Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abergen.

This day, July 30th, 1956, look in your wallet, friends, pull out a dollar bill.

I am, you can hear a theater of the mind, that's a dollar bill.

The motto on there, it says, In God, we trust, and it was on this day July 30th

1956 that that was formally adopted as the official motto of the United

States it would in turn begin to appear on all the bills. It is of course on many coins.

Coins, you can hear those.

Really going in with the sound effects. Yeah, we need more sound effects on this show.

The coin thing is actually a little more complicated with history, so we're going to get into all of that history and why it's complicated and how we ended up with in God we trust as our official motto.

Let's talk about that with as always Nicole Hemmer of Columbia. Hello Mickey.

Hello, Jody.

And our special guest for this episode, and next is Kevin M. Cruz, professor of history

at Princeton University. Hello, Kevin.

Hey guys.

You wrote a book about this, Kevin. It's not a coincidence that you're I did yeah yeah

Okay. Okay. Well why don't you start with this? E. Pluribus unum and then in God we trust in my mind both of those are sort of floating around as

mottos of the United States describe those two and then we'll get into this

particular moment and this particular shift but how do those two play into each

other well E Plurbusunum was for a long time

many Americans assumed was the motto of the United States.

A Latin phrase that came from the obverse side

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