Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Dollar Sign

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Ross Blocher explore why the dollar sign is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

The dollar sign, known for being money, famous for being a symbol of money. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the dollar sign is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, it is you. And we are enjoying being in this like the second week of the two of the Maximum Fun Drive. Pretty wild, pretty neat. And we have a wonderful guest joining us from a wonderful fellow Maximum Fun show called Oh No, Ross and Carrie.

Folks, please welcome Ross Bl blotcher ross hey hi hello so good to be here i also celebrate the holiday of maximum fun drive we all have trees in our background what are the things what are the items the maximum fun shrub i've been growing mine all year it's's sprouted berries. It looks great. The traditional berries. Ross does not know that our previous week's episode was about pistachios, which it turns out are tree fruit. So that's very in my head now that somehow we grow pistachios for the drive. Great.

Okay. Wow, that's cool. I got to say, I love the concept of your show. And if you ever talk about the number pie, I'm totally in if you need a guest expert. Why Pi? I've got Pi on the brain because it's almost Pi Day, you know, 3-1-4 every year, March 14th. And I'm a Pi memorizer. I'm number 21 in the U.S. for memorizing digits of Pi.

My record is 3,200. So picture like a stack of 200 credit cards and I've memorized that many numbers of pi. I'm just going to picture that the rest of the week, month, year. This is very exciting. Yeah. Well, sometimes when I'm sent a code on a security code, I don't have to look at the phone every two seconds to put it in. So, you know, take that. Ross, that's amazing. We should do that. We interestingly have done a couple of episodes about symbols in the sense that we've done an episode about the letter X and an episode about the letter Y. This was suggested by Glimfeather on the Discord, one of many listeners

suggested and picked topics. And we always start by asking our relationship to the topic or opinion of it. So Ross, how do you feel about the dollar sign? I mean, I guess I'm for it. You know, when you told me about being on the show, you said, do you like and then a bunch of dollar signs. And I guess I misunderstood the nature of this relationship. Thanks for all your info, by the way. I really't know. I do think back to like Scrooge McDuck and I feel like a proper dollar sign has the like the two vertical lines through it, like like almost like a double breasted suit or something. That's a dignified dollar sign. But I think I've realized sometimes it gets a little too crowded and I've got to use the single bar. Other than that, I don't know. I have like a big spreadsheet where I track all of my expenses that has a lot of dollar signs. That's my connection to the dollar sign. Yeah.

Katie, how about you? It's weird when I like see money or someone proposes a very lucrative plan to me, dollar signs appear in my pupils and it's very painful. And I've been to an optometrist about it and she's like, oh,, yes, it's a type of cataract in the form of dollar signs. It's very bad, bad for your vision. No, it's, yeah, you know, I like money in that I need it. Sorry, sorry, cash-er-act. Just thought of it. Cash-er-act.

Go on. Oh, it was right there. It was right there. Thank you, Alex. I like that bad guys. Bad guys always let you know what they're up to because, yeah, they put the dollar sign on the sack. It's got the money sack that they have at banks where it's just a burlap sack with a dollar sign on it. And then you put the money in it.

And that is how you get money out of banks. And the first time I ever went to a bank and they gave me something called a cashier's check, I was like, what is this? Where's my sack? I want a sack. Give me my sack. Cartoons lied to us so much about so many dollar signs. Every dollar sign in a cartoon is fake and false and not in real life. That's wild.

Yeah, no vaults filled with gold. I was shocked how vague the story of this topic is. We are going to talk about something where there is a strong theory about where it came from, and it's not totally for sure. Oh, shrouded in mystery. And we have a whole set of stats and numbers this week, because especially money is numerical. But before that, we're going to start with a mega takeaway about the origins of this symbol, which is mega takeaway number one. The dollar sign is probably a Spanish currency symbol scribbled by an Irish merchant in Spanish New Orleans.

Hmm. That involved a lot of locations. Oh, my goodness. Let's break it down, Alex. I'll say it again because it was long. Yeah. The dollar sign is probably a Spanish currency symbol scribbled by an Irish merchant in Spanish New Orleans. Oh, I like that the New World was involved in this.

Okay, so where is Spanish New Orleans? Is it in New Orleans or in Spain? It was a time when the city of New Orleans was a Spanish colony and controlled by Spain. So after the French founded it and before the United States rolled in. All right. Then where did the Irishman come into play? There is an American Revolutionary War patriot named Oliver Pollack, who basically no one's ever heard of, even though he bankrolled a significant amount of rebel American military

operations, just because he liked the United States and was also Irish. So he didn't like the British. He was like anything to make the British mad. Rebel, you mean revolutionary war. We're not talking civil war here. Yeah. Revolutionary war. Yeah. So, okay. So this is like the time that you've placed us in. Is there a United States at this point, but they just haven't expanded far enough to include the Louisiana Purchase? That's right. Like late 1700s? Okay. Exactly. Late 1700s.

This was probably starting to be drawn immediately before the Declaration of American Independence. And then the guy who really got it going was getting it going in letters about the money he was donating to the American Revolution. Okay. Was it sacks of money? What were these sacks, Alex? It was huge amounts of silver coins, and they might have been in sacks. They probably didn't have the robber symbol on it, but yeah, sure. Yeah, like sacks. I'm giving you a lot of foreign currency, and I'm going to miswrite the symbol to represent that currency. And we got a new thing. Yeah, pretty much.

I think they wrote all of that on the sack, and that's why they replaced it with the dollar sign. That was a little verbose. That was a mouthful. A lot to fit on a sack. Dearest General George Washington. This is hard. It didn't spell out as a clean acronym. Nah.

Hard to write, especially with a quill. Yeah, and to be as accurate as possible about this, this whole story we're going to unspool is a likely theory. It is not totally agreed upon that this is where it came from. It's just far and away the strongest theory and it makes sense. Okay. And so later in the show, we'll talk about a couple other theories too. You would think we would just know, oh, dollar signs came from this, but no, it's kind of murky. Yeah. Well, I had learned that it was a U and an S that were overlapped. That's what I learned. Yeah.

And it was like a U over the S and the two, like the two like bars that we had were part of the U, but we got rid of the little like sort of swoopy bit because who needs that? And then that got further simplified to the one bar. That's how I learned it. Wasn't that floated by Ayn Rand? Like that was another theory that she created. One of many things that Ayn Rand got wrong. Send all your angry emails to Alex, not me. Emails to Alex, not me. Yeah, we will explore her later because it turns out the U.S. theory is a less likely theory.

The likeliest theory is that this is a capital P and a small s being put together because this was notation for a currency that's had a few names, but one of them was pesos. Oh. And it was the primary silver coin of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Fascinating. You know, you say Ayn Rand is always wrong, but she did say the universe was going to end when she died. And, you know. Yeah. Good thing she's still alive, right? Right.

Oh, man. I'm glad she just kept on ticking. and, you know. Yeah. Good thing she's still alive, right? Right. Oh, man. I'm glad she just kept on ticking. I just love that there are theories floating out here and I'm trying to figure out in my mind who these theoreticians are floating currency theories. Yeah, that too. Our key source in this mega takeaway is archives technician Jackie Kilby

of the U.S. National Archives. But she's far from the only person with this Oliver Pollack, Spanish currency, Irish guy theory. Other sources are the U.S. National Park Service, Atlas Obscura and BBC, 99% Invisible, an article on their website. There's a lot of sources converging around this. But the gist is that this starts with the Spanish invasion and colonization of North and South America. And especially in the early 1500s, they invaded and took over a bunch of places and found huge deposits of silver. And then they started minting as many silver coins as they possibly could. Oh, that they were stealing from native peoples or? Yeah, yeah.

Okay, I'm along for the ride. I can't wait to hear. Like if any of the metal was above ground, they took it and then they mined, especially in modern day Bolivia, just as much silver as possible. Oh my goodness. Okay. Can we clip that of Ross saying he's along for the ride for stealing? For stealing things? I feel like I was taken out of context.

This is a gotcha show. I joked about stealing Ross's bank information. Why don't I also go after his reputation? Right. Just full villain. Great. Perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. In bags with dollar signs. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't Argentina like named for the root word for silver, like Argentium or something like that? It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Anyways. Yeah. Yeah. This is all like there was gold that the Spanish found, but they found so much silver. There's silver in them thar hills. Like literally the kind of Andes. Yeah, for sure uh yeah yeah and then spanish invaders they their monarchy says we're minting a new denomination of silver coin and they made so

much of it in such a regular way and such a pure value of metal way it pretty much became a global currency for a couple hundred years from the early 1500s all the way to the late 1700s, early 1800s, one Spanish coin is not the official currency everywhere, but if you give it out most places, especially in Europe and the Americas, people say, that's money to me. That's good. Great. Like Republic credits. Yeah. Or like the U.S. dollar today. Most countries are like, yeah, okay, that's money. That makes sense. That's a better analogy, sure.

It's got the longevity of something like Dogecoin. Yeah. I feel like by moving us away from Star Wars, I moved us toward Dogecoin. That was a huge mistake. I take it back. Yeah, and then this coin, it had a bunch of names, partly because people just like doing nicknames for money. But it was called the Silver Real because real is the Spanish word for royal. If people know soccer like Real Madrid, it's like that.

Or El Camino Real in California. There's this long road that goes through California called El Camino Real, which is where the father Junipero Serra would travel and set up all the missions along the coast. I grew up near El Camino Real. I never saw Father Junipero whatever. What's his name? Not a single one time. Rude. Yeah, he like Ayn Rand lives forever.

Yeah, didn't see a single Franciscan monk. Anyways, it was the Royal Road. Sorry, you said Real. That got me excited. Oh, yeah. No, it's such a common word and Spanish influence in the world that people knew what it was. Yeah. And they also called it the silver peso because peso can be a word just meaning weight.

And this coin was a specific weight of silver. And so that was another common name. This coin is also well known in what I think of as pirate lingo. They called it a piece of eight. Oh, OK. Now that I've heard of before. Yeah. Usually parrots are squawking it.

Yeah. Yeah. Why is it? It's a piece of eight. What is always my question. Eight what? Yeah. They would also call this like the eight real coin because the common way of making change out of this coin was to slice it into eight pieces. Cut it up?

Like they would chop it up. Yeah. Like a pizza? Yes. Like pizza slice shapes. Yeah. Really? Like equal eighths.

And then that's like pointy, you know, but these like shipped pieces of a coin were super common currency too. Like if somebody gave you that, you'd be like, great, this is money for sure. Awesome. Wow. Did people just carry around like little coin pizza cutters? Yeah, I think just there were a lot more blades at the time. They were like, great. Everyone had a blade.

I got a full one for you and here's two slivers. We're good now, right? We're good. Yeah, I'm imagining guys cutting their hands on it. It seems bad, but it's what it was. Imagine trying to make change with current money and you get out a pair of scissors.

Well, let me cut this dollar in half. Yeah, and one thing I'm excited to link this week is it's from the National Park Service. It's their setup at a place called Fort Stanwix, which is in the northern part of modern New York State. And they've found a lot of silver real piece of eight coins there because these were all over North and South America and not just the coins, but the little pizza slices. It was like, yeah, that's real money. That's better than most of the currency in this area. Oh, fun. Yeah. You're on a dig site and all of a sudden you find these little like partial coins everywhere. Interesting. Yeah. Apparently it happens all over

these two continents and in Europe too. Yeah. yeah, there had been other currencies that were prominent in the world, but this was pretty much the most popular world currency for like 300 years, the Spanish coin. Wow. And then one other name for it that came from outside Spain is the Spanish dollar. outside Spain is the Spanish dollar. And it turns out the word dollar, not a Spanish word, it comes from various Central European languages like Czech and German, as well as Scandinavian languages. Okay. Interesting. What did it mean? Yeah, I've been studying German for a while, so I'm really curious to hear this connection. Yeah. And in a lot of the languages, it's from a word Thaler, T-H-A-L-E-R. Oh yeah. Which would be pronounced Thaler. Yeah. Like for a valley or like something related to a valley.

Yeah. And then it got turned into a word for just unit of money. Yeah. Which is a little confusing, but that became a common word for some money. And a few decades before these Spanish coins, there were countries like Austria and Bohemia creating their own standardized coin currency and using that word for it. And so people who were familiar with Central European money and the Spanish money, but didn't speak those languages just started saying, yeah, that's a Spanish dollar. Like it's the Spanish Central European coin. Equivalent of what I'm familiar with. Okay. Yeah. And so English speakers in particular, they would call this super popular coin, the Spanish dollar in many cases. And then this coin was also massively popular across the British

13 colonies. The later US.S. government didn't get a national currency going for a while, and we'll talk about why later. But the upshot is that many of the white colonizers in what's now the United States either just didn't use currency or used Spanish silver reals whenever they could come across them and get them. It was like much more popular than we imagine when we picture American revolutionary times. That's wild. So you had like our founding fathers conducting transactions with Spanish peso or Spanish dollars while they're also just making up their own spelling and using things that look like Fs instead of Ss. Wild times.

Yeah, a messy handwriting time. That's very important to the theory. Yeah. It's the Constitution of these United States, not us, these United States. We'll also link the National Constitution Center. They have some examples of paper notes that the Continental Congress gave out to pay soldiers. And a lot of the notes just listed a value in Spanish milled coins.

Like they were like, we don't have a currency yet, but like this piece of paper is worth an amount of the Spanish coin from the Spanish government that everybody trusts. So that's your money. That's chaos. Okay. Yeah. Like we were in places like New York state where I am, we were, we were just passing around Spanish money for a long time, uh, for the most part and, and each colony or future state also sometimes made its own money. But the, the thing people trusted the most was the Spanish King's money. Yeah. Okay.

I mean, it was probably shiny. It was probably shiny, right? Like for me, something shiny. I'm like, I trust it. Yeah. And not like weird, greasy paper that Benjamin Franklin or his friend printed. Yeah. I trust that a lot more.

Yeah. I don't know why I made it greasy. That's not fair. You know what? I take that back. Why would it be greasy? I mean, it is Benjamin Franklin it greasy. That's not fair. You know what? I take that back. Why would it be greasy? I mean, it is Benjamin Franklin. I think that's totally fair.

And like Father Junipero Serra and Aunt Ayn Rand, he's still alive and can be offended. Yeah. Hanging out in a vat together. The wild conversations they must have. Yeah, those are the three precogs in Minority Report. It's Benjamin Franklin, Junipero Serra, and Ayn Rand. And that's why there's a Minority Report. Those three don't agree on anything, you know?

It's this 13 colonies that declares independence and is primarily most interested in Spanish silver coins as money. And that brings us to a unique and nearly totally forgotten American patriot. I'm especially surprised Irish Americans have not told his story much that I know of. Immigrant to Pennsylvania from Ireland, he was a wealthy merchant named Oliver Pollock. It's a great name. It is. It's even a good name, right? It's not like funny, you know? Some of those guys, it's like he's a founding father, really, but it's a great name. It is. It's even a good name, right? It's not like funny, you know? Some of those guys, it's like, he's a founding father, really? But it's a good name. Yeah, yeah.

And we don't have a lot of Pollocks. We got Jackson Pollock. Welcome, Oliver. You're the new Pollock. Yeah. So he was not particularly wealthy coming from Ireland, but he made a fortune twice over in the colonial Americas. First, he was a businessman in Philadelphia during the Seven Years' War that I was taught as a war called the French and Indian War when I was in school. But he made a fortune selling supplies to the British forces in that. And then he relocates to New Orleans, which was Spanish territory because in the Seven Years War, they took it from France. And they held it for about 40 years.

Spain did. Oh, wow. And I guess the French then got it back because we bought it from the French, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Okay. It like switched again before the Jefferson move. Yeah.

When did beignets enter the equation? That's really all I care about. Yeah. You don't want to visit New Orleans before beignets. Yeah. When did beignets enter the equation? That's really all I care about. Yeah. You don't want to visit New Orleans before beignets. Right. If I had a time machine, when do I go for the best beignets? Yeah. The year one AB after beignets. Press the button. So he moves to Spanish New Orleans. They had just rolled in. They had also apparently sent way too many troops to the point where the troops ate most of the food. And so New Orleans has a food crisis. Oh, no, no beignets.

No. My worst nightmare. So I don't go then. I don't go then. I don't go then. And so then Pollack says, I'm rich and I have connections in the Pennsylvania area. And then he works out life-saving food shipments from Pennsylvania and nearby to New Orleans. And the Spanish authorities thank him by giving him a bunch of lucrative trading rights that make him many, many times richer over the next few years.

So like twice over, he's done a really skillful mercantile becoming incredibly wealthy. Impressive. Yeah. And prevented a starvation thing, you know, and it's great. Yeah. And so then as the 1770s begin, he is one of the richest people in North America. And he's also Irish and doesn't like the British. And he has fond feelings toward Pennsylvania because he made his start there. And so when the 13 British colonies declare independence, he decides he wants to support the revolution. And he reaches out to the Continental Congress and donates the equivalent of nearly $1 billion with a B, modern U.S. dollars.

Oh, we had like a billionaire back then. Yeah, he was that rich. Like by our standards, he was a billionaire. And he said, here's one billion dollars to just fight the war. There you go. Wow. What does a billion in like this currency look like? That just seems like a lot of volume.

I mean, obviously, it's not literally a billion, like a billion of these coins. Like, that's not what you're saying. It's like worth a billion dollars in today's money. But how... Given inflation. Given inflation. What does that look like? How many mules do you need to get that amount of coinage over there? Yeah, perfect question. Because U.S. dollars basically don't exist yet. Even what he specifically donated is 300,000 Spanish silver coins. OK, so still like a lot of sacks. And then it's it's a billion dollars today. So you could call them Oliver sacks. Now, OK, I'm just thinking he's like he's Irish. He's good at ending famines, but he wasn't around long enough to help with the potato famine. He was not. And he actually goes bankrupt before the American Revolution ends, mainly due to his massive donations.

Like, can you give me back some of that money I gave you? Yeah. Yeah. The sacks lying around? He writes letters to that effect to the Continental Congress, and they talk about it and say it's a good idea and can't pay him. They're like, we're also broke, so sorry. Oh, no. Whoops. All that money is gone now.

Yeah, in 1782, which is a year before the Battle of Yorktown, it's before the revolution ends, he is bankrupt and asks for help and can't get it. Oh, no. So he should be celebrated as a patriot. Like, he really helped to his own expense. Did he die in poverty? He died living off of his daughter and her husband's Mississippi plantation. Like, he just had a room there. And tragically, that's what his daughter and her husband's Mississippi plantation. Like he just had a room there. And tragically, that's what his daughter and her husband were up to.

But yeah, he like was a dependent of his children at the end of his life. Yeah. Right. I just picture his tombstone, Oliver Pollock, generous to a fault. Yeah, that would be correct. Yeah, he does this billion dollar donation in our money. And he also proceeds to give money to the Spanish colonial government so they can attack British coastal forts and also help the revolution that way. And as he does this, it's so much money. He's in touch with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, who's Washington's money guy. Like every leading founder is in contact with him and exchanging letters with him. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah. We should all know about him. Yeah. And he he also lived in Spanish territory. So maybe that's part of why we don't talk about him is like, you know, if we don't want to teach our kids fiscal irresponsibility. Oh, yeah. We don't want to teach our kids fiscal irresponsibility. Oh. Yeah, like we only teach our kids about guys in that green visor that shows you're doing accounting. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, Pollack is in touch with and writing to all of the leading founding fathers. And he may not have been the first person to draw a dollar sign. There are a few sources I found that said a few years ahead of this, there's some journal where somebody mashed together the letters for pesos. But he was definitely the most influential person doing it. He was also the first person to draw the cool S. Oh, yeah, which we always called the Stussy S, but it had nothing to do with the clothing brand. No, it's just a cool S.

A common way of abbreviating pesos, if you're using that one of many names for Spanish silver coins, was a big P and a small S next to it. And in his letters, partly because he's drawing so many amounts of money he is giving to the new United States, Pollock just starts mushing

the P and the S together into a recognizable version of a dollar sign with one vertical line. It looks like a dollar sign in the documents we have. I feel like PlayStation could have used this

in their advertising, you know, the big, the P, the S, and then like meld them together. It'll cost you lots of money. Yeah, PS, common acronym. But that was just one, but that's one, that's one line though. So where did the two lines come from? This is more theory territory. territory, we think it might have been some people trying to make it really clear that it's a PS sign and a dollar sign rather than just a regular letter S that one mark got put on

by mistake. There's also a separate theory that these Spanish coins had a heraldic symbol on them called the Pillars of Hercules. And there were two of these heraldic pillars of Hercules on the Spanish coins. So some people think the two lines are representing two pillars. It's a whole nother theory. Hercules had pillars? Yeah, that is an antique name for a location in the world, which is the Rock of Gibraltar and the North African side,

like at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Everybody has pillars. You don't have pillars, Katie? Wait, no, wait. I feel left out. I'm feeling some FOMO. No, I didn't realize everyone had pillars. Where do you guys get your pillar supply?

Mine are right over there. Who's your guy? Who's your pillar guy? His name's Oliver. Oliver Pillars. So you're saying the coin itself, the pieces of eight, the Spanish dollar had these two pillars on it. Yeah. And that became just kind of a colloquial way of like representing it, perhaps, according to theoreticians.

Yeah, we think the most likely theory is that people were trying to just clarify that this is not an S with a weird mark on it and it's a dollar sign, so they did two lines. But it also could be that the coin that APS is short for, the Spanish dollar, had two of a heraldic symbol that's pillar-shaped. And so maybe people said, oh, there should be two lines because there's two pillars. Great. Okay. And either could be true. We don't know. Pollack officially adopting a dollar sign as like the, this is what our money symbol is as an official thing. Okay. So after our Declaration of Independence, after our Constitution, then we got our dollar sign. I feel like that's some meta-narrative about capitalism or something. We had our democracy before we had our dollar. That and the rest of this, it's one of the biggest reasons this Spanish peso theory makes the most sense, is that it took a while to ramp up into having U.S. dollars. So it makes sense that we would borrow a money symbol from the common currency before that. Yeah.

Well, and it was already on their keyboards, so they had to use it. Yeah. They already had the emoji with the dollar eyeballs and barfing up a dollar. Sincerely, I was like, this emoji is just so weird. I'm going to look it up for the episode. And it's just from a batch of a bunch of emojis two guys pitched. I don't know why they pitched it. It's really random and weird.

Yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me, but they just like threw it into a doc of like 20 ideas that all got taken. Yeah. Yeah. I was just reminded and maybe this is going to come up later, but like when you're using the terminal or like when you're using Linux, the prompt is a dollar sign, like the thing that kind of sits there on screen waiting for you to type something. And now that I guess it seemed weird to me the first time that I thought about it, and then I stopped thinking about it. And now it seems weird to me again. Why is there a dollar sign?

Yeah, and apparently that's one of those coding things where sort of like the hashtag pound sign, not British pounds, like a few of those symbols that are prominent on a keyboard, but we don't use a lot. Just coders have scooped them up. Right. What are we not using? You know what? The dollar sign. We haven't used that in our code. That's going to be the prompt. Okay. I'm happy now. Yeah. And I feel like it was risky to pick a dollar sign because you need to talk about money. Like, I don't know, there could be some weird overlap, but they went with it. Yeah. Maybe they thought they could generate it.

Sort of, you know, get dollar sign, print dollar sign. I've used up all the programming terminology I know. The Pillars of Hercules, that's an antique name for sort of the entrance to the Mediterranean, if you're coming to it from the Atlantic. It's the Rock of Gibraltar, and then no particular point in North Africa, just the land that's on the other side. Those don't seem like pillars, though. Just like metaphorical. It's like, you know, something you need to pass through to get to the great lucrative Mediterranean Sea. Yeah.

But they're probably pretty far apart, right? Yeah. They're pretty far apart. I think people just wanted them to feel like that one shot in the Lord of the Rings when there's two big statues of guys in a straight. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They just want that vibe. If we could get that, that I mean, that's even that's like beyond pillars, man. That's like the best pillar you could do. A big guy. Yeah. With those pillars of Hercules, we'll have a picture linked of one side of a very old Spanish coin, this coin we're talking about. The way they drew it in heraldry, it was not just a pillar. It was also like a swoopy banner laid across the pillar in like a letter S shape because they wanted to put Latin slogans on the pillar. And so they put it on a banner around it.

And so it's not as accepted of a theory, but another theory about dollar signs is it's just directly a drawing of the pillar with the swoopy heraldry banner in an S shape. Like it's even more of a peso thing, maybe. I'm looking at it and I'm going to be honest. I don't really see it. I don't really buy that theory because like this picture you sent us, is that the best condition peso that we have left? The Spanish peso is pretty worn down.

Pretty beat up. Yeah, yeah. I think it's if nothing else, it's just amazing how much these early American colonials we think of were passing around Spanish money. And the very last beat of this is a year. It's 1857. In 1857, shortly before the U.S. Civil War, Congress had to pass a new coinage act, which had a provision banning the use of Spanish dollars in U.S. transactions. Like they had to bother to legislate that. Oh, so they were still lingering.

Yeah. And they're like, OK, let's let's clean this up here. This is messy. Come on. We're a new country. We've been around for what, four score or almost four score years? About four score. Yeah, yeah.

We should we should be using our own currency. No more Spanish pesos. That's fascinating. Was there like a cash for pesos program where you could like turn in your pesos for cash? No, I think they just put it on the books and got mad at you. And then people were like, I'm mad about this. It was a big fight. Yeah.

Nowadays, we'd brand it. There'd be like a slogan, peso yourself. Wait, no, that's the opposite of what they want to do. This is one of those things where when you tell me that's what was happening, that you had early Americans passing around Spanish pesos and cutting them up into little slivers. Like, it makes sense. I believe it. It's just the thing you don't think about. You just kind of assume there was always some form of the American dollar and that it came like right after the signing of the uh the the

declaration of independence yeah like maybe they were originally called like washington bucks or something but that they just you know they hit the ground running with it i know the confederacy tried to come up with their own, you know, competing currency. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Nice try, guys. Yeah.

With Dogecoin. And yeah, we have tons of stats and numbers about some other less credible theories about the dollar sign and also its prominence in the world. And we'll jump into that after a quick break. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls.

you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we are back. We're with our wonderful guest, Ross Blotcher from the podcast on Ross and Kerry. And we're talking about dollar signs. The whole rest of the episode is a huge set of numbers and statistics. And that's in a segment called Put Your Stats in What You Most Believe In. Two hosts, one numbers time. Trust your stats, Katie and Alex, to count the stats on SIF. You've got to release an album. Wow. Is this a regular thing or do you write new songs for each episode? It's very much a regular thing. That was submitted by Aldo Butler.

Thank you. Thank you, Aldo. We have a new name for this every week. Please submit to Discord or on SifPod at gmail.com. Make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Thank you. That's amazing. Also, I'm just realizing we never said what Ono, Ross, and Kerry is about.

carries about uh i'll just briefly say like i joined i joined cults and and do weird embarrassing stuff yes that skirts the edges of what science tells us about the world and then i tell you about it with carrie who's not here she has water damage oh cult related water damage you know maybe maybe we could blame one of the cults, but I think it's just the sky, the atmospheric rivers we can blame. That's what they want you to think. Oh, see, okay. Hey, you're right in with the conspiracy theory logic there. Yeah, it's an amazing show. We wanted to have you on in general.

And also when this topic came up, I thought like the dollar sign has weird lore. Yeah. Yeah. Like more than you would think. It's a notation for money. You would think it would just be normal, but people treat it like it's the eye on the top of the pyramid on the dollar. They're like, whoa, like, you know.

Right. There are a lot of pieces of conspiracy theory that are focused on money. And of course, conspiracists always think that like there's this plot to not only do this weird subterfuge pull this wool over everybody's eyes but also to give little subtle nods to it for people in the know so that like the the disney logo has like hidden six six sixes in it or like like like you said, the pyramid on the back of the dollar with the little floating ulcing eye, admittedly creepy. You know, they'll make a big deal about that,

about how the Illuminati runs our monetary system. And of course, anything to do with money and conspiracy goes back to antisemitism. And then you're talking about the Jews and stuff. So definitely connected. There should be like a term for like how many steps, like how many licks does it take to get to the center of the conspiracy pop before you get to anti-Semitism? Oh, okay.

Well, sorry. I know we're talking about rabbit holes here and distractions, but I got to show you this. Oh, please. This is going to be art of the owl from Tootsie Pops ads, isn't it? The owl. I don't trust it. The owl is a major theme on our podcast. So, okay, this thing is called the conspiracy chart, and it was created by Abby Richards.

It was created by Abby Richards, and it's a beautiful infographic that shows this kind of expanding wedge that starts with, you know, just things that actually happened. You like Watergate or the Tuskegee experiments. But then you cross the speculation line into things like, well, we have questions. We're not entirely sure, like UFOs or the JFK assassination. And then you cross another Rubicon and you're into, and now suddenly you're leaving reality. And now you get into things like cryptids or Elvis is still alive. And then you cross the reality denial list and you get to things that are dangerous to yourself and others, like the global warming hoax or chemtrails. And then you pass the anti-Semitic point of no return. And now you're into George Soros, Pizzagate, Holocaust denial, all of that stuff.

The conspiracy chart, look it up. It's amazing. Please email it to me. I'll link it. I will. That's just persistently always the bottom, isn't it? The anti-contest. At some point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and probably the most conspiracist part of this topic is this first number. It is the year 1957, because 1957 is when author Ayn Rand published the novel Atlas Shrugged.

And as we briefly touched on, promotes a sense pretty much debunked theory about the origin of dollar signs. For all the reasons we just talked about, it doesn't make sense. But it's a common one. So my teacher was just parroting back Ayn Rand to me. Your teacher was a libertarian. I did actually have a good number of libertarian teachers. And when I was in high school, I would try to argue with them.

And it was always incredibly frustrating. Was this public school? Because extra good. Yes. If that's the case. It was. It was. Yeah.

And we don't think she invented this. She probably picked it up from somebody else. Yeah, and we don't think she invented this. She probably picked it up from somebody else. But in the dialogue of Atlas Shrugged, a character asks another character what dollar signs stand for these reasons, it is used as a brand of infamy. It stands for the initials of the United States. Wait, did she not? I thought she liked money. Yeah, I think it's a thing of like, it's might of America that people get mad about

because we're so mighty, like that kind of vibe. Oh, I see, I see. Okay, so she's saying it's a good kind of might. Yeah. And she's tapping into, there's a theory that the dollar sign with two lines, right, is either a combination of the letters U and S because of the word United States or because of the words units silver. Oh.

And then the belief is that it's two lines because there used to be a bottom of a U units silver. Oh. And then the belief is that it's two lines because there used to be a bottom of a U connecting them. And then we got lazy and dropped bad. And then we got lazy and just did one line for some reason is the theory. Okay. Or could it stand for Uncle Scrooge? Like Scrooge McDuck?

Uncle Scrooge. Uncle Scrooge. Oh my God. Or Uncle Sam. That fits. Wow, my God. Or Uncle Sam. That fits. Wow. That fits. Yeah.

You can really go deep on this if you want to. Steve Urkel. Steve Urkel. In the fun book. Yeah, yeah. And when you think about it, U-S really just spells us. And no one's ever had that thought before. I just did.

I'm very brilliant it also spells so whoa yeah but anyways let's talk about jewish people now that has all the hallmarks of like folk etymology just something that's easy makes sense and i can see why that would be persistent and stay with people. Yeah, yeah. People are just grabbing something that seems to make sense. And partly because it is slightly fuzzy how we got the symbol. It wasn't obvious that it would be a Spanish currency and an Irish guy. But according to the National Constitution Center, the name United States got officially adopted in the fall of 1776. It was a couple

of months after independence. We tended to call this place either the 13 colonies or the United colonies before that. United colonies would be a UC acronym. There were dollar signs floating right before independence and during. So just the timeline doesn't add up. The names don't add up. The Pollock theory has more going for it. Okay. So maybe we named the U.S. after Steve Urkel. Yeah, once he built that robot, we were like, this is our leader. This is the top American.

He time traveled. He's like, you got any beignets? That's my best Steve Urkel impression. It's not good. It's pretty good. The other big flaw with the theory is how common a single line dollar sign was early on. If it's a U, it just doesn't fit the single line. There's a lot of reasons.

And then our next number of dollar signs is another year. It is 1652. The year 1652. Okay. I have no associations with that year. Yeah, it's just very early on. 1652. It's when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Right. Every historical figure is always alive. And he was still sailing. That's the thing about those mnemonic devices that rhyme. It's like, well, like ocean blue rhymes with any two in any context. How is that useful? That's true. Who's supposed to remember that?

Yeah. 1652. That is the year when the British colony of Massachusetts began making its own coins as currency. Oh, so it was the first one. Wow. signs from Spanish money is that British law was extremely strict about forbidding the colonies from making their own currencies. But then the colonies had a hard time getting enough British money from across the ocean from Britain. And then a few of the colonies started doing illegal rebellious minting of money long before they seemed all that interested in independence from Britain. Okay. These were the early signs of rebellion, of standing up like, all right, you jokers, you're

not sending us enough money. We're going to make some of our own. So these are like bootleg pounds that were like plounds or something. Plounds. Or like plounds or something? Plounds? Yeah, this is, again, 1652, more than 120 years before the Declaration of Independence. Wow.

Massachusetts violates British law and strikes a set of coins called pine tree shillings. They were named that because they had a tree design on them. But they were even called shillings like they were vaguely British style of money, but just they made their own money because there wasn't enough British money and there were draconian laws about it. And then, you know, they had some Spanish money floating around and they wanted to supplement that just to have enough money. If you've got like two options, like one, we could persecute witches, The other, we could mint our own money. I'm glad they spent some time focused on making money. That's true.

They should have shown Salem's leaders some cool graphic design ideas and logo classes. Salem in general needed something to occupy their time with because they were clearly incredibly bored. Exactly. If we had started this and supported this sooner, we could have avoided a whole lot of heartache. If you gave those like the girls making all the accusations, if you just gave them fidget spinners, I don't think it would have happened. I think it's a great thing that teenagers have TikTok and fidget spinners now because

now they're not spending time accusing people of witches. Yeah. Hear, hear. Yeah. And yeah, this is the first example of future U.S. states setting up traditions of non-dollar currencies. The pine tree shillings end up spreading across the 13 colonies just because equally like Spanish money, this is money we can get. Great. colonies just because equally like Spanish money. This is money we can get. Great. And then my favorite thing about the pine tree shilling is this number again, 1652. They did a scam to trick

the British by printing 1652 on every coin every year they made them. Oh. Because they said, because the British said it's against the law to make your own money. So they made some of these in 1652. I get it. Now they're making more in 1662, but they say 1652 and they're like, oh, this was part of the original batch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So historians have to officially date any of these coins they find because the Massachusetts people were cleverly like, oh, you just keep finding old coins. And then in their basement, they're making more and

more coins, you know? Do they put it like in their mouth and taste it and like, yeah, this tastes like a 1653 coin. Coin sniffing dogs who can tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All this led to the next number, 1792, because that's when the new U.S. government set up a federal mint and kind of began the process of making national money in a way in the U.S. It didn't really get going in a modern way until after the Civil War and when greenbacks were printed and we started having a more organized federal government. Greenbacks were printed and we started having a more organized federal government. And a lot of year numbers this week. The next one is 1920, because 1920 is the year when the Treaty of Versailles went into effect. It turns out that the aftermath of World War I is when anybody outside the U.S. really started caring about U.S. dollars. It was a very regional currency until about 100 years ago.

OK, so we were just these upstarts. But now that we played an interesting kind of pivotal role in a world war, they're like, all right, well, we're interested in your financial stability. Yeah. Yeah. And especially the U.S. held a bunch of Europe's debt after World War I and then repeated that process after World War II. Wait, who died and put the U.S. in charge? Oh, wait. Yeah. People in a war. Let's say the Kaiser.

That's more fun, right? Yeah. It's just the Kaiser. That's more fun, right? Yeah. It's just one guy. And I'm linking a National Geographic interview with Doug Mudd, curator of the Edward C. Richette Money Museum

in Colorado. Can you just say that's a great name? Yeah, all around. For a curator? Doug Mudd. That's incredible. Okay, go on.

Yeah, you bring all the good names. Yeah. As the Spanish Empire declined, the next kind of big European American currency in the world was British gold sovereigns. But then due to Britain spending tons of its money and also lives in the two world wars, the U.S. dollar proceeded to become the next biggest currency. It might get replaced after that, but it seems to take a giant umpire and a relatively good economic period for a modern country to make its currency huge all over the world. So Spain did it, then Britain did it, and now the U.S. has done it.

I'm feeling pretty good about Bored Apes being next. next. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the U S has had kind of like a hundred year run then of, uh, international financial viability. Yeah. Cause, cause especially before world war one, with the exception of a war funnily enough against Spain to take some of their colonies, the U S was pretty isolationist really until the mid 1900s. If you, if you waved around U.S. dollars in other countries, people would be like, why do you have that relatively specific currency from just one country? We use British gold sovereigns or other stuff. And speaking of conspiracy theorists, I feel like so many of them have really strong thoughts on the creation of the Federal Reserve in, I feel like it was around that time, like 1920 or thereabouts, and how that changed our monetary

system. And usually you have the conspiratorial crowd also talking about how we no longer have a gold-backed currency and how that's ruinous to our nation. Is it true that like the Wizard of Oz was originally like complaining about the various like currency standards or something? Oh. Yeah, that's that's supposed to be a thing that when we debated whether to back money with gold or silver, the Wizard of Oz book put in a bunch of gold and silver symbols like the yellow brick road is a path of gold backing. And yeah, yeah, it's yeah, that's supposed to. Oh, I got it.

I got to read that. Some minor like pop culture conspiracy yeah yeah cool if you look up like the wizard of oz grover cleveland you will get to the stuff i'm looking that up now you'll also get a lot of uh turn safe search on for that, I'm just going to say. Yeah. But yeah, and so we're in a slightly more than 100 years of U.S. dollars being sort of the first currency people reach for if they're looking for a global one.

And that has led to dollar signs becoming a lot more popular in the world because when countries either write that or adopt a new post-colonial currency, they often call it a dollar, use a dollar sign. Okay. Easier than changing out the keys on the keyboard.

Partially, yes. Yeah. And in these post-colonial countries, quick set of numbers for that, a lot of post-colonial countries from Spanish empire tend to use names like peso, but especially former British possessions will distinguish themselves from Britain by switching from a pound type name to a dollar. The Australians switched from an Australian pound to a decimalized Australian dollar in 1966. One year later, New Zealand did that with New Zealand pounds. They became New Zealand dollars.

There are dollar currencies in Belize, Singapore, Namibia, all sorts of countries. The one country that did it before all this is Canada, probably just due to closeness to the US. Apparently, banks in British Canada issued notes called dollars as early as the early 1800s. And in 1858, they retired a Canadian pound to do Canadian dollars. Wow. Just a little subtle show of independence for each country. Yeah. It's been especially a way to become independent from Britain is to say our money is called dollars and we use dollar signs. Yeah. Fascinating. Huh? Yeah. I enjoy sticking it to England and the British as much as possible. They can take it. Yeah.

What is this? Hot leaf water? Oh, big deal. Oh, the sun doesn't set on your empire? It does here. We use dollars. Yeah. Also, night is good.

Try it. It's fun. Yeah. You get some sleep. Anyway. And then very last number here. It's really the power of the dollar sign through actual U.S. dollars. The number is 10 because 10 is the approximate number of countries besides the U.S. that have U.S. dollars as one of their official currencies. Oh.

It's like on the books as an official currency in 10 countries. Oh, that's a good trivia thing. All right. Yeah. Are you going to name these? Yeah. A lot of them are small island nations. Okay.

And those are the British Virgin Islands, East Timor, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Turks and Caicos, and Palau. I knew Palau was going to be on there. Right. Everyone was saying Palau at home. I know, Palau, Palau. And then there's three countries in Latin America, Panama, El Salvador, and Ecuador. Okay.

One other country, the country of Zimbabwe. Hmm. Okay. One other country, the country of Zimbabwe. They have at various times tried to establish a Zimbabwean dollar and have also had the U.S. dollar as an official currency, at least part of the time. And I think all of us have like a $10 billion Zimbabwe note somewhere. Yeah. And there's a long history of countries adopting a currency called the dollar with a dollar sign. And then there's some kind of political or economic trouble, usually with foundations and what European colonizers did to them. But then, yeah, like then they end up printing a note with a huge number on it and then it's not not meaning anything. Yeah. Rampant inflation. Oh, fascinating. OK, I'm not going to remember any of those countries except for Palau. Nobody forgets Palau.

But yeah, so the dollar sign is global, not just through US dollars, but also other people making dollars. And that would change probably if another country becomes more economically predominant and just more of an empire. When I was a kid, I used to print out money that had a kitty on it and I called them cat bucks and I'd distribute them. I think we could do that. Kitty bucks. Yeah, I think everyone would be on board with that. Legit. I'm thinking like if someone made kitty bucks, they would need to make an active decision. Do I just use dollar signs because that's on

computer keyboards or do I make like a K with a second vertical line and it's its own thing? Like the people who made the Euro were like, we're the European Union. We're doing our own symbol. We're not just calling it like an e-buck. You know? I think it should be a little paw print. A little paw print as a symbol.

That'd be cute. Ooh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, folks, that's the main episode for this week. And I want to say an extra thank you to our special guests, Ross Blotcher. He and Carrie Poppy make an amazing podcast that he describes so well. Oh no, Ross and Carrie, truly unique and a member of our wonderful network, Maximum Fun. So please check it out. I particularly enjoyed their Whitley Stryber breakdown recently and also their prophecies for 2024. Not theirs, but they got them from

other people. They're pretty wild. Nothing else like it. I hope you check it out. In the meantime, you're in the outro of this podcast with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaway. This week, it's one mega takeaway. The dollar sign is probably a Spanish currency symbol scribbled by Irish merchant Oliver Pollock in Spanish-controlled New Orleans. That story spun off into a lot of other stories, and also our stats and numbers had many of them. We got into the Massachusetts currency more than 100 years before the American Revolution that revolted against the British monetarily.

We talked about the dollar sign conspiracy theory spread by Ayn Rand, the British decolonization role of dollar signs, and so much more. That's the takeaway and our stories. And I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists and, oh no, Ross and Kerry exists and all the shows on the network. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the SIF main episode. This week's bonus topic is three quick stories, it's two amazing dollar signs in fine art, and one dollar sign that solved a legal case. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 15 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows,

and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It is special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things. Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources include the U.S. National Archives, in particular, archive technician Jackie Kilby, digital resources for old coins held at the Smithsonian, other coins found at Fort Stanwix in modern New York State. There's pictures of the chopped up pieces of eight into those little pieces, and then tons of writing from Atlas Obscura, the National Constitution Center, National Geographic, and more. That page also

features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadagoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Ross taped this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Ross's location, and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIFT Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you

like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 17. That's about the topic of ham. And on that episode, there's a story about a ham and bean soup that they serve at the U.S. Senate cafeteria. I got so into that story, I made TikToks about the soup and also made a similar soup at my home and reviewed it on TikTok. So I've been making a lot of soup posts because of ham. And check those out. They're fun. Also check out my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists own shows supported directly by you