Speaker 1: One of Franklin's greatest inventions is the character A Bit Franklin.
Speaker 1: He creates it, he polishes it. He does it through
Speaker 1: Poor Richard and through his autobiography. His arrival in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: is one of the most famous scenes in autobiographical literature.
Speaker 1: He gets off the boat but draggled, and uses coins
Speaker 1: to tip the boatmen. He buys three puffy rolls and
Speaker 1: gives one away to somebody. He says, you're always more
Speaker 1: generous when you're very poor than when you're very rich,
Speaker 1: because you don't want people to think you're poor. He
Speaker 1: writes that scene for posterity and also for his son,
Speaker 1: who has become very pretentious and was a royal governor
Speaker 1: back then. He's saying, remember, your humble roots were tradesmen,
Speaker 1: were not part of an aristocracy.
Speaker 2: So he had figured out a little bit of mythmaking
Speaker 2: even at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: But as Shakespeare teaches us, we sometimes become the mask
Speaker 1: we wear, and so Ben Franklin, by showing how industrious
Speaker 1: he could be by having the pretense of humility, even
Speaker 1: if he couldn't have the reality, was able to make
Speaker 1: himself into this type of character that he portrays both
Speaker 1: in Poor Richard's Almanac and in the autobiography.
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin was perhaps the quintessential American character. He created
Speaker 2: the type through his writing style, through the aphorisms of
Speaker 2: Poor Richard's Almanac, through his picturesque autobiography, and in many
Speaker 2: ways itself humble, industrious, and hopeful. The new American spirit
Speaker 2: felt familiar and appealing to colonists and eventually to a
Speaker 2: nation eager to forge its own identity. And while the
Speaker 2: character Franklin created was in many ways close to Franklin
Speaker 2: the person, in others it was painfully far away. In
Speaker 2: this second episode of On Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson reveals
Speaker 2: how Franklin wrote the American identity into being and just
Speaker 2: how far Franklin's own life strayed from this national ideal.
Speaker 2: You describe beautifully how he came to represent this certain
Speaker 2: part of the American character. And it includes practicality, it
Speaker 2: includes compromise. Were there any sort of seminal incidents in
Speaker 2: his childhood that you feel like shaped this orientation towards
Speaker 2: what became a kind of American character, a central American character.
Speaker 1: When Franklin is growing up in Boston, he had been
Speaker 1: indentured to his brother, who is a publisher, newspaper editor,
Speaker 1: and printer. Franklin knew he had to be self educated.
Speaker 1: He knew that his father decided not to send him
Speaker 1: to Harvard, and so every night he would read and
Speaker 1: study at his brother's print shop and publishing house. He
Speaker 1: embarked on a self improvement course. He was one of
Speaker 1: America's great self taught people. And what he did was
Speaker 1: he took down volumes of The Spectator, a daily that
Speaker 1: was being published in London, with wonderful essays by Joseph
Speaker 1: Addison and Richard Steele. And what Franklin would do is
Speaker 1: he would turn the essays into poetry. And he thought
Speaker 1: it would help him increase his vocabulary because he would
Speaker 1: have to think of different words that would either rhyme
Speaker 1: or have the right meter. And he would read the essays,
Speaker 1: take notes, jumble up his notes, and then a few
Speaker 1: days later, see if he could recreate the essay, and
Speaker 1: then he would go back and correct. He said, every
Speaker 1: now and then I could write it even better, I
Speaker 1: could improve it, which made me think I would become
Speaker 1: a tolerable writer. Well, not only does he become a
Speaker 1: tolerable writer, he becomes the best and most popular writer
Speaker 1: in America. He also read Cotton Mather's Essays to Do
Speaker 1: Good because Boston then was pretty much ruled by a
Speaker 1: Puritan theocracy. Puritan preachers like Cotton Mather were always talking
Speaker 1: about God's grace, that we got salvation through God's grace alone,
Speaker 1: whereas Benjamin Franklin is much more simple. He'd believed that, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you could earn your way into the good grace
Speaker 1: of the Lord by doing good works and helping your
Speaker 1: fellow citizens.
Speaker 2: So Franklin's early years are spent teaching himself to write
Speaker 2: moral education, less religious than the puritanical world he lived in,
Speaker 2: but focused on practicality and contributing to the world around him.
Speaker 2: But even if he was indentured to his brother, he
Speaker 2: was still indentured, and naturally he chafed at that, and
Speaker 2: the fundamental unfairness of it, along with his core character,
Speaker 2: led him to push back. He has this sort of
Speaker 2: maybe inborn but natural resistance to authority, and he abandons
Speaker 2: the apprenticeship, which was, as I understand it, quite a
Speaker 2: big deal at the time.
Speaker 1: Right He becomes apprentice to his older brother, and his
Speaker 1: older brother was very strict in dealing with him and
Speaker 1: didn't let him write for the paper, which is why
Speaker 1: Franklin writes under the pseudonym and fakes his handwriting, and
Speaker 1: it's called Silence Do Good. It's a triumph of the
Speaker 1: imagination because here you have a fifteen or sixteen year
Speaker 1: old kid who had never left Boston, but he's writing
Speaker 1: in the voice of a widowed, elderly woman who lives
Speaker 1: in the countryside. And this is part of Franklin's magic,
Speaker 1: which is he has that sense of spunky imagination and
Speaker 1: a colloquial sense to him. Other people at the time,
Speaker 1: like Jonathan Edwards are writing in this grand rhetoric about
Speaker 1: centers in the hands of an angry god. But Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin as a kid almost invents this vernacular auschus cracker
Speaker 1: barrel style that you see in Mark Twain and Will
Speaker 1: Rogers and others that pokes fun at the pretensions of
Speaker 1: the elite. He became the best writer of his time
Speaker 1: because he had such a colloquial voice.
Speaker 2: He goes on to use anonymous writing or pseudonymous writing
Speaker 2: throughout his career, even up to major diplomatic incidents later
Speaker 2: in life. Can you explain a little bit about why
Speaker 2: he uses pseudonyms. Is it a wink wink kind of
Speaker 2: pseudonym or is it pure Inneymi. The great thing about
Speaker 2: the colonial period is you could write under a pseudonym
Speaker 2: and you had some anonymity. But eventually people can find out.
Speaker 2: And indeed his brother finds out that young Benjamin is
Speaker 2: a run doing Silence do Good. So it's good.
Speaker 1: It gave people a lot of freedom to speak, but
Speaker 1: it still put a little bit of a leash on
Speaker 1: how far they were willing to go.
Speaker 2: But not too much of a leish under the pseudonym's
Speaker 2: silence do Good. But he was still in Boston writing
Speaker 2: for his brother's paper.
Speaker 1: He tests the limits, and Silence do Good says, I
Speaker 1: have a natural aversion to tyranny, and an he trampling
Speaker 1: over my rights makes my blood boil exceedingly. That's how
Speaker 1: you know I'm an American. And this is ingrained in Franklin,
Speaker 1: especially since he was indentured to his brother. And eventually
Speaker 1: he runs away and breaks the indenture agreement he had
Speaker 1: made and secretly goes into Filhiladelphia.
Speaker 2: And this is the moment in his autobiography, that famous
Speaker 2: scene of Franklin walking off the boat with just a
Speaker 2: few coins in his pocket, and this picture of how
Speaker 2: the world sees him, a young, plucky naif, sharing his
Speaker 2: roles and confident in the opportunities ahead. You write that
Speaker 2: he became the country's first unabashed public relations expert, and
Speaker 2: the first subject of his public relations was himself.
Speaker 1: Yes, even as a young printer opening a shop in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: he makes a point of carting the paper he needs
Speaker 1: through the streets back and forth to show that he's
Speaker 1: diligent in working, rather than having Sarven's other people do it.
Speaker 1: And he cares a lot about not only the reality
Speaker 1: of being diligent, but just showing people how diligent he is.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Poor Richard.
Speaker 1: When he had a print shop, with his his own
Speaker 1: colloaquial style and wit, he's able to do a really
Speaker 1: fun almanac. He calls it Poor Richard's Almanac. That's his pseudonym.
Speaker 1: But in this case everybody knew it was Ben Franklin
Speaker 1: who was doing it. In the almanac, he has all
Speaker 1: sorts of maxims wisdom from the ages. A penny saved
Speaker 1: is a penny earned early to bed, early to rise,
Speaker 1: And we sometimes mistake the real Benjamin Franklin for those maxims.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was never early to bed, an early
Speaker 1: to rise type person. But through that voice he's able
Speaker 1: to create an unpretentious ethic throughout his whole life. He
Speaker 1: wants to poke fun at the pretensions of the elite,
Speaker 1: and that's what he starts doing through Poor Richard common
Speaker 1: folk wisdom.
Speaker 2: Did people at the time start to see him this
Speaker 2: way as embodied by poor Richard?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everybody knew he was writing these almanacs,
Speaker 1: but it was all part of the fun. People knew
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin. He was not exactly a very priggish person.
Speaker 1: One of the secrets to his humor and to his
Speaker 1: personality was self deprecation. It was not exactly humility, but
Speaker 1: it was the good pretense of humility. He would poke
Speaker 1: fun at himself, and especially poor Richard could do it.
Speaker 1: At one point one year instead of Poor Richard writing
Speaker 1: the forward to the almanac, is poor Richard's wife Bridget. Now,
Speaker 1: of course this has all been Franklin doing it, but
Speaker 1: poor Richard's wife talks about the experiments that poor Richard's
Speaker 1: doing and how it'd be better off if he learned
Speaker 1: how to earn a living. So that notion of a
Speaker 1: self deprecation as a way to be influential and charming
Speaker 1: and perhaps settle some disputes is something that Franklin perfected.
Speaker 2: But Franklin himself was far from perfect. When he returned
Speaker 2: after the break, we take a look at a family
Speaker 2: life that was marked by both tragedy and neglect, and
Speaker 2: also a wonderfully broad sense of what family in this
Speaker 2: new country could meet. We haven't talked about his personal
Speaker 2: life yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Franklin has a very complicated family life. At one point,
Speaker 1: he has an illegitimate son named William, and he takes
Speaker 1: responsibility for the son, brings the son in, and he
Speaker 1: ends up forming a common law marriage with Deborah, person
Speaker 1: who had seen him straggling off the boat when he
Speaker 1: first was a runaway from Boston. But her husband had
Speaker 1: disappeared and so she couldn't get married married again because
Speaker 1: of the bigamy laws. But she and Franklin create a
Speaker 1: common law marriage and it becomes a very practical thing.
Speaker 1: She's the bookkeeper, she's the person helping run the shop,
Speaker 1: and it's somewhat typical of Franklin. He's not a deeply
Speaker 1: romantic person. They have a beautiful daughter named Sally that
Speaker 1: becomes very close to Franklin, and they have a child
Speaker 1: named Frankie. And it was pretty tragic because, just as
Speaker 1: nowadays we fight over vaccinations, that was a big fight
Speaker 1: back then, and Franklin's brother had fought against inoculations. And
Speaker 1: even though Benjamin Franklin believed that he had not yet
Speaker 1: inoculated his young son, Frankie because he was too young,
Speaker 1: and he ends up dying a smallpox and this effects
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: Was it a scandal when he took in his illegitimate son?
Speaker 2: Was that something that his enemies would use against him
Speaker 2: or was that something that was normal that people would
Speaker 2: view that as virtuous.
Speaker 1: Well, children born out of wedlock were rather common back then,
Speaker 1: it wasn't totally usual for a father to take responsibility.
Speaker 1: But Benjamin Franklin not only takes total responsibility for William
Speaker 1: and raising him, but ends up with Deborah and they
Speaker 1: raise him together. It does get used against him years
Speaker 1: later in some political campaigns where they talk about it,
Speaker 1: but it never really hurt him, and he took great
Speaker 1: pride in having raised William.
Speaker 2: A lot of families today could relate to grandparents taking
Speaker 2: in children, unusual family relationships, people being brought into the family,
Speaker 2: made part of the family who aren't even blood relatives.
Speaker 2: I feel like that is something in Franklin adopting that
Speaker 2: and enthusiastically embracing it. It's something that people today could
Speaker 2: connect with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that Franklin always had a resistance to
Speaker 1: the notion of aristocracy. And you know, in England and
Speaker 1: in to some extent in America, you had children born
Speaker 1: illegitimately or out of wedlock or not part of the arishex.
Speaker 1: Franklin thought that was ridiculous. It becomes complicated because William
Speaker 1: has a son born out of wedlock of his own
Speaker 1: who doesn't actually take in right away. He puts him
Speaker 1: in foster care. But eventually Temple Franklin gets brought into
Speaker 1: the family by Benjamin Franklin, and so there's Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: helping to raise his grandson, not quite letting everybody know
Speaker 1: the real relationship. But eventually Temple Franklin becomes very close
Speaker 1: to Benjamin Franklin, and so he brings the whole family together.
Speaker 1: And it's not a big distinction made.
Speaker 2: As Franklin star Rose, he traveled first to the colonies
Speaker 2: and then also abroad to England eventually France too. It's
Speaker 2: like a lot of ambitious people in big careers. Was
Speaker 2: hard on his family, but it wasn't clear that it
Speaker 2: made a big difference to Franklin.
Speaker 1: Franklin's love of travel was not very good for his
Speaker 1: marriage to Deborah, because as far as we know, Deborah
Speaker 1: never spent a night away from Philadelphia. And one can
Speaker 1: blame Benjamin Franklin for always being away from going up
Speaker 1: and down the coast of America doing the postal system
Speaker 1: and then going to England and staying there. But also
Speaker 1: Deborah Franklin was her choice. He wanted her to come
Speaker 1: to England, but she never ever wanted to travel, especially
Speaker 1: across the ocean, and she was perfectly content, although by
Speaker 1: the end of her life a little bit sad staying
Speaker 1: at home without Benjamin Franklin there. When he arrives in London,
Speaker 1: he does something interesting, which is he almost recreates his
Speaker 1: life back in Philadelphia. He finds a landlady, missus Stevenson,
Speaker 1: who treats him almost as if an unromantic husband arrangement
Speaker 1: of convenience where she looks after him and she has
Speaker 1: a daughter about the same age as Sally, and he
Speaker 1: becomes a father figure to Polly Stevenson flirts with her
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, it's all a little bit odd,
Speaker 1: but there he is, having a comfortable domestic life in
Speaker 1: London that's not all that different from the one he
Speaker 1: had in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: And was there something about the fact that those weren't
Speaker 2: deep attachments, that they weren't really his family that enabled
Speaker 2: him to have an anchor but also be so much
Speaker 2: out in the world.
Speaker 1: There were no real ties that bound him. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's quite happy to spend many years going to England
Speaker 1: and then going back and forth, as opposed to somebody
Speaker 1: who feels tied down. But it was part of his
Speaker 1: own personality, a natural aversion to anything that would restrain
Speaker 1: his liberty.
Speaker 2: It was that aversion to tyranny that helped him to
Speaker 2: break free from his intentured service to his brother as
Speaker 2: a young man. But it was hard to square the
Speaker 2: completely untethered, somewhat selfish version of Franklin with the moral
Speaker 2: characters and poor Richard in Silence do Good? Was there
Speaker 2: real Ben Franklin so unsentimental and when he broke his
Speaker 2: apprenticeship was he severed from his family? Did he remain
Speaker 2: close to his family even after he was in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: When Franklin runs away from his apprenticeship to his brother,
Speaker 1: he does it secretly at night, and for a long
Speaker 1: time the family has no idea where he went. I mean,
Speaker 1: he goes to Philadelphia and gets himself a job there,
Speaker 1: and at one point, after he becomes successful, he goes
Speaker 1: back to Boston. He's got some silver coins in his
Speaker 1: pocket and he shows off, goes in to see his brother,
Speaker 1: and his brother, of course, is very annoyed by it.
Speaker 1: Franklin realized he had shown pride there and that he
Speaker 1: had alienated it brother. And throughout his life Franklin kept
Speaker 1: a ledger of the mistakes he had made. He called
Speaker 1: him Erota on how he tried to rectify it, and
Speaker 1: mistake number one in his ledger book was running away
Speaker 1: from his indentured service to his brother and alienating himself
Speaker 1: from his brother. And then the way he rectified it
Speaker 1: is when his brother died, he took his brother's son underwing,
Speaker 1: and Benjamin Franklin helped set him up in business, helped
Speaker 1: educate him, and it was his way of doing that
Speaker 1: balance of trying to reconcile himself to his family. He
Speaker 1: was very close to his youngest sister, Jane, and their
Speaker 1: letters are truly delightful. That's how we know about Franklin's
Speaker 1: battle against pride and desire to at least have the
Speaker 1: pretense of humility. And I think that relationship was probably
Speaker 1: the most enduring of his life.
Speaker 2: When we come back, Franklin's autobiographical writings reveal the super
Speaker 2: awkward way he chose his wife, and how his belief
Speaker 2: in meritocracy didn't necessarily extend to a rejection of nepotism.
Speaker 2: We know about Franklin because he wrote so much and
Speaker 2: so well. It's how we get a sense of who
Speaker 2: he was and the kind of personality he made for
Speaker 2: the world to see the mix of poor Richard and
Speaker 2: silence do good and of course the Franklin we see
Speaker 2: in his autobiography, and it's through his writings that Walter
Speaker 2: met him too.
Speaker 1: Back then they want digitized, I'd go to Yale Library.
Speaker 1: I think it had had forty or fifty feet of shelves.
Speaker 1: And he has such an approachable style of writing that
Speaker 1: it made it to you could write a history of
Speaker 1: him that was storytelling because we have all of his letters,
Speaker 1: his notes as journal, the anecdotes he wrote as a fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 1: seventeen year old, and I became entranced with Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: the inventor, the scientist, the state crafter, the writer, but
Speaker 1: also the storyteller.
Speaker 2: Much like Walter's stroll through Franklin's handwritten letters and notebooks,
Speaker 2: ben Franklin's autobiography gives us a glimpse into how Franklin
Speaker 2: worked to mold his character, how he was on this
Speaker 2: continuous campaign of self improvement. But that warts and all
Speaker 2: story wasn't just for future Americans hoping to follow in
Speaker 2: Franklin's footsteps. It was also written for one young man
Speaker 2: in particular.
Speaker 1: William loved a book called The Habits of the well
Speaker 1: Born and Practices, And so he become somebody who hangs
Speaker 1: around with the dukes and the urals and the aristocracy,
Speaker 1: and is very good at putting on airs and pretenses,
Speaker 1: which his father doesn't like. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: his father writes the autobiography. It starts with the words,
Speaker 1: dear son, and it says, hey, remember who we are,
Speaker 1: a middle class people. We don't have the pretensions of
Speaker 1: the aristocracy. But one of the cool things about Franklin
Speaker 1: is sees a little bit upfront about his moral failings,
Speaker 1: makes fun of him, sometimes makes us realize, well, he's human,
Speaker 1: all too human, and in some ways I think that
Speaker 1: makes him more inspiring and more of a role model.
Speaker 2: Sometimes Franklin told on himself a little more subtly, like
Speaker 2: what he writes about his system for making decisions, something
Speaker 2: that would be very familiar to fans of Stephen Covey
Speaker 2: and fans of workplace efficiency in general.
Speaker 1: Whenever he had a decision to make, he did a calculus.
Speaker 1: He took a piece of paper and on one side
Speaker 1: of the paper he wrote all the reasons for something,
Speaker 1: the pros, and then on the other side he wrote
Speaker 1: all the things against all the cons and he designed
Speaker 1: weights to each of the factors, and he'd say, does
Speaker 1: the pros outweigh the cons or not? And it was
Speaker 1: his bookkeeping mentality, his sort of very scientific and experimental
Speaker 1: way of doing things. And he even does it when
Speaker 1: he's trying to decide whether to take Deborah as his
Speaker 1: common law wife. Now I love the notion of doing
Speaker 1: a calculus to figure out how to make tough decisions,
Speaker 1: but one criticism of Franklin is to do it when
Speaker 1: trying to decide whether to get married or not. There
Speaker 1: was a little something unromantic about his calculus.
Speaker 2: If you decide pro and get married, you should probably
Speaker 2: not let your spouse see the pro con list after.
Speaker 1: That, definitely, And I think he has poor Richard say
Speaker 1: keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shot
Speaker 1: after a marriage. In other words, once you've made your decision,
Speaker 1: tolerate the flaws of the other person.
Speaker 2: So often Franklin's writing is cheeky. He fills his autobiography
Speaker 2: with wit and happily winks at the reader as he
Speaker 2: relais his tales. But while the style is entirely his own,
Speaker 2: the structure of his biography is lifted from another work,
Speaker 2: a book that influenced him decades earlier, back when he
Speaker 2: was still an apprentice in his brother's print shop.
Speaker 1: He really identified with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress because it's about
Speaker 1: a person making his way in the world, trying to
Speaker 1: be moral, trying to be practical, and it was a journey.
Speaker 1: And if you read Franklin's autobiography, it's really the first
Speaker 1: self made person memoir we have. But it's written in
Speaker 1: the style of a real pilgrim's progress, a very practical
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin making his progress in the world.
Speaker 2: He made his life into a pilgrim's progress.
Speaker 1: When Fredlin was a young tradesman in Philadelphia, Franklin embarked
Speaker 1: on what he called grandly his moral perfection project. Now
Speaker 1: you have to know there's a bit of a sense
Speaker 1: of irony when he's writing about this in his autobiography.
Speaker 1: He's looking back at it somewhat amused because it's this
Speaker 1: very earnest sort of thing. But he made a list
Speaker 1: of virtues and values that you were supposed to have
Speaker 1: if you were going to be successful, and they're very
Speaker 1: pragmatic values. There's temperance, there's silence, there's order, there's resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness,
Speaker 1: and tranquility. And after he made the list, his friend said, Franklin,
Speaker 1: you're really proud of that list, but you are to
Speaker 1: add one thing. And he said, what's that? And the
Speaker 1: friend says, humility. You might want to try that one
Speaker 1: for a change. If you look at the list of
Speaker 1: virtues and values, they're not honor and duty and classical virtues. Instead,
Speaker 1: they're very Ben Franklin like, they're things like frug reality, industry,
Speaker 1: moderation that just make you a good citizen.
Speaker 2: Silence is one that feels like it's sometimes in short supply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the fact that silence is on the list.
Speaker 1: He says, speak not but what may benefit others, avoid
Speaker 1: trifling conversations. And nowadays we're always in the cable TV
Speaker 1: and social media world trying to have our hot takes.
Speaker 1: But at various important parts of his life, including when
Speaker 1: he's being grilled by a committee of Parliament during the
Speaker 1: lead up to the American Revolution, Franklin just stands there silently.
Speaker 2: Even in his earlier writings The Silence Do Good Essays,
Speaker 2: he would point out the hypocrisy of the strict morality
Speaker 2: of the times, and in himself.
Speaker 1: Franklin was very good at writing in the voice of women.
Speaker 1: Silence Do Good the very first thing he writes as
Speaker 1: a teenager. It's in a woman's voice, And when he
Speaker 1: gets to Philadelphia, he writes the story of Polly Baker,
Speaker 1: a woman who was on trial for having five illegitimate children.
Speaker 1: Polly Baker, she argues she was doing good for the world,
Speaker 1: bringing five children in and she had relied on the
Speaker 1: promises made to her by men, and men had broken
Speaker 1: those promises. And she says that at least I'm taking responsibility. Remember,
Speaker 1: Franklin had an illegitimate child and he took responsibility for it.
Speaker 1: So he's poking fun at men who have illegitimate children
Speaker 1: and then look down on the women. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the piece is funny. She's in front of
Speaker 1: the magistrates, even hints that one of the magistrates may
Speaker 1: have been amongst those who misled her, and at the
Speaker 1: end she's acquitted. The interesting thing is that throughout his
Speaker 1: life Franklin had pretty much the same style that he
Speaker 1: developed in the Silence Do Good Essays. He wrote hoaxes
Speaker 1: and parodies, He wrote him in conversational style, and even
Speaker 1: on his deathbed he's writing a parody of a speech
Speaker 1: that you can almost hear Silence do Good, giving.
Speaker 2: The sort of virtues of writing with simplicity and humor
Speaker 2: those started in his teenage years and not just carried through.
Speaker 1: One of the Silence Do Good Essays is an attack
Speaker 1: on Harvard, the elite college where he was supposed to go,
Speaker 1: but then his father decided not to send him there
Speaker 1: and so he has silence do good in a dream
Speaker 1: thinking about sending kids to Harvard and how only rich
Speaker 1: kids got to go, and they consulted their purses Franklin
Speaker 1: wrights as opposed to their brains. And he said, Harvard
Speaker 1: only knows how to turn out dunches and blockheads who
Speaker 1: can enter a room genteely, something they could have learned
Speaker 1: better in dancing school. And so it was him being
Speaker 1: self aware. And this is just a teenage boy, but
Speaker 1: throughout his life he's always poking fun at credentialism and
Speaker 1: the pretensions of the elite.
Speaker 2: It feels like something that's in a way so modern.
Speaker 2: Now you have people, particularly running for public office, who
Speaker 2: go to Harvard or Yale and then still poke fun
Speaker 2: at it, still disclaim the elite status that comes from
Speaker 2: attending those institutions.
Speaker 1: America's always had mixed feelings about elite credentials. People like
Speaker 1: to brag they go to Harvard or Yale, you see
Speaker 1: it in a JD Vance, but also they want to
Speaker 1: poke at the pretensions of the elite. And it's the
Speaker 1: same as it was in.
Speaker 2: Franklin jer It's funny that there is a presidential candidate
Speaker 2: running today. Trump who does brag about attending the university
Speaker 2: that Benjamin Franklin began.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure how Benjamin Franklin would feel that
Speaker 1: the first US president to come out of the university
Speaker 1: that he created was Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Franklin didn't think it was very American to have anything
Speaker 2: like an aristocracy. He was self made and thought it
Speaker 2: was important for people to make their own ways. But
Speaker 2: it was easier in theory than in practice. Even someone
Speaker 2: who so thoroughly believes in sort of meritocracy and pulling
Speaker 2: yourself up, he is always trying to help his grandson
Speaker 2: get a position somewhere. He can't quite get this grandson
Speaker 2: can't quite get a foothold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they can't really help himself. He's got
Speaker 1: this charming grandson, very good looking, but who isn't exactly
Speaker 1: the strongest character, and so he's always trying to get
Speaker 1: him appointment to be the secretary to the delegation in
Speaker 1: France and other political appointment. So there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of nepotism there. It doesn't quite work. Temple doesn't amount
Speaker 1: to do much. I feel like it almost comes back
Speaker 1: to silence, do good. He hates nepotism and elitism up
Speaker 1: any stripe. He believes in this rugged meritocracy. It's how
Speaker 1: he lived his life and made all u success, and
Speaker 1: yet he can't help but want better for his grandson. Franklin,
Speaker 1: like the rest of us, but more evidently, is always
Speaker 1: wrestling with the virtues and the values, looking after his
Speaker 1: own self interests but also what's good for the community.
Speaker 1: He was the most successful self made person of his time,
Speaker 1: and that's what his autobiography is about. But he also
Speaker 1: felt that the pursuit of money for its own sake,
Speaker 1: to have riches, to be an aristocrat, was unappealing. I
Speaker 1: think the word he would use, and so even though
Speaker 1: he becomes successful, he doesn't build grand mansions, he doesn't
Speaker 1: patent his invention. He tries to do well, but not
Speaker 1: be excessive, not put on airs, not be indulgent, and
Speaker 1: he felt too that was part of America's character.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of On Franklin, we'll get into
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin, the business savant and champion of the new
Speaker 2: middle class, and find out how his cunning helped him
Speaker 2: build the first American media empire.
Speaker 1: That made Franklin charming at times, but also he's able
Speaker 1: to rub people the wrong way and make enemies of
Speaker 1: the people he went into business with.
Speaker 2: This show is based on the writing and research of
Speaker 2: Walter Isaacson. So stood by me Evan Ratliffe, produced, mixed
Speaker 2: and sound designed by Anna Rubinova. Adam Bozarth is our
Speaker 2: consulting producer, Lizzie Jacobs who is our editor. Social media
Speaker 2: by Dara Potts. The show was engineered at CDM Sound
Speaker 2: Studios from iHeart Podcast. The executive producers are Katrina Norvell
Speaker 2: and Ali Perry. For Kalledyscope, it was executive produced by Mangeshetigador,
Speaker 2: with an assist from Ozwalishan Kostaslinos and Kate Osborne. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Amanda Urban, Bob Pittman, Will Pearson, Color Burnt,
Speaker 2: Nikki Etour, Carrie Lieberman, Nathan on Tuski and Ali Gavin
Speaker 2: And If you like podcasts about inventions what they mean
Speaker 2: for humanity, check out my other show shell Game, about
Speaker 2: how it created an AI clone and said it loose
Speaker 2: on the world. It's a shell Game dot co and
Speaker 2: for more shows from Kaleidoscope, be sure to visit Kaleidoscope
Speaker 2: dot NYC. Thanks so much for listening,