A year ago, Rendon Greeley saw something on television that couldn't have been more up his alley.

Have you seen this skit? Nate Bargatsy was on Saturday Night Live and he's playing George Washington.

No need. I am fearful as well.

Bargatsy, as George Washington, is crossing the Delaware, like in the famous painting,

and trying to inspire his men.

But we will live through the battle ahead because we fight to control our own destiny.

Yeah.

To create our own nation. to do our own thing with the English language.

He then details the linguistic oddities his soldiers are fighting for, like the freedom to call cows and pigs,

beef and pork when they're dead, but for chickens to always just be chicken

and the privilege of having two ways to spell Jeff.

What are the two ways to spell Jeff, sir?

It's the short way with a J and the stupid way with the G.

And so one of those lines is, he's like, and we will have our own currency.

And it will be called the dollar.

The dollar, sir?

Yeah.

And one of the cast members goes, General, why will it be called the dollar?

And he says, nobody knows.

And with that, Brendan's phone lit up. Because it isn't true that nobody knows why it's called

the dollar. I got texts from people. They're like, wait a minute, I know a guy who knows.

Brendan's been a finance reporter for 20 years. He covered the Federal Reserve for Bloomberg and the Financial Times where he still writes a column. And a couple years ago, an editor suggested to him that there might be a juicy book in a biography of the dollar. Literally, someone said, do you want to write a book? And I was like, sure do. I'm definitely going to write a book. I can figure this out. And then I started to figure it out. And I realized how much I didn't know and how much I had to learn.

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