January 16, 2026 • 14 mins
From the treasury joker who snuck his face on some cash, to Theodore Roosevelt’s drastic redesign for the penny, to the very best reason Harriet Tubman belongs on the $20, Will and Mango are diving into dollar bill facts Scrooge McDuck-style.
This episode originally aired on January 31, 2019.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Well, so you may have heard this before, but did
you know there's actually a law that states that only
dead people can appear on us currency.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
You know, I had heard that before. But what's funny
is like why did that become a law? Like why
was that important enough to put into writing?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It really is, it's weird, And I was wondering the
same thing. So I decided to look back at this,
and I'm glad that I did because it's it's kind
of a weird and fun story. But it goes back
to this superintendent of the National Currency Bureau, and it
was a guy named Spencer Clark, and this was back
in eighteen sixty six, so a long time ago, and
he oversaw the creation of what we're called fractional bills.
(00:42):
And I didn't remember a whole lot about these, but
these were bills that were not as big as regular ones.
They were five cent, ten cent, twenty five cent, and
these other denominations. But they were actually made because the
nation was dealing with a coin shortage. This was just
after the Civil War, and so Congress had asked the
Bureau to make a new fractional bill in honor of
(01:02):
William Clark. Now this is the Clark from Lewis and
Clark fame. But the document that was passed along to
Spencer Clark only said Clark. Now you may notice that
he had the same last name. So as a joke,
Spencer Clark decided to interpret that as being about himself,
and so he actually had the five cent bill made
(01:23):
with his own mug on it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
This is not a joke, Spency. That's pretty gutsy. How
did this joke go over well? About as well as
you could imagine. Congress was not at all please.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So Congressman Russell Thayer successfully pushed to have a law
passed that stated that hereafter, no portrait or likeness of
any living person shall be engraved or placed on any bond, securities, notes,
or postal currency of the United States. So that is
why only dead people can appear on money for now.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Because of Frank, I kind of love that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I do too. And you know, that's really just one
of many fun facts about the things that we see
on our money, and that's exactly what we're talking about today.
So let's dive in. Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to
(02:28):
part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always, I'm
joined by my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on
the other side of the soundproof glass showing off one
of the world's weirdest piggy bangs. It's this green pig
and for some reason it says dill piggle on it.
I don't really, I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, I don't get it either, And apparently he isn't
alone in this. Like you can actually buy these on eBay.
They're marketed as the perfect piggybangs for foodies. For some reason.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's another weird one from our friends and producer Tristan McNeil. So, Mango,
are you ready to talk money?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I am. I was thinking about money this week and
I immediately started thinking about Alex p. Keaton from Family Ties.
You over him, of course more than like Scrooge McDuck
or Richie rich or Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, Like,
this is the character I associate with money. And it's
all because of one scene that's somehow like stuck in
my head. It's uh. He was talking about how much
(03:22):
he loved money, and some other character would throw a
coin into a jar and he'd just identify it by
the sounds, so he'd be like nickel Quarter doing an
episode on money made me think of that, plus saying
Kristen's dill pickle bank.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Anyway, I do want to pick up where you left off,
and that's what people we find on our dollar bills
and specifically presidents. To me, it's pretty interesting that the
earliest coins and bills didn't actually have any presidents on them,
and that was partially because of George Washington and who
he was. He made it clear he didn't want his
image on any currency, despite other people pushing for it,
and this actually made sense because the US had obviously
(03:58):
been rebelling against the country that liked putting their heads
of states on their money, and instead the founding fathers
decided to use imagery that they felt symbolized the type
of government that they were aiming to build. So they
used things like an American eagle on one side and
then a Goddess of Liberty on the other, which is
super interesting because you know, while men and mostly white
(04:18):
men are on faces of money right now, like at
one point, women were better represented on some of our
earliest currencies.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So when exactly did president start appearing on our money?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
If I tell you this does account as one of
my facts.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
You know, it's interesting. I'm looking over Tristan and he
is nodding pretty aggressively, and he sets the rules around here,
so I guess it has to but I feel like
it's worth sharing anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So the first president didn't appear on US currency until
nineteen oh nine, and that's one hundred and thirty three
years after the country was created, and right around one
hundred years after Lincoln was born. And that's actually how
it all got started. So Teddy Roosevelt was president at
the time, and he wanted to find a way to
celebrate that anniversary. He'd actually always a close connection to Lincoln.
(05:01):
I don't know if you remember this, but he'd attended
Lincoln's funeral procession as it moved through New York City
when he was a boy. I think he was six
years old at the time. When he became president, he
wore a ring that had strands of Lincoln's hair in it.
So when he actually had the power to do so,
he had a series of commemorative pennies made in Lincoln's honor,
twenty two million of them in fact, and the American
(05:21):
public seemed to like them so much that they just
stuck around and everyone kept making.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Them, and so that's what started at all, and presidents
just started showing up left and right on these coins
or what you know.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Surprisingly, it wasn't the floodgate you might imagine. It was
actually another twenty three years before another president appeared, and
that was Washington on a commemorative quarter in nineteen thirty two,
which of course was also a big hit. So the
mint just kept making them.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Oh that's interesting, all right, Well, I want to talk
for a minute about the ridges on our coins, you know,
the ones along the kind of the edge of the coin.
And I think most of us have heard that they're
there to help prevent counterfeiting, and you know, because it
makes it that much more detailed and hard to reproduce.
But there's actually a slightly different origin to these ridges
that I've never heard about. So in the earliest days,
(06:08):
the US meant coins were actually made of their actual
value in gold or silver or whatever precious metal, and
so that meant that a five dollars coin was actually
made of five dollars in gold. The problem was that
this metal was so valuable that people started just kind
of filing it down on the smooth edges of these coins,
(06:29):
and then they would sell off the shavings, and this
became known as clipping, and so those who were really
good at this could actually shave off just enough where
people wouldn't notice, and then they could still use those coins.
But that became much harder to pull off as the
ridges were put into place, because you know, if somebody
shaved off any coin, it would no longer have those ridges.
(06:50):
And so you know, even though those coins are no
longer made of these same precious metals, some still have
these ridges. And it actually turns out that preventing counterfeiting
isn't the only reason for that.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Is it just tradition then?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I mean, that's definitely one reason, because it was something
that was put in place a long time ago. But
one of the others is that it's actually another helpful
way for the visually impaired to tell what coin they're holding,
because some coins have the ridges and others don't, So
for example, you know, dimes have reeds, pennies don't, so
it you know, it makes a lot of sense when
you think about it, all right, Mengo, So what do
(07:24):
you want to talk about next?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, I do feel like we have to address the
fact that pretty much every bill we get our hands
on is disgusting.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
And oh, so we do. We have to address this.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So there's this one two thousand and two report in
the Southern Medical Journal, and it showed that more than
ninety percent of bills tested have some form of a
harmful pathogen on them. So we're talking about stuff like
staphylococcus and other gross things. And the same study actually
showed that most bills have at least trace amounts of
fecal matter on them, which is also wonderful.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I'm never using anything but a credit card ever.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Again, it feels like it whised to like wash your
hands after using dollar bills. But that's not all it's
it's wild that one study back in the late nineties
found that somewhere around eighty percent of bills in circulation,
eighty percent had trace amounts of cocaine on them.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Oh that is wild. So of like all bills they
have this. That's so disgusting.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It is, but you know, it's definitely more some types
of bills than others. It turns out, if you really
want to avoid a hint of cocaine on your bills.
It's best to use ones and fives over tens and twenties.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Okay, well, that's something I'll keep in mind. Right. Well,
here's something I hadn't paid much attention to. But have
you seen the spiky circle that's on the right side
of Washington on the one dollar bill. Yeah, this is
actually the seal of the Treasury, and it's one part
of the dollar bill that has actually had to change
a little bit over the years because the number of
spikes is intended to match the number of states in
(08:52):
the Union. So they're now, of course fifty there. But
this is definitely not the number you find most represented
on our bills. So have you noticed that there is
a bit of an obsession with the number thirteen? So
the shield and the Treasury seal that I just mentioned
has thirteen stars to represent the thirteen original colonies, but
there are so many more reminders that we have these
(09:14):
thirteen original colonies. There are thirteen stars above the eagles head,
thirteen stripes on the shield in front of the eagle,
thirteen arrows in one of the eagles talons, thirteen leaves
with thirteen olive branches, and something I had not heard before,
and that's the fact that there are thirteen letters in
Eploribus Unham.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That is strange. You know, as soon as you said
the number thirteen, I wasn't thinking thirteen colonies. I was
just thinking, like, how unlucky the number thirteen is. And
it is funny that it's just like blasted all over
our bills. That's crazy. So here's a weird one. We
all know. Andrew Jackson is on the twenty dollars bill.
There's been all this hubbub whether he should be there,
(09:54):
like or whether we can take him off. I know
we've talked about replacing him with Harriet Tubman recently, or
someone just less horrible than he is. But there's this
weird thing about having Jackson on the bill, and also
that people are fighting to keep him there. And it's
that Jackson didn't believe in paper money, Like, yeah, he
(10:15):
actually used his farewell address as president to blast the
idea of paper currency, claiming it had no intrinsic value
and that it would quote render property insecure and wages
unsteady and uncertain. So, you know, having him on the
twenties almost like having Richard Nixon on your soup labels,
which I know is a weird reference, but he didn't
believe in soup and he had a band from the
(10:36):
White House. Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I wasn't expecting you to bring soup into this. But
all right, well we've each got one more fact to share,
but before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Welcome back part time Genius, where we're talking about things
we find on our money. So far, we found cocaine,
we found the number thirteen a lot. But yeah, I know,
during the break you mentioned that you had a fact
about that Latin motto e pluribus unham, which I think
we all learned in school means out of many one.
But that wasn't your last factor, was it.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, no, mago, come on, I got better stuff than that.
But all right, well this is just one more reference
to the original thirteen colonies, as we mentioned. But what
I found funny was that the founding fathers may have
actually borrowed this phrase from a popular magazine. It wasn't
something that they actually came up with themselves. So there
was this British periodical that started back in seventeen thirty
(11:41):
two and it ran for nearly two centuries, and it
was called gentleman's magazine, and it's not as dirty as
it sounds. So anyway, on every issue was this phrase
e pluribus unham. But in this case, this was actually
referring to the fact that so many articles were coming
from so many different sources but all brought together into
(12:02):
one publication. So it kind of makes sense why they
would say this. So as gentlemen's magazines started gaining popularity
in the colonies, it seems very possible that they were
actually inspired by this phrase, and so that may be
where it came from. Anyway. All right, mango, so what
is your last factor of the day.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Well, I like that you spotted plagiarism basically on our
bellor bills. That's pretty amazing. So I think I'm gonna
end with the fact about the two signatures you see
on every print bill here in the US. One is
from the treasurer of the United States and one's from
the Secretary of the Treasury.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Wait, so those aren't the same thing.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
No, So the treasure actually advises the Secretary about various
currency but it's the Secretary that makes the final calls.
And the current Secretary of the Treasury is Steve Munuchian,
He's actually the seventy seventh person to hold this title,
and every one of them has been a man. But
this is the more interesting part. The current treasure is
Jovita Kranza or Jovita Karanza. I might be pronouncing that wrong,
(13:01):
but she's actually the forty fourth person in this position,
and it's actually only been held by women for the
past seven decades, dating back to Harry Truman appointing the
first female in this role.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's so weird. So only men in one role and
only women for the past seven decades. It feels like
just another reminder of how weird people are about gender stuff,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah. In fact, Jennifer Lawless, who's the director of the
Women in Politics and Student at American University, she actually
said this about it quote. Once there's a woman appointed
in a position, it's easy to assume that position is
one that could be filled by a woman. Once an
initial ceiling is broken, once an initial piece of progress
is made, there's a tendency to continue down that path.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
All right, Well, here's to a woman holding the position
of Secretary of Treasury at some point in the not
too distant future. I feel like mego for that little
reminder of just how weird people are. I feel like
I need to give you today's trophy.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Well I will take it because I feel like I
haven't earned a trophy in a little bit. But from
Tristan Gabe Wilhelmy, thank you so much for listening.
Guess what, mango?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Well, so you may have heard this before, but did
you know there's actually a law that states that only
dead people can appear on us currency.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
You know, I had heard that before. But what's funny
is like why did that become a law? Like why
was that important enough to put into writing?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It really is, it's weird, And I was wondering the
same thing. So I decided to look back at this,
and I'm glad that I did because it's it's kind
of a weird and fun story. But it goes back
to this superintendent of the National Currency Bureau, and it
was a guy named Spencer Clark, and this was back
in eighteen sixty six, so a long time ago, and
he oversaw the creation of what we're called fractional bills.
(00:42):
And I didn't remember a whole lot about these, but
these were bills that were not as big as regular ones.
They were five cent, ten cent, twenty five cent, and
these other denominations. But they were actually made because the
nation was dealing with a coin shortage. This was just
after the Civil War, and so Congress had asked the
Bureau to make a new fractional bill in honor of
(01:02):
William Clark. Now this is the Clark from Lewis and
Clark fame. But the document that was passed along to
Spencer Clark only said Clark. Now you may notice that
he had the same last name. So as a joke,
Spencer Clark decided to interpret that as being about himself,
and so he actually had the five cent bill made
(01:23):
with his own mug on it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
This is not a joke, Spency. That's pretty gutsy. How
did this joke go over well? About as well as
you could imagine. Congress was not at all please.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So Congressman Russell Thayer successfully pushed to have a law
passed that stated that hereafter, no portrait or likeness of
any living person shall be engraved or placed on any bond, securities, notes,
or postal currency of the United States. So that is
why only dead people can appear on money for now.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Because of Frank, I kind of love that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I do too. And you know, that's really just one
of many fun facts about the things that we see
on our money, and that's exactly what we're talking about today.
So let's dive in. Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to
(02:28):
part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always, I'm
joined by my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on
the other side of the soundproof glass showing off one
of the world's weirdest piggy bangs. It's this green pig
and for some reason it says dill piggle on it.
I don't really, I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, I don't get it either, And apparently he isn't
alone in this. Like you can actually buy these on eBay.
They're marketed as the perfect piggybangs for foodies. For some reason.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's another weird one from our friends and producer Tristan McNeil. So, Mango,
are you ready to talk money?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I am. I was thinking about money this week and
I immediately started thinking about Alex p. Keaton from Family Ties.
You over him, of course more than like Scrooge McDuck
or Richie rich or Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, Like,
this is the character I associate with money. And it's
all because of one scene that's somehow like stuck in
my head. It's uh. He was talking about how much
(03:22):
he loved money, and some other character would throw a
coin into a jar and he'd just identify it by
the sounds, so he'd be like nickel Quarter doing an
episode on money made me think of that, plus saying
Kristen's dill pickle bank.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Anyway, I do want to pick up where you left off,
and that's what people we find on our dollar bills
and specifically presidents. To me, it's pretty interesting that the
earliest coins and bills didn't actually have any presidents on them,
and that was partially because of George Washington and who
he was. He made it clear he didn't want his
image on any currency, despite other people pushing for it,
and this actually made sense because the US had obviously
(03:58):
been rebelling against the country that liked putting their heads
of states on their money, and instead the founding fathers
decided to use imagery that they felt symbolized the type
of government that they were aiming to build. So they
used things like an American eagle on one side and
then a Goddess of Liberty on the other, which is
super interesting because you know, while men and mostly white
(04:18):
men are on faces of money right now, like at
one point, women were better represented on some of our
earliest currencies.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So when exactly did president start appearing on our money?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
If I tell you this does account as one of
my facts.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
You know, it's interesting. I'm looking over Tristan and he
is nodding pretty aggressively, and he sets the rules around here,
so I guess it has to but I feel like
it's worth sharing anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So the first president didn't appear on US currency until
nineteen oh nine, and that's one hundred and thirty three
years after the country was created, and right around one
hundred years after Lincoln was born. And that's actually how
it all got started. So Teddy Roosevelt was president at
the time, and he wanted to find a way to
celebrate that anniversary. He'd actually always a close connection to Lincoln.
(05:01):
I don't know if you remember this, but he'd attended
Lincoln's funeral procession as it moved through New York City
when he was a boy. I think he was six
years old at the time. When he became president, he
wore a ring that had strands of Lincoln's hair in it.
So when he actually had the power to do so,
he had a series of commemorative pennies made in Lincoln's honor,
twenty two million of them in fact, and the American
(05:21):
public seemed to like them so much that they just
stuck around and everyone kept making.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Them, and so that's what started at all, and presidents
just started showing up left and right on these coins
or what you know.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Surprisingly, it wasn't the floodgate you might imagine. It was
actually another twenty three years before another president appeared, and
that was Washington on a commemorative quarter in nineteen thirty two,
which of course was also a big hit. So the
mint just kept making them.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Oh that's interesting, all right, Well, I want to talk
for a minute about the ridges on our coins, you know,
the ones along the kind of the edge of the coin.
And I think most of us have heard that they're
there to help prevent counterfeiting, and you know, because it
makes it that much more detailed and hard to reproduce.
But there's actually a slightly different origin to these ridges
that I've never heard about. So in the earliest days,
(06:08):
the US meant coins were actually made of their actual
value in gold or silver or whatever precious metal, and
so that meant that a five dollars coin was actually
made of five dollars in gold. The problem was that
this metal was so valuable that people started just kind
of filing it down on the smooth edges of these coins,
(06:29):
and then they would sell off the shavings, and this
became known as clipping, and so those who were really
good at this could actually shave off just enough where
people wouldn't notice, and then they could still use those coins.
But that became much harder to pull off as the
ridges were put into place, because you know, if somebody
shaved off any coin, it would no longer have those ridges.
(06:50):
And so you know, even though those coins are no
longer made of these same precious metals, some still have
these ridges. And it actually turns out that preventing counterfeiting
isn't the only reason for that.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Is it just tradition then?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I mean, that's definitely one reason, because it was something
that was put in place a long time ago. But
one of the others is that it's actually another helpful
way for the visually impaired to tell what coin they're holding,
because some coins have the ridges and others don't, So
for example, you know, dimes have reeds, pennies don't, so
it you know, it makes a lot of sense when
you think about it, all right, Mengo, So what do
(07:24):
you want to talk about next?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, I do feel like we have to address the
fact that pretty much every bill we get our hands
on is disgusting.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
And oh, so we do. We have to address this.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So there's this one two thousand and two report in
the Southern Medical Journal, and it showed that more than
ninety percent of bills tested have some form of a
harmful pathogen on them. So we're talking about stuff like
staphylococcus and other gross things. And the same study actually
showed that most bills have at least trace amounts of
fecal matter on them, which is also wonderful.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I'm never using anything but a credit card ever.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Again, it feels like it whised to like wash your
hands after using dollar bills. But that's not all it's
it's wild that one study back in the late nineties
found that somewhere around eighty percent of bills in circulation,
eighty percent had trace amounts of cocaine on them.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Oh that is wild. So of like all bills they
have this. That's so disgusting.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It is, but you know, it's definitely more some types
of bills than others. It turns out, if you really
want to avoid a hint of cocaine on your bills.
It's best to use ones and fives over tens and twenties.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Okay, well, that's something I'll keep in mind. Right. Well,
here's something I hadn't paid much attention to. But have
you seen the spiky circle that's on the right side
of Washington on the one dollar bill. Yeah, this is
actually the seal of the Treasury, and it's one part
of the dollar bill that has actually had to change
a little bit over the years because the number of
spikes is intended to match the number of states in
(08:52):
the Union. So they're now, of course fifty there. But
this is definitely not the number you find most represented
on our bills. So have you noticed that there is
a bit of an obsession with the number thirteen? So
the shield and the Treasury seal that I just mentioned
has thirteen stars to represent the thirteen original colonies, but
there are so many more reminders that we have these
(09:14):
thirteen original colonies. There are thirteen stars above the eagles head,
thirteen stripes on the shield in front of the eagle,
thirteen arrows in one of the eagles talons, thirteen leaves
with thirteen olive branches, and something I had not heard before,
and that's the fact that there are thirteen letters in
Eploribus Unham.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That is strange. You know, as soon as you said
the number thirteen, I wasn't thinking thirteen colonies. I was
just thinking, like, how unlucky the number thirteen is. And
it is funny that it's just like blasted all over
our bills. That's crazy. So here's a weird one. We
all know. Andrew Jackson is on the twenty dollars bill.
There's been all this hubbub whether he should be there,
(09:54):
like or whether we can take him off. I know
we've talked about replacing him with Harriet Tubman recently, or
someone just less horrible than he is. But there's this
weird thing about having Jackson on the bill, and also
that people are fighting to keep him there. And it's
that Jackson didn't believe in paper money, Like, yeah, he
(10:15):
actually used his farewell address as president to blast the
idea of paper currency, claiming it had no intrinsic value
and that it would quote render property insecure and wages
unsteady and uncertain. So, you know, having him on the
twenties almost like having Richard Nixon on your soup labels,
which I know is a weird reference, but he didn't
believe in soup and he had a band from the
(10:36):
White House. Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I wasn't expecting you to bring soup into this. But
all right, well we've each got one more fact to share,
but before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Welcome back part time Genius, where we're talking about things
we find on our money. So far, we found cocaine,
we found the number thirteen a lot. But yeah, I know,
during the break you mentioned that you had a fact
about that Latin motto e pluribus unham, which I think
we all learned in school means out of many one.
But that wasn't your last factor, was it.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, no, mago, come on, I got better stuff than that.
But all right, well this is just one more reference
to the original thirteen colonies, as we mentioned. But what
I found funny was that the founding fathers may have
actually borrowed this phrase from a popular magazine. It wasn't
something that they actually came up with themselves. So there
was this British periodical that started back in seventeen thirty
(11:41):
two and it ran for nearly two centuries, and it
was called gentleman's magazine, and it's not as dirty as
it sounds. So anyway, on every issue was this phrase
e pluribus unham. But in this case, this was actually
referring to the fact that so many articles were coming
from so many different sources but all brought together into
(12:02):
one publication. So it kind of makes sense why they
would say this. So as gentlemen's magazines started gaining popularity
in the colonies, it seems very possible that they were
actually inspired by this phrase, and so that may be
where it came from. Anyway. All right, mango, so what
is your last factor of the day.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Well, I like that you spotted plagiarism basically on our
bellor bills. That's pretty amazing. So I think I'm gonna
end with the fact about the two signatures you see
on every print bill here in the US. One is
from the treasurer of the United States and one's from
the Secretary of the Treasury.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Wait, so those aren't the same thing.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
No, So the treasure actually advises the Secretary about various
currency but it's the Secretary that makes the final calls.
And the current Secretary of the Treasury is Steve Munuchian,
He's actually the seventy seventh person to hold this title,
and every one of them has been a man. But
this is the more interesting part. The current treasure is
Jovita Kranza or Jovita Karanza. I might be pronouncing that wrong,
(13:01):
but she's actually the forty fourth person in this position,
and it's actually only been held by women for the
past seven decades, dating back to Harry Truman appointing the
first female in this role.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's so weird. So only men in one role and
only women for the past seven decades. It feels like
just another reminder of how weird people are about gender stuff,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah. In fact, Jennifer Lawless, who's the director of the
Women in Politics and Student at American University, she actually
said this about it quote. Once there's a woman appointed
in a position, it's easy to assume that position is
one that could be filled by a woman. Once an
initial ceiling is broken, once an initial piece of progress
is made, there's a tendency to continue down that path.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
All right, Well, here's to a woman holding the position
of Secretary of Treasury at some point in the not
too distant future. I feel like mego for that little
reminder of just how weird people are. I feel like
I need to give you today's trophy.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Well I will take it because I feel like I
haven't earned a trophy in a little bit. But from
Tristan Gabe Wilhelmy, thank you so much for listening.
Part-Time Genius News
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Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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