Speaker 1: I'm Manny, I'm Noah.
Speaker 2: This is Devin and this is no such thing show
Speaker 2: where we settle our dumb arguments in yours by actually
Speaker 2: doing the research. On today's episode, was Benjamin Franklin a fraud.
Speaker 1: Founding father or frauding father?
Speaker 2: Try that one. I'm gonna put that in there.
Speaker 3: A fraudulent father?
Speaker 4: I have no There's no no such thing, no such
Speaker 4: thing such, thank such, thank touch, thank so.
Speaker 2: Today's episode was actually inspired by our previous episode we
Speaker 2: did last year. We did an episode titled Can You
Speaker 2: Change the Mind of Conspiracy Theorists, And as part of
Speaker 2: that we asked our listeners to call in with their
Speaker 2: favorite conspiracy theory that they believed. So as part of
Speaker 2: that process, we got a call from one of Manny's
Speaker 2: friends named Kelsey.
Speaker 5: I think that Benjamin Franklin was a grifter with a
Speaker 5: great pr team. I live in Philadelphia, so his image
Speaker 5: is everywhere. To a degree I find suspicious. He's credited
Speaker 5: with inventing basically everything from electricity to buifocals to modern
Speaker 5: day fire insurance. And I don't believe that one little
Speaker 5: guy achieved all of this alone. He was never actually president,
Speaker 5: but was somehow always there as an advisor and Elon
Speaker 5: Musk kind of fraudster.
Speaker 6: The ideas guy with a big check book.
Speaker 5: I just feel like it's extremely possible that everyone hated
Speaker 5: him and he was a bad hang, but his reputation
Speaker 5: has been scrubbed clean. Wow.
Speaker 1: I like that it's a bad hang. It's like everyone's
Speaker 1: hanging out with him. I feel like that he'd the
Speaker 1: opposite where he's probably a good hand, maybe not doing something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would imagine a lot of people want it
Speaker 3: to be around him, you know, because of the reputation
Speaker 3: he had built, fraudulent or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, well that was a very brief shirt,
Speaker 2: you know. So I called up Kelsey to hear more
Speaker 2: of her thoughts. So as she mentioned, one big thing
Speaker 2: to note is that Kelsey lives in Philadelphia, so she
Speaker 2: is definitely, I think, seeing more of Benjamin Franklin related
Speaker 2: things than we are. Because when we got this. I
Speaker 2: remember this, when you were editing this episode, Manny, it
Speaker 2: was like, I don't really think about Benjamin Franklin at all. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was.
Speaker 1: My thought too. I was like, how did you even
Speaker 1: come up with that? Like he's even talking about this guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had never thought about that theory before, so
Speaker 3: now I'm happy to hear more.
Speaker 2: Well, we found out that you are on a group
Speaker 2: chat with Kelsey where she sends you photos every time
Speaker 2: she sees something Benjamin Franklin related. And I, you know,
Speaker 2: I spoke to her a couple of weeks ago. Now,
Speaker 2: so we have our own son of group chat because
Speaker 2: it's only two people. But she now sends me stuff
Speaker 2: that she comes across that are that are Benjamin and
Speaker 2: it is. It's a decent mount.
Speaker 4: It's a lot.
Speaker 3: If you're in Philadelphia, it seems like, you know, walking
Speaker 3: around you will run into a Benjamin Fine.
Speaker 2: And this is only the stuff she's sending. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm imagining she's not sending every single Benjamin Franklin thing
Speaker 2: that she's coming across. So two things Kelsey wanted us
Speaker 2: to get to the bottom of. It's number one, why
Speaker 2: does it feel like Benjamin Franklin hasn't had a proper reckoning.
Speaker 2: So in twenty twenty, we were really examining historical figures.
Speaker 3: And especially the presidents.
Speaker 2: Yes, especially presidents. You know, Obama was being called the
Speaker 2: war criminal. We were talking a lot about Washington. So
Speaker 2: why wasn't Benjamin Franklin a part of that conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then she also wanted us to investigate just the
Speaker 2: scope of what he's been credited with inventing.
Speaker 5: I think just like the huge, like broad brushstrokes of
Speaker 5: the things he's credited for coming up with or inventing
Speaker 5: feel like so categorically like all encompassing. Like I've just
Speaker 5: heard like he invented the concept of insurance and I'm like, what,
Speaker 5: like did any single person do that? And also like
Speaker 5: that that's like such a big claim. And then same
Speaker 5: with like firefighting, like modern firefighting, and like bifocals and electricity.
Speaker 5: Like I'm sure he was maybe like a savant like
Speaker 5: genius guy who came up with some stuff, but like
Speaker 5: I think, like the lack of specificity is what makes
Speaker 5: me suspicious or like, yeah, it just feels so big.
Speaker 2: So after that episode aired where Kelsey you know, ripped
Speaker 2: apart Benjamin or Franklin, another friend at a pod, Rich
Speaker 2: was texting us because he's a big Benjamin frank was
Speaker 2: sensed well, which I didn't know. You know, Rich was
Speaker 2: so down for many.
Speaker 1: No, but he's a history buff, but he was a
Speaker 1: proud American. He's a patriot.
Speaker 2: He's a patriot, but Rich he was very upset. So Noah,
Speaker 2: you had a conversation with Rich just to find out
Speaker 2: why he was so irate. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Rich his main point was like, it's not fair to say,
Speaker 1: you know, Ben Franklin is basically what we would see
Speaker 1: as you know elon Musk today, he was actually kind
Speaker 1: of doing this stuff. Mainly he's pointing to his diplomacy.
Speaker 1: He you know, made the alliance with the French, which
Speaker 1: helped the American Revolution, of course, and you know, just
Speaker 1: generally his Rich's main point is like, you wouldn't send
Speaker 1: him around to all these things, these high stakes positions
Speaker 1: if he's a fraud, he's got to be doing something, yeah,
Speaker 1: or at least be well liked and trusted.
Speaker 2: In some sense, a fraud would put themselves in as
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be like, oh yeah, you go, how would
Speaker 2: you get here?
Speaker 1: Especially he's not in the president, so it's like reason
Speaker 1: to just have this outside you know, outsider figure for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, Yeah, to do this, like
Speaker 1: to trust that stuff with him, There's got to be
Speaker 1: something there.
Speaker 7: I think the thing about Franklin that this caller seemed
Speaker 7: skeptical of was his celebrity. I mean, like the idea
Speaker 7: of a celebrity is kind of fairly modern, but in
Speaker 7: terms of the eighteenth century, he was as close to
Speaker 7: a celebrity as you could get. The thing is is
Speaker 7: that he used that to his causes benefit In some way,
Speaker 7: he was like a marketer of the American Revolution as
Speaker 7: much as he was a diplomat and a leading politician.
Speaker 7: He started arguing for colonial unity like decades before even
Speaker 7: the Declaration of Independence, which by the way, he also
Speaker 7: helped Jefferson draft. So not only did he help draft
Speaker 7: the Declaration of Independence, he also helped draft the Treaty
Speaker 7: of Paris, which ended the war, so that set the
Speaker 7: terms for what the country was going to look like.
Speaker 7: And he also played an important role in the Constitutional Convention.
Speaker 7: So I mean, look, he's there at the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 7: the treaty that ends the war and helps establish what
Speaker 7: the United States is going to be, and then the Constitution.
Speaker 2: I don't know what more you could want them with gut.
Speaker 7: Did he do some like flamboyant public image stuff, Yes,
Speaker 7: of course, but he was using that to his advantage.
Speaker 2: He was an.
Speaker 7: Interesting guy, I mean, like someone like John Adams, for example,
Speaker 7: people usually thought he was like boring, kind of goofy, annoying,
Speaker 7: but like with Franklin, people loved him.
Speaker 3: And you can see easily how our two friends here
Speaker 3: their ideas are not as to each other, but you
Speaker 3: can also see some areas where they're not necessarily Like
Speaker 3: I think Kelsey's main gripe seems to be all the
Speaker 3: things attributed to him in terms of like innovation, I guess.
Speaker 3: And then you know, Rich isn't necessarily talking about that
Speaker 3: aspect of his life. He's just talking about how much
Speaker 3: of an integral role he played in kind of the
Speaker 3: founding of the country. I want to see how we
Speaker 3: can marry these two ideas.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the personality of it, I think is key too.
Speaker 1: That's definitely what led to him being iconic in the
Speaker 1: sense of being all over Philadelphia. Yeah, and then that
Speaker 1: also is what Rich is telling is what led to
Speaker 1: him being the one who trusted to kind of convince
Speaker 1: people to come to our side and that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're saying, they might not be as
Speaker 1: at odds as we think as.
Speaker 2: They think they think. So we are going to find
Speaker 2: out if Kelsey is right? Is Benjamin Franklin fraud? Or
Speaker 2: is rich right? Is he our greatest founding father? After
Speaker 2: the break, we'll find out does Benjamin Franklin actually suck?
Speaker 3: O'm Manny Noah, and.
Speaker 2: I am Devin. We are joined in the studio by
Speaker 2: doctor Claire Aubyn. Claire is a writer and historian at Yale.
Speaker 2: She also has her own podcast, which you may already know,
Speaker 2: called This Guy Sucked, which was named one of Apple
Speaker 2: Podcasts Best New Shows of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: In some great company, How Along with You?
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's literally how we know.
Speaker 2: Each and we love this show because it's a show
Speaker 2: for haters, and we love the hate on this show. Claire,
Speaker 2: can you give us just your elevator pitch for This
Speaker 2: Guy Sucked?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: So every week I bring in a new scholar, a
Speaker 8: new academic. Occasionally we have like a comedian or do
Speaker 8: a collaboration with someone else. But but I bring someone
Speaker 8: who is an expert on a person in to tell
Speaker 8: us why they don't like that person basically, and why
Speaker 8: make an argument for the audience for like they shouldn't
Speaker 8: like that person either. So we've spanned like a huge
Speaker 8: amount of historical time period. We talk about people who
Speaker 8: are very famous, people who are not famous but should
Speaker 8: be for bad stuff. The argument being that, whether you
Speaker 8: realize it or not, historical figures have negatively impacted your
Speaker 8: life today and you should not like them, and that
Speaker 8: you can be interested in them without liking them.
Speaker 6: Also, yeah, that's good, which we'll get into.
Speaker 3: We're familiar with the concept people who should be famous
Speaker 3: but aren't.
Speaker 1: We're getting.
Speaker 2: Us.
Speaker 6: So unfortunately, you don't want to be the subject.
Speaker 8: I will say, I would say, you know, come on,
Speaker 8: but that is actually in fact, what's happening.
Speaker 2: All right, Claire. So to recap, we have you here
Speaker 2: because we chatted with two friends at a pod our,
Speaker 2: friend Kelsey who thinks Benjamin Franklin is a fraud. A
Speaker 2: friend Rich who thinks Benjamin Franklin is a national treasure
Speaker 2: maybe underrated. So we're going to hand off the episode
Speaker 2: to you at this point as our historian, to sort
Speaker 2: of break it down what's the truth about the Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 8: So part of this is a little bit complicated because
Speaker 8: the two arguments that he's a fraud and that he's
Speaker 8: important are not.
Speaker 6: In opposition to one another.
Speaker 8: So it was funny trying to figure out what the
Speaker 8: answer to this is, because like one could be a
Speaker 8: fraud and also important and like memorable at the same time,
Speaker 8: and like a contributor in some other way. And I
Speaker 8: think there are plenty of historical examples and living examples.
Speaker 6: That we have of that.
Speaker 8: So I think they're not actually arguing at cross purposes,
Speaker 8: Like they're not against each other in this. They just
Speaker 8: have different conceptions of why people remember him. But I
Speaker 8: did come up with what I see as the questions
Speaker 8: that they were asking. I tried to summarize their questions
Speaker 8: and find answers to them.
Speaker 6: So questions are.
Speaker 8: Like did he have haters in his day? Would he
Speaker 8: be taken more seriously if he had been president? Was
Speaker 8: he stealing credit from other people?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 8: They asked a lot of I think really interesting questions
Speaker 8: that help us to figure out like how we think
Speaker 8: about celebrity and history and.
Speaker 6: All kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 8: And then the one that I found really interesting is
Speaker 8: what are the bad things about him?
Speaker 6: Yeah? There are some bad things about him.
Speaker 2: You know, if we want to cancel him, will we
Speaker 2: pull up?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: We shouldn't we talk about talk about his accomplishments. I
Speaker 1: feel like, yeah, maybe we start.
Speaker 2: And then we get to this. Let's start what's real.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, what do you know about him as his accomplishments, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, discovering electricity, Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution.
Speaker 8: Yes, he's at the Constitution.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 3: That about the diplomat, like he was building around in France.
Speaker 1: I talked to rich So yet he was crucial in
Speaker 1: getting the French alliance, which helped back us up during
Speaker 1: the American Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on the what is it the one bill?
Speaker 6: Mm hmmm, yeah, pretty famously.
Speaker 1: I've never seen all.
Speaker 2: Of those.
Speaker 3: Smaller bills, Penny, who's this?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so most of these things at least have like
Speaker 8: a grain of truth for them. He definitely is, for example,
Speaker 8: instrumental in securing this French alliance. That's right, A lot
Speaker 8: of these things are true. He does work on electricity,
Speaker 8: but I will say.
Speaker 2: Work on electric discovery.
Speaker 4: Well. No.
Speaker 8: So one of the things I find kind of interesting
Speaker 8: about this is the idea of like whether he was
Speaker 8: stealing credit from other people his inventions or not, because
Speaker 8: as a name, yeah, you know, the issue here is
Speaker 8: really just kind of like oversimplification. So no, he doesn't
Speaker 8: steal credit from people. But yes, his relationship to the
Speaker 8: things he invents and does and science are oversimplified. Sometimes
Speaker 8: he kind of fails to credit his collaborators on things
Speaker 8: in this sort of classic inventor scenario.
Speaker 2: You know who does that current day?
Speaker 6: This is not ready.
Speaker 2: I don't think you think this person would come up
Speaker 2: in this conversation Travis Scott famously, he needs to pretend
Speaker 2: that he does everything by himself, to the point where
Speaker 2: when I worked at Genius the music company, we would
Speaker 2: do these series where we'd talk to the collaborators a
Speaker 2: big famous people. Right, it's hard to talk to the
Speaker 2: big famous people. It's easier to talk to a producer
Speaker 2: or a music video director. And he would threaten to
Speaker 2: sue us if we did videos like they had to
Speaker 2: take a video down because they worked with I think
Speaker 2: it was either a music video he did or a producer.
Speaker 2: He didn't like the idea that the audience would see
Speaker 2: that he wasn't the only person doing it. Oh, he
Speaker 2: didn't like the idea of being seen as a collaborator.
Speaker 2: He wants to be seen as like the mastermound in
Speaker 2: a brainchild lither thing. Yeah we had to take a video.
Speaker 8: Down, Yeah, for sure, also first time probably someone has
Speaker 8: brought up Travis Scott and Benjamin Franklin type of guy.
Speaker 8: So like breaking the ground every day, this is what
Speaker 8: podcasts are for. Yeah, but actually, yeah, that does fit
Speaker 8: in part because one of the issues around Franklin's legacy
Speaker 8: is that he gets credited with being the sole creator
Speaker 8: of things that are actually sort of transnational global ideas.
Speaker 8: So the idea of electricity and lightning being somehow related
Speaker 8: to electricity predates him. He's not the person to come
Speaker 8: up with this, in part because like ideas don't exist
Speaker 8: in vacuums. The lone genius scientist guy who is like,
Speaker 8: I've invented electricity isn't real. That's not actually how scientist
Speaker 8: or how innovation.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't figured it out there was that one guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like science is incremental, innovation is incremental. There's a
Speaker 8: sort of network of what we would call experimental philosophers
Speaker 8: and experimental scientists, although they're not really thinking of themselves
Speaker 8: as scientists necessarily at this moment, because all these things
Speaker 8: are kind of mixed together, Like you're a philosopher and
Speaker 8: a scientist and a doctor and whatever altogether, you're just
Speaker 8: engaging in sort of questions about the world and trying
Speaker 8: to answer them much like yourselves, you, Travis Scott, and Benjacinara,
Speaker 8: and he is part of this network. We know that
Speaker 8: he's traveling to Europe fairly regularly and coming back and
Speaker 8: doing stuff. So I imagine that he exists in this
Speaker 8: space where he's coming up with things by himself is.
Speaker 6: Just not real or possible.
Speaker 8: We know, for example, that the lightning rod is based
Speaker 8: in part on European theories around electricity and lightning.
Speaker 6: There is a Czech.
Speaker 8: Priest named Prokop Divish who is also working on grounded
Speaker 8: lightning rods at the same time. His grounded lightning rod
Speaker 8: happens about three years after Franklin's, but they're working with
Speaker 8: the same ideas. So that's not to say that he
Speaker 8: doesn't do these incredible things, but like he doesn't do
Speaker 8: them by himself, and he doesn't do them in a
Speaker 8: way that no one else is considering approaching them because
Speaker 8: science is also a very messy and very iterative process,
Speaker 8: Like you have to try things over and over and
Speaker 8: over again and figure them out. And if he's the
Speaker 8: first guy to do in America, like that's great, but
Speaker 8: he's not the only.
Speaker 6: Capable of it either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it seems like he's benefited from essentially
Speaker 3: like the elementary school curriculum, right, Like the oversimplification happens
Speaker 3: because they're teaching this to kids, so he's getting a
Speaker 3: lot of credit from I mean, I didn't read a
Speaker 3: single thing about him after elementary school. I think so
Speaker 3: if I had, I guess the teachings would have been
Speaker 3: a little bit more nuanced.
Speaker 2: I'm worried about your high school education, but but I
Speaker 2: do wonder how much it is is like you said,
Speaker 2: many like the over simplification, like teaching kids things, you know,
Speaker 2: like even like Rose Parks wasn't the first person, you know,
Speaker 2: to not get up. She also wasn't seated in the
Speaker 2: front of the bus. You know, like there's there's stuff
Speaker 2: like that. There's a nuance cell out of stuff that
Speaker 2: when you're a kid, it's like, you know, can just
Speaker 2: fit in a picture book. It's like Benjamin Franklin Kite
Speaker 2: get the gist electricity.
Speaker 3: Right, You're not going to tell the kid about all
Speaker 3: the other collaborators.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly, about Czech priests broke up division.
Speaker 1: We didn't need to go to Prague and see whether.
Speaker 8: I mean, and that's kind of generally a problem with
Speaker 8: how people understand historical figures, right, Like the real problem
Speaker 8: is once again the American education system. Unfortunately, in terms
Speaker 8: of how we like satisfying endings.
Speaker 6: We like people who said satisfy curiosity.
Speaker 8: We like people who we can hold up and say
Speaker 8: this is the guy, because history itself is a lot
Speaker 8: messier and more complicated than that, and it's harder.
Speaker 6: To grapple with.
Speaker 8: So these simplifications really benefit us in terms of our
Speaker 8: ability to understand things. They're often though not really that
Speaker 8: true or that real, and the issue is further down
Speaker 8: the line when you're like, ah, well, this is the
Speaker 8: thing I know about Benjamin Franklin and someone has to say,
Speaker 8: I guess, well, not so much.
Speaker 1: That Kelsey's main gripe, aside from kind of the Philly
Speaker 1: centric angle and like the advertisement use, which is obviously
Speaker 1: way far. Afield was kind of like, how could this
Speaker 1: one guy do all this thing? Yeah, yeah, we're but
Speaker 1: to me, this is my simple explanations. I think about
Speaker 1: someone like da Vinci, like a renaissance man sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking, you know, hundreds of years ago, not
Speaker 1: that many people were educated, so to me, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem that crazy that the few people that were highly
Speaker 1: educated would know about a lot of things and be
Speaker 1: working in a lot of different fields, whether that be
Speaker 1: you know, science, electricity or politics or whatever, or art
Speaker 1: in you know, Franklin, he was writing, he did almanacs,
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. So it's not that crazy that
Speaker 1: one guy would kind of have his hand in all
Speaker 1: these different pots. Yeah, I mean, does that make sense?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, like fully, one hundred percent, it makes sense.
Speaker 8: The way that we conceive of like sciences and the
Speaker 8: humanities or art as these separate categories is relatively recent.
Speaker 8: Like historically speaking, the man who is educated is educated
Speaker 8: in all of these fields, and they're not seen as
Speaker 8: necessarily separable. So you can say like, yes, I've learned history,
Speaker 8: Yes I've learned science or art or whatever.
Speaker 6: But a person who.
Speaker 8: Is educated as well rounded and interested in all of
Speaker 8: these things. So like what I mentioned before about this
Speaker 8: sort of philosopher or physicist whatever guy, that's very normal
Speaker 8: because that is part.
Speaker 6: Of being educated and interested in the world.
Speaker 8: The way that we've kind of siloed these things as
Speaker 8: totally separate is relatively recent, because now we've focus in
Speaker 8: on like becoming an expert in one single thing, becoming
Speaker 8: the person we in part because our approach to things
Speaker 8: like invention has narrowed further and further because we're getting
Speaker 8: we're progressing and.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're getting more admits.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so you can be like, I do this one thing.
Speaker 8: So a lot of these things really benefit or draw
Speaker 8: from each other. So the Da Vinci Renaissance man style guy,
Speaker 8: it was a much more common person until recently, and
Speaker 8: like a thing that proves how good you are and
Speaker 8: how educated you are and how intelligent you are that
Speaker 8: you can engage with all these different things.
Speaker 2: I feel like the similarity happens in like youth sports
Speaker 2: now right where back in the day, if you are athletic,
Speaker 2: you would play a bunch of different sports. Now they
Speaker 2: have like eight year olds that they're like, you're going
Speaker 2: to be a sock star. You're only playing soccer, do
Speaker 2: not play any other sports? Yeah yeah, And a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, older athletes talk about that's not actually great,
Speaker 2: like you should if your child's athletic, just let them
Speaker 2: play a bunch of different sports and like don't narrow
Speaker 2: them down.
Speaker 1: When the later exactly, Okay, you're going to make a career.
Speaker 8: It used to even more recently beyond that, using the
Speaker 8: sports childhood sports analogy. Being a three sport athlete used
Speaker 8: to be a type of person in the US, Like
Speaker 8: if you're a person who plays baseball, basketball, and football,
Speaker 8: you are a three sport athlete. Yeah, that's like that
Speaker 8: was a type of high school guy basically, and now
Speaker 8: we rarely see that because people are told to do
Speaker 8: just do one thing or be like maybe you should
Speaker 8: focus on your school work.
Speaker 6: I'd only play ones.
Speaker 8: But yeah, so even that is like us narrowing and
Speaker 8: arrowing and yeah, all of that is crazy too because
Speaker 8: it's like, hey, eight year old, yeah, I need you
Speaker 8: to prepare yourself for a.
Speaker 6: Life of CTE.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, starting now, starting now.
Speaker 3: Ron James was famously a five star football recruit as well,
Speaker 3: maybe not maybe four or five stars I can't remember,
Speaker 3: but he definitely could have made a lot of money
Speaker 3: in football.
Speaker 2: But he's a big athletic guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some great highlight tapes on YouTube if you want
Speaker 3: to go back and check them out.
Speaker 1: Why don't we pull him off right now.
Speaker 8: To go back to your question some of the other
Speaker 8: things he's credited with.
Speaker 6: So the bifocals.
Speaker 8: One is good glasses existed, having different glasses also existed
Speaker 8: for for distance and for a close range vision. From
Speaker 8: what I understand, things like inventions are not necessarily my specialty.
Speaker 8: As his story, but from what I understand in the
Speaker 8: research they did for this, he kind of perfected an
Speaker 8: idea that had existed, that pre existed, or he he
Speaker 8: made a thing that people had been thinking about into
Speaker 8: a thing that existed.
Speaker 6: If that makes sense, yeah, especially because we're like he
Speaker 6: invented the bifole. Well that's what great.
Speaker 8: But if people are switching between two kinds of glasses,
Speaker 8: I feel certain someone said I wish these were one
Speaker 8: pair of you know, he.
Speaker 2: Basically made like a scrub daddy.
Speaker 1: He just put it like we got sponges. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: better version of this, you put your finger, that'd be perfect.
Speaker 1: Let me do it.
Speaker 8: Let me get to be fair. I am a huge
Speaker 8: scrub daddy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Have scrubed mommies too.
Speaker 1: Are actually better? Can you guys give me the quick
Speaker 1: pitch on what squad actually is the benefit of these
Speaker 1: compared to another normal sponge.
Speaker 2: I think there's better sponges. They're they're thicker, you know,
Speaker 2: sponges more I would say horizontal.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so these are more they and the wetter they get,
Speaker 8: the softer they get. So they start out like kind
Speaker 8: of crispy in a way that's good for.
Speaker 6: Your pants.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then they get softer so they're more workable,
Speaker 8: which is great, and have more crevices crevice options.
Speaker 2: And the mommy has two sides.
Speaker 1: Okay, like a hard side, like a scrubside.
Speaker 2: Scrubside, and then like a more a softer sid try.
Speaker 1: It out and we're not putting this in until they
Speaker 1: give us some money.
Speaker 2: Yes, at the.
Speaker 8: End of the episode sponsor us scrub daddy and mommy.
Speaker 1: Some other things. And these are more like uh like
Speaker 1: infrastructural that came up were like the fire department, postal
Speaker 1: service speak to that, like how how important was Franklin
Speaker 1: to those being set up?
Speaker 8: Fire brigades existed? Yeah, that was a long a long time,
Speaker 8: pretty famous before. And yeah, they did have fires and
Speaker 8: they did have community responses to.
Speaker 1: Individual es.
Speaker 8: Benjamin Franklin actually invented both fires and fires.
Speaker 6: And the concept of insurance.
Speaker 8: I don't know, I'm I also feel confident that that predated,
Speaker 8: at least to some extent, with all of these things
Speaker 8: we're looking at, like what we consider very obvious concepts
Speaker 8: now that he might have popularized or he might have
Speaker 8: formalized in some way. But again, like I don't necessarily
Speaker 8: think that these are things that we should be like.
Speaker 8: That's his thing, that's him who did that. One of
Speaker 8: the things that I found interesting in the conversation that
Speaker 8: you had with Rich is he talks a little shit
Speaker 8: about John Adams in it, And I found that very
Speaker 8: funny because John Adams kind of emerges as the opposite
Speaker 8: of Ben Franklin and in the way.
Speaker 6: That Rich says.
Speaker 8: But one of the things he's annoyed at Ben Franklin
Speaker 8: for and writes in his diaries and in letters about
Speaker 8: as in John Adams is writing this, is that Franklin.
Speaker 8: Adams is writing that that Franklin, like is getting too
Speaker 8: much credit for stuff, and he feels frustrated that that
Speaker 8: he's been credited not just for inventions, but for like
Speaker 8: the whole revolution and for all of these ideas, and
Speaker 8: he feels frustrated that people are kind of laying all
Speaker 8: of this at Franklin's feet.
Speaker 6: So this goes also to the did he have haters?
Speaker 8: Yeah, when he was alive thing that there was already
Speaker 8: frustration while he was alive at how people were engaging
Speaker 8: in this like myth making around him.
Speaker 2: Did John want some more credit? Was John like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm doing some of this ship too, nobody's talking about me.
Speaker 2: Was that was that his real issue? Or was he
Speaker 2: just like all right enough?
Speaker 3: This sounds like class the more classic kind of hating
Speaker 3: where it's like I'm tired of hearing about this guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's more of that. I don't think
Speaker 8: there's as much of John Adams being like it should
Speaker 8: have been me. But I do think he's like, Okay,
Speaker 8: there were a lot of us at the Constitutional Convention,
Speaker 8: hold on, but yeah, and even like Thomas Jefferson is
Speaker 8: also writing like, look, he can't be president because his
Speaker 8: temper is a little too he says.
Speaker 6: I think he says he has a supple.
Speaker 8: Temper, but that he's not suited did in terms of
Speaker 8: temperament to the difficulties of actual leadership.
Speaker 6: I mean, there are people who are while he's alive,
Speaker 6: being like hold on, like we can't. This guy is
Speaker 6: not necessarily everything he's being held up to be.
Speaker 2: So he did have haters, but how widespread was this hate.
Speaker 2: You know these people are right, you're saying righteous in
Speaker 2: your diaries. Are they saying this publicly or the just
Speaker 2: whispers behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: I hate these guys. Yeah, that's different than the little people.
Speaker 6: Not as much public hate.
Speaker 8: It depends on what point in his life you're talking about.
Speaker 8: The British are really frustrated at him, for example, because
Speaker 8: they're like, man, you kind of mess this up for us.
Speaker 6: Like the British are.
Speaker 8: Like, you know, maybe wouldn't have succeeded, for example, if
Speaker 8: he didn't go to France and do this. So that's
Speaker 8: what we would consider sort of hating from someone who
Speaker 8: like lost a war.
Speaker 1: I'd be pretty mad if I.
Speaker 6: So that one is more understandable.
Speaker 8: The people around him do have these frustrations, and a
Speaker 8: lot of them end up being.
Speaker 6: Kind of frustrations around like is he a good employer?
Speaker 8: The normal stuff, But there isn't like this widespread hate
Speaker 8: movement while he's alive, necessarily until you get to his
Speaker 8: late seventies. He dies in his mid eighties, but his
Speaker 8: late seventies is when he decides to take an abolitionist turn,
Speaker 8: and then people who are like, no, we like slavery
Speaker 8: are like we hate this guy. That being said, there
Speaker 8: is another group of people who might hate him, which
Speaker 8: would be all of the people he had enslaved, and
Speaker 8: so those people might hate him, but we lose them
Speaker 8: in the historical record, which is a pretty common issue
Speaker 8: with for example, enslaved people who were enslavers, where we
Speaker 8: lose the voices of the people who had like that
Speaker 8: level of relationship with him, that level of antagonistic relationship,
Speaker 8: and so often when we think about them because we
Speaker 8: don't have them in the historical record, where like everyone
Speaker 8: loved him, it's like, maybe not the people who couldn't
Speaker 8: leave his house.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: It's a pretty sobering thing, But it depends on who
Speaker 8: you consider a person when you're thinking about like what
Speaker 8: hating on someone is, who counts?
Speaker 1: Can you walk us through his arc towards abolitionism.
Speaker 8: Benjamin Franklin died in seventeen ninety. He takes this abolitionist turn,
Speaker 8: or starts thinking about it from what I can tell,
Speaker 8: in the early seventeen seventies, he moves fully into what
Speaker 8: we would call his abolitionist kind of phase. In I
Speaker 8: think seventeen eighty one, he becomes an open public abolitionist
Speaker 8: takes over control of this very public abolitionist group. He's
Speaker 8: doing all of these things in part because he's like,
Speaker 8: I think this might be bad. He's also surrounded by
Speaker 8: other people at this moment in the seventeen eighties, where
Speaker 8: wealthy people living.
Speaker 6: In the North are starting to be like, maybe this
Speaker 6: isn't good.
Speaker 8: So this is actually when the fault lines start to
Speaker 8: appear between who thinks slavery is an acceptable institution and
Speaker 8: who thinks it's not. But he yeah, he takes his
Speaker 8: weird turn, and we think around seventeen seventy two seventeen
Speaker 8: seventy five he starts thinking about it more and becomes
Speaker 8: open and public about it in the seventeen eighties, But
Speaker 8: before that, when he's asked to comment on slavery, he
Speaker 8: like outright refuses. So for most of his life, not
Speaker 8: only does he own slaves or have people living with
Speaker 8: his family as their slaves, he also feels basically fine
Speaker 8: with it and is like, when asked to comment on it,
Speaker 8: says he's not going to. He also is making money
Speaker 8: off of slavery because he is the editor and the
Speaker 8: guy who runs the Pennsylvania Gazette, where people are advertising
Speaker 8: slave markets and slave sales, so he's actively making money
Speaker 8: off of this. And he also when people have like
Speaker 8: missing or self emancipated slaves, so people who run away,
Speaker 8: he's allowing these missing and runaway slave ads to be
Speaker 8: run in his paper, so he like enables slave patrols
Speaker 8: and slave catchers as well.
Speaker 6: Not super good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: The other thing I would add to the abolitionist thing
Speaker 8: is at the point that he becomes an abolitionist, he
Speaker 8: still has people who are enslaved living that he like owns,
Speaker 8: and he puts in his will that when he dies,
Speaker 8: that's when.
Speaker 1: They can convenient and they.
Speaker 8: Both, the two that he names and his will, both
Speaker 8: die before he does, so they die still enslaved.
Speaker 3: Washington do something similar, Yes, mancific after this is kind of.
Speaker 6: A classic thing. Actually that people who are classic.
Speaker 8: As in like this is a common thing, a thing
Speaker 8: that happens when people are like abolition is good.
Speaker 2: Not yet though, yeah wait until I'm gone.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you can't do it, but the next generation might
Speaker 8: be equipped you. You You've lived too long like this.
Speaker 8: I'm too responsible for you. I'm not going to, for example,
Speaker 8: offer you your freedom and then pay for you to
Speaker 8: live a life of freedom and take care of you
Speaker 8: that way financially, which he absolutely could have done and
Speaker 8: other people did.
Speaker 6: Instead. He was like, when I'm gone, you can go too.
Speaker 3: It's what frustrates me so much about this kind of
Speaker 3: argument on the right, from like the Charlie Kirk types
Speaker 3: that like, you can't really blame the Confederacy that much
Speaker 3: because slavery was normal. It was like the norm, and
Speaker 3: they didn't know any better. But there is so much
Speaker 3: information that disproves that. The question we have to the
Speaker 3: guys who had the slaves, you can be free after
Speaker 3: I die, it's a clear indication that they knew what
Speaker 3: they were.
Speaker 8: Doing, absolutely, And one of the questions we have to
Speaker 8: ask when that comes up, when someone says, oh, this
Speaker 8: was normal, it's like for who yeah, Because again, the
Speaker 8: calculus then is who's a person.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: If the calculus is a.
Speaker 8: Person who enslaves someone and someone who is enslaved, and
Speaker 8: we don't have the enslaved person's thoughts on the record,
Speaker 8: and we do have this person, we default to the
Speaker 8: person who says it was normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: The person experiencing it does not think this is normal, yeah, right, Like.
Speaker 3: It might even be normal on this on the basis
Speaker 3: of like a society, But it doesn't mean it was
Speaker 3: like default.
Speaker 8: Fine, no, And also yeah, normal doesn't mean good or positive. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so it's a It is a really frustrating and kind
Speaker 8: of circular argument because it really just gets back to like, well,
Speaker 8: who do you consider a person? Whose thoughts do you
Speaker 8: care about, Whose feelings do you care about? Who matters here?
Speaker 8: You know, to bring John Adams up again, which I
Speaker 8: think is interesting to head off this this is normal.
Speaker 8: All the Founding Fathers had them argument. You know, who
Speaker 8: did not have slaves? John Adams who emerges as kind
Speaker 8: of the secret hero, and neither did his cousin Samuel Adams.
Speaker 8: In fact, of the Founding Fathers we traditionally think of,
Speaker 8: for example, when we're looking at the signing of the
Speaker 8: Decoration of Independence, a little over a quarter of them
Speaker 8: were not slaveholders. So if you can say it's normal
Speaker 8: to in slavor, yeah, it's also normal not to be
Speaker 8: it would be to be like a vegetarian or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do we know if that was because of like historical
Speaker 3: happenstance or they had a position against it.
Speaker 8: It depends on the person. Sometimes it's kind of both.
Speaker 8: Sometimes they like it doesn't make financial sense for me.
Speaker 8: They're expensive, right, Like not just in like to purchase,
Speaker 8: but the care and upkeeping another human being is expensive,
Speaker 8: and so some people couldn't really like afford this. And
Speaker 8: this is just using the sort of like really kind.
Speaker 2: Of like.
Speaker 8: Colds, But there's that some people did also have like
Speaker 8: a real moral ethical obligation where they felt like this
Speaker 8: was not right.
Speaker 6: So those people count too. And I think it's interesting.
Speaker 8: That when we think about Benjamin Franklin, we're like, look
Speaker 8: at all these amazing things he did. The seven people
Speaker 8: that he over the course of his life purchased sold.
Speaker 6: At one point, one runs away.
Speaker 8: From him in England and he goes on this quest
Speaker 8: to go find this man. Discovers that the man is
Speaker 8: in this other woman's house in England and is having
Speaker 8: a better time.
Speaker 6: There basically, and he's like, okay, fine, I guess you
Speaker 6: can stay here. And he sells the man.
Speaker 8: So again, this is not like he says, you're having
Speaker 8: a good time, I guess you can.
Speaker 6: Stay because you're happy. He's like, so do you need
Speaker 6: to pay me.
Speaker 8: In this scenario when you can stay in England? But yeah,
Speaker 8: I mean he he for almost his whole life makes
Speaker 8: money off of slavery and benefits enormously from enslaving people.
Speaker 8: So I think that should be part of the conversation
Speaker 8: when you think about if he's important or good or
Speaker 8: a fraud or whatever, and that goes to the what's
Speaker 8: bad about him?
Speaker 6: That's mostly what's bad about Okay.
Speaker 2: On our we're going to cancel Benjamin Franklin. The slave
Speaker 2: stuff pretty big.
Speaker 1: It's a bad one.
Speaker 2: It's up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll speak for rich and say we don't support that.
Speaker 8: Gary Nash, who's a historian who works on the American
Speaker 8: Revolution and works on like black and white relations during
Speaker 8: and after the American Revolution, says, like many other white
Speaker 8: colonists during the years leading up to the American Revolution,
Speaker 8: the Franklins grew to dislike slavery, but not so much
Speaker 8: as to sacrifice their investments. So they don't they don't
Speaker 8: like it, but they don't like it, like they still
Speaker 8: like it enough to change, yeah, to not risk some money.
Speaker 6: Basically, yeah, so just like.
Speaker 2: We won't do it again, and they do.
Speaker 4: Do it again. Though.
Speaker 6: You know what's interesting is they say, like, whoa, we
Speaker 6: don't want to do this, but if you have a kid,
Speaker 6: that kid's going to be going to become a slave too.
Speaker 8: It's a really like it's a murky thing, and it's
Speaker 8: a thing that makes people really uncomfortable because you have
Speaker 8: to grapple with a whole lot of.
Speaker 6: Other stuff about American history when you think about it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but yeah, that's my argument for the like what's
Speaker 8: about he also, you know, does the thing that quite
Speaker 8: that a lot of white colonists at this time do
Speaker 8: where he says we need to take the West indigenous
Speaker 8: peoples over there?
Speaker 6: Who cares about them? He's not overtly like we hate
Speaker 6: them and should kill them. He just is like, we
Speaker 6: should take the West too.
Speaker 8: We need more space, we need more people. The way
Speaker 8: that America is going to survive is by bringing as
Speaker 8: many people here as possible. And he's not, you know,
Speaker 8: alone in thinking this, and it's not specifically about wanting to,
Speaker 8: you know, cause the annihilation of this enormous group of people.
Speaker 6: But he doesn't have a problem.
Speaker 8: With it necessarily, so you can, I guess add that
Speaker 8: as another tick on the list.
Speaker 1: Up next, what did Ben Franklin think about running for
Speaker 1: president and older women and farting.
Speaker 2: All of that?
Speaker 1: After the break?
Speaker 6: Would he be taken more seriously, if he had been president, is.
Speaker 3: Another ambitions to be to run for office.
Speaker 8: No, he's eighty one at the Constitutional Convention old for context,
Speaker 8: George Washington is fifty five at this point my whole
Speaker 8: I know completely then.
Speaker 2: And this was before eighty year olds were running for president.
Speaker 1: At the time, ahead of his time.
Speaker 3: If he yea also is is eighty like it's already
Speaker 3: old today, but back then that must be like.
Speaker 2: It's like one hundred and twenty year old.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's very ocean.
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, I mean he's not like, it's not like insane.
Speaker 8: There are plenty of eighty year olds that existed, fact
Speaker 8: that not as often as now because you could get
Speaker 8: dysentery pretty easily, you know, so like you could get
Speaker 8: taken out by all kinds of stuff at a garage,
Speaker 8: you know, like they didn't have penicillin.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, some basic stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I mean there is there is that.
Speaker 2: Uh so he was in no shape to It wasn't
Speaker 2: like they passed over him. It's like, guys, I'm too
Speaker 2: old that I'm yeah, I'm not even in running.
Speaker 8: It wasn't gonna that wasn't gonna happen that I don't
Speaker 8: think that was a real conversation that that people.
Speaker 6: Were really were thinking about.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it does reframe a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 8: and we think about, like he lived, you know, his
Speaker 8: whole life other than the stints in Europe, like in
Speaker 8: the US or what would become the US and he's
Speaker 8: eighty one when we get a constitution.
Speaker 1: He was able to do all this stuff then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he had a lot of time.
Speaker 6: That's part of this.
Speaker 8: He's not president, so we can spend his time doing
Speaker 8: all kinds of going on side quests for his entire
Speaker 8: life you know then was not very quick. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: he's he's like he has time to do a million
Speaker 8: other things because he doesn't.
Speaker 6: Hold political office in the same way.
Speaker 8: So he kind of has given this like guiding grandpa
Speaker 8: uncle role in a lot of this.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, he is Clinton.
Speaker 3: Is un I'm basically curious, like what he was up
Speaker 3: to during the war, Oh.
Speaker 8: All kinds of stuff he was in France, he was
Speaker 8: he was like being a diplomat and securing alliances.
Speaker 3: Was he like busy with that or was this isn't
Speaker 3: also a time when he's like kind of doing all
Speaker 3: the inventions.
Speaker 6: I think kind of simultaneously doing all of these things.
Speaker 6: But a lot of the inventions do.
Speaker 8: Kind of pre date the constitutional conventions, and there's like
Speaker 8: between During the war, he's off getting alliances, meeting people,
Speaker 8: hanging out, yeah, and not fighting because he's seventy years
Speaker 8: the oldest.
Speaker 6: Like these all feed.
Speaker 8: Into each other though, right, because he's in France, he's
Speaker 8: meeting all these philosophers and scientists and whatever, and then
Speaker 8: he's getting ideas.
Speaker 6: He's coming back.
Speaker 8: He invents the Franklin stove, which is a stove that
Speaker 8: is kind of credited with, Like he's kinded with this
Speaker 8: new stove technique that, by the way, is immediately improved
Speaker 8: upon because it's.
Speaker 6: Not that good. But he's still like is this guy who.
Speaker 3: Step on Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, but yeah, like his his relationship to the war
Speaker 8: is more in like a support being in other places
Speaker 8: doing stuff, so he has time he even there kind
Speaker 8: of has timed it.
Speaker 6: Dick around. Yeah, interestings to.
Speaker 2: Who would we say is like the modern day equivalent
Speaker 2: of Benjamin Franklin diplomacy And.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it depends on your idea of diplomacy because.
Speaker 6: There are plenty of like tech billionaire guys Gates or
Speaker 6: something that who are all over the place doing all
Speaker 6: kinds of weird stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's not really doing diplomacy at least. Bill
Speaker 2: Gates has like the charities and stuff.
Speaker 3: Elon skipped the diplomacy, says, he's just directly involved in
Speaker 3: the elections. Yeah, he's not really having conversations, just doing Yeah.
Speaker 8: It is kind of weird to compare like Elon and
Speaker 8: Benjamin Franklin because we're like, Okay, well here's our idea
Speaker 8: of an inventor, like a.
Speaker 6: Crazy inventor guy.
Speaker 8: But because Benjamin Franklin does actually invent a bunch of
Speaker 8: stuff or like come up with stuff and do stuff.
Speaker 6: And he also like does objectively help the.
Speaker 8: Become a country rather than just be like, let's destroy
Speaker 8: everything and hire someone named big Balls to like take over.
Speaker 8: I don't know, but this does fit with Actually I
Speaker 8: said that we should talk about his milk thing. The inventors.
Speaker 8: Famous inventors are freaky guys is a long term problem
Speaker 8: in the US, and and Benjamin Franklin has a lot
Speaker 8: of like weird creepy.
Speaker 6: Uncle stuff that he does and not not in like
Speaker 6: a not.
Speaker 8: In like a scary way, but in like a like
Speaker 8: a you know, Elon and like the WIFEU stuff.
Speaker 1: No, no, am I to online?
Speaker 3: Yeah no, no, like he just loves the anime looking Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Benjamin Franklin is like that a little bit.
Speaker 3: Well, so who's the anime in Benjamin?
Speaker 8: So he we have letters from him where he does
Speaker 8: a couple of things. So one of the things he's
Speaker 8: famous for is writing something called fart Proudly, which is
Speaker 8: proudly fart proudly, which uh. A fun thing about a
Speaker 8: lot of guys in the eighteenth century is they were
Speaker 8: they love talking about farting. So that's and that's something
Speaker 8: that ben Franklin is really into back then. He but yeah,
Speaker 8: he writes this thing that's for I think it's sort
Speaker 8: of like a science magazine, like to encourage young men
Speaker 8: to engage in scientific inquiry. And so he writes this
Speaker 8: thing manifesto. I don't know how to describe it, about
Speaker 8: how they should practice farting basically and how they should
Speaker 8: like do it as scientific experiment and like they should
Speaker 8: undertake special diets.
Speaker 6: It's crazy, but.
Speaker 8: Like we can find we have I think he's read no, no,
Speaker 8: he's talking literally yeah, but then he's saying do this
Speaker 8: and then you'll learn how to engage in scientific inquiry
Speaker 8: if you do this farting experiment. But like back then
Speaker 8: they were making fart jokes and being like, you know
Speaker 8: what teen teenage boys love is fart jokes, and he.
Speaker 6: Was like yeah, and then time yeah.
Speaker 8: And then the other real weird thing that we have
Speaker 8: from him, it's a letter that's known as Advice to
Speaker 8: a young Friend on mistresses, and it's telling this young friend. Uh,
Speaker 8: he's telling this young friend that having sexual urges, being
Speaker 8: horny is normal, and the way to solve it is
Speaker 8: by getting a wife.
Speaker 6: And he says, you know they're hot when they're old too,
Speaker 6: like get a hot.
Speaker 8: Old wife basically, and like it's you're kind of like okay,
Speaker 8: and but some of the things he writes about it
Speaker 8: are yeah, and I'm sorry to.
Speaker 6: My parents who are probably gonna be listening to this.
Speaker 8: The Wikipedia page on it literally says, whether serious or humorous,
Speaker 8: the letter is frankly sexual.
Speaker 6: He says. He talks about things like.
Speaker 8: The lower parts continuing to last as plump as ever,
Speaker 8: and says and as in the dark, all cats are gray.
Speaker 6: The pleasure of corporal enjoyment with an old woman is
Speaker 6: at least equal and frequently superior, every knack being by practice,
Speaker 6: capable of improvements. Who says, the older she is, the
Speaker 6: better she is, the more practice she has is incredible.
Speaker 6: Isn't that incredible? So add that to the uncancellation.
Speaker 3: Yes, supersedes slavery, and we're assuming by older woman. He's maybe,
Speaker 3: I mean back then, he could be talking about someone's
Speaker 3: twenty what is.
Speaker 4: The eight.
Speaker 8: I mean he has a wife, like, he has an
Speaker 8: old later on, Yeah, he's writing this to.
Speaker 6: A young young like. He's saying, hey, I know.
Speaker 2: You got to get an experience.
Speaker 6: You can get a more experience, he says, he's just
Speaker 6: trying to pay through this.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's like, you're no, I mean, you have urges.
Speaker 8: You're a young man. Get a wife and the bonuses.
Speaker 1: It just gets better.
Speaker 4: It's all.
Speaker 6: Cats are not take he.
Speaker 2: Said, don't take advantage of her either, get married to her.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He's not saying just go out there and sleep with her,
Speaker 2: make her your wife.
Speaker 8: And he's saying, this is the best way to fulfill
Speaker 8: all of these urges.
Speaker 2: It's by being loyal to more experience. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 2: find nothing wrong with that's pretty good, absolutely good.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's a it's a It is wild
Speaker 8: every pretty much every historic figure.
Speaker 6: If you look hard enough, you're going to find something crazy.
Speaker 2: I love the day So he wrote this. This is
Speaker 2: a letter he sent to his front man. If I
Speaker 2: send you off some ship like that, right after you
Speaker 2: read it read.
Speaker 1: Letters, Hey, I don't know what to do, Like I'm
Speaker 1: dating Devin sends me that. Hey, listen, all cats are
Speaker 1: great in the friends.
Speaker 8: It does have a very like uncle at a at
Speaker 8: like a barbecue.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something.
Speaker 6: Yeah, look, you've been single for too long.
Speaker 2: They wrote too much down back then, you know.
Speaker 3: So I always wonder if it's going to be read
Speaker 3: by the public in the future, like I imagine in
Speaker 3: this case, the guy who received the letter, maybe his
Speaker 3: family after he died, gave it to a museum or
Speaker 3: something because they knew who he was from. I always
Speaker 3: wonder if the.
Speaker 8: Audience, Yes, exactly, people were writing letters the way that
Speaker 8: people are like tweeting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because we would call it an epistolary culture.
Speaker 8: So like letter writing culture, this is like how you
Speaker 8: get your thoughts up.
Speaker 6: So people are saying thousands of letters to each other.
Speaker 8: So this is something that you would just fire off
Speaker 8: like he was like, all right, I need to give
Speaker 8: someone advice.
Speaker 2: He said at my young boy, you know, like he
Speaker 2: was on Twitter. Yeah, he's the guy's tweet now. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's like, young, I'm a horny what should I do?
Speaker 2: And then Ben's adding him.
Speaker 3: Wasn't the original tweet icon when you click to tweet
Speaker 3: something like a quills? Oh yeah, there's.
Speaker 8: Continuity, historical continuity happening here.
Speaker 6: Actually, we're all engaging in epistolary culture. Wow, at this
Speaker 6: moment in time.
Speaker 1: If we still use Twitter, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: So I guess the last question we have is why
Speaker 2: isn't he today more scrutinized. You know, I like a
Speaker 2: lot of modern day figures, especially post twenty twenty. We
Speaker 2: were looking at everybody.
Speaker 1: Jefferson, they got his.
Speaker 2: We were going through all these people. Oh, y'all like him.
Speaker 2: They did this ship here.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Jefferson really really got and he deserves to Jackson
Speaker 8: Jackson too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, harder than ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So why I don't remember us talking a lot
Speaker 2: about Benny during that time period? Why do you think
Speaker 2: that is?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 6: Why do you have any memories of this?
Speaker 2: And why did he get?
Speaker 1: But yeah, my only guess is like because he's not
Speaker 1: a president, so only we mainly think of him. Of
Speaker 1: course we know this diplomacy and stuff from but I
Speaker 1: mean we think of the electricity thing as kind of
Speaker 1: the iconic stuff I feel like when you're a kid, right,
Speaker 1: and then you know he's involved in the other stuff,
Speaker 1: but we don't put that much importance because we don't
Speaker 1: see him like a George Washington was the leader.
Speaker 2: Of the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think the presidents obviously take you know,
Speaker 1: the first they're the top founder and then like the
Speaker 1: one b we got Ben Franklin, right, even though he's
Speaker 1: probably more famous than a few of those presidents really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he wasn't like a general or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's not any there's not like other stories
Speaker 1: about him in that way.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's that's my only guess for why we haven't had
Speaker 1: that re examination. And then the only other association storry
Speaker 1: I'll keep going. Please, he's on one hundred dollars bills,
Speaker 1: so it's like all about the Benjamins. We'd like, like
Speaker 1: that's a cool, daool aspirational thing and just we like money,
Speaker 1: yeah cool, And.
Speaker 6: He's all over filly and sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Yeah, all our friends in Philly see him
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think there are two answers to this. So the
Speaker 8: first answer is basically what you've said. He's so fascinating.
Speaker 8: He does all this interesting stuff. He's all over the place,
Speaker 8: he has all these side quests, he's going to all
Speaker 8: these places doing interesting things, and he's doing this while
Speaker 8: not holding enormous formal state power.
Speaker 6: So we don't tend to criticize people who we see
Speaker 6: as being like.
Speaker 8: Helpers of the machine rather than the machine themselves. And
Speaker 8: like we love the kooky genius guy, Like that's archetype
Speaker 8: that we've been working with for a very very long
Speaker 8: time in a lot of different contexts. We know, the
Speaker 8: interesting genius dude, Like that's a that's if you like
Speaker 8: go in your head, climb into your head and think
Speaker 8: about this, Like you could probably come up with a
Speaker 8: ton of like wacky guys, Albert, Yeah, whacky guys who
Speaker 8: come up with stuff. They look funny, they send weird
Speaker 8: letters about farting and specs with older women. They're like,
Speaker 8: they're that's a guy, Like.
Speaker 6: That's the archetype of a guy.
Speaker 8: And so people are like, okay, well we can just
Speaker 8: kind of box them away that way. Yeah, and so
Speaker 8: we don't need to scrutinize him because we're like, oh,
Speaker 8: he's a founding father, but he's eighty when he's doing it,
Speaker 8: and he's kind of he's kind of wacky and and
Speaker 8: so that's I think part of this. And then the
Speaker 8: other part is because we don't really scrutinize historical figures
Speaker 8: that much in general. Actually, like off the top of
Speaker 8: your head, when you're like who are the people that
Speaker 8: we think of, we're like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson,
Speaker 8: which is like, oh, like the Trail of Tears guy,
Speaker 8: Like you know, yeah, these are and and someone who Yeah,
Speaker 8: and we've got Jefferson and Sally Heavy, like these are
Speaker 8: things where we're like, oh, pretty famously.
Speaker 6: They did really really bad stuff, not like daily level.
Speaker 8: Everyone's kind of doing bad stuff, stuff like really egregiously
Speaker 8: bad things. But everybody who doesn't do that or doesn't
Speaker 8: do things that rise to that level, we often kind
Speaker 8: of leave them alone. So let me make you a
Speaker 8: pitch for a podcast. Yeah, Like, everything I'm saying here
Speaker 8: has been said before by much more knowledgeable people, like
Speaker 8: people who work on Franklin directly so I'm just reiterating
Speaker 8: their ideas. But like people are uncomfortable with having to
Speaker 8: reassess historical figures because if you reassess the past, it
Speaker 8: makes you have to think harder about what you're.
Speaker 6: Dealing with right now.
Speaker 8: There's a reason that like current modern state policy is
Speaker 8: about rewriting and erasing parts of the past that are uncomfortable,
Speaker 8: and specifically the parts that we have started to reckon
Speaker 8: with where we've started to be like, h at this
Speaker 8: at Monticello, for example, or at Mount Vernon. Let's have
Speaker 8: exhibits on the people who were enslaved and living here.
Speaker 6: Let's have these in national parks.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about the indigenous people that we've like booted
Speaker 8: off this land or killed or whatever.
Speaker 7: Like.
Speaker 8: Those are the things that people are trying to get
Speaker 8: rid of, in part because it makes you like think
Speaker 8: about the time that.
Speaker 6: We're living in right now.
Speaker 8: And so when we reassess people, it feels like like
Speaker 8: it creates a sense of discomfort. It can also create
Speaker 8: a sense of like satisfaction and relief when we reassess someone,
Speaker 8: to feel like someone is being written back into a narrative.
Speaker 8: But that often is at odds with the discomfort. You know,
Speaker 8: it's less satisfying to say this person was complicated, yeah,
Speaker 8: you know, or this person did some good stuff. Also,
Speaker 8: the people who you know, were forced to work for
Speaker 8: him for their entire lives didn't think he was that great.
Speaker 8: Actually probably that's a that's a weird thing to like
Speaker 8: sit with and and think through basically, And so often
Speaker 8: we'll switch to no, he's great, he's really important, and
Speaker 8: or no, it's just he's he's fraudulent. Rather, it's like
Speaker 8: all of these things are true at the same time.
Speaker 8: And also he sucks, and also he's smart, and also
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 6: But we like a one dimensional guy when we think
Speaker 6: about history.
Speaker 1: So now, after all we've learned about Ben Franklin, we
Speaker 1: think it's important to bring it back to our original debaters,
Speaker 1: Rich and Kelsey. So we're gonna call him up and
Speaker 1: see how they feel about all this.
Speaker 2: All right, So we are joined now by our two
Speaker 2: competing factions of the Ben Franklin legacy. Yeah, Kelsey and
Speaker 2: Rich from episode one. So we've now talked to our expert,
Speaker 2: We've talked to Claire. We have some information we want
Speaker 2: to share a few about good old Benjamin Franklin and
Speaker 2: then we want to get your reactions. But first of all,
Speaker 2: thank you guys for joining us, thank.
Speaker 5: You for having us.
Speaker 1: It's very serious, very tense.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: It's palpable. Yeah, tension in the studio right now is
Speaker 2: it feels like I'm in court.
Speaker 3: So we'd love to just get some general reactions thoughts,
Speaker 3: maybe starting with Rich.
Speaker 7: Yeah, sure, So I think that in terms of the
Speaker 7: main question, was he overrated, underrated? Was he like legit
Speaker 7: for what he's known for. I think that, Yeah, there's
Speaker 7: a lot of mythology around him, around this idea of
Speaker 7: being a renaissance man. I think part of that is
Speaker 7: he was as close to a celebrity as you.
Speaker 2: Had back then.
Speaker 7: But I think that used that to his advantage. Yeah,
Speaker 7: basically the Kardashian of the founding Fathers. So I think
Speaker 7: I think he used that to his advantage for his diplomacy,
Speaker 7: especially with France. And I think that, like if we're
Speaker 7: talking about like the first like the premise of this debate, basically,
Speaker 7: I think that even if you just took his diplomacy
Speaker 7: with France, which helped bring them to the war, which
Speaker 7: ended up winning the war, for what became the US,
Speaker 7: I think that is enough for like to be considered
Speaker 7: a founding father in a real way. I think there's
Speaker 7: plenty of evidence yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another thing we realized was that your two points of
Speaker 3: view are not even necessarily in contrast with each other.
Speaker 3: Because Rich you just think he, you know, is adequately
Speaker 3: credited for the things he did in his life. Kelsey's
Speaker 3: just fucking annoyed at seeing him everywhere, So it's like
Speaker 3: they're not even necessarily in conscious Just your general thoughts.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm it's nice to meet you, Rich, and I'm
Speaker 5: glad that moving forwards, friends, I was a little scared
Speaker 5: to learn that I had a potential nemesis out there
Speaker 5: in the universe around Benjamin Franklin. So that's really getting me.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, No, I'm so excited about everything that we've
Speaker 5: learned through this exploration. I think that's something I'm reflecting on,
Speaker 5: is that this all tracks because I just kind of
Speaker 5: hate celebrities, so maybe that's kind of what I'm responding to.
Speaker 5: I also, I think I have some anger at like
Speaker 5: the kooky little genius guy archetype.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, yeah, the mad scientist.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think I mean, it's really interesting to
Speaker 5: think about how my positionality and like where I exist
Speaker 5: in history just really complicates my ability to even fully
Speaker 5: understand that as like a norm, because I feel like
Speaker 5: I exist in like the hive mind era of like
Speaker 5: information sharing and discovery, and so the idea that like
Speaker 5: I kind of live by is like nothing is original,
Speaker 5: and we're all making everything together, and like the best
Speaker 5: things that we do are together. And so the idea
Speaker 5: that like this one little guy could come up with
Speaker 5: all without crediting anybody else just like comes into sharp,
Speaker 5: uh like tension with that. But that's a really interesting
Speaker 5: I don't know how I would have felt back then,
Speaker 5: And I'm excited to tell him that he's pro milf.
Speaker 5: That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: That was one of his strongest positions.
Speaker 1: Actually he never waved on that.
Speaker 4: Thing.
Speaker 1: No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Kate Osborne and make Yes hot A Cadur.
Speaker 1: The show is created by Manny Fideo, Noah Friedman, and
Speaker 1: Devin Joseph. Themine credit song by Manny, mixing by Steve Bone.
Speaker 1: Our guest this week is Claire Aubyn. Check out her
Speaker 1: show This Guy Sucked and special thanks to our friends
Speaker 1: Rich and Kelsey. Visit No Such Thing dot show to
Speaker 1: subscribe to our newsletter for links to more research, and
Speaker 1: to look at the fart Proudley manifesto. If you have
Speaker 1: feedback for us or a question, our email is Manny
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Speaker 4: Bye nos nosy, nosy hells No Such Thing.