, around the time of the Great Depression. Seems
like a great time to make a one hundred thousand
dollar gold certificate. So Larry Summers, who used to be

(11:51):
the Treasury Secretary, I'm sure you remember him from his
work at Harvard, He's pushed this idea that the government
should discontinue the hundred dollar bill because it makes agal
transactions so much easier. So there's people pushing for removing
the penny from circulation and the bill. That's interesting, all right, Well,
apparently the bill with the shortest lifespan of any denomination

(12:12):
is the ten dollar bill, and that's because it gets
handled the most. So a typical ten dollar bill will
only stay in circulation for about four and a half years.
That's crazy. I've actually read that it takes something like
four thousand double folds on a bill for it to tear.
But uh, how's that compared to other bills, which is
actually just think about that. That's one more reminder of
just how many people are touching a bill over some

(12:34):
period of time. You know, it surprised me a little
bit because I didn't realize that the ten dollar bill
was the most handled until I saw that fact recently,
or you know, passed around the most. I would have
thought it would have been the one, but the one
last for about a year long or so, about five
and a half years in circulation. Uh. Well, here's what
I like about Rembrandt and how gullible he was. Apparently

(12:54):
his students used to regularly punk him by painting fake
coins on the floor just to watch him try to
pick them off. I have to wonder, like how long
did this work for? I mean, I understand being gullible
and falling for it once maybe twice, but then you
start to get in there like why are you still
falling for this territory? But anyway, that's an amusing fact.
So I feel like I want to give this round

(13:16):
to you terrific. And actually I was gonna ask for
more money facts from our listeners, and we just got
one yesterday by coincidence from the wonderful Beverly Macintosh, and
this is what you wrote in In Britain, wealthy people
were usually buried inside the church under the stone floor.
As the bodies gassed off, the smell would come up
through the floor, thus instigating the phrase stinking rich. So

(13:38):
I love that. I feel like phrase origins are always
a little murky to to, you know, decipher, but I
really like that story and just how disgusting it is.
So that's a great story. Everly check your mail because
we want a pony express you something fun And for
the rest of you out there, keep sending in those
facts from Will Tristan, me and the rest of us
a part time genius. Thank you so much for listening

(14:08):
to the