0:01

The Dollar Sign. Known for being

0:03

money. Famous for being a symbol

0:05

of money. Nobody thinks much about

0:07

it, so let's have some fun.

0:10

Let's find out why The Dollar

0:12

Sign is secretly incredibly

0:15

fascinating. Hey

0:33

there, folks. Welcome to a whole new

0:35

podcast episode of Podcasts All About Why

0:38

Being Alive is More Interesting Than People

0:40

Think It Is. My name is Alex

0:42

Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm

0:44

joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie,

0:46

hello. Yeah, that's me. Yeah,

0:49

it is you. And we are enjoying

0:51

being in this like the second week

0:53

of the two of the maximum fun drive.

0:55

Pretty well, pretty neat. And we

0:57

have a wonderful guest joining us from a

1:00

wonderful fellow maximum fun show called Oh No

1:02

Ross and Carrie. Folks, please

1:04

welcome Ross Blotcher. Ross, hey, hi. Hello,

1:06

so good to be here. I

1:09

also celebrate the holiday of maximum fun drive.

1:12

We all have trees in our background. What

1:14

are the things? What are the items? The

1:17

maximum fun shrub. The

1:20

shrub. The shrub. I've been

1:22

growing mine all year. It's sprouted berries. It

1:24

looks great. The traditional berries.

1:28

Ross does not know that our previous week's

1:30

episode was about pistachios, which it turns out

1:32

are tree fruit. So that's very in my

1:34

head now that somehow we grow pistachios for

1:36

the drive. Great. Okay. Wow, that's

1:38

cool. I got to say I love

1:41

the concept of your show. And if you ever talk

1:43

about the number pi, I'm totally in

1:47

if you need a guest expert. Why

1:49

pi? I've got pi on

1:51

the brain because it's almost pi day,

1:53

three, one, four every year, March 14th.

1:56

And I'm a pi memorizer. I'm

1:58

number 21. in the

2:01

US for memorizing digits of pi.

2:04

My record is 3,200. So

2:07

picture like a stack of 200

2:09

credit cards and I've memorized that many numbers of

2:11

pi. I'm just

2:13

going to picture that the rest of the week, month,

2:15

year. This is very exciting. Wow.

2:18

Yeah. Well, sometimes when

2:20

I'm sent a code on

2:23

a security code, I don't have to

2:25

look at the phone every two seconds

2:27

to put it in. So,

2:30

you know, take that. Ross,

2:34

that's amazing. We should do that.

2:37

Incredible. We, interestingly, have done a

2:39

couple of episodes about symbols

2:41

in the sense that we've done an episode about the

2:44

letter X and an episode about the letter Y. This

2:46

was suggested by Glimfeather on the Discord,

2:49

one of many listeners suggested and picked

2:51

topics. And we always start by asking

2:53

our relationship to the topic or opinion

2:55

of it. So Ross, how do you

2:57

feel about the dollar sign? I

3:00

mean, I guess I'm for it. You

3:03

know, when you told me about being on

3:05

the show, you said, do you like and then a bunch

3:07

of dollar signs? I guess I

3:09

misunderstood the nature of this relationship. Thanks

3:12

for all your info, by the way. I really appreciate it.

3:14

Yeah. Yeah. Wait,

3:16

what are you doing with my bank account numbers? I

3:19

don't know. I do think back to like

3:22

Scrooge McDuck and I feel like a proper

3:24

dollar sign has the like the two vertical

3:27

lines through it, like almost like

3:29

a double breasted suit or something.

3:31

That's a dignified dollar sign. But

3:34

I think I've realized sometimes it gets a little too crowded

3:36

and I've got to use the single bar. Other

3:39

than that, I don't know. I have like a big

3:41

spreadsheet where I track all of my expenses that has

3:43

a lot of dollar signs. That's

3:45

my connection to the dollar sign. Yeah.

3:49

Katie, how about you? It's weird when I like

3:51

see money or someone proposes

3:53

a very lucrative plan

3:55

to me. Dollar

3:57

signs appear in my pupils. And

4:00

it's very painful and I've been to an

4:02

optometrist about it and she's like, oh, yes

4:05

Uh, it's a type of a cataract In

4:08

the form of dollar signs. It's very bad

4:10

bad for your vision. No, it's uh, yeah,

4:12

you know, I uh, I

4:15

like money in that I sorry

4:17

cash erect just thought of it cash. Oh

4:20

It was right there. It was

4:22

right there. Thank you. Alex.

4:25

Um, I like the bad guys Bad

4:28

guys always let you know what they're up to because

4:30

yeah, they put the dollar sign on the sack Yeah,

4:32

it's got the it's the money sack that they

4:34

have at banks where it's just a burlap sack

4:36

with the dollar sign on it And then you

4:39

put the money in it and that is how

4:41

you get money out of banks And the first

4:43

time I ever went to a bank and they

4:45

gave me something called a cashier's check. I was

4:47

like, what is this? Where's my sack?

4:50

I want a sack. Where's give me my sack Yeah, I

4:53

want a sack Cartoons

4:55

lied to us so much about so many

4:57

dollar signs Every dollar sign in

4:59

a cartoon is fake and false and not in

5:02

real life. That's wild Yeah,

5:04

no no vaults filled with gold I'm

5:08

I was shocked how Vague

5:11

the story of this topic is that we

5:13

are going to talk about something where there

5:15

is a strong Theory about where it came

5:17

from and it's not totally for sure Oh

5:20

shrouded in mystery And

5:22

we we have a whole set of stats

5:24

and numbers this week because especially money is

5:26

numerical But before that we're going

5:28

to start with a mega takeaway about the origins

5:31

of this symbol Which is

5:33

mega takeaway number one The

5:38

dollar sign is probably a

5:40

spanish currency symbol scribbled

5:42

by an irish merchant in spanish

5:44

new orleans Hmm

5:48

that involved a lot of locations. Oh my

5:51

god Let's break

5:53

it down. Alex. I'll say it again because it was

5:55

long yet The dollar sign

5:57

is probably a spanish currency symbol scribbled

6:00

by an Irish merchant in Spanish

6:02

New Orleans. Oh,

6:04

I liked that the New World was involved in this. Okay,

6:07

so where is Spanish New Orleans? Is

6:10

it in New Orleans or in Spain?

6:13

It was a time when the city of

6:15

New Orleans was a Spanish colony and controlled

6:17

by Spain. So after the

6:20

French founded it and before the

6:22

United States rolled in. All right.

6:24

Then where did the Irishman

6:27

come into play? There

6:30

is an American Revolutionary War patriot

6:32

named Oliver Pollack who

6:34

basically no one's ever heard of

6:36

even though he bankrolled a significant

6:38

amount of rebel American military operations

6:42

just because he likes

6:44

the United States and was also Irish. So he

6:46

didn't like the British. He was

6:48

like anything to make the British mad. Rebel

6:51

you mean Revolutionary War. We're not talking Civil

6:53

War here. Yeah, Revolutionary

6:55

War. Yeah. Okay, so

6:57

this is like the time that you've placed us

6:59

in. Is there a United

7:01

States at this point that they just

7:03

haven't expanded far enough to include the

7:05

Louisiana Purchase? That's right.

7:08

Like late 1700s? Okay. Exactly.

7:10

Late 1700s. This was

7:13

probably starting to be drawn immediately

7:15

before the Declaration of American Independence.

7:17

And then the guy who really

7:19

got it going was getting

7:21

it going in letters about the money

7:23

he was donating to the American Revolution.

7:26

Okay. Oh, was it

7:28

sacks of money? Were these

7:30

sacks, Alex? It

7:33

was huge amounts of silver coins and

7:35

they might have been in sacks. They

7:37

probably didn't have the robber symbol of

7:39

it, but yeah, sure. Yeah, I like

7:41

sacks. I'm giving you a

7:43

lot of foreign currency and I'm going

7:45

to miswrite the symbol to represent that

7:47

currency and we got a new thing.

7:50

Yeah, pretty much. I think they wrote all of

7:53

that on the sack and that's why they replaced

7:55

it with a dollar sign. That

7:57

was a little verbose. It was a

7:59

mouthful. A lot to fit on a

8:01

sack. Dearest General George

8:04

Washington, this is hard. It

8:06

didn't spell out as a

8:09

clean acronym. Nah. I

8:11

had to write, especially as a quill. Yeah,

8:15

and to be as accurate as possible

8:17

about this, this whole story we're going

8:20

to unspool is a likely

8:22

theory. It is

8:24

not totally agreed upon that this is where

8:26

it came from. It's just firing

8:28

away the strongest theory and it makes sense. And

8:32

so later in the show we'll talk about a couple other theories

8:34

too. You would think we would just know,

8:36

like, oh, dollar signs came from this, but no. It's

8:39

kind of murky. Yeah. Well,

8:41

I have learned that it was a

8:44

U and an S that were overlapped.

8:46

That's what I learned. Yeah. And

8:49

it was like a U over the S and

8:51

the two bars that we had were part

8:53

of the U, but we got

8:57

rid of the little like sort

8:59

of swoopy bit because who needs that?

9:02

And then that got further simplified to the one

9:04

bar. That's how I learned it. What

9:09

wasn't that floated by Ayn Rand? Like

9:11

that was some, the other theory that

9:13

she created. One of many things that

9:15

Ayn Rand got wrong. Send

9:18

all your angry emails to Alex, not

9:21

me. Yeah,

9:23

we will explore her later because

9:26

it turns out the

9:28

U.S. theory is a less likely

9:30

theory. The likeliest theory

9:32

is that this is a capital

9:34

P and a small S being put

9:36

together because this was

9:39

notation for a currency

9:41

that's had a few names, but one of them was pesos.

9:45

And it was the primary silver

9:47

coin of the Spanish colonization of

9:49

the Americas. Hmm. Fascinating.

9:53

You know, you say Ayn Rand is always

9:56

wrong, but she did say the universe was

9:58

going to end when she died. And, you know.

10:02

Yeah. Good thing she's still alive, right? She's... Right.

10:06

Oh, man. I'm glad she just kept on ticking. I

10:08

just love that there are theories floating out here,

10:10

and I'm trying to figure out in my mind

10:12

who these theoreticians are floating currency theories. Yeah.

10:16

That's who our key source in

10:18

this mega takeaway is archives technician

10:20

Jackie Kilby of the U.S. National

10:22

Archives. But she's far from the

10:24

only person with this Oliver Pollock

10:27

Spanish currency Irish guy theory. Other

10:30

sources are the U.S. National Park Service,

10:32

Atlas Obscura, and BBC 99% Invisible, an

10:35

article on their website.

10:38

There's a lot of sources converging around

10:40

this. But the

10:42

gist is that this starts with

10:44

the Spanish invasion and colonization of North

10:46

and South America. And

10:49

especially in the early 1500s, they invaded

10:51

and took over a bunch of places

10:53

and found huge deposits of silver. And

10:56

then they started minting as many silver coins

10:58

as they possibly could. Oh,

11:01

that they were stealing from native

11:03

peoples or... Yeah, yeah.

11:05

Okay. I'm along for the ride. I can't wait

11:07

to hear. Like, if any of

11:09

the metal was above ground, they took it

11:11

and then they mined, especially in modern day

11:13

Bolivia, just as much silver as possible. Oh,

11:16

my goodness. Okay. Can we

11:18

clip that of Ross saying he's along

11:21

for the ride for stealing? I

11:26

feel like I was taken out of context. This

11:29

is a gotcha show. I

11:31

joked about stealing Ross's bank information. Why

11:34

don't I also go after his reputation?

11:36

Right? Just full villain. Great.

11:39

Perfect. Yeah. In

11:41

bags with dollar signs. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't

11:44

Argentina named for the root word for

11:46

silver, like Argentium or something like that?

11:48

It is. Yeah. Yeah.

11:52

Yeah. This is all like... There

11:54

was gold that the Spanish found, but they found

11:56

so much silver. There's silver in

11:59

them thar hills. Like,

12:02

literally, kind of Andes, yeah, for

12:04

sure. Yeah. Yeah,

12:07

and then Spanish invaders, they, their

12:09

monarchy says, were minting a new

12:11

denomination of silver coin. And

12:14

they made so much of it in such a

12:16

regular way and such a pure value of metal

12:18

way. It pretty much became

12:20

a global currency for a couple hundred years.

12:23

In the early 1500s, all the way to the late 1700s, early 1800s, one Spanish

12:25

coin is not the

12:31

official currency everywhere. But if you give

12:33

it out most places, especially in Europe

12:35

and the Americas, people say, that's money to

12:38

me. That's good. Right.

12:40

Hmm. Like Republic credits. Yeah.

12:43

Or like the US dollar today. Most

12:46

countries are like, yeah, okay, that's money. Like,

12:49

that makes sense. That's a better analogy. Sure.

12:51

Yeah. It's

12:54

got the longevity of something like Dogecoin.

12:57

Yeah. I

13:00

feel like by moving us away from Star Wars,

13:02

I moved us toward Dogecoin. That was a huge

13:04

mistake. I take it back. Yeah.

13:08

And then this coin, it had a

13:10

bunch of names, partly because people just

13:12

like doing nicknames for money. But it

13:15

was called the silver real because real

13:17

is the Spanish word for royal. If

13:19

people know soccer, like real Madrid, it's

13:21

like that. Or

13:24

El Camino Real in California.

13:28

There's this long road that goes through California

13:30

called El Camino Real, which is where the

13:34

father Junipero, Sarah, would travel

13:37

and set up all the missions along the coast. I

13:40

lived near, I grew up near El

13:43

Camino Real. I never saw father Junipero,

13:45

whatever. What's his name? Not

13:47

a single one time. Rude.

13:50

Yeah. He like Ayn Rand lives forever. Yeah.

13:53

Didn't see a single Franciscan monk.

13:58

Anyways, it was the Royal Road. said real that

14:00

got me excited oh yeah

14:03

no I'd like that's it's such a common

14:05

word in Spanish influence in the world that

14:07

people knew what it was yeah and they

14:09

also called it the silver peso because peso

14:11

can be a word just meaning weights and

14:14

this coin was a specific weight of silver

14:16

and so that was another common name this

14:19

coin is also well known in what

14:21

I think of as pirate lingo they called it

14:23

a piece of eight oh

14:27

okay now that I've heard it

14:29

before yeah usually parrots are

14:31

squawking it yeah

14:34

what yeah why is it it's a piece of

14:36

eight what is always my question

14:38

eight what yeah they

14:41

would also call this like the eight real

14:43

coin because the common way

14:45

of making change out of this coin

14:47

was to slice it into eight pieces

14:51

cut it up like they would chop it up

14:53

yeah like a pizza yes

14:56

like pizza slice shapes yeah really

14:58

like equal equal ace and then then

15:01

it's like pointy you know but these

15:03

like yeah if pieces of a coin

15:05

were super common currency too like if

15:07

somebody gave you that you'd be like

15:10

great this is money for sure awesome

15:13

Wow people just carry around

15:15

like little coin pizza cutters yeah

15:18

I think just there were a lot more blades

15:20

at the time they were like great everyone had

15:22

a blade yeah I got a full one for

15:24

you and here's two slivers we're good now right

15:27

we're good yeah I've a

15:29

measure of guys like cutting their hands on

15:31

it yeah it seems bad but it's what

15:33

it was imagine like trying to

15:35

make change with current money

15:37

and you get out of parrots is it like well

15:39

let me cut this dollar in half yeah

15:44

and one thing

15:46

I'm excited to link this week is

15:48

it's from the National Park Service it's

15:50

their setup at a place called Fort

15:52

Stanwicks which is in the northern

15:55

part of modern New York State and

15:57

they've found a lot of silver ray

15:59

options piece of eight coins there

16:01

because these were all over North and

16:03

South America. And not just

16:06

the coins, but the little pizza slices. It was

16:08

like, yeah, that's real money. That's better than most

16:10

of the currency in this area. Oh,

16:12

fun. Yeah, you're on a dig site

16:14

and all of a sudden you find these little like

16:17

partial coins everywhere. Interesting. Yeah,

16:20

apparently it happens all over these two

16:22

continents and in Europe too. And

16:25

so yeah, there had been other

16:27

currencies that were prominent in the world, but

16:29

this was pretty much

16:31

the most popular world currency for like

16:33

300 years, the Spanish coin. Wow.

16:37

And then one other name for it

16:39

that came from outside Spain is the

16:41

Spanish dollar. And it

16:43

turns out the word dollar, not a

16:45

Spanish word, it comes from various

16:48

central European languages like Czech and

16:50

German, as well as Scandinavian languages.

16:54

Okay, interesting. What did

16:56

it mean? Yeah, I've been studying German for

16:58

a while, so I'm really curious to hear this connection. Yeah,

17:01

in a lot of the languages, it's

17:04

from a word, fahler, T-H-A-L-E-R. Oh

17:08

yeah, which would be pronounced it, tall-er, if like

17:10

for a valley or like

17:13

something related to a valley. Yeah,

17:15

and then it got turned into a word for

17:17

just unit of money. Yeah. Okay. Which

17:20

is a little confusing, but that became a common

17:22

word for some money. And a

17:25

few decades before these Spanish coins, there

17:27

were countries like Austria and Bohemia

17:30

creating their own standardized coin currency and

17:32

using that word for it. And

17:35

so people who were familiar with central

17:37

European money and the Spanish money

17:40

but didn't speak those languages just started saying,

17:42

yeah, that's a Spanish dollar. Like it's the

17:44

Spanish central European coin.

17:48

Equivalent of what I'm familiar with. Okay.

17:51

Yeah. And then there were countries in particular,

17:53

they would call this super popular coin

17:55

the Spanish dollar in many cases. And

17:58

then this coin was also... massively

18:01

popular across the British 13 colonies.

18:03

The later US government didn't get a

18:05

national currency going for a while, and

18:07

we'll talk about why later. But

18:10

the upshot is that many of the

18:12

white colonizers in what's now the United

18:15

States either just didn't use currency or

18:18

used Spanish silver reals whenever they could

18:20

come across them and get them. It

18:22

was like much more

18:24

popular than we imagined when we picture

18:26

American Revolutionary times. That's

18:29

wild. So you had like our

18:31

founding fathers conducting transactions

18:33

with Spanish peso or

18:35

Spanish dollars while

18:38

they're also just making up their own spelling

18:40

and using things that look like S instead

18:42

of S's. Wild

18:45

times. Yeah,

18:47

a messy handwriting time. That's very important to

18:49

the theory. Yeah. It's the

18:51

Constitution of these United States, not

18:54

us, these United States. We'll

19:00

also link the National Constitution Center.

19:02

They have some examples of like

19:05

paper notes that the Continental Congress gave

19:07

out to pay soldiers, and a lot

19:10

of the notes just listed a value

19:12

in Spanish milled coins. Like they

19:15

were like, we don't have a currency yet,

19:17

but like this piece of paper is worth

19:19

an amount of the Spanish coin from the

19:21

Spanish government that everybody trusts. So that's your

19:24

money. That's chaos. Okay. Yeah.

19:27

Like we were in places like

19:29

New York State where I am. We

19:31

were just passing around Spanish money for a long

19:33

time for the most part.

19:35

And each colony or future state also

19:37

sometimes made its own money, but the

19:40

thing people trusted the most was the

19:42

Spanish Kings money. Yeah.

19:44

Okay. I mean, it was probably shiny.

19:46

It was probably shiny, right? Like for

19:49

me, something shiny. I'm like, I trust

19:51

it. Yeah. And not

19:53

like weird, greasy paper that Benjamin Franklin

19:55

or his friend printed. Yeah. I trust

19:57

that a lot more. Yeah. I

20:02

don't know why I made it greasy. That's not fair. You know

20:04

what? I take that back. Why

20:06

would it be greasy? I mean, it is Benjamin Franklin.

20:08

I think that's totally fair. And

20:10

like Father Junipero Serra and Ayn Rand,

20:12

he's still alive and can be offended.

20:15

Yeah. Hanging out in

20:17

a vat together. The

20:20

wild conversations they must have. Yeah,

20:23

those are the three precog said minority

20:25

report. It's Benjamin Franklin, Junipero Serra, and

20:27

Ayn Rand. And

20:29

that's why there's a minority report. Those three don't agree

20:32

on anything, you know? It's

20:37

this 13 colonies that declares

20:39

independence and is primarily most

20:41

interested in Spanish silver coins

20:43

as money. And

20:45

that brings us to a unique

20:47

and nearly totally forgotten American patriot.

20:49

I'm especially surprised Irish Americans have

20:51

not told his story much that

20:53

I know of. Immigrant

20:56

to Pennsylvania from Ireland. He

20:58

was a wealthy merchant named Oliver Pollock. It's

21:01

a great name. It is. It's

21:03

even a good name, right? It's not like

21:05

funny, you know? And some of those guys, it's like

21:07

he's a founding father, really, but it's a good

21:09

name. Yeah. And we don't have a

21:12

lot of Pollocks. We got Jackson Pollock. Welcome

21:14

Oliver. You're the new Pollock. Yeah.

21:17

So he was not particularly wealthy coming

21:19

from Ireland, but he made

21:21

a fortune twice over in the

21:23

colonial Americas. He

21:25

was a businessman in Philadelphia during the

21:27

Seven Years' War that I was

21:30

taught as a war called the French and Indian War when

21:32

I was in school. But he

21:34

made a fortune selling supplies to

21:37

the British forces and that. And

21:40

then he relocates to New Orleans, which

21:42

was Spanish territory because in the Seven Years'

21:44

War, they took it from France and

21:48

they held it for about 40 years. Spain did.

21:51

Oh, wow. I guess the French then got

21:53

it back because we bought it from the French, right? Yeah,

21:55

that's right. Yeah. Okay. It

21:58

switched again before the Jefferson. move. Yeah.

22:01

When did beignets enter the equation?

22:04

That's really all I care about. Yeah,

22:06

you don't want to visit New Orleans before beignets.

22:09

Right. If I had a

22:11

time machine where, when do I go for

22:13

the best beignets? Yeah,

22:16

the year one AB after beignets.

22:19

I pressed the button. So

22:22

he moves to Spanish New Orleans. They had

22:25

just rolled in. They had also

22:27

apparently sent way too many troops to the point

22:29

where the troops ate most of the food. And

22:32

so New Orleans has a food crisis. Oh

22:35

no, no beignets. No. I'm

22:37

going to beignets. So I

22:39

don't go then. I don't go then. And

22:44

so then Pollock says, I'm

22:46

rich and I have connections in

22:49

the Pennsylvania area. And then he

22:51

works out life-saving food shipments from

22:53

Pennsylvania and nearby to New Orleans.

22:56

And the Spanish authorities thank him by giving him

22:59

a bunch of lucrative trading rights that make him

23:01

many, many times richer over the next few years.

23:04

So like twice over, he's done

23:06

a really skillful mercantile becoming incredibly

23:08

wealthy. Impressive. Yeah.

23:11

And prevented a starvation thing. You know, it's great.

23:14

Yeah. And so then as the

23:16

1770s began, he is one of the richest

23:18

people in North America. And

23:20

he's also Irish and doesn't like the British.

23:23

And he has fond feelings toward Pennsylvania

23:25

because he made his start there. And

23:28

so when the 13 British colonies

23:30

declare independence, he decides he

23:32

wants to support the revolution. And

23:35

he reaches out to the Continental

23:37

Congress and donates the equivalence of

23:39

nearly one billion with a B,

23:41

modern US dollars. Oh,

23:43

we had like a billionaire back

23:46

then. Yeah, he was that rich.

23:49

Like by our standards, he was a billionaire. And

23:51

he said, here's $1 billion to just fight

23:53

the war. There you go. Wow.

23:56

What does a billion in

23:58

like this? Currency look like that

24:01

just seems like a lot of volume. I

24:03

mean obviously it's not literally a billion Like

24:06

a billion of these coins like that's

24:08

not what you're saying It's like worth

24:10

a billion dollars in today's money, but

24:12

how give an inflation you have an inflation What

24:15

does that look like how many mules do

24:18

you need to get that amount of coinage

24:20

over there? Yeah, perfect

24:22

question because US dollars

24:24

basically don't exist yet Even

24:26

what he specifically donated is

24:28

three hundred thousand Spanish silver

24:31

coins Okay, so

24:33

still like a lot of sex and then

24:35

it's it's a billion dollars today. So

24:37

you could call them Oliver Saks No,

24:43

okay, I'm just thinking he's like he's

24:45

Irish She's good at ending famines, but

24:47

he wasn't around long enough to help

24:50

with the potato famine He

24:52

was not and he actually goes bankrupt

24:55

before the American Revolution ends

24:58

Mainly due to his massive donations like

25:00

can you give me back some of that money I gave

25:03

you? He

25:07

writes letters to that effect to the Continental Congress

25:09

and they talk about it and say it's a

25:12

good idea and can't pay him Oh,

25:14

they're there like we're also broke. So sorry All

25:18

that money is gone now Yeah

25:21

in 1782 Which is

25:23

a year before the Battle of Yorktown is

25:25

before the Revolution ends He is bankrupt and

25:28

asks for help and can't get it So

25:30

no he should be celebrated as a patriot

25:32

like he really helps to it

25:34

to his own expense Did he

25:36

die in poverty? He died

25:39

living off of his daughter and

25:41

her husband's Mississippi plantation like

25:43

he just had a room there and

25:46

tragically that's what his daughter and her husband were

25:48

up to but I

25:51

don't feel the dependence of his children at the end

25:53

of his life. Yeah, right. I just

25:55

picture his tombstone Oliver Pollock

25:57

generous to a fault Yeah,

26:00

that would be correct. He does

26:03

this billion-dollar donation in our money,

26:06

and he also proceeds to give money

26:08

to the Spanish colonial government so

26:10

they can attack British coastal forts and

26:13

also help the revolution that way. And

26:16

as he does this, it's so

26:18

much money. He's in touch with

26:20

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris,

26:22

who's Washington's money guy. Like, every

26:24

leading founder is in contact

26:26

with him and exchanging letters with him. Oh,

26:29

wow. Yeah, we should all know about

26:31

him. Yeah, and he also

26:33

lived in Spanish territory, so maybe that's part of

26:36

why we don't talk about him, is like, you

26:38

know, if this— I think because we don't want

26:40

to teach our kids fiscal

26:42

irresponsibility. Oh. Yeah,

26:47

like, we only teach our kids about guys

26:50

in that green visor that shows you're doing

26:52

accounting. Yeah, yeah. So,

26:56

yeah, Pollock is in touch with

26:59

and writing to all of the leading

27:01

founding fathers, and he may

27:03

not have been the first person to draw

27:05

a dollar sign. There are a

27:07

few sources I found that said a

27:09

few years ahead of this there's some

27:11

journal where somebody mashed together the letters

27:14

for pesos, but he was

27:16

definitely the most influential person doing it. He

27:19

was also the first person to draw the cool S. Oh,

27:24

yeah, which we always called the Stussy S, but

27:26

it had nothing to do with the

27:29

clothing brand. No, it's just the cool S.

27:32

A common way of abbreviating pesos,

27:34

if you're using that, one of

27:36

many names for Spanish silver coins,

27:39

was a big P and a small S next to

27:41

it. And in his letters,

27:44

partly because he's drawing so many amounts of

27:46

money he is giving to the new United

27:48

States, Pollock just starts mushing the

27:50

P and the S together into

27:53

a recognizable version of a dollar sign

27:55

with one vertical line. It

27:57

looked like a dollar sign in the documents we

27:59

have. I feel like PlayStation

28:01

could have used this in their advertising, you know,

28:03

the big the P the S and then like

28:05

meld them together Yeah,

28:10

huh PS I'm an acronym but

28:12

that was just one that but that's one that's one line though

28:16

So where did the two lines come from? This

28:19

is more theory territory We think it might have

28:21

been some people trying to make it really clear

28:23

that it's a PS sign And

28:27

a dollar sign rather than just a

28:29

regular letter S that one mark got

28:31

put on by mistake there's

28:34

also a separate theory that

28:36

these Spanish coins had a heraldic

28:39

symbol on them called the pillars of Hercules

28:41

and There were two

28:43

of these heraldic pillars of Hercules on the

28:45

Spanish coins So some people think the two

28:48

lines are representing two pillars is

28:50

a whole nother theory Hercules had pillars Yeah,

28:54

that is an antique name for a location in

28:56

the world Which is the Rock

28:58

of Gibraltar and the North African side

29:00

like at the entrance to the Mediterranean

29:03

Everybody has pillars. You don't have

29:05

pillars Katie Wait,

29:07

no, wait out. I'm feeling some

29:09

FOMO. No, I didn't realize everyone had pillars.

29:12

Where you guys get your pillars So I

29:14

know right over there. Who's your guy? Who's

29:16

your pillar guy? His

29:18

name's Oliver Okay,

29:21

wait so you're saying

29:24

So you're saying the the coin

29:26

itself the pieces of eight the

29:28

Spanish pace the Spanish dollar had

29:30

these two Pillars on

29:33

it. Yeah, and that became

29:35

just kind of a colloquial way

29:37

of like representing it perhaps according

29:39

to theoreticians Yeah, we

29:41

think the most likely theory is that people were

29:43

trying to just clarify that this is not an

29:46

ass with a weird Mark on it and it's

29:48

a dollar sign. So they did two lines, but

29:50

it also could be that The

29:52

coin that a PS is short

29:54

for the Spanish dollar Had

29:57

two of a heraldic symbol that's

29:59

pillars And so maybe people said, oh,

30:01

there should be two lines because there's two pillars. Great.

30:05

Okay. And either could be true. We don't

30:07

know. Pollock is the first

30:10

influential person to repeatedly do

30:12

this. And he's doing it

30:14

in documents to every founder. My

30:16

sources conflicted a little bit on the exact date,

30:19

but the solid estate I found was 1797 for

30:21

the U.S. And

30:24

we were actively adopting a dollar sign as like the

30:26

– this is what our

30:28

money symbol is as an

30:30

official thing. Okay. So after

30:32

our Declaration of Independence, after our Constitution,

30:35

then we got

30:37

our dollar sign. Yeah. I

30:39

feel like that's some metanarrative

30:42

about capitalism or something. We had

30:44

our democracy before we had our

30:46

dollar. That and

30:48

the rest of this is one of the

30:50

biggest reasons this, like, Spanish peso theory makes

30:52

the most sense, is that it took a

30:54

while to ramp up into having U.S. dollars.

30:57

So it makes sense that

30:59

we would borrow a money symbol from

31:01

the common currency before that. Like, yeah.

31:04

Sure. Well, and it was already on their

31:06

keyboard, so they had to use it. Yeah.

31:09

They already had the emoji with the

31:11

dollar eyeballs and barfing up a dollar.

31:14

I sincerely

31:19

– I was like, this emoji is just so weird. I'm

31:21

just going to look it up for the episode. And

31:24

it's just from a batch of a bunch of

31:26

emojis two guys pitched. I don't know why they

31:28

pitched it. It's really random and weird. Really? Yeah.

31:33

It doesn't make any sense to me, but they just,

31:36

like, threw it into a dock of, like, 20 ideas

31:38

that all got taken. Yeah. Yeah.

31:40

I was just reminded – and maybe this is going

31:42

to come up later, but, like, when you're using the

31:45

terminal or, like, when you're using Linux, the

31:48

prompt is a dollar sign. I

31:51

like the thing that kind of sits there on screen waiting for you to type something. And

31:54

now that – I guess it seemed weird to me the first

31:56

time that I thought about it, and then I stopped thinking about

31:58

it, and now it seems weird to me. me again.

32:00

Why is there a dollar sign? Yeah,

32:03

and apparently that's one of those coding

32:05

things where sort of like the hashtag

32:07

pound sign not British pounds like a

32:09

few of those symbols that are

32:12

prominent on a keyboard but we don't use a

32:14

lot. Just coders have scooped them up. Right,

32:17

what are we not using? You know what, the

32:19

dollar sign. We haven't used that in our code.

32:21

That's gonna be the prompt. Okay, I'm happy now.

32:24

Yeah, and I feel like it was risky to pick a dollar

32:26

sign because you need to talk about

32:29

money. Like I don't know, there could be some weird overlap

32:31

but yeah, I went with it. Yeah, maybe

32:33

they thought they could generate it sort

32:35

of, you know, dollar

32:38

sign, print dollar sign.

32:41

I've used up all the programming terminology

32:43

I know. The

32:48

Pillars of Hercules, that's a

32:51

antique name for sort of the entrance

32:53

to the Mediterranean if you're coming to

32:55

it from the Atlantic. It's the Rock

32:57

of Gibraltar and then no particular

32:59

point in North Africa, just the land

33:01

that's on the other side. That sounds

33:04

like pillars though.

33:07

Just like metaphorical, it's like you

33:10

know something you need to pass through

33:12

to get to the great lucrative Mediterranean

33:14

Sea. Yeah, but they're

33:16

probably pretty far apart, right? Yeah,

33:19

they're pretty far apart. I think people

33:21

just wanted them to feel like that one

33:23

shot in the Lord of the Rings when

33:25

there's two big statues of guys in a

33:28

strafe. Oh yeah. Yeah, they

33:30

just want that vibe. If we can get that, that,

33:33

I mean that's even, that's

33:35

like beyond pillars, man. That's like the

33:37

best pillar you could do. A

33:40

big guy? Yeah. With

33:42

those Pillars of Hercules, we'll have a

33:44

picture length of one side of a

33:46

very old Spanish coin, this coin we're

33:49

talking about. The way they

33:51

drew it in Haroldry, it was not just a

33:53

pillar, it was also like

33:55

a swoopy banner laid across the pillar

33:57

in like a letter

33:59

S. shape because they wanted to put

34:02

Latin slogans on the pillar and so they put on

34:04

a banner around it. And

34:06

so it's not as accepted

34:08

of a theory, but another theory about

34:10

dollar signs is it's just directly a

34:12

drawing of the pillar with the

34:14

swoopy heraldry banner in an S shape. Like

34:17

it's even more of a peso thing maybe.

34:20

Oh, I'm looking at it and I'm gonna be

34:23

honest. I don't really see it. I

34:25

don't really buy that theory because like this

34:28

picture you sent us, is that the best

34:30

condition peso that we have left, the Spanish

34:32

peso. So

34:34

it's pretty born down. They're all pretty beat up. Yeah.

34:39

Yeah. I think it's, if nothing else, it's

34:41

just amazing how much these

34:43

early American colonials we

34:45

think of were passing around Spanish money.

34:48

And the very last beat of this is a year,

34:50

it's 1857. In

34:54

1857, shortly before the

34:56

US civil war, Congress had

34:58

to pass a new coinage act, which

35:01

had a provision banning the use of

35:03

Spanish dollars in US transactions. Like

35:05

they had to bother to legislate that. Oh,

35:07

so they were still lingering. Yeah.

35:10

And they're like, okay, let's clean this

35:12

up here. This is messy. Come

35:15

on. We're a new country. We've

35:17

been around for what, four score or almost

35:21

four score years. About four score. We

35:25

should be using our own

35:27

currency, no more Spanish pesos.

35:29

That's fascinating. Was there like a

35:31

cash for pesos program where you

35:33

could like turn in your pesos for cash?

35:37

No, I think they just put it on the books and

35:39

got mad at you. Other people were like, I'm mad about

35:41

this. It was a big fight. Yeah. Nowadays

35:43

we'd branded, there'd be like a slogan, peso yourself. Wait,

35:45

no, that's the opposite of what they want to do.

35:50

This is one of those things where when

35:52

you tell me that's what was happening, that

35:54

you had early Americans passing around Spanish pesos

35:56

and cutting them up into the little slivers.

35:58

Like it makes sense. It's just

36:00

the thing you don't think about. You just

36:02

kind of assume there was always some form

36:04

of the American dollar and that it came

36:07

like right after the signing of the Declaration

36:09

of Independence. Yeah, like maybe

36:11

they were originally called like Washington

36:13

Bucks or something, but they hit

36:17

the ground running with it. I

36:19

know the Confederacy tried to come up

36:22

with their own competing currency. Yeah,

36:25

interesting. Okay, nice try, guys.

36:28

Yeah. With Dogecoin.

36:32

And yeah, we have tons of stats

36:35

and numbers about some other less credible

36:37

theories about the dollar sign and also

36:39

its prominence in the world. And we'll

36:41

jump into that after a quick break.

36:54

And we are back. We're with our wonderful guest,

36:56

Ross Blotcher from the podcast on our Ross and

36:59

Kerry. And we're talking about dollar signs. The

37:02

whole rest of the episode is a huge

37:04

set of numbers and statistics. And

37:06

that's in a segment called, Put

37:09

your stats in what you most believe

37:11

in to host one

37:14

numbers time. Trust your

37:16

stats. Katie and Alex to count

37:18

the stats on SIF. But it

37:20

is a data data data data

37:22

data data. We've

37:25

got to release an album. Wow. Wait,

37:27

is this a regular thing? Or do you write new songs for

37:30

each episode? It's very

37:32

much a regular thing. That was submitted by Aldo

37:34

Butler. Thank you. Thank you, Aldo. We

37:37

have a new name for this every week. Please

37:39

submit to Discord or on siftotgmail.com. Make the Massillion

37:41

wacky and bad as possible. Thank you. That's

37:44

amazing. Also, I'm just realizing we never

37:46

said what Oh, no, Ross and Kerry's about. I'll

37:49

just briefly say like I joined I joined

37:51

cults and and do weird, embarrassing stuff that

37:53

skirts the edges of what science tells us

37:56

about the world. And then I tell you

37:58

about it with Kerry, who's now. here.

38:00

She has water damage. Oh,

38:03

cult related water damage? You

38:07

know, maybe, maybe we could

38:09

blame one of the cults, but I think

38:12

it's just the sky, the atmospheric

38:14

rivers we can blame. That's

38:16

what they want you to think. Oh,

38:18

see, okay. Hey, you're right in with the

38:21

conspiracy theory logic there. Yeah,

38:24

it's an amazing show and I, we

38:27

wanted to have you in general and

38:29

also when this topic came up, I

38:31

thought like the dollar sign has weird

38:33

lore. Yeah. Yeah. Like it more

38:35

than you would think it's a notation

38:37

for money. You would think it would

38:39

just be normal, but people treat it

38:41

like it's the eye on the top

38:43

of the pyramid on the dollar. They're

38:46

like, whoa, like, you know, right. There

38:48

are a lot of pieces of conspiracy

38:50

theory that are focused on money. And

38:52

of course, conspiracists always think that like

38:54

there's this plot to not only do

38:57

this weird subterfuge, pull this wool over

38:59

everybody's eyes, but also to give little

39:01

subtle nods to it for people in

39:03

the know so that like the

39:05

Disney logo has like hidden

39:08

666s in it. Or like,

39:11

like you said, the pyramid

39:13

on the back of the dollar with

39:16

the little floating ulcing eye, admittedly creepy,

39:18

you know, they'll make a big deal

39:20

about that, about how the Illuminati runs

39:22

our monetary system. And of course, anything

39:24

to do with money and conspiracy goes

39:26

back to antisemitism. And then you're talking

39:28

about the Jews and stuff. So yeah,

39:31

definitely, definitely connected. There

39:33

should be like a term for like how

39:36

many steps, like how many licks does it

39:38

take to get to the center of the

39:40

conspiracy pop before you get to antisemitism? Oh,

39:45

okay. Well, sorry, I know we're

39:47

talking about rabbit

39:49

holes here and distractions, but I got to

39:52

show you this. Oh, please. This

39:54

is gonna be Art of the Owl from Sitsy Pop's

39:56

ads, isn't it? The owl. I don't trust it. The

40:00

owl is a major theme on our podcast.

40:04

This thing is called the conspiracy

40:06

chart. It was created

40:08

by Abby Richards. It's

40:10

a beautiful infographic that shows

40:13

this kind of expanding wedge

40:15

that starts with just

40:18

things that actually happened like

40:22

Watergate or the Tuskegee

40:25

experiments. Then you cross

40:27

the speculation line into things

40:29

like, well, we have questions. We're

40:31

not entirely sure, like UFOs or

40:34

the JFK assassination.

40:37

Then you cross another Rubicon and you're

40:39

into ... Now suddenly

40:41

you're leaving reality and now

40:43

you get into things like cryptids or

40:45

Elvis is still alive. Then

40:48

you cross the reality denial list and

40:50

you get to things that are dangerous

40:52

to yourself and others like the

40:55

global warming hoax or chemtrails. Then

40:58

you pass the anti-Semitic point

41:00

of no return. Now

41:03

you're into George

41:05

Soros, Pizza Gate, Holocaust denial,

41:07

all of that stuff. The

41:09

conspiracy chart, look it up.

41:12

It's amazing. Please email it to me.

41:14

I'll link it. I will. That's

41:16

just persistently always the bottom, isn't it?

41:18

The anti-Semitism. At some point, yeah. Yeah.

41:21

Well, and probably the most conspiracist part of

41:23

this topic is this first number. It is

41:25

the year 1957 because

41:28

1957 is when author Ayn Rand

41:30

published the novel Atlas Shrugged. As

41:33

we briefly touched on, promotes a

41:35

sense pretty much debunked theory about the origin

41:38

of dollar signs. For all the reasons we

41:40

just talked about, it doesn't make sense, but

41:42

it's a common one. My

41:44

teacher was just parroting back Ayn Rand to

41:46

me. Your teacher

41:48

was the libertarian. I

41:51

did actually have a good number of libertarian teachers.

41:54

When I was in high school, I would try

41:56

to argue with them and it was always incredibly

41:59

frustrating. Was this

42:01

public school? Because extra good. Yes. If

42:04

that's the case, yeah. It was. It was. Yeah,

42:08

and we don't think she invented this. She probably

42:10

picked it up from somebody else. But

42:13

in the dialogue of Atlas Shrug, a

42:15

character asks another character what dollar signs

42:17

stand for, because all her

42:19

books, very normal conversations the whole time. And

42:22

here's the response in the dialogue,

42:24

quote, for achievements, for

42:26

success, for ability, for man's

42:29

creative power, and

42:31

precisely for these reasons, it is used

42:33

as a brand of infamy. It stands

42:35

for the initials of the United States.

42:39

Wait, did she know? Okay. I

42:41

thought she liked money. Yeah,

42:43

I think it's a thing of like it's

42:45

might of America that people get mad about

42:47

because we're so mighty. Like that kind of

42:49

– Oh, I see. I see. Okay. So

42:51

she's saying it's a good kind

42:53

of might. Yeah, and

42:56

she's tapping into – there's a theory

42:58

that the dollar sign with two lines,

43:00

right, is either a combination of the letters

43:03

U and S because

43:05

of the word United States or because

43:07

of the words unit silver. Oh. And

43:11

then the belief is that it's two lines because

43:13

there used to be a bottom of a U

43:15

connecting them, and then we got lazy

43:17

and dropped bad, and then we got lazy and

43:19

just did one line for some reason is the

43:21

theory. Okay. Or could

43:23

it stand for Uncle Scrooge, like

43:26

Scrooge McDuck? Uncle Scrooge! Uncle

43:28

Scrooge! Oh

43:30

my – or Uncle Sam. That fits. That

43:33

fits. Wow. Yeah. You can really

43:35

go deep on this if you want to see it. Steve

43:38

Urkel. Steve Urkel. In the

43:41

fun book, yeah, yeah. And

43:45

when you think about it, U.S.

43:47

really just spells us, and

43:49

no one's ever had that thought before. I just

43:51

did. I'm very brilliant. It

43:54

also spells S. Whoa.

43:58

Yeah. But so – Let's

44:00

talk about Jewish people now. That

44:04

has all the hallmarks of like folk

44:06

etymology, just something that's easy, makes sense,

44:08

and I can see why that would

44:10

be persistent and stay with people. Yeah,

44:13

yeah. People are just grabbing

44:15

something that seems to make sense, and partly

44:17

because it is slightly

44:19

fuzzy how we got the symbol. Like

44:21

it wasn't obvious that it would be

44:23

a Spanish currency and an Irish guy

44:25

and, you know. According to the National

44:27

Constitution Center, the name

44:29

United States got officially adopted in

44:32

the fall of 1776. It

44:34

was a couple months after independence. We

44:36

tended to call this place either the

44:39

13 colonies or the United Colonies before

44:41

that. United Colonies would be a UC

44:43

acronym. There were

44:45

dollar signs floating right before independence

44:47

and during, so just the timeline doesn't

44:50

add up, the names don't add up.

44:53

The Pollock theory has more going for it. Okay.

44:57

So maybe we named the

44:59

US after C. Vergle. Yeah,

45:04

once he built that robot, we were like, this

45:06

is our leader. This is the

45:09

top American. He time traveled, he's like,

45:11

you got any beignets? That's

45:15

my best C. Vergle impression.

45:17

It's not good. It's pretty good. The

45:20

other big flaw with the theory is how

45:22

common a single line dollar sign was early

45:25

on. If it's a U,

45:27

it just doesn't fit the

45:30

single line. There's a lot of reasons. And

45:33

then our next number of dollar signs is another year.

45:35

It is 1652. The

45:38

year 1652. Okay,

45:40

I have no associations with that year. Yeah,

45:43

it's just very early on. 1652,

45:46

it's when Columbus sailed

45:48

the ocean blue. Right,

45:50

every historical figure is always alive and he was

45:53

still sailing. That was great. I love those mnemonic

45:55

devices that rhyme. It's like

45:57

ocean blue. Blue

46:00

rhymes with any two in

46:02

any context. How is that useful?

46:06

That's true. Who's supposed to remember

46:08

that? Yeah. That

46:12

is the year when the British colony

46:14

of Massachusetts began

46:16

making its own coins as

46:18

currency. Oh,

46:20

so it was the first one. Wow.

46:23

Yeah. And this is like

46:25

the other big reason we probably got dollar

46:28

signs from Spanish money is that British

46:30

law was extremely strict about forbidding

46:33

the colonies from making their own

46:35

currencies, but then the colonies

46:37

had a hard time getting enough British

46:39

money from across the ocean from Britain.

46:42

And then a few of the colonies

46:44

started doing illegal rebellious

46:46

minting of money long

46:49

before they seemed all that interested

46:51

in independence from Britain. Okay.

46:54

These were the early signs of

46:57

rebellion of standing up like, all right,

46:59

you jokers, you're not sending us enough

47:01

money. We're going to make some of

47:03

our own. So these are

47:05

like bootleg pounds that

47:07

were like clowns or something?

47:11

Clowns. Yeah. This

47:13

is again, 1652, more than 120 years before

47:16

the Declaration of Independence. Wow.

47:20

Massachusetts violates British law and strikes

47:23

a set of coins called pine

47:25

tree shillings. They were named that

47:27

because they had a tree design on them, but they

47:29

were, they were even called shillings.

47:31

Like they were vaguely British style of money,

47:33

but just they made their

47:35

own money because there wasn't enough

47:38

British money and there were draconian

47:40

laws about it. And then, you know, they

47:42

had some Spanish money floating around and they

47:44

wanted to supplement that just to have enough

47:46

money. If you've got like

47:48

two options, like one, we could persecute witches,

47:50

the other we could mint our own money.

47:53

I'm glad they spent some time focused on

47:55

making money. That's true.

47:57

They should have shown Salem's leaders some. cool

48:00

graphic design ideas and

48:02

logo classes. Salem

48:05

in general needed something

48:07

to occupy their time with because

48:09

they were clearly incredibly bored. Exactly.

48:13

If we had started this and supported this sooner,

48:15

we could have avoided a whole lot of hardx.

48:18

If you gave those like the

48:21

girls making all the accusations, if you just gave

48:23

them fidget spinners, I don't think it would have

48:25

happened. I think it's a great

48:27

thing that teenagers have TikTok and fidget spinners

48:29

now because now they're not spending time accusing

48:32

people of witches. Yeah. Hear,

48:35

hear. Yeah. And

48:38

yeah, and this is the first example of

48:40

future US states setting

48:42

up traditions of non-dollar currencies.

48:45

The pine tree shillings end up spreading

48:47

across the 13 colonies just because equally

48:49

like Spanish money, this is money we

48:51

can get. Great.

48:53

And my favorite thing about the

48:55

pine tree shilling is this number

48:57

again, 1652. They

49:00

did a scam to trick the British by

49:02

printing 1652 on every

49:05

coin every year they made

49:07

them. Oh. Because

49:11

they said, because the British said it's against the

49:13

law to make your own money. So

49:15

they made some of these in 1652. I

49:18

get it. Now they're making more in

49:20

1662, but they say 1652 and they're like, oh,

49:22

this is part of the original batch. Yeah,

49:24

exactly. Yeah. So

49:27

historians have to officially date any of

49:29

these coins they find because the

49:31

Massachusetts people were cleverly like, oh, you just

49:33

keep finding old coins. And then in their

49:35

basement, they're making more and more coins. You

49:38

know, they put it like in their mouth and

49:40

taste it and like, yeah, this tastes like a

49:42

1653 coin coin sniffing

49:44

dogs who can tell you. Yeah.

49:47

Yeah. The eldest

49:49

led to the next number

49:51

1792 because that's when the new

49:54

U.S. Government set up a federal

49:56

mint and kind of began

49:58

the process of making. money

50:01

in a way in the US. It didn't really get

50:03

going in a modern way till after the Civil War.

50:06

And when like greenbacks were printed and

50:09

we started having a more organized federal

50:11

government. And

50:13

a lot of year numbers this week. The next

50:15

one is 1920 because 1920 is the year when

50:18

the Treaty

50:20

of Versailles went into

50:22

effect. It turns out that

50:24

the aftermath of World War I is when anybody

50:27

outside the US really started caring

50:30

about US dollars. It

50:33

was a very like regional

50:35

currency until about

50:37

a hundred years ago. Okay, so

50:39

we were just these upstarts but now that we played

50:42

an interesting kind of pivotal role in

50:44

a world war, they're like, all right,

50:47

we're interested in your

50:49

financial stability. Yeah, and

50:51

especially the US held a bunch of Europe's

50:53

debt after World War I and then repeated

50:55

that process after World War II. Wait,

50:59

who died and put the US

51:01

in charge? Oh, wait. Yeah.

51:05

Well, people in a war. Let's

51:09

say the Kaiser. That's more fun, right? Yeah. Just

51:12

one guy. And I'm linking

51:14

a National Geographic interview with Doug

51:17

Mudd, curator of the Edward C.

51:19

Rochette Money Museum in Colorado. You

51:21

can say that's a great name. Yeah,

51:23

all around. Poor curator. That's

51:25

incredible. Okay, go on. Yeah, you

51:27

bring all the good names. Yeah. As

51:31

the Spanish Empire declined, the next

51:33

kind of big European-American currency in

51:35

the world was British gold sovereigns.

51:39

But then due to Britain spending tons

51:41

of its money and also lives in

51:43

the two world wars, the

51:46

US dollar proceeded to become the next

51:48

biggest currency. It might

51:50

get replaced after that, but it

51:52

seems to take like a giant

51:54

empire and a relatively good economic

51:56

period for a modern country to

51:59

make its currency. huge all over the world.

52:01

So Spain did it, then Britain did it, and now

52:03

the US has done it. I'm

52:05

feeling pretty good about board apes being next.

52:09

Yeah, yeah. So

52:11

the US has had kind of like

52:13

a hundred year run then of international

52:16

financial viability. Yeah,

52:19

because especially before World War I,

52:22

with the exception of a war, funnily

52:24

enough against Spain to take some of

52:26

their colonies, the US was pretty isolationist.

52:29

Really until the

52:31

mid 1900s, if you

52:34

waved around US dollars in other countries, people

52:36

would be like, why do you have that

52:38

relatively specific currency from just one country? We

52:41

use British gold sovereigns or other stuff.

52:44

And speaking of conspiracy theorists, I feel like

52:46

so many of them have really strong thoughts

52:48

on the creation of the Federal Reserve in,

52:50

I feel like it was around that time,

52:52

like 1920 or thereabouts, and

52:55

how that changed our monetary system.

52:57

And usually you have the

53:00

conspiratorial crowd also talking about how we

53:02

no longer have a gold backed currency

53:04

and how that's ruinous to our nation.

53:07

Is it true that like the Wizard

53:09

of Oz was originally complaining

53:12

about the various currency standards or

53:14

something? Oh, yeah,

53:17

that's supposed to be a thing that when

53:19

we debated whether to back money with gold

53:21

or silver, the Wizard of Oz book put

53:23

in a bunch of gold and silver symbols

53:25

like the yellow brick road is a path

53:27

of gold backing and yeah, yeah, that's supposed

53:29

to be a thing. Oh,

53:32

I gotta read that. Some minor like pop culture

53:35

conspiracy yet. If

53:38

you look up like the Wizard of Oz, Grover

53:40

Cleveland, you will get to the stuff. I'm

53:43

looking that up now. You'll also

53:45

get a lot of turn

53:47

safe search on for that. I'm just gonna say. But

53:52

yeah, and so we're in a slightly

53:55

more than 100 years of US dollars

53:57

being sort of the first currency people

53:59

reach. for if they're

54:01

looking for a global one. And

54:04

that has led to dollar signs becoming

54:06

a lot more popular in the world

54:08

because when countries either write that or

54:10

adopt a new post-colonial currency, they often

54:12

call it a dollar. Use a dollar

54:14

sign. Okay. Easier

54:16

than changing out the keys on the keyboard.

54:19

Partially, yes. Yeah. And

54:22

in these post-colonial countries, quick set of numbers for that.

54:25

A lot of post-colonial countries from Spanish Empire

54:27

tend to use names like peso, but

54:31

especially former British possessions

54:33

will distinguish themselves from Britain by switching

54:36

from a pound type name to a

54:38

dollar. Oh. The

54:41

Australians switched from an Australian pound

54:43

to a decimalised Australian dollar in

54:47

One year later, New Zealand did that with New

54:49

Zealand pounds. They became New Zealand dollars. There

54:52

are dollar currencies in Balese, Singapore,

54:54

Namibia, all sorts of countries. The

54:58

one country that did it before all this

55:00

is Canada, probably just due to closeness to

55:02

the US. Apparently, banks

55:04

in British Canada issued notes called

55:06

dollars as early as the early

55:08

1800s. Oh,

55:10

wow. And in 1858, they retired a Canadian

55:13

pound to do Canadian dollars. Wow.

55:15

Just a little subtle show of

55:18

independence for each country. Yeah,

55:20

it's been especially a way to become independent from

55:23

Britain, is to say our money is called dollars

55:25

and we use dollar signs. Yeah. Fascinating.

55:29

Yeah, I enjoy sticking it to England

55:31

and the British is much- They can

55:33

take it. ... impossible. Yeah. What

55:36

is this? Hot leaf water? Oh, big

55:38

deal. Oh,

55:40

the sun doesn't set on your empire.

55:42

It does here. We use dollars. Yeah.

55:45

Also, night is good. Try it.

55:49

It's fun. Yeah. You

55:52

get some sleep. Anyway. And

55:56

then, very last number here, it's

55:58

really the power of the dollar. through actual

56:00

US dollars, the number is 10 because

56:03

10 is the approximate number of countries

56:06

besides the US that have US dollars

56:08

as one of their official currencies. Oh

56:11

it's like on the books as an official currency

56:14

in 10 countries. Oh that's

56:16

a good trivia thing. All right yeah

56:18

are you gonna name these? Yeah

56:21

a lot of them are small island nations.

56:23

Okay. And those are the British

56:25

Virgin Islands, East Timor,

56:28

Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Turks

56:30

and Caicos, and Palau. I

56:34

knew Palau was gonna

56:36

be on there. Right

56:38

everyone was saying Palau at home, I know Palau.

56:41

And then there's three countries in

56:43

Latin America, Panama, El

56:45

Salvador, and Ecuador. Hmm

56:48

okay. One other

56:50

country, the country of Zimbabwe. They

56:53

have at various times tried to establish

56:55

a Zimbabwean dollar and have also had

56:57

the US dollar as an official currency

56:59

at least part of the time. And

57:02

I think all of us have like a 10 billion

57:05

dollars Zimbabwe note somewhere.

57:08

Yeah so and there's a long history

57:10

of countries adopting a currency called a dollar

57:12

with a dollar sign and then there's

57:15

some kind of political or economic trouble

57:17

usually with foundations and what European colonizers

57:19

did to them. But then yeah like

57:21

then they end up printing a note

57:24

with a huge number on it and then

57:26

it's not not meeting anything. Yeah. Rampant

57:29

inflation. Oh fascinating. Okay I'm not gonna

57:31

remember any of those countries except for

57:33

Palau. Nobody

57:36

forgets Palau. But

57:40

yeah so the dollar sign is global

57:42

not just through US dollars but also

57:44

other people making dollars and that

57:47

would change probably if another country

57:49

becomes more economically predominant and just

57:51

more of an empire. Hmm.

57:54

When I was a kid I used to

57:56

print out money that had a kitty on

57:58

it and I called them cat bucks. and

58:01

I distribute them.

58:03

I think we could do that. Kitty

58:06

bucks. Yeah, I think everyone would be

58:08

on board with that. Legit,

58:10

I think if someone made kitty bucks, they

58:13

would need to make an active decision. Do

58:15

I just use dollar signs because that's on

58:17

computer keyboards? Or do I make like a

58:19

K with a second vertical line and it's

58:21

its own thing? Like the people who made

58:24

the arrow were like, we're the European Union.

58:26

We're doing our own symbol. We're not just

58:28

calling it like an e-buck, you know? I

58:30

think it should be a little paw print, a little paw

58:32

print of the symbol that means e-buck. Oh yeah. Mabel

58:50

sent the main episode for this week, and

58:52

I want to say an extra thank you to our special guest, Ross

58:54

Blaucher. He and Kerry Poppy make an

58:56

amazing podcast that he describes so

58:58

well. Oh no, Ross and Kerry,

59:00

truly unique and a member of our

59:03

wonderful network, Maximum Fun. So please

59:05

check it out. I particularly enjoyed their

59:07

Whitley-Stryber breakdown recently. And also

59:09

their prophecies for 2024, not theirs, but they got

59:11

them from other people. They're pretty wild. Nothing else

59:13

like it. I hope you check it out. In

59:16

the meantime, you're in the outro of

59:19

this podcast with fun features for you,

59:21

such as help remembering this episode with

59:23

a run back through The Big Takeaway.

59:29

This week it's one mega

59:31

takeaway. The dollar sign is

59:33

probably a Spanish currency symbol

59:35

scribbled by Irish merchant Oliver

59:37

Pollack in Spanish controlled New

59:40

Orleans. That story spun off

59:42

into a lot of other stories, and also

59:44

our stats and numbers had many of them.

59:46

We got into the Massachusetts currency more than

59:48

100 years before the American Revolution that revolted

59:50

against the British monetarily. We

59:53

talked about the dollar sign conspiracy theory

59:55

spread by Ayn Rand, the British decolonization

59:57

role of dollar signs, and some other

59:59

things. so much more. That's

1:00:04

the takeaway and our stories. And I

1:00:06

said that's the main episode because there

1:00:08

is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available

1:00:10

to you right now. If

1:00:12

you support this show at maximumfun.org. Members

1:00:15

are the reason this podcast exists and oh no, Ross

1:00:17

and Carrie exists and all the shows on the network.

1:00:20

So members get a bonus show

1:00:22

every week where we explore one

1:00:24

obviously incredibly fascinating story related to

1:00:26

the SIF main episode. This

1:00:28

week's bonus topic is three quick stories.

1:00:31

It's two amazing dollar signs in fine

1:00:33

art and one dollar sign that solved

1:00:35

a legal case. Visit SIFpod.fun

1:00:37

for that bonus show for a library of

1:00:39

more than 15 dozen other

1:00:41

secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a

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catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus

1:00:46

shows. It is special audio. It's just

1:00:48

for members. Thank you to everybody who

1:00:50

backs this podcast operation. Additional

1:00:53

fun things. There are research sources on

1:00:55

this episode's page at maximumfun.org. Key

1:00:58

sources include the U.S. National

1:01:01

Archives, in particular, archive technician

1:01:03

Jackie Kilby, digital resources

1:01:05

for old coins held at the Smithsonian,

1:01:07

other coins found at Fort Stanwix in

1:01:09

modern New York State. There's pictures of

1:01:11

the chopped up pieces of eight into

1:01:14

those little pieces. And then

1:01:16

tons of writing from Atlas Obscura, the

1:01:18

National Constitution Center, National Geographic and more.

1:01:21

That page also features resources such as native-land.ca.

1:01:25

I'm using those to acknowledge that I

1:01:27

recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land

1:01:29

of the Munsee Lenape people and the

1:01:31

Wapinsher people, as well as the Mohican

1:01:33

people, Skadigok people and others. Also

1:01:36

Katie taped this in the country of

1:01:38

Italy. Ross taped this on the traditional

1:01:40

land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and

1:01:43

Chumash peoples. And I

1:01:45

want to acknowledge that in my location, Ross's

1:01:47

location and many other locations in the Americas

1:01:49

and elsewhere, Native people are very much still

1:01:51

here. That feels worth doing

1:01:54

on each episode and join the free SIFT

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Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about

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1:02:00

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Discord. We're also talking about

1:02:05

this episode on the Discord, and hey,

1:02:07

would you like a tip on another

1:02:09

episode? Because each week I'm finding is

1:02:11

something randomly incredibly fascinating, by running all

1:02:13

the past episode numbers through a random

1:02:15

number generator. This week's pick

1:02:17

is episode 17, that's about the topic of

1:02:19

ham, and on that episode there's a story

1:02:21

about a ham and bean soup that they

1:02:23

serve at the US Senate cafeteria. I got

1:02:25

so into that story I made TikToks about

1:02:28

the soup, and also made a similar soup

1:02:30

at my home and reviewed it on TikTok.

1:02:32

So I've been making a lot of soup

1:02:34

posts because of ham. And

1:02:37

check those out, they're fun. Also check

1:02:39

out my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast,

1:02:41

Creature Feature, about animals and science and

1:02:43

more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Unshaven

1:02:45

by the Budos Band. Our show logo

1:02:47

is by artist Burton Durand. Special

1:02:50

thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on

1:02:52

this episode. Special thanks to

1:02:54

the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra

1:02:57

extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you

1:02:59

to all our listeners. I'm thrilled

1:03:01

to say we will be back

1:03:03

next week with more secretly incredibly

1:03:06

fascinating. So how

1:03:08

about that? Talk

1:03:10

to you then. Thank

1:03:30

you.