Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, we are celebrating President's Day.
It is the third Monday of February, and here in the U .S., that means it is President's Day.
This is a day to honor the previous presidents of the U .S., and we're going to do that today by talking about specific presidents.
These are the presidents who are represented on the currency of the U .S.
That's right, we're going to talk about these presidents who are on the coins or the dollars of the U .S.
and we'll talk a little bit about them, why they are important and why people care about them and their importance in the history of the United States.
If you are interested in learning about these presidents and of course learning a little bit about some U .S.
history American culture, and building your English vocabulary, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we begin, I just want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode so you can find the list of words and phrases that I use.
That way you can take them and help build your English vocabulary.
A quick overview of the currency system here in the United States.
We have metallic coins, coins that are made out of some type of metal.
These are usually very small, very low in value.
And then we have paper money that are bills.
These are usually larger denominations.
They're usually worth more than coins.
There are some instances where there are some special coins that are equivalent to one dollar bill.
These are pretty rare.
Most people don't use them but they do exist.
However usually overall we can say that coins are pretty low in value, not worth very much, and that the bills are worth more.
Let's start with the smallest denomination that is possible in the United States and that is the penny.
The penny is a copper -colored coin.
It is relatively small and it is only worth one cent.
That is one hundredth of a one dollar bill.
You need a hundred pennies to make one dollar, so these really aren't worth very much money.
Even though they are only worth one cent, they actually cost more to make.
The U .S. Treasury Department, which is the department in the United States that prints money and makes the money that people use, they actually spend more money making a penny than the penny is actually worth.
And that's because the metals that are in a penny are relatively valuable.
They cost money when you buy them and when you use them.
And the U .S. Treasury Department actually loses money making a penny.
I know that's kind of funny that the penny themselves aren't worth very much money but the materials that make them are worth a little bit more.
The person who is on the penny is Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln is important because he was the president who was in office during the Civil War.
The Civil War was in the 1860s and it occurred because there were states that had slaves where slavery was legal and there were states where slavery was illegal.
The states where you could not have people enslaved were the northern states, and the places where you could have people enslaved was the southern part of the United States.
We usually refer to this as the north and the south.
President Lincoln is pretty famous.
He was the one to end the horrific practice of slavery in the United States, and he also was the one who helped the Union side, which means the side that wanted to keep all of the United States together as one country.
He was the one who helped the Union side win the Civil War.
You see a lot of images of him on President's Day, and of course you see him on the penny.
You also see him on the five dollar bill.
So the paper money that is worth five U .S.
dollars has Abraham Lincoln on it as well.
Our next denomination of coin is the five cent coin and it is called a nickel.
So this is worth five pennies and on the five cent coin is our third president Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson is famous because he was a lawyer and a very good writer.
When the United States was originally founded, it wasn't called the United States, it was just a colony of Great Britain.
The settlers who lived in the United States eventually wanted to leave the British Empire and form their own country, and to do so they sent a document to the king of England that was called the Declaration of Independence.
The name kind of tells you what it did.
It was a declaration or a statement that the country wanted to be independent.
It wanted to be its own country.
And the writer of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson.
That made him very well known in this new nation.
It made him a very important figure and he eventually became the third president of the United States.
For his role in the Declaration of Independence and his job as the third president of the U .S., he was honored by having his image put on the five cent coin as well as the two dollar bill.
Just like Abraham Lincoln, he does have a coin and a bill, but I will say that Thomas Jefferson's bill, the $2 bill, is not used very often.
There's actually not a lot of demand for the $2 bill because people don't really use it.
The Treasury Department does not print very many of them.
They do print some every year, but they print a smaller amount than they do for other denominations of the U .S.
dollar. Because it is not used very commonly, because the U .S.
Department doesn't print very many of them, people tend to treat them like collector's items.
When I graduated school at one of my graduation ceremonies, our school actually gave us $2 bills and they said that they were giving them to us because they were very rare and very special and because we were also very rare and very special this was the perfect gift for us.
In actuality like I said they do get printed every year by the treasury department.
They're not really that rare but because people don't really use them people treat them like they are very rare and people think they are very rare.
If you do end up seeing a two dollar bill you could of course keep it as a souvenir, keep it as a little collector's item.
I have my two dollar bill from my graduation ceremony.
I still have it even after all of these years.
So it is one of those things that people treat as a special item.
Our next denomination of currency is the 10 cent and we refer to it as a dime.
So this is equal to 10 pennies or two of the five cent pieces.
On the 10 cent piece is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
His name is very long.
A lot of times you will hear people just call him FDR.
And he was the president who was probably the most popular president while he was in office.
He is the only president in history who was elected four times.
Currently, you can only be elected twice to the office of the presidency, but he was in office before that role took effect.
That's what I mean when I say that he is probably the most popular president or was the most popular president during his presidency because he was elected once and then reelected three more times.
He was the president during the Great Depression and was the president who helped get the United States out of the Depression.
And then he was also in power during World War II.
Because he was in office so long, he was able to do a lot of changes, a lot of changes that were very popular, and he is probably one of the most well -known presidents.
If you ever watch a TV show or movie that is set during World War II and you see the president of the United States speaking, that is FDR.
That is an actor playing President Roosevelt.
Our next coin is the 25 cent piece, which we call a quarter.
So this is 25 pennies or one fourth of a dollar.
And the president who is on this is George Washington.
George Washington was the first president of the United States.
Our capital is called Washington, D .C., and it is named after George Washington.
We also have Washington State that is named after him, so he is a very important president.
He was elected the first president because he was a general during the war with Great Britain, the War of Independence, as we call it, when we were trying to become our own nation.
He was a famous general during that time.
He became elected the first president.
And at the time, it wasn't really clear what was going to happen, how people were going to either stay in power or transition from one leader to the next.
He probably could have set up his own monarchy here in the United States, but he did not want to be a king.
He wanted to serve his term as president and then he left office.
He gave away power.
There was another election and he went into retirement because he is the one who really set the standard for giving up power when your term is over because he was so important in the War of Independence to help the United States win its independence from England.
He is very well -known.
I said that Abraham Lincoln was probably the second most well -known president.
George Washington is definitely the first.
He is the most important when it comes to the history of the United States.
He is definitely the most well -known president.
Because of his accomplishments and his role in U .S.
history, he is on the quarter, and he's also on the dollar bill.
This is the smallest denomination of paper money.
It is only worth one US dollar, but it is his image that is on that bill.
Our last coin that we're going to talk about is the 50 cent coin.
So this is 50 pennies or one half of a dollar.
And I would say out of all of the coins, this is the rarest, or at least out of all of the coins that we're going to talk about today the reason that it is so rare is that the u .s treasury department does not make very many of them like the two dollar bill there is not a lot of demand so they don't
make that much of it you probably won't see one if you do come to the u .s i can say personally that i don't think i've seen one in the past 20 years even though i live in the united states if you are a coin collector If you go to a particular coin show, you will probably see one there.
But in everyday life, you're probably not going to see that.
Even though it's not really used, I did want to mention it because there is a president on this coin, and that is our 35th president, John F.
Kennedy. John F. Kennedy usually has his name shortened to just be his initials, JFK.
And he was one of the younger presidents who was elected.
He was the first Catholic president who was ever elected in the U .S., and he was elected in 1961.
Sadly, he only served until 1963 because he was assassinated.
I did an episode on my trip to Dallas.
I will leave an iCard if you are interested in watching it.
That is where the event took place, and there is a memorial there and a museum.
If you're interested, you can go and see that there.
Because he was sadly assassinated while he was in office, there is this sense of nostalgia for his time, for his presidency.
He only served for two years, but he was known to be a president who focused on liberal issues such as civil rights and minimum wage.
And he was the president who challenged the U .S.
government to go to the moon.
this event did occur but sadly after his death so he did not get to see it himself this is the only currency that he is on he is not on any other coins and he is not on any paper money but he was an important president people do look at his time in office very fondly people liked the Kennedys and he
was an important president even though like I said you're probably not going to receive this coin if you do end up coming to the United States.
We're now going to finish off with the rest of the paper money that has presidents on it.
We've talked about the $1 bill, we've talked about the $5 bill, and the next denomination that has a president on it is the $20 bill.
Now this is probably the most commonly used denomination in the United States.
Anytime you withdraw money from an ATM you will get a $20 bill.
It is very rare to get any other bank note from an ATM.
They usually only give $20 bills and that is one of the reasons why it is so common.
If you go to a pharmacy or a gas station or a fast food place they usually have a sign saying that the largest bill they will take is a $20 bill.
And because it is so common from ATMs, because it is the largest denomination accepted at a lot of different stores and retail places, this is usually the one that most people use.
On the $20 bill, there is a controversial president and that is Andrew Jackson.
Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States and he was considered to be a populist president, which means that he was thought to really champion the average American.
He would try to get things done that would benefit the average citizen in the United States, not just the people who were very rich and who had a lot of power.
Now that sounds like a good thing, but like I said, he is very controversial and there was one point in time where it seems like he would not be on the $20 bill any longer.
A few of the reasons why Andrew Jackson is considered to be so controversial include his fiery temper.
So he was known to be very angry, to get very mad at people and be mean to them when he would get angry.
He was also known to really lash out at his critics, which means that he would get very mad at people who criticized him and he would use his power to punish them because he really used a lot of presidential power even more than was probably normal at the time or maybe even legal he was given the title
king jackson or king andrew which meant that he wasn't really a president he was trying to be more like a king and the last reason really has to do with his history of racism in what is now known as the United States before people arrived from Europe, there was an indigenous population.
These Native Americans were people who were native to the continent, and they were really treated poorly by people who settled from Europe.
Andrew Jackson was one of the presidents who did the most damage to some of the native tribes here in the U .S.
He is known for the Trail of Tears.
We'll talk about this in a different episode because it takes way too much time, but he is controversial because he was pretty racist and really did damage to the Native population.
Because he was so controversial, President Obama, when he was in power, announced that Jackson would be removed from the $20 bill and replaced with Harriet Tubman, who is probably one of the most amazing women in the history of the United States.
We will definitely do an episode on her because her story is just so spectacular.
But that was the original plan, that Andrew Jackson was going to be removed from the $20 bill and replaced with Harriet Tubman.
Of course, that has not happened.
That did not happen.
And you will still find Jackson on the $20 bill if you come to the U .S.
And our last bill that we're going to talk about is the $50 bill.
The $50 bill is one of those other bills that is just not used that often.
Like I said, a lot of places will not accept a $50 bill.
So you usually only give this as a gift.
You usually only use it in very special occasions or at very fancy restaurants, places that do accept high denominations of money, but it's just not that common.
The president that is on the $50 bill is Ulysses S.
Grant. Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th president of the United States, and he was famous before he became president because he was one of the generals during the Civil War.
That's right, he was one of Abraham Lincoln's generals, and he is probably one of the most important military figures of the Civil War.
He was famous for his aggressive position.
He really took an aggressive tactic and pursued the confederate army and eventually that led to the end of the civil war when the confederate side surrendered because of his achievements in battle he was elected as president and he did try to do some rebuilding of the southern part of the united states
after the war there was a lot of damage There was a lot of economic loss.
He tried to rebuild the south but his presidency was mixed let's say.
There was a lot of corruption a lot of scandals with his administration and Grant himself struggled with drinking a lot of alcohol after the war so he really wasn't that effective as president.
However he did have an important enough role to be put on the $50 bill.
Like I said though you probably will not see this I can't remember the last time I saw one actually it's very rare that I ever see a $50 bill if you do want a $50 bill that is something you would have to actually go to a bank and ask for because it's just not commonly in circulation most people don't
use them in their everyday lives I hope you learned a little bit from this episode I hope you learned a quick overview of some of the most important presidents in U .S.
history. And I also hope you learned a little bit about these different denominations of money that we have here in the U .S., the different cent pieces and what we call them, the different denominations of dollar bills.
We did not cover everything.
There are more because some of them have people who were never president, and we didn't mention them today.
I really just wanted to focus on presidents, but But if you would like an episode where we talk more about the different money in the US, please let me know.
Also, tell me if you want to learn more about the US presidents.
I was thinking of doing some episodes about them.
I really could only tell a few minutes of their stories.
So there's a lot more that we could talk about.
But of course, I don't know if you want that unless you tell me.
So please leave a comment.
Tell me if that is something you are interested in for future episodes.
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Until then, keep learning English.
