ON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Episode 1: Ingenuity

Summary

ON CRISPR: The Story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson

Season 2: ON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Episode 1: Ingenuity

Host: Evan Ratliff
Guest: Walter Isaacson
Release Date: August 29, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the multifaceted genius of Benjamin Franklin and how his relentless ingenuity in science, business, and politics shaped both his life and the national character of the United States. Through an in-depth interview, renowned biographer Walter Isaacson discusses Franklin’s early curiosity, lifelong dedication to experimentation and learning, and his enduring legacy. The episode illustrates how Franklin’s scientific mindset influenced not only his inventions but also his political diplomacy, constitutional thinking, and approach to imperfection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Benjamin Franklin? The Genesis of Isaacson’s Biography

• After writing about Kissinger and realpolitik, Isaacson sought to find the roots of America's balance between idealism and realism. He found Franklin epitomized both qualities.
  • Quote: "He is both the ultimate realist and the ultimate idealist." (05:49, Isaacson)
• Franklin’s application of scientific thinking to governance, diplomacy, and business drove Isaacson’s interest.

2. Early Life: The Making of a Polymath

• Franklin’s background as the 10th son of a Puritan immigrant and his early designation as a "tithe to the Lord" led to his father’s initial plan to send him to Harvard, later reconsidered due to Franklin’s irreverence and independent streak.
• His resourcefulness in youth manifested as a leader among peers, even devising swimming innovations.
  • Quote: "He was always a spunky lad... invented ways to do swimming, including paddles and flippers." (08:29, Isaacson)
• Lack of formal education sharpened his drive for autodidactic learning.

3. Curiosity as a Defining Trait

• Franklin’s insatiable curiosity led him to pursue answers independently, spanning history, science, meteorology, and even eclipses.
  • Quote: "It's that insatiable curiosity... almost created when he was denied the right to go to college." (09:17, Isaacson)

4. The Enlightenment and Practical Science

• Franklin’s approach contrasted with theoretical scientists like Newton; he valued practical application over pure theory.
  • Example: Experiments on heat absorption of different cloth colors and real-world inventions like the Franklin stove and bifocals.
  • Quote: "As a practical person, you don't need to know the theory of gravity to know that if you let go of a piece of crockery it'll fall to the floor and break." (10:26, Isaacson)

5. Lightning Rod and International Fame

• Franklin’s most famous scientific achievement was the lightning rod, which saved countless lives and conferred celebrity status in France and beyond.
  • He methodically hypothesized, tested, and documented the similarity between electricity and lightning, inspiring others to carry out his experiment in France first.
  • Quote: "Let the experiment be made." (20:44, Isaacson, on Franklin’s scientific rigor)
• His fame as a scientist paved the way for his success as a diplomat.

6. Altruism Over Profit

• Despite inventing lucrative devices (e.g., the lightning rod, stove), Franklin deliberately avoided patenting them, believing inventions should serve civic good.
  • Quote: "We should be happy to put things back in the river of history." (23:12, Isaacson)

7. The Turkey vs. the Eagle

• Franklin jested about preferring the turkey over the bald eagle as America’s symbol, viewing the turkey as a "more practical" and less pretentious animal—a reflection of his humility and sense of humor.
  • Quote: "...the turkey reminds us, you know, we're a little bit silly, we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously." (24:39, Isaacson)

8. Scientific Mindset Shapes Political Philosophy

• Franklin’s lifelong experimentation paralleled his evolving political thought. His willingness to accept mistakes and revise beliefs was central to both his science and statesmanship.

  • Quote: "That scientific method... is the essence of democracy." (34:25, Isaacson)

• He advocated for a Constitution open to revision, voicing skepticism about achieving perfection.

  • Quote: "A half truth is a whole lie." (25:37, Isaacson quoting Franklin)

• At the Constitutional Convention, he argued for embracing imperfection and compromise:

  • Quote: "I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present. But... the older I get, the more I realize that I’m wrong at times." (35:41, paraphrased by Isaacson)

9. Example of Iterative Inquiry: The Gulf Stream

• Even while returning from diplomatic missions, Franklin investigated ocean currents, measuring water temperature to chart the Gulf Stream—his chart closely matches modern NASA data.

  • Quote: "If you see the chart he makes, it’s remarkably similar to the one that’s now on the NASA website." (37:04, Isaacson)

• Franklin’s legacy included setting up structures (such as revolving loan funds) to aid future generations of inventors and entrepreneurs.

10. A Lasting Legacy and Self-Reflection

• Franklin kept a “ledger of errors” in which he cataloged his mistakes and how he tried to rectify them—a humble approach that shaped both his personal and public life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scientific Approach:
  • “What is the use of a newborn baby?” (32:31, Isaacson channeling Franklin on the open-ended nature of innovation)
• On Adapting Beliefs:
  • “One of the things we don’t do very well is let people change their minds... Franklin often evolved. That’s the essence of the scientific method, but it’s also the essence of democracy.” (34:09–34:25, Isaacson)
• On Civic Generosity:
  • “We gain so much from previous inventions that we should be happy to put things back in the river of history.” (23:13, Isaacson)
• On Humility and Symbols:
  • “We shouldn't get too grand, we should poke fun at our pretensions.” (24:39, Isaacson on Franklin’s preference for the turkey)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 04:13 | Start of main interview (Evan Ratliff & Walter Isaacson) | | 05:40 | Why Franklin? Isaacson’s motivation | | 08:13 | Franklin’s Family Background & Early Curiosity | | 09:44 | Franklin as an Autodidact | | 11:19 | Scientific Methods and Practical Inventions | | 18:06 | The Lightning Rod Experiment & International Fame | | 23:07 | On Patents and Civic Duty | | 24:16 | The Turkey vs. Eagle Debate | | 30:25 | Science as a Side Pursuit, then a Focus | | 34:09 | Scientific Method Reflected in Politics | | 35:33 | Imperfection in the Constitution | | 36:13 | Discovery of the Gulf Stream | | 38:38 | Franklin’s Legacy, “Ledger of Errors” | | 39:55 | Teaser for next episode: Franklin the printer, businessman, and rebel |

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Episode Tone & Style

The discussion is lively, accessible, and infused with humor and admiration for Franklin. Isaacson and Ratliff highlight Franklin’s wit, humility, and relentless curiosity. The episode is both a historical exploration and a meditation on the value of openness, humility, and adaptability—a blend of storytelling and practical reflection highly relevant to modern listeners.

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For Next Episode

The next installment will delve into Franklin’s early years as a printer, business innovator, and rebel, with a closer look at his complicated personal life and the continued theme of self-examination and growth.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Narrator/Promoter]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

Sacred Scandal is back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Elena Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season she's telling her story.

[Elena Sada]

When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Martial Macel, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a calling.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

Surviving meant hiding. Escaping took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred the Many secrets of Martial Maciel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[Walter Isaacson]

Had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. Five, six white people pushed me in the car. I'm going, what the hell?

[Commentator/Local Resident]

Basically your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you gotta do is receive the package. Don't have to open it, just accept it. She was very upset, crying. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Walter Isaacson]

December 29, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

[Narrator/Promoter]

The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage. Kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed.

[Nicole Garcia]

There's been a bombing at the TWA.

[Walter Isaacson]

Term just a chaotic, chaotic scene.

[Narrator/Promoter]

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of law and criminal justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nicole Garcia]

Kaleidoscope.

[Walter Isaacson]

During the COVID crisis, when I was hanging around Elon Musk, I was in the airless, windowless conference room down in Boca Chica, Texas and Starbase. And of course nobody was wearing masks because they were all acolytes of Musk. But one of the things I did is I'd sneak into the conference room sometimes and make sure the vent fan was always on. I wasn't very sure about cloth masks or anything else, but I knew if you were with a group of people in a room, you should make sure the windows are open because that's what Franklin taught us. There's a really amusing scene where Benjamin Franklin is traveling with John Adams to meet with a British emissary to see if they can avert the revolution. And Adams and Franklin have to share a room at an inn, and Adams has a cold, and Franklin keeps opening the window, and Adams says, no, no, shut the window. I have a cold. And Franklin explains his theory of colds and airborne organisms. And Adams, who's not a very funny fellow, writes in his journal. Franklin droned on and on until I finally fell asleep and the window was left open. And indeed, Franklin doesn't catch the cold.

[Evan Ratliff]

Walter, welcome.

[Walter Isaacson]

Thank you very much, Evan. Great to be with you.

[Evan Ratliff]

Yeah, it's great to talk to you. I am very excited to talk about Mr. Benjamin Franklin.

[Walter Isaacson]

Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Excuse me. Yes, we all know Dr. Franklin. Even though it's not exactly an earned doctorate, he got many honorary ones and loved the title.

[Evan Ratliff]

The proper respect should be shown.

[Walter Isaacson]

Respect must be paid.

[Evan Ratliff]

Over the past year, I've had an ongoing conversation with the famed biographer Walter Isaacson about writing, about research, and, of course, about the subjects themselves. You may have heard the first part of our conversation in On Musk, when we talked about his experience studying the controversial tech mogul. Some of the things we discussed, both about innovation and about the state of our polarized politics, made me want to reach back into the past and look at some of Walter's historical subjects. So he turned to a figure that Walter can't stop thinking about, Benjamin Franklin, a man who straddled the worlds of science, media, and government in America's turbulent founding era, to see if he could help us make sense of today's turbulent times. Where were you in your life when you decided that you were going to pursue a biography of Franklin and what was it about him that sort of grabbed you?

[Walter Isaacson]

I came to Benjamin Franklin having written about Henry Kissinger and foreign policy. Kissinger was very much a realpolitik realist. And I wanted to look at the roots of that tension between realism and idealism in American foreign policy. And it takes you back to Benjamin Franklin. He is both the ultimate realist and the ultimate idealist. So I thought, wow, I should go back and do Benjamin Franklin. But then the second thing that struck me is that his balance of power, diplomacy, and the checks and balances, all the things he did derived from his science.

[Evan Ratliff]

It wasn't easy for someone like Franklin, who had limited means, to transition seamlessly from printing to science to politics and excel in all three. This remarkable versatility became the foundation of Franklin's enduring influence. I was especially interested to learn about Franklin the scientist. It's the part of him I knew least well, or at least not beyond the idea that he discovered electricity. More on that in a bit. And Isaacson tells me it's his scientific curiosity and exploration that lays the groundwork for some of his most important work as a founding father. For Franklin, being a scientist was not a profession or a strict field of study. It was a state of mind driven by curiosity and a tendency towards self directed learning. And of course, there was still so much to discover.

[Walter Isaacson]

Nowadays. In our generation you had people who are great humanists, great, but they would say, oh, I can't do physics, I can't do math, you know, I don't do any of that. But he or his younger friend Jefferson would have thought you were a philistine if you didn't keep up with science. Well, those were connected for Benjamin Franklin, somebody whose experimental nature, whose search for evidence informed everything he did. So that made me want to write about all the facets of Benjamin Franklin the scientist, Benjamin Franklin the entrepreneur, Benjamin Franklin the business person who creates a media empire, Benjamin Franklin the diplomat. All of this wove together and I felt nowadays, boy, we really need Benjamin Franklin. So that's why I immersed myself at that time.

[Evan Ratliff]

You felt we need Benjamin Franklin.

[Walter Isaacson]

And all the more so today I.

[Evan Ratliff]

Want to go all the way back, start at the beginning and try to figure out how he became one of the foremost scientists of his age.

[Walter Isaacson]

Benjamin Franklin was the 10th son of a Puritan immigrant to the Massachusetts Bay colony. And as the 10th son, he was going to be his father's tithe to the Lord. His father was going to send him to Harvard to study to be a minister. And Franklin wasn't exactly cut for the cloth. At some point they were salting the provisions for the winter. And he said to his father, why don't we just say grace over him right now, we get it done for the entire next few months. And so his father realized, well, that would be a waste of money to send him to become a minister. He was always a spunky lad and he loved to think of himself as a leader among the boys. He was the one who led the other kids to stealing rocks so they could build a dam in the Boston harbor where they could swim. And he invented ways to do swimming, including paddles and flippers.

[Evan Ratliff]

Franklin becomes an autodidact less by choice than by the fact that his dad decides that this particular son is probably not worth the investment of a Harvard education.

[Walter Isaacson]

He becomes a person always curious. He read about everything from history to science. He watches how whirlwinds form. He eventually discovers how storms move up the coast because he's interested in an eclipse that is happening. So it's that insatiable curiosity that I think was almost created when he was denied the right to go to college. So he gets this hunger for teaching.

[Evan Ratliff]

Himself and this sort of ability to see the world in a way that you feel you can figure it out if you see something around you. In Benjamin Franklin, it prompted an idea that he could solve it, that he could understand something that maybe hadn't been understood.

[Walter Isaacson]

This was the gift of the scientific revolution that had occurred just before Franklin's time, which is the universe wasn't just a total mystery. There were things you could figure out about it. How storms moved, how eclipses happened. Now, that seems pretty obvious, but you have to remember, before the Enlightenment, we thought wisdom was received as opposed to, let's figure out nature. And so Franklin becomes the pioneer of the Enlightenment in America. Unlike Newton, Galileo, he doesn't have a lot of math. He doesn't do the great theories. But as he says, as a practical person, you don't need to know the theory of gravity to know that if you let go of a piece of crockery, it'll fall to the floor and break. Among the things Franklin studied as an experimentalist and a tinkerer is just simple phenomenon. The lightning rod being the most famous. But then how does dark cloth absorb heat better than light cloth? And he did experiments where he put black pieces of cloth on snow and then lighter pieces of cloth and measured which would melt the snow underneath faster.

[Evan Ratliff]

It almost sounds like something you would do in an eighth grade or even elementary school science project. And the idea that at the time, you know, he could conceive these experiments and just do them on his own, he could just execute them and make a discovery.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, we had great theorists right before Franklin who understood the nature of light and heat. But then you have Franklin doing experiments. We all did. It's like, okay, a light piece of cloth and a dark one, what's going to get warmer? But what Franklin does is he always looks for practical ways to use that. Your clothes in summer should be light and in winter should be dark. He also tinkered and created a wood burning stove we now call the Franklin stove. And it was about the simple thing of how do you get more heat into the room with less smoke? And these type of things may seem mundane compared to, you know, Newton figuring out a theory of gravity. But in our daily lives, having clean burning stoves, bifocal glasses, understanding the heat absorption of cloth, a urinary cathetera when his brother was having a urinary tract disease, Franklin is able to make it flexible, easy to insert, and this is just his way of using both science and ingenuity to create new technology, which is what we try to do in our modern age.

[Evan Ratliff]

When we come back, Franklin's scientific discoveries make him an international celebrity. And we'll even dig into that rumor about Franklin wanting to bump the bald eagle and make the humble turkey America's official bird.

[Walter Isaacson]

All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator/Promoter]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Walter Isaacson]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator/Promoter]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Walter Isaacson]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator/Promoter]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Evan Ratliff]

I did not know her and I.

[Walter Isaacson]

Did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Evan Ratliff]

That y' all said.

[Walter Isaacson]

They literally made me say that I.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her.

[Walter Isaacson]

They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[Narrator/Promoter]

From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator 2]

At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of sacred scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Martial Maciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.

[Elena Sada]

My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator 2]

This season on Sacred Scandal. Hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini secrets of Martial Maciel as part of the My Cultura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

In early 1988, federal agents race to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[Walter Isaacson]

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles, and you name it.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

But what they find is not what they expected.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

Basically, your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said, yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Nicole Garcia]

It may look different, but Native culture is very alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture.

[Podcast Host]

It was a huge honor to become a television writer because it does feel oddly like very traditional. It feels like Bob Dylan going electric, that this is something we've been doing for, like, hundreds of years. You carry with you a sense of purpose and confidence.

[Nicole Garcia]

That's Sierra Teller Ornelas, who, with Rutherford Falls, became the first Native showrunner in television history. On the podcast Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we explore her story along with other Native stories, such as the creation of the first Native Comic Con or the importance of reservation basketball. Every day, Native people are striving to keep traditions alive while navigating the modern world, influencing and bringing our culture into the mainstream. Listen to Burn Sage, Burn bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Evan Ratliff]

There's the story of Benjamin Franklin and his ingenuity that every school kid knows. It involves a man in long socks, a kite, a key, and a lightning storm. But it isn't just his discovery of electricity and conductivity that makes this moment special. As with all Franklin's scientific explorations, it led to something Practical, an invention that saved countless lives. I asked Walter about that. I did not realize how famous he became just from the lightning rod, particularly in France. And it's sort of foreshadowing for later what he's able to do diplomatically for the new America. A lot of it is derived from this fame that he's accrued because he invented the lightning rod.

[Walter Isaacson]

It's kind of odd, but up until then, people believed they were bolts from heaven, an expression of God's will, and they would consecrate the bells of churches to ward off the lightning. But even the most religiously faithful were likely to have noticed that it was not very effective. Lightning kept hitting church steeples. In Germany, during one period, 35 years, 386 churches were struck. And in Venice, like, 3,000 people were killed when tons of gunpowder had been stored in the church and it was hit. Franklin later wrote to John Winthrop, who was a Harvard professor, and he wrote, the lightning seems to strike steeples of choice just as the bells are ringing. 1 think we might now try some other trick to ward it off. Benjamin Franklin began his electricity experiments when a showman came down from Boston who was doing static electricity, you know, rubbing a glass with cloth and then making little sparks. What Franklin does is he mixes this sort of fun you have with a parlor trick using static electricity with theories from reading the other great scientists of the time. In the journal that Franklin kept for his experiments, he noted in 1749 that there were some similarities between electrical sparks and lightning. And being the type of bookkeeper he was, he listed 12 of them. They both give light. They're the same color, the crooked direction, swift motion, the sulfurous smell. And then, very Franklin like, he puts his rattling cry at the bottom of the notebook page. Let the experiment be made. You know, great theorists like Newton had noticed the apparent connection between lightning and electricity, but nobody had written, let the experiment be made. So Franklin lays out a methodical test for figuring out exactly what lightning is. And it's a rather complicated thing. He describes how you would make an electrical stand that's grounded but has an iron rod that's connected to the earth and how many feet. And he. He also had discovered that pointed pieces of metal attract sparks better than rounded pieces. So he does all of these very specific descriptions of how to do the experiment, and it's done actually in France first, before he has a chance to erect all the apparatus in Philadelphia.

[Evan Ratliff]

But even though he wasn't there to do the experiment, he becomes famous for having designed the experiment absolutely.

[Walter Isaacson]

The King of France has read about Franklin's proposed experiments, and the king asked people in France to try to carry them out. And these are known as Franklin's experiments.

[Evan Ratliff]

And then what happens when he finally arrives in France?

[Walter Isaacson]

When he arrives in France, he is known as the great scientist who tamed lightning. And so he's enormously famous. Crowds turn out in Brittany when he lands. They carry him to the steps of the academy when he gets to Paris so that he can hug Voltaire. He also is a good public relations guy. And so Franklin, who had hardly ever been to the backwoods and lives in Philadelphia, Boston, and London his whole life, wears a fur cap he had gotten during one trip to Canada and pretends to be the backwoods sage and scientist. And they revere them. And the women start wearing their hair in what was called the coiffure la la Franklin, which is their hair done up as if it's a fur cap on their heads.

[Evan Ratliff]

It's wild to think of him as such a celebrity. And then you realize at this point, his popularity is just from the lightning rod, even though he also invented, or goes on to invent so many other things. But my question is, why didn't he patent the lightning rod? I mean, it feels obvious for a man like Franklin, a successful business owner, if he just taken a percentage on every rod, his descendants could still live off that.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, he talks about how much he could have made had he patented the lightning rod idea or patented the stove. But he always felt that it was part of your civic duty to be inventive, and. And that we gain so much from previous inventions that we should be happy to put things back in the river of history. So his experiments that come to the conclusion of the single fluid theory of electricity, the invention of batteries in which you can store electricity, the invention of lightning rods so you can draw electricity from the clouds. Those are the most important experimental discoveries of his era. But he just wants to say, what use is it? At one point, after a season of electricity experiments, he said, we discovered all sorts of things, but we hadn't figured out what the use of it would be. And so they draw a lot of electricity, store it in batteries, and then use the shocks to kill turkeys. And he said they were uncommonly tender. And so we southerners like to think he's the inventor of the first fried turkey. Hold on.

[Evan Ratliff]

Speaking of turkeys, I want to quickly address this rumor that you hear periodically around Thanksgiving, that Ben Franklin wanted the turkey as America's national bird instead of the bald eagle.

[Walter Isaacson]

I think he thought the bald eagle was too proud. And it was in one of his writings where he didn't want there to be an aristocracy called the Cincinnatus Club. People who had served with Washington were supposed to be part. He said, no, no, we're not trying to do that. And he then does this little divergence where he doesn't want the eagle to be the symbol of the United States, to be the turkey, because the turkey reminds us, you know, we're a little bit silly, we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. And he does this pay on to the turkey a much more practical and I don't know, he just thought we shouldn't get too grand, we should poke fun at our pretensions.

[Evan Ratliff]

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll look at how Franklin's scientific inquiry bled into all parts of his life, including how he managed to keep a cool head while helping found a new nation.

[Walter Isaacson]

All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator/Promoter]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Walter Isaacson]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator/Promoter]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Walter Isaacson]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator/Promoter]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Evan Ratliff]

I did not know her and I.

[Walter Isaacson]

Did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Evan Ratliff]

That y' all said.

[Walter Isaacson]

They literally made me say that I.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her.

[Walter Isaacson]

They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[Narrator/Promoter]

From Lava for Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley. Feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator 2]

At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Martial Maciel looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.

[Elena Sada]

My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator 2]

This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story of from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini secrets of Martial Maciel as part of the My Cultura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get her podcasts.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[Walter Isaacson]

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles, and you name it.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

But what they find is not what they expected.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

Basically, your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said, yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Nicole Garcia]

It may look different, but Native culture is very alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture.

[Podcast Host]

It was a huge honor to become a television writer because it does feel oddly like very traditional. It feels like Bob Dylan going electric, that this is something we've been doing for, like, hundreds of years. You carry with you a sense of purpose and confidence.

[Nicole Garcia]

That's Sierra Teller Ornellis, who, with Rutherford Falls, became the first Native showrunner in television history. On the podcast Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we explore her story along with other Native stories, such as the creation of the first Native Comic Con or the importance of reservation basketball. Every day, Native people are striving to keep traditions alive. We'll navigate the modern world, influencing and bringing our culture into the mainstream. Listen to Burn Sage, Burn bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Evan Ratliff]

One of the things about Ben Franklin is that being a scientist is foundational. It shapes him as a person and spills into all his different interests. But he's Always kind of doing it on the side. When does it really become a focus for him?

[Walter Isaacson]

By age 42, he had probably become the most successful self made person in the colonies. He had not only created print shops, but he had franchised them up and down the coast. He had helped create a colonial postal system to tie these print shops together. He created Poor Richard and he created newspapers. And so this makes him very successful. But at that point he wants to change his life a bit. And so he retires partly so that he become more of a civic citizen, even more than he had been before, but also somebody who was interested in everything from the sparks of electricity and lightning to diplomacy.

[Evan Ratliff]

What do you think it was about his outlook on life that caused him to have this almost like sense of fun and scientific adventure about exploring all of these different areas.

[Walter Isaacson]

There are very few people in history who really have the hunger to learn everything possible about everything that you could know. I mean, that's certainly true of Leonardo da Vinci, who was everything from a musician to a mathematician to an artist to an engineer. It was true of maybe Aristotle. Well, it's definitely true of Benjamin Franklin.

[Evan Ratliff]

And he must have had an innate ability to not be concerned about being wrong or being called a dabbler.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, I think that if somebody called him a dabbler or an amateur, he would take it as a compliment. He really loved being ingenious and trying to be interested in everything. And I think he thought if he were blindered and too focused, he wouldn't be able to be as creative or as imaginative. He also just loves science for its own sake, the fascination of experiments, and that included, when he's in France after the revolution, he's helping fund the first flights of hot air balloons just because he's totally fascinated. When a spectator asked, what is the use of these new balloons, what are they good for? Franklin said, what is the use of a newborn baby? Franklin realized that curiosity for its own sake. We may not know what it will grow into, but we should always expect that things will grow and they'll become useful.

[Evan Ratliff]

But he didn't lose the rest of his life on experiments. He just did experiments while he was doing everything else.

[Walter Isaacson]

Even when he's in England trying to negotiate for the colonies and prevent the revolution, he still pursuing scientific inquiries. It's his hobby to help put the lightning rods on St. Paul's Cathedral. That's where he does his theories of the common cold. That's where he does theories of exercise, where he sees how much heat you're generating when you do different types of exercises, and sort of comes up with this notion of what we now call calories. He looked into lead poisoning, why the oceans were salty. He actually got that one wrong. But even inventing things like musical instruments.

[Evan Ratliff]

You mentioned him being wrong. That's another aspect of it. It's not just about making discoveries and proving things, but it's about this sort of iteration and revision and evolution, where you might get it wrong, but then you've still moved scientific knowledge forward.

[Walter Isaacson]

He liked testing things out and being open to evidence. The basic scientific method, which Franklin embraced, which is to have a theory, figure out a way you can test it, then revise your theory based on the evidence you get. That scientific method sounds so simple to us. It's so obvious. You got a theory, test it. And by the way, if the evidence comes back, figure out a new theory. And that notion helps him understand how science intersects with public policy. One of the things we don't do very well is let people change their minds. We always say, well, you flip flop. Do you change your mind? Well, Franklin often evolved. He evolved on slavery, he evolved on immigration and having that open mind in which you're willing to accept new evidence and revise your opinions. That's the essence of the scientific method, but it's also the essence of democracy.

[Evan Ratliff]

And for someone who is so detail oriented, he seemed to push the notion of imperfection. That imperfection needed to be allowed in the Constitution. It's sort of funny to think about today when there's so much reverence for the Founding Fathers and they've written the perfect documents, and those documents need to be respected letter by letter and word by word. But he seemed to have a notion of we're not going to achieve perfection.

[Walter Isaacson]

His closing speech in the Constitutional Convention is really a document that everybody should read. He was the oldest person by far at the convention, twice as old as the average member. And he says, I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present. But he said, the older I get, the more I realize that I'm wrong at times. And what seems like an imperfection to me, well, maybe it's the right way to do it. And so he says, I endorse this Constitution with all of its perhaps flaws, because I'm not sure now that they are flaws or that we could get something more perfect that came out of human hands.

[Evan Ratliff]

And of course, there were cases where he was right, and one of them is the Gulf Stream. Can you walk us through how he figured that out?

[Walter Isaacson]

Even as he's traveling across the Ocean. Coming back to Philadelphia in 1775, for instance, there he is standing on the deck of the boat with his grandson Temple Cross, and hearing that it takes longer to get back to America than it does to get to Europe. And he's going, why is that? Why is that? And so he measures with his grandson helping him, the temperature of the water. And he's devised a barrel that has a flap to it that he can open so he can take the temperature at different depths to see how deep the Gulf Stream is.

[Evan Ratliff]

And something that is now confirmed by satellites that match up to a picture that he created just by lowering barrels into the water. It's extraordinary.

[Walter Isaacson]

If you see the chart he makes, it's remarkably similar to the one that's now on the NASA website. In fact, the NASA website reprints a picture of Benjamin Franklin's chart. Franklin was a great believer in the future. In his will, he set up two trust funds for aspiring entrepreneurs like himself. One in Boston and one in Philadelphia. The revolving loan fund in Philadelphia was particularly interesting because it accrued just as the way he said it did. And two centuries after his death, the fund had reached more than $2 million. And at one point, it was used by kids in inner city Philadelphia to make electric go kart type things to race in one of these solar races. So I love the idea of the person who helped us harness electricity also having a loan fund of people doing it in the 21st century.

[Evan Ratliff]

And was there a tiny bit of ego in it too, that his name would sort of carry along with those? He couldn't have known maybe how big his name would continue to be anyway.

[Walter Isaacson]

Oh, I think he, he knew Franklin.

[Evan Ratliff]

Was someone who cared deeply about the legacy he would leave. And not only as a scientist and a civic leader, but also as a man with some pretty big regrets of a more personal nature. Next time on On Benjamin Franklin, we dive into Franklin's early life as a printer, a businessman and a rebel.

[Walter Isaacson]

Franklin has a very complicated family life and throughout his life he had kept this ledger of errors he had made and how he had rectified. And mistake number one in his ledger book was running away from his brother.

[Evan Ratliff]

This show is based on the writing and research of Walter Isaacson. It's hosted by me. Evan Ratliff produced, mixed and sound designed by Anna Rubinova. Adam Bozarth is our consulting producer. Lizzie Jacobs is our editor. Social media by Dara Potts. The show was engineered at CDM Sound Studios from iHeart Podcast. The executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Ally Perry. For Kaleidoscope. It was executive produced by Mangesha Tikador with an assist from Oz Volition, Costas Linos and Kate Osborne. Special thanks to Amanda Urban, Bob Pittman, Conal Byrne, Will Pearson, Nikki Itor, Carrie Lieberman, Nathan Otuski and Ali Gavin. And if you like podcasts about inventions, what they mean for humanity, check out my other show, Shell Game about how it created an AI clone and set it loose on the world. It's at Shell Game Co. And for more shows from Kaleidoscope, be sure to visit Kaleidoscope NYC. Thanks so much for listening.

[Narrator/Promoter]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

Sacred Scandal is Back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Elena Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season she's telling her story.

[Elena Sada]

When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marcia Almase, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a calling.

[Sacred Scandal Narrator]

Surviving meant hiding. Escaping took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred the Many Secrets of Martial maciel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[Walter Isaacson]

Had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. Five, six white people pushed me in the car.

[Elena Sada]

I'm going what the hell.

[Commentator/Local Resident]

Basically your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you gotta do is receive the package. Don't have to open it just to deceptive. She was very upset, crying. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.

[Federal Agent Narrator]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Walter Isaacson]

Hey guys, it's Stephanie, Beatriz and Melissa.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Fumero and this is more better. We are jumping right in and ready to hear from you.

[Walter Isaacson]

Your thoughts, your questions, your feelings about.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Socks to sandals and we're ready to share some possibly questionable advice and hot takes. That sucks so hard, though.

[Walter Isaacson]

I'm so sorry. Can you out petty them?

[Podcast Host]

Can you match their pettiness for funsies?

[Narrator/Promoter]

Yeah, all the things.

[Walter Isaacson]

Because aren't we all trying to get a little more better?

[Narrator/Promoter]

Listen to More better on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast.