Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Today, we have something that a few people might call controversial. We're talking about Tom's We're talking about deuces. We're talking about two dollar bills. I bet two dollar bills rule everything around me? Then, right, dream and some money two dollar bills, y'all, No, it's me No. And of course we're joined with our super producer, Casey and Pegram. Casey, I'm laughing because off air, I was wondering if we should give you some kind end of currency related nickname for this for this show. How about Casey Greenback's Pegram. I like that. Yeah, I'm sold enough. Ben. You know, I only really recently realized that cream stands for cash rules everything around me. Really, I'm a huge fan that concept, But not just the acronym cream. I'm a fan of all of the multitudes of slang words we have made for currencies, both in the US and abras Scratch yeah, cheese, cabbage, grip, yeah, there's grip, a stack of bill. It's so it's so contextual and so ubiquitous now, and there's such a wide range of slang words that I feel like, if you if you say, just a made up phrase while you're handing someone money, then they will believe that slang for money. So if I, if you and I and Casey were at Dave and Busters or something, they have their own currency. Oh crap, Yeah, they beat us that cluster Bucks. Bluster Bucks, Yeah, a pale shadow of bend Bucks from what I hear. Objective. So but here, like, imagine this, so we're in um, you know, we're in some place I don't know, a ritzy club or something, but the Ritz Carlton. There we go literally ritzy. Yes, well that's where at the Ritz Carlton. And if we pay someone at the hotel counter and then we say, well, let me throw a couple of pony bones away, and it's like two bills, they're just gonna roll with it, and they may later refer to cash as pony bones, which is kind of morbid. I'm I would I would maybe be something like, yeah, let me grease your palm with a couple of these sweet Jim Jams, Jim Jams, Jim Jams. I feel like, yeah, I feel like we're we've established this um interesting etymology that's still evolving. But today's episode, as we said, is about something a little controversial in the world of US currency, the two dollar bill, the deuce, the tom. Yeah, that's why the slaying terms were Ye. I wanted to ask you at the top here. Do you have a lot of experience with two dollar bills? Do you have a like a story or did something happen to you? Well, all of my life savings are in two dollar bills inside of dirty mattresses, That's the truth. And you save money that you would have otherwise had to spend on cleaning the mattresses. Well, it's also like, you know, they're super rare, right Ben, So, I mean they're gonna one day be worth well more than two dollars apiece, my man, am I right? Sure, they're worth their weight of in saffron and uh, golden pony bones, diamond dust. Yeah, but no, that is a common misconception though, right, that two dollar bills are rare and you should hang onto them. Um, which is kind of a funny little conundrum that we'll get into a little later. But why don't we start off with sort of the broad strokes. Um, what's the history of the deuce? Excellent silent point to begin Uh, the deuce or the tom first comes to the United States. It's first printed, that is, in eighteen sixty two. Before that time, the States would allow banks to print their own currency, and that was pretty problematic. There's a good illustration of it in this documentary you and I watched called the two dollar Bill documentary. The two dollar Bill document a burse of creativity. So not to try to be addictive filmmakers, it's very very good, but come on, guys, right, that's by a writer and director John Bernardo, and in there they have some experts explain how the problem with bank issued currency is that the further away you are from the bank physically, the less likely other institutions are to accept it at full face value. They call them broken banknotes. Right. Yeah, So like a bank in Florida prints out a two dollar bill or five dollar bill, it doesn't matter. A bank in Maine might say, we'll give you fifty cents for it. That's really funny. Or they might also just be like, get this trash out of my face. Yeah, get this this, get this Florida rag out of here. Well, it's sort of the same idea as you know, trading in in items like if you know, like I say, a shell or or some sort of, you know, carved wooden piece is worth something, and then I take it to some other community and they disagree. You know, what are you supposed to do? And this is issually too, because if the bank that issued the note folded, it would become an obsolete note and become absolutely worthless. But you know, it takes time for word to travel, right, so it could even be um weeks or months before someone farther away even found out that the bank had closed, and they might still give you you know, yes, So it's time dependent, it's not it's not very sustainable. This changes, hopefully for the United States in eighteen sixty two in March when they issue currency, they is one dollar bills and they issued two dollar bills and spoiler alert, two dollar bills are the hot business people in that time made an average of around fifteen dollars a month. Interesting, So if you have two dollars and you're paying, you're throwing down two's. That's gonna be my new sling, throwing down to throwing down twos drop induces. Yeah wait, yeah, I think someone beat us to that one. It's true. But here the reason that they changed this game up is because they needed to finance the war, right, the Civil War, that is, the Confederacy actually had a little forethought and they issued their own currency. But the Union tried to borrow its way through the war at rapacious interest rates. Right, So in response, the US passed these three legal tender acts that resulted in the issuing of I believe in the neighborhood of four hundred and fifty mill in UH. Legal tender which means what, man, what is legal tender? So legal tender or legal tender you we might be more familiar with it through the slang name greenbacks, which is way cooler and sexier than legal tender. Uh. These were replacements for what we're called demand notes or earlier greenbacks, and essentially they were a form of fiat currency. Legal tender means that they can be used for any debt for like a public debt perhaps the Union with face due to the atrocious interest rates in the war, or a private debt, except that I think they had an uh, they had one exception. Let's see. I Yes, this note is a legal tender for all debts public and private. Accept duties on imports and interest on the public debt, and as redeemable and payment of all loans made to the United States. It's an iou Oh my gosh. Now I thought fiat currency meant that it was backed by just faith in the government. Yeah, the fiat currency means that it's backed by the institute and institutional beliefs. So there are other things that will come along, called silver certificate. That's right. Not only that there were notes backed by coin. There were the silver certificates, There were Federal Reserve notes, and there were national bank notes. So you can find in various various places online you can find a picture of earlier currencies. We should caveat our our timeline here because we said in eighteen sixty two, in March, that's when we have the first wide scale printing of the two dollar bills. There were other private entities like banks printing things prior to that. There were also other two dollar bills before then, but they were they were much smaller in scope and distribution because by the time the US broke with England, or by the time excuse me, the American colonies at that point broke with England, they had been putting out paper currency for nearly a century, but they didn't like continental currency existed but they still hadn't gotten the formula quite right or worked out the process. And you can see in the National Museum of American History you can see examples of this older currency and it just looks pisspard. Oh dude, it looks like something you'd find in a pirate wreck. Yeah, like yeah, and no, yeah, I I see now too, Ben. I have this note that um, they issued forty nine thousand, two dollar bills, UM, and that was for quote bills of credit for the defense of America. It wasn't until almost a century later, on July eleven of eighteen sixty two, the Congress decided to make that two dollar denomination part of the nation's legal tender, as we discussed earlier. So I think we're up to date with the two dollar bill. Let's talk a little bit about a rivalry. I think I know where this is going. A little beef Yeah, two prominent founding fathers were what I like to call beefed up for a long time to have this rivalry. Let's do a slow build up to to those beefed up rivals and explore what this bill actually looked like. Yeah, and also like whose faces appeared, which will lead us to the good question. Um, So these bills and all American legal tender use a process that's called intaglio printing, which is it's really really cool. It's like the opposite of relief printing, UM, which means that it's got these fine lines, these etch deep etchings um in these plates, and the designs are cut or scratched into these plates and they can be copper or zinc or aluminum or plastic or magnesum or even like coated paper, and the ink is rubbed into these grooves and then the paper is placed on top of it, and it requires great amounts of pressure to get that to take yes, and you end up with this really beautiful, fine kind of embossed look. And I think it takes seventy two hours to do each side, at least here in the modern day because of the drying. Right, because there's so much ink on the two dollar bill if you look at either side of it, the printing, which is beautiful, is very detailed. Also, the coolest part is if you get a chance, go online and watch the engravers making the plates. What a weird rarefied job. It's pretty cool too. You see them with those what do you call that a loop like a jeweler's loop monocle looking thing where they're examining them to make sure they're perfect. And each plate has a of specific code that ends up on the front end back of the note and can even tell you like where it was printed. And the thing about the two is that it actually has some of the most ornate intaglio printing of any US note um And that's because the back of it has a very large scene in the middle, much much more elaborate than than some other bills that were used to Yeah, a lot of people think that the the back end, for lack of a better phrase, of the two dollar bill is the signing of the Declaration of Independence. However, we are going to give you a gift, friends and brews. Now you will be armed with a small bit of trivia for your next sire. Let's just call it truth man, let's drop some knowledge, some truth. It's time for a two dollars worth of truth bombs here, folks. It is not actually called the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, it's just the Declaration of Independence. And it's a painting by John Turnbull, and it just depicts the presentation of the signed document to the Continental Committee, of which Thomas Jefferson was a member. And I don't have the exact names, um, but some of the lesser players I think they were like forty two people pictured in this. Um. They had to do a redone version of this for the bill so that they could actually fit it all into that little picture hole. That's what I'm calling it. That's the picture hole. UM call it the frame. Maybe kind of cropped out some dudes that they felt were superfluous, And the fact that I don't know their names probably speaks volumes. You can find, of course, a list of the names. It's not too far out there to say many of those names would be unfamiliar to the average you know us kid today, but there are so many we aren't. We aren't going to go through the whole list. That would be uh, wait for it, ridiculous. Yeah, we got there, and I see what you did. But you know, Ben Franklin's there, Thomas Jefferson is, as you mentioned, Noel. Also, George Clinton is there, like of Parliament funkadelic. Yep, he's in the back. No, No, not not that George Clinton. Unfortunately, Uh, he is a time traveler a funk, but you can see the entire list of these people. The reason we're bringing this up is because if you look at the detail of this engraving, you can see how this this separates a two dollar bill in terms of sophistication from many other examples of US currency. And one of the things that caught in our minds was, I, I don't know if you had ever heard this growing up, but people have told me in the past that two dollar bills were bad luck. You had mentioned that earlier, Ben, but I had not heard that. Um, does that mean I should stop sleeping on my mattress is full of two dollar bills? I you know, I I don't know. I don't I don't know how it works, bad luck or no, they're incredibly comfortable. Well, of course, it's a comfortable mattress and good night's sleep. The two dollar bill, like all US currency, is printed on very high quality paper. But it may even be a mistake to call it a paper. Yeah, it's actually a fine blend of cotton and lenin. In fact, some of my hoarded two dollar bills I have sewn together into a delightful sheet set. Oh that's cool. You could also make a cape that would be awesome pun show perhaps perhaps No, no, not both. You can't wear him. At the same time that people wouldn't take you as seriously. Poncho and a cape. People would be like that guy needs to be more definitive in his decisions. A poncho is kind of just like a cape all around, a light cape, you know, yeah, exactly, Yeah, that would be extreme to wear a poncho. Do you think anybody has front capes? Oh? Yeah, aprons? Never mind, moving on. Yeah, this this stuff, it's got a surprising amount of cotton in it, which helps with the durability because when we think about it, if you had typical printing paper and stuff was printed on there, it would be easier to counterfeit, but it would be much more vulnerable to wear and tear. And that's a whole big part of the processes they used to make these bills is to make them hard to duplicate um. In fact, there's a whole another step in the printing process where all of those little stamps and seals, those are all done in a separate, completely separate layer, so it's like a different set of ink, and it's you know, it's very, very difficult to successfully counterfeit. And did you yeah, and did you know that one company supplies all of the paper. It's a place called the Crane Company. I did not know that, but it makes sense, right, if you could just get it anywhere, that'd be no good, you know, But talk about a great business model to those guys are set. Yeah, And in the film that we're talking about, the documentary about the two r bill, it shows this process and the folks that craft and maintain these plates, they're really like, you know, artisans. I mean, it really is a very high precision skill to be able to work with these I mean, you're, like I said, they are doing a lot of it by hand, and it's very intricate form of printmaking essentially right, And this process has proven to be beneficial for the US, and a lot of other countries have modeled some behaviors off of this. But I want to get back to I don't want to get lost in the conversation. And we lost the beef, well lost the bad luck luck and then because I was yeah, yeah, yeah, So a lot of us have heard that the two dollar bill is associated with bad luck, and the question is why because, as it turns out, it is not associated with any specific tragic event or a murder. And yes, the forty two people that are in the in the Trumbull painting or engraving rather are all dead. But that's just because that's what happens to be the way of the old white dude. It was not unusual. Uh And we have to dig into a little bit of speculation to find where this superstition occurred. Superstition is the correct word. It's kind of like four leaf clovers being lucky, you know. Uh So two dollar bills were tied to brothels early in the twentieth century. You could use a two dollar and it kind of continues, but you could use a two dollar bill for a m well, we're family show. Maybe the best way to put it is a a very quick experience, you know what I mean, not the premium treatment whatever that was. Also, two dollars used to be a standard betting price point in horse races. That is pretty cool, man. I'm gonna go ahead and drop this now. It's because it's neat and in associate with what you're saying. But there's a story, um in the modern day of two dollar bills being associated with not brothels, but strip clubs. Gentlemen. I think we talked about this on a previous episode, that Oregon Portland in fact has the highest number of strip clubs like per capita or something like that, which is still so amazing. You know. I learned that from my uber driver when you were visiting. Yeah, and that you do so you mentioned that, and that kind of blew my mind. I was not expecting it. But um, as it turns out, there's one strip club in particular called Club Diablo UM, where the proprietor thought it would be really clever to get a whole bunch of two dollar bills because you can get them easily. Just get them, get them today, get him at the bank, um, and stain them in red ink to make them look like they were blood stained, and then he would give them out as change as kind of a gimmick in his establishment. But it turns out that they ended up circulating all over town and people stopped taking them and it became an issue. It's like it's a Charlotte letter, and the word got back that it was all as a result of of this, this strip club impresario's little gimmick which was meant to connect his place with the vampire film from Dust Till Dawn by Robert Rodriguez and with Quentin Tarantino in it, where there is like a strip club, you know, populated by blood sucking vampire ladies. Um. And he actually got the law on him pretty hard. The c I a UM was investigating him and the FBI actually came to the bar. And you know what, that wasn't enough to spook him. This guy, by the way, has it made using strip clubby name of Johnny Zukle. Johnny Zukle. Pretty you gotta say it with a little bit of rasp in your voice, Johnny Johnny Zukle. He he was not shaken. Um. It wasn't until you know, things started to escalate that he finally backed down. Um. But just wanted to drop that in there. And because I think that's that that ties in with what you were saying. But let's go back back to the back, back back to the beef, back to the backy, back to the beef. Let's see who's beefed up. So we mentioned that in terms of bad luck, the superstition probably originates more from people's perception what the money was used for, and as no point out, that's still around a little bit today, but it's not associated with a tragedy. We did a little bit of foreshadowing. We mentioned the people on the back of the bill, but let's pay off the foreshadowing. Now, who are the people on the front, because they change over time. Well, remember when we were talking about those um early versions of currency, when all of the regions I guess are smaller areas could have their own There were in those days around a thousand completely unique two dollar bills just floating around, and we mentioned what a problem that was. Then enter the Civil War. We now have legal tender and the first two dollar bill it's officially issued has Alexander Hamilton's Alexander Hamilton's Alexander Hamilton's like the the guy from both the musical and also fun fact, a real life founding father of the United States. Very true, he along with his nemesis. I don't know if that's fair. We're probably creating a bit of a false narrative there, But no, no, they had issues. They definitely had issues. Hamilton's and Jefferson both founding fathers. They had very different ideas of what the government should be. Hamilton's Federalist party wanted to centralize the government, um wanted to represent the interests of trade, manufacturing, big city, you know, cosmopolitan ideas. Thought these were forces that would be crucial for progress in this new society. Strong central government, strong central currency, public debt. He didn't like, Radicals, didn't want him, didn't trust him anyone to maintain good relationships with England because they would be a trading partner, you know, right. And Hamilton's economic plan for the nation included making a bank, national bank, like the kind that existed in England, for the purpose of maintaining public credit. One of the very controversial things that he proposed at the time was to consolidate state's debts. And Jefferson and his faction Republicans also known as the Republican Democrats at times Republican dash Democrats. It's a weird one. This faction took the position that, let's say, Virginia should not be responsible for debts accrued by New York. So it's a very almost isolation anist states rights kind of vibe federalist anti federalists exactly. And if Hamilton's is the city mouse, Jefferson is the country mouse because the Republican Party wanted to mainly take care of agriculture and agrarian have an agrarian society, did not trust bankers unconcerned with manufacturing and commerce. Again, like you said, Ben, all about these states rights, self sufficient communities. Um, there's a great quote where he said, I am not a friend to a very energetic government, right right, So this is weird because originally is Alexander Hamilton's on that first two dollar bill and that was because, of course he got his way. He was the Secretary of the Treasury. He got that National Bank that was established in February of seventeen ninety one. And then a little time goes by eighteen sixty two rolls around that too, that deuce comes out. Uh, we got old alex Hamilton's face on the front because like you said, he was the Secretary of the Treasury. And I guess maybe you want I don't know, do you think he wanted it? Do you think he pushed for it? You get care and I don't know's you know, you have to wonder is it awkward to bring that up in conversation, to be the person who says, you know what would what would be a great portrait, guys, because we're doing portraits for these for these dollars. I'm in Secretary of the Treasury, so I think like we could do an equal but we should We should probably do me. That just seems very weird. And there's something Kanye west Ish about it, you know, Kanye West is talking about is it dragon power these days? Or egal egal power, Eagle power? It should be Eagle Bays dragon power. I think it's dragon energy, dragon energy. Thank you. That's been Casey on the case. And you may be asking yourself the question we asked ourselves off air. Uh A dragon energy and higher blood related. Did they play some sort of role in the publication two dollar bill? Uh? That is currently lost to history? But right, and if you have any ideas, you know what else has lost history? And it's that Why did Jefferson swoop in and knock his old nemesis Hamilton's off of the bill? Yeah? In eighteen sixty nine, just a few years later, Thomas Jefferson's portrait replaces Hamilton's and it's used on the two dollar note for the first time, and it's been used ever since. But what I'm saying as no one. I have not found any sources saying why this happened, Why did Hamilton's fall out of favor? Right, And there's there's a really cool part in this documentary where in one of the historians explains when when asked about all these different portraits that are on various forms of currency in the US, he says that the history is largely unwritten, and many times the best thing historians can say is just that it is ultimately up to the Secretary of the Treasury to decide. So Alexander Hamilton's is no dies, so he certainly had no saying. Neither did Thomas Jefferson. Maybe our best bet is to ask ourselves who the Secretary of the Treasury was in eighteen sixty nine when that picture change occurs. That's Hugh McCullough from Indiana, the secretary. Maybe he was beefed up with Hamilton's two and just wanted to, you know, give his legacy a good thrashing. Perhaps perhaps, Oh and let me amend that same year mccullo was replaced by George S. Bookedwell, who also may have been beefed up with Hamilton's very volatile times in the Secretary of the Treasury, and and like you said earlier, these bills were popular because of the nature of of wages, and the two sort of two would be like the way we might drop a hondo today, you know, to really throw throw a weight around. And there was also the Gold Panic in eighteen sixty nine, so maybe those events, those events tied into it. So we should probably do an episode on some of those catastrophic financial disasters that occurred in the eighteen hundreds that remain relatively obscure today. You know, I love anything with panic in it, Gold Panic, Satanic panic, Satanic panic, panic at the disco, manic panic. Remember that haired out hair dye? Yeah, yeah, skate shops back in the day, back at gad zooks. Do you ever die your hair bright pink or red? Do you ever have a you never went through a phase like that. Our our coworker and um compatriot, Holly fry Gate, brought me some silver hair dye today because I have this really dope silver gray gray streak in my hair. Got characterized it as being dope because I'm just a fan. It just isn't just the right place. People think that I did it on purpose, but I didn't but Holly's like, you know, you need to really take that up a notch and just make it like shiny silver. I thought she was joking like Rogue in the Oh wait silver not white silver. Not well so she's totally like Rode the next Men. But she presented me with a tube of hair stuff. Maybe congratulations, thanks man. Yeah, and we're gonna drop it in. You gonna don't do it over the weekend. I don't want to hurt how he's feelings. Does it wash out or is it a permanent one? It looks permanent. Look it's a commitment, commitment. Maybe try some some of that washout dive first, see how you feel, get some of the theater stuff that you just sprayed. I was just sort of like, Holly, I don't think I'm I'm not lacking. I'm good with this. She's like, no, it can be better. You can take it up a notch. But anyway, we digress. Best of intentions always, no, Holly's the best, so so yes. Panics aside and motivations somewhat unknown or murky, The fact remains that Thomas Jefferson replaced Alexander Hamilton's on the two dollar bill in eighteen sixty nine. And the fact also remains that over time, a good bit of time, the two sort of fell out of favor. Yeah yeah, And it had lower printing numbers starting in about the nineteen fifties, and this is what led to for a time the two dollar bill becoming the rarest current denomination of US currency, and people started to hoard two dollar bills. But as a result, this decreased the circulation even more. It's right. It's a really great Mental Faces article about the curious case of the two dollar bill, and they talk about the idea of the two dollar build sort of being surrounded by circular logic, one of those notions being that no one uses them because no one uses them, right, Yeah, So they're not printed because people are disinclined to use them, But people are disinclined to use them because they're not printed very often, right, And they're always something worth commenting on. Their Many people find them to be remarkable in some way or memorable, which is why at modern day gentlemen's club, gentleman's parlor, gentlemen's lobby. I'm just thinking of different words for building. It's a lounge. There we go, there we go uh. In this article by Hannah Keyser, we do see that this logic works against at least the the prevalence of the two dollar bill, uh, even if it does help its popularity. And this eventually leads to the federal ment just throwing up their hands and say no more. Right. Yeah, it was in nineteen sixty six that they decided to discontinue this particular denomination of currency. Um. So it stayed entirely out of production, out of print for ten years. Yeah. And the Economic Review said that they were pulling this because people weren't using it, you know why, people were hoarding them in their houses. But then one faithful day April thirteen, the spring day of nineteen and seventy six, the centennial. That's right, the two dollar bill was issued once again for the first time in a decade. UM, and it was announced by President Nixon. Nixon, the two dollar barrels back. What is that? I think I think we get there. It was. It was crazy Nixon. Uh, wrestler Nixon. He's kind of tough to say two dollar to dollar. I see you really, you've got the cadence, you've got the tone. More. I think we we've got you and I have some practice ahead of us. I think if we combined our impressions, we'd be pretty close to the mark. But you've got the Bark down sort of Vultron, the Nixon, You've got Yourse've got the bark and the quaver down. So so we, uh, we have some a montage ahead of us, you and I off air when we when we get Nixon up. Yeah, we're gonna have a Nixon off Yeah, we heard your emails. At first we thought you were joking, But I don't think people are joking noll. I think they want us to do a full to go full Nixon. Well, I think if we're gonna do that, then it probably has to be a bonus episode just for the uper fans. Yeah, we don't want to alienate out there. I was thinking about that. So what when someone tunes in for the first time and they're they're like, who are these cars? Even the sound effect has to be in a Nixon voice. Everything must be Nixon. We could get the Nixon filter we've been talking about so much on our vision board. So Nixon announces this and there's a little bit of finger wagging from a New York Times article about the reintroduction where they say, oh, dish it man, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't read this one where they say public reluctance to accept and use the two dollar bill was the principal cause of its discontinuous nine years ago, and the main reason for that reluctance was the relative scarcity of the note in circulation. So to me, that comes off like the tone of it is okay, kid, it's America, do better this time. You can have it back, But remember what happened? Like you're they're giving like you're giving a kid a toy back. Here's the thing, though, America did not play nice, and there was a functional reason beyond just a delightful little bicentennial gimmick for releasing this. They needed there was a gas shortage, I believe, and they needed to release a certain value amount of currency, but not they didn't want to print as many ones, so they were able to print like half as many two's. And I'm no economist, but I guess that's what you do. So what is this going to accomplish, ben, is my question to you. Well, it's going to give you more bang for your buck about twice as much you get in terms of printing costs exactly twice as much, exactly twice as much. Also not an economist, we should note, but this, this gives an injection of cash into a an economy that is um in dire knee. It's true, and it did create I didn't create. It just was scarce because it hadn't been in circulation for ten years. So you know, I guess they don't know how they introduced currency. They must do it a little at a time, obviously, you know, over a large area. I think it's a T shirt cannon. Okay, that'd be cool. I think it's Man. I mean like it was sort of like Joker in Man with the trust, you know, and he's got the gas and the balloons and all that, and that'd be cool. That's probably the most efficient way to do it. Again by centennial parade. Again we're not economist, but we would be great at this parade. It's and and now, though you're right, people didn't play nice because they started to see this as as much of a collectible as it was a functional piece of currency exactly. So people didn't spend it. No, they like went to the post office and got a stamp the show the date that they got it, and like a notary type stamp, like a postage stamp, and a rubber cancelation stamp, and it made it seem like a keepsake. Interesting see it sort of to me sounds like when they released those fancy commemorative coins and a lot of I wonder if that creates a circulation problem with quarters. Probably not. I don't know. They made a bunch of Yeah, that's true, um, but again doesn't quite accomplish what they were after. But they don't pull it. Again. There's still two dollar bills in circulation. I don't think they print them particularly often. They certainly print them less often than you know, the standard denominations that were used to I don't have an exact figure on that. I believe again from the excellent documentary that we checked out by John Bernardo, I believe that one of the experts at the Federal Mints says that since nineteen fifty six, there have only been nine printings of the two. They're so cool about it. They don't call they don't call it a two dollar bill. They call it the two, the two, which makes it sound so classy. I learned a new word. What is it too? I think you probably know this one, but um new mismatics, Yes, yes, yes, or a new mismatist, collector and enthusiast of currency and coins. And they have an awesome Uh, they have an awesome convention in Florida with an acronym that I don't have to ask. I already know you and I both love it. It is the Florida United New Mismatists Convention or fun Baby. It sounds like a barrel of laughs to me. Oh god, I hope they are as proud of that as I am. Oh man, Yeah, I know, it's good. You should be proud and they should be proud that you're so proud of them. But He's the thing. There's a lot of misconceptions even today about the two dollar bills. People still think they're scarce, and while it may be scarce compared to other denominations, there are over one billion two dollar bills in circulation today right right. You can, as as we mentioned earlier, you can go to a bank and specifically request a large amount of two dollar bills, and it turns out that you probably wouldn't be the first person to do that, because two dollar bills in in recent years, especially post you know, the reintroduction of the bill, they have become signs of protest, right, not not just this is this is different from the gentleman's lounge throw in red paint on stuff. That's more of a marketing ploy. I guess right, yeah, I agree. But but you and I and our researcher Christopher Hasiotis found some really cool examples of two dollar bills being used as a protest. Right. Did you hear the one from the mid eighties around an event called Black Dollar Days Black Dollar Days, No School me late later? Well, the a c P had this event that they dubbed Black Dollar Days that was from September two through the ninth, where in order to show the spending power, the massive spending power in American community, remember what they do, they urged they're just black consumers in twenty nine cities across the country to only spend two dollar bills and one dollar Susan B Anthony coins to demonstrate how much economic heft they had, with Raymond Johnson Jr. The president of the u w a CP s l A Chapter, saying that black spent well over one d billion on goods and services from non minority firms in ur and yet the corporations purchased less than one percent of that amount from black vendors. Um. He's saying, we're not asking for anything except our fair share. So in using those two dollar bills, in those Susan bees um, they collected somewhere the neighborhood of five million dollars in purchases. Uh. In in that that that very short span of time, and that's that's a noble one. You know. That's thing I think everybody can really get behind because that's a way to speak truth to power, you know, vote with your vote with your purchasing ability. As heartless as it sounds, that makes a difference to corporations. They're not the only people protesting either. We found a case where nudists did something very similar. I did not see this one, Ben, Please. So in Landa Lakes, Florida, Uh sorry, they make the butter. I you know it should be, but I think they just didn't check the list of cities that already existed when they named at Landa Lake's do the nudists cover their bodies and butter? Uh? You know what? Statistically, probably at least one of them has it. You can use it as like a sun tanning solution. I thought that was dangerous. Whatever, man, you just live your life. Tell me about the butter time. We're here for a good time, not a long time, right. Uh. Yes, So these nudists in Landa Lakes, Florida's Central Florida launched a campaign where they decided to also buy everything with two dollar bills to show the local merchants, uh, how much of an impact they make. And this was nudists in general, this specific community is the nudist dollar. Yeah, it was. It was an idea created or proposed by Chuck Foster, who runs the Caliente Resort. I thought you'd like that name. That sounds spicy. Um And you know, uh, in a stunning turn of events, I feel like we're going from most culturally valuable to least maybe well act, I don't know. I would maybe flip yours with with the one I'm about to talk about. Maybe tell me what you think. A. Yeah, there's a local organization in Alger County in Michigan, UM that decided to mount a statewide effort to show their support of medical cannabis and push for a bigger, more widespread adoption of legalization in the state. And that was back in two thousand eight. And if I'm had to correct me, if I wrong, is Michigan gone legal? So many places, it seems, are are changing that quickly. I think it's up for it's up for political debate marijuana legalization maybe on their November ballot, you know what the but they do have medical cannabis. Okay, that is on the books. This is not on the books. This is what they were pushing for. Can necessarily credit the two dollar scheme making that happen, but it's certainly UM did a good job of showing lawmakers. Something that's very important with these cases often is that people spend money. People who nudists spend money. Sure, African Americans spend money. We'd had spend money, and everybody spends money, and everybody should be treated fairly. We saw another example where gay rights advocates took the same approach using two dollar bills. And this was this was a reaction to the Proposition eight initiative in California, remember that, Yeah, yeah, And so they did some stuff that I thought it was really cool. There were people protesting by uh calling in gay quote unquote gay to work. Sure, and they did the same thing as then double a CP did with two dollar bills and they were transparent, uh in citing then double a CPS earlier work. Oh, that's cool, credit work, credit is due. Yeah. And this article from A O. L by Jason Cochrane UM titled gay rights advocates pondered best way to flex their economic power. They decided that this two dollar bill method, which if I wasn't clear, that's also what the what the pot people did, um was decided they would spend only two dollar bills to show their economic impact directly to the community. Because you know shopkeepers and banks, and you count the two dollar bills that you got, you can see where the impact is coming from, and you know who spent those. But that with the whole calling in gay to work thing, a lot of members of the community didn't think that was a very focused effort, and it seemed kind of counterproductive and it didn't really hit the way they wanted to, which was to show their actual spending power, which has been estimated in America UM that the gay community contributes something like seven billion dollars to the economy. Wow, And I believe this also happened in two thousand and eight, didn't it. It's the same same year as the Michigan protest, right, you are, my friend? What what a time? What were what were we doing? I don't think they even had me two dollar bills, you know all. I still had my mattresses. Yeah. I was probably napping on him at the time, But I count those morse furniture for you than like maybe emergency currency, maybe, but it better be a real emergency. I like to think of it more as immersion currency because I just I just roll around in and man, yeah it feels good. And also, we want to be clear that despite dirty mattress jokes, NOL does washers currency. I don't want to scare anybody by letting you know just how many really gross statistics are out there about paper money saying I launder my money. I'm saying you literally launder your money in the best possible way. I will say this when I'm not sleeping on my stack of two dollar bill filled mattresses. I sleep on the Casper baby. I knew you weren't going to do it. Yes, Casper mattresses objectively great mattresses. So there's something that just occurred to me as we were talking about this protest. One of the reasons that two dollar bills might also be a great way of showing your community or your groups economic weight is because there's no, uh, there's no drawer space for two dollar bill in the typical cash register. Forgot that point entirely, Ben. It's very true. It's another reason that it's probably never taken off. It's clearly never been fully embraced by the economic community, by big cash register big registers. Yeah, and here's the thing too, and um, even today, you'll hear lots of stories about people just being very confused about this this currency, this this denomination. In fact, there's a story about a guy who, um, in his own kind of little protest, a little more of a mini protest. Best Buy apparently refused to install his son's car stereo for the gratis price they had promised him. And they said, okay, no, actually you have to pay for We're gonna call the cops if you don't come in. Um. This guy's name was Mike Billesta, and this was supported by the Baltimore Sun. The fifty seven year old Mike Billesta uh found himself in lock up. Um. He actually was handcuffed to a poll for three hours after he decided to give best by the old middle fingy and pay with all two's. Because the person he tried to pay first didn't recognize this, she went to get the manager. The manager said, these are counterfeit I've already called the police, and I believe he said the cop was He throws in that the cop was young as well. Sure, yeah, he was young, and they kept him handcuffed to this pole until they can get the damn Secret Service to show up. Can you imagine if you're that Secret Service agent, how annoyed you would be to be called out to a best Buy? It's crazy. I think a lot of people and they're probably in the lock up of the time they can get I think a lot of people are aware that the Secret Service is the organization that supervises counterfeiting. It's true because under federal law, anyone, anyone who intentionally uses counterfeit money can get up to twenty years in the clink and is also subject to a fine, a steep fine, I imagine, right, I would imagine so and this, uh, this has always been a fascinating thing to us. The the idea that the secret service of all groups has that specific task, because one would reasonably assume it would be the FBI. Or they can get involved too. They can't. They can get involved too, but specifically with counterfeiting. So that's like why in our earlier examples the FBI got called. That's right, but in this example, the Secret Service. I you know what we should We should write to some secret service folks, see if we can we can talk to them about this. Want to get in that system, man, I want to be on a list for in a letter writer, being some kind of agitator, being some kind of uh anachronistic BlooDye uses a pen. See that's exactly what happened to DENISEI and Neil, an eighth grader at the CHRISTA. Mccaulliffe Middle School outside of Houston. She attempted to pay for her school lunch with a two dollar bill. By the way, we haven't talked about how two dollar bills favorites of grandparents the world over. Oh yeah, is that true? We have We'll give you, give you a two dollar bill and your birthday card. You know, they think it's they think it's cute. That's sweet. Yeah, But anyway, this was not cute because her grand mama gave her this two dollar bill um and her grandmother's name was Sharon K. Joseph, and the cafeteria workers at the school did not believe that it was real. They said they had never seen two dollar bills and her life and she was sent to something called the police office because this particular school, this particular school district UM in Houston or outside of Houston, Fort Bend Independent School District has its own police force that's like a step above the police store Fort Bend I s d UM. And apparently the officer told her that she was going to be in big trouble for using this bill, which they believed to be counterfeit. Wow. So still a real stigma surrounding the two of the deuce. It is the tom the tom. You're right, it is still in circulation. It is not illegal to use it. It's not counterfeit. And when you think about it, most counterfeiters, who would be professional level counterfeiters, are not gonna mess with a small denomination. They want fifties, hundreds, stuff like that. They're not gonna mess with one that's gonna cause so many people to make a face, right, you want something that slides in unnoticed. There's something else I found that was pretty interesting. If you think people in the US are obsessed with the two dollar bill, then who boy are you in for an adventure in Ecuador? According to author Nina Poor Zucky, who wrote why are Ecuadorians obsessed with the two dollar bill? For p R I. In Ecuador, this bill is even more rare, and people believe that it is good luck. It is some of the best good luck. It functions like a four leaf clover. Ecuador has had the US dollars official currency since two thousand and The problem that they run into is a bank in Ecuador will order money from the federal reserve here in the States if they need five tens, fifties and two dollar bills are not a priority, So they're even less frequently found there than they are here, and that feedback loop happens again. People save them because they think they're good luck. But we also have these sort of um two dollar bill freedom fighters, don't we People like HEATHERN. McCabe, who runs a blog called to Buckaroo, and her whole life's mission is to dump two dollar bills back into circulation. And see people's reactions when she tries to spend them. There's an article about ms McCabe in the New York Times. UM and she was also in that documentary that we talked about, But this one is called two Dollar Bill is Oddity, but Some Love the Tender UM. It describes Heather McCabe was being on a one woman mission to revitalize the quirky Greenback through deliberate casual use. UM. It also cites this guy, Matthew zach Lad, who pours apparently close to seven thousand notes into circulation each year. UM And McCabe apparently has been turned away from businesses, told to pay with something else in different bars, and as constantly being asked by people that she encounters, can I buy this wallet full of two dollar bills that you have because they still think that it's cookie and wind rare and they have no idea that you can go down to the Fun Invention. Again, that's an acronym and it's not amazing the fun. I want to go to the Fun Convention and buy a wallet made out of two dollar bills. I think it was forty bucks. But there are other neat facts that we discovered about the two dollar bill. It's often used as a tracer by like mom and pop stores to track robberies. They keep the two dollar bill at the bottom of the drawer, they write the serial number down somewhere else, and then they just wait. Two dollar bills used to be handed out at Monticello, former home of President Jefferson's, because he got all the glory after they kicked all hamm me off. You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your two dollar story. Steve Wozniak buys two dollar bills by the sheet from the Treasury Department and makes his own little coupon book essentially out of home so he can rip them out. Really, yeah, that's so weird. Is it just for grandpa purposes? Do he just wanted the ale to rip one out to give to his I don't know. Maybe he hates leafing through things very interesting, but no, you know, I've got to tell you I had a bunch of stuff on another weird currency. But maybe we should save that for a different episode. Because this rabbit hole is going deep, deep, deep, A lot deeper than I thought it would, my friend, Yeah, a lot deeper we thought it would. Do you have a two dollar bill at your home currently, I do not. I I have one. Wait no, no, that's not true. I have three. Yeah, your flush, Well I planted them? What? No, I I have three. I think they actually, now that I think about it, I think they did come from an older relative. But there um, I think they might be pre seventy six. I can't remember. But beat as it may, we'd like to hear your two dollar bill stories because one thing that McCabe did in her blog is she started asking people to tell her a story about the two dollar bill, and she got some very interesting responses. It's a really cool blog. The one I'm looking at right now isn't a personal story as much as it is a new story. The headline is two dollar bill leads to heroin bust. In New Jersey, when a driver was pulled over for tossing a lit cigarette out of car window, the police officer reported seeing a rolled up two dollar bill with white residue on it. The driver and passenger were asked to step out of the vehicle. Prior to doing so, the driver made an attempt to hide the bill. According to the police, officer later located the bill in a cigarette pack containing Heroin. But what happened to the two dollar bill tongue? Yeah, so again we want to hear your stories or personal experiences, your memories. Did you grow up being told that two dollar bill was good luck or bad luck? If so, why do you think that the bill should continue? Because one thing I really uh, one thing I really wish we could have hit in this episode was the debate over whether or not to abolish the penny. I know you have very strong feelings about that, largely because you probably don't like touching pennies. Right, And we didn't even touch on the fact that Georgia Tech our hometown NERD football team. Yeah, you ever wondered about that? There you went there? Yeah, you were't on the football team though, No, not that I recall. So do they just let people go there just to be on the football team or is the football team just like full of genius engineers and diplomats? From what I remember, they have a pretty high bar academically. Sorry, I don't mean to be dismissive. I don't understand how this stuff works, but yeah they have. They have a rivalry with Clemson UM and they actually refused to play each other out of protest, and the alumni stamped two dollar bills with the Clemson Tiger paws and used them around Atlanta to illustrate the money that the Tiger fans were spending at these events. So once again the two dollar bill rears. It's uh quirky head and perhaps you can be part of a two dollar bill protest movement in the future. Have you been part of one? Yeah? And if you're planning one, what are you protesting? We might just join you. Let us know. You can write to us directly. We are ridiculous at how stuff works dot com. As always, a massive thanks to Casey Pegrom and Alex Williams who composed our track and not to mention a plus ace number one researcher Christopher Hasiotis for holding our hands down this rabbit hole deep dive, shallow dive, medium dive. I thought it was pretty good dive. You know, I I rate us more on form, so I thought it was a good form. I made a tiny splash, right, Oh man, how come the one does a cannonball at the Olympics. I was wondering that when I was a kid. But cannonballs aside. Stay tuned for our next episode. When we will ask how related are US presidents in terms of familial I thought I was gonna say they're their presidents. They're all president presidents. You know you can try, but name one US president who was not president? All right, that's tough. It's a tough one, not impossible. But no, I see where you're going with this, Ben, and that does sound like a good time. So stay tuned right to us. Will always love to hear from you. You can also join our community on Facebook. We are Ridiculous Historians. That's where you can see Nolan, Casey and I are dropping by with the odd childhood photo maybe soon the karaoke eclips, and most importantly, hearing your suggestions for future topics. That sounds good to me, My friend Casey, can we go out on the cash registered Ram