All About the Benjamin with No Such Thing

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Guy Sucked
Episode: All About the Benjamin with No Such Thing
Release Date: March 18, 2026
Host: Dr. Claire Aubin
Guests: Manny (D), Noah (C), Devin (B), Kelsey (E), Rich (F)
Collaboration: No Such Thing Podcast

Episode Overview

This milestone episode celebrates the one-year anniversary of This Guy Sucked and brings together the hosts of "No Such Thing" for a lively, critical, and often hilarious investigation into Benjamin Franklin's real legacy. Central to the discussion is the question: Was Franklin a genius founding father or an overhyped, self-promoting fraud? Along the way, the conversation addresses everything from historical celebrity culture, mythmaking, education shortfalls, and Franklin’s relationships (with slavery, women, and farting). The episode wrestles with how—and why—some historical figures escape modern scrutiny.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origin of the Episode: Franklin's Modern Reputation

• [03:54] The episode’s inspiration comes from a listener’s conspiracy theory: “I think that Benjamin Franklin was a grifter with a great PR team. ...He was never actually president, but was somehow always there as an advisor, an Elon Musk kind of fraudster, the ideas guy with a big checkbook.” (Kelsey, E)
  • Kelsey’s perspective is colored by living in Philadelphia, where Franklin imagery is omnipresent.
  • She questions how any one man could be credited for so many innovations.
• “I feel like it’s extremely possible that everyone hated him and he was a bad hang, but his reputation has been scrubbed clean.” (Kelsey, E — 04:50)
• The hosts set out to determine if Franklin was a fraud, a hero, or something in between.

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2. Dueling Perspectives: The Friends' Franklin Debate

• [08:23] Rich, described as a Franklin enthusiast and “patriot,” argues it’s unfair to call Franklin a Musk-like fraud and points to his diplomatic achievements, especially securing French support during the Revolution, as evidence of real substance.
• “You wouldn’t send him around to all these things, these high stakes positions, if he’s a fraud.” (Rich paraphrased by Noah, C — 09:23)
• The hosts highlight that both Kelsey and Rich are talking past each other: Kelsey objects to the legend of Franklin as the lone genius, while Rich focuses on his public service and diplomacy.

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3. Historical Mythmaking & Public Image

• [11:32] Dr. Aubin and the hosts explore Franklin’s celebrity, noting that his status as an 18th-century celebrity fueled both his myth and his effectiveness.
• The myth of the “lone genius” is a recurring theme, with analogies to modern celebrities and inventors (e.g., Travis Scott and Elon Musk).

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4. What Did Ben Franklin Actually Accomplish?

• [17:04] The group lists Franklin’s supposed inventions/achievements: flying a kite, discovering electricity, the Declaration of Independence, diplomacy, bifocals, insurance, firefighting, postal service, and more.
• Dr. Aubin: “Most of these things at least have a grain of truth to them. He ...is instrumental in securing this French alliance... He does work on electricity. But I will say work on electricity.” (A, 17:53)
• Franklin did not invent electricity but popularized theories and conducted experiments already ongoing in Europe. The lightning rod, for example, was developed in parallel with others abroad (e.g., Prokop Divis, Czech priest).
• [23:06] Education and textbook oversimplification inflate Franklin’s solitary genius narrative: “The lone genius scientist guy who is like, I’ve invented electricity isn’t real. That’s not actually how science works or innovation works.” (A, 20:26)

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5. The Renaissance Man and the Myth of Complexity

• [24:40] The panel discusses specialization vs. generalization: Historically, educated men were expected to be well-rounded (science, philosophy, art)—the “Renaissance Man.”
• “So the Da Vinci, Renaissance man-style guy, it was a much more common person until recently. ...that proves how good you are... how intelligent you are that you can engage with all these different things.” (A, 25:20)

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6. Franklin’s Flaws: Slavery, Opportunism, and Self-Promotion

• [34:35] Franklin’s complicated and troubling legacy with slavery:
  • Owned, bought, and sold enslaved people for most of his life.
  • Profited by running slave ads in the Pennsylvania Gazette and enabling slave patrols.
  • Publicly turned to abolitionism only late in life (“So for most of his life, not only does he own slaves...he also feels basically fine with it,” A, 34:42), and stipulated that his enslaved people would only be freed upon his death—both died before gaining freedom.
  • “They don’t like it, but they still like it enough to...not risk some money, basically.” (A, 41:44)
• Franklin also advocated for westward colonial expansion with little regard for Indigenous peoples.
  • “He says…we should take the west, too. …he’s not alone in thinking this…it’s not specifically about wanting to…cause the annihilation of this enormous group of people, but he doesn’t have a problem with it necessarily.” (A, 42:10)

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7. Franklin the Eccentric: Sex, Farts, and Advice

• [50:21] Franklin’s “freaky uncle” reputation is supported by:
  • “Fart Proudly” — An essay encouraging scientific inquiry into flatulence for young men (A, 50:21).
  • “Advice to a Young Friend on Mistresses” — Franklin recommends marrying older women, famously writing, “...as in the dark, all cats are gray. The pleasure of corporal enjoyment with an old woman is at least equal and frequently superior.” (A, 52:43)
• “The older she is, the better she is, the more practice she has.” (A, 52:52)
• This eccentric, relatable side adds to his indelible public image.

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8. Why Wasn’t He President?

• [45:13] At the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was 81—too old for serious consideration as president (A, 45:16). His advanced age allowed him to pursue a staggering variety of “side quests.”
• “He has time to do a million other things because he doesn’t hold political office in the same way.” (A, 46:52)

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9. Why Doesn’t Franklin Get “Canceled” Today?

• [56:12] Unlike Jefferson or Jackson, Franklin seems to escape modern reassessment. The group theorizes:
  • He was not president or a general; so not the “main character” in popular U.S. narratives.
  • His persona as a “kooky genius” makes him easy to compartmentalize, deflecting deeper scrutiny.
  • “We love the kooky genius guy. Like, that’s an archetype that we’ve been working with for a very, very long time…” (A, 57:39)
  • Americans (and their curricula) prefer simple, comfortable stories about the past, avoiding discomfort and nuance.

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10. Closing Reflections: Reconciling Contradictions

• [61:22] Dr. Aubin sums up: “All of these things are true at the same time. And also he sucks and also he’s smart and also. So, you know. …We like a one-dimensional guy when we think about history.”
• Both “sides” of the debate (Kelsey & Rich) realize their views are less antagonistic than they thought—Kelsey’s aversion is to celebrity mythmaking; Rich values Franklin’s diplomatic achievements.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• "I just kind of hate celebrities. ...I think I have some anger at, like, the kooky little genius guy archetype." (Kelsey, E — 65:01)
• "The issue here is really just kind of, like, oversimplification. So, no, he doesn't steal credit from people, but, yes, his relationship to the things he invents and does and science are oversimplified." (A, 18:23)
• "He gets credited with being the sole creator of things that are actually sort of transnational global ideas." (A, 19:52)
• "He did have haters... while he was alive at how people were engaging in this, like, myth making around him." (A, 31:33)
• "If you reassess the past, it makes you have to think harder about what you're dealing with right now. ...So when we reassess people, it feels like... it creates a sense of discomfort." (A, 60:55)
• "All of these things are true at the same time. And also he sucks and also he's smart and also..." (A, 61:25)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:54 - Origin of episode: Kelsey’s Franklin conspiracy
• 08:23 - Rich’s pro-Franklin position
• 15:42 - Dr. Aubin explains why “fraud vs. importance” isn’t a dichotomy
• 17:04 - The Franklin accomplishments myth—panel's knowledge tested
• 18:48 - Comparison to Travis Scott (Franklin’s control over his own myth)
• 20:26 - The lone genius myth and collaborative invention
• 24:40 - The Renaissance man then vs. now
• 34:35 - Franklin and slavery—enslaver, late abolitionist, profiteer
• 42:10 - Franklin’s take on Indigenous peoples and westward expansion
• 50:21 - Franklin on farting, sex with older women (“Fart Proudly,” “all cats are gray in the dark”)
• 56:12 - Why modern reassessment/cancellation skips Franklin
• 61:22 - Complexity of historical figures—closing argument

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Conclusion

The episode deconstructs Benjamin Franklin’s mythology, revealing a complicated, often uncomfortable, but ultimately deeply human portrait. Yes, Franklin contributed enormously to the American Revolution and was genuinely involved in science and public service. But he also exploited and omitted others, benefited from and perpetuated slavery, and expertly managed his own celebrity. The hosts and guests agree: Adolescents of American history love tidy legends, but the truth about Franklin—and all “great men”—is messier, requiring a reckoning with both accomplishment and complicity.

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For listeners new to the show or topic:
You’ll never look at the man on the $100 bill, or the phrase “all cats are gray in the dark,” quite the same way again.

Transcript

[A]

Hi. So I have some wild ass news for you. TGS is turning one year old this month. It has been a bananas year from news coverage to award nominations and best of lists, and I really could not possibly have anticipated the show's success so far, especially because most podcasts fail pretty much immediately and they definitely don't ever make any income. I'm so incredibly grateful to all of you for listening to the show, telling your friends about it, and letting us make good, accessible public history. This was really an experiment and I'm honestly over the moon and slightly bewildered at how well it's working. I really can't express how deep my joy and appreciation for all of you is. We're doing a few things to celebrate we're having a birthday triple header week to celebrate the actual anniversary with some really exciting guests and we're doing huge discounts off of our Patreon almost month long between now and April 1st if you head to patreon.com this guy sucked. You can use the code TGSB Month like birth month for 50% off your first month on a monthly subscription, or TGSB Year like birth year for 30% off your first year on an annual subscription, which does stack on top of our normal 17% off annual discount. So the annual subscriptions this month are like incredibly discounted. The Patreon is how we can afford to make the show in the first place, and we've worked really hard to make it actually worth your money. So we thought we'd also make it a little easier to afford as a birthday treat for both us and you all. We've got lots of cool stuff in store for the year ahead. For example, I'm hoping to double our Patreon income so that we can start a K12 history classroom grant program, which would really, really rock. If you'd like to be part of the Patreon and make some of our year two goals more reachable, use code TGSBYear or TGSBMonth between today and April 1st to get started. Thank you and I can't wait to see what happens next. A list of sensitive themes and topics covered in this episode can be found in the episode Description. Hello. I have a fun little treat for you all to kick off our first birthday triple header, by which I mean three days in a row of new episodes to celebrate one one year of tgs. Let me paint a picture for you. It's December. I'm at a fancy holiday party full of podcasters, many of whom are very big deals and honestly Kind of intimidating. From across the room, I spot three men that I recognize because our shows follow each other on Instagram. And we were both named to the same best new shows list, which is also why we're all at this same party. These are Manny, Noah, and Devin of no such thing. I walk over to them and we have a little chat. And one of them, mid chat, Noah specifically says, hey, maybe you can answer a question about Benjamin Franklin. And this podcast episode was birthed. We recorded it in a studio in Brooklyn in the middle of a literal blizzard. That's how important it was to figure out what was actually going on with this man. Enjoy. Never looking at a hundred dollar bill the same way again.

[B]

On today's episode, was Benjamin Franklin a

[C]

fraud, founding father or frauding father?

[B]

Try that one. I might put that in there.

[D]

A fraudulent father. There's no such thing. No such.

[B]

So today's episode was actually inspired by our previous episode we did. Last year, we did an episode titled can you change the mind of conspiracy theorists? And as part of that, we asked our listeners to call in with their favorite conspiracy theory that they believed. So as part of that process, we got a call from one of Manny's friends named Kelsey.

[E]

I think that Benjamin Franklin was a grifter with a great PR team. I live in Philadelphia, so his image is everywhere to a degree I find suspicious. He's credited with inventing basically everything from electricity to bifocals to modern day fire insurance. And I don't believe that one little guy achieved all of this alone. He was never actually president, but was somehow always there as an advisor, an Elon Musk kind of fraudster, the ideas guy with a big checkbook. I just feel like it's extremely possible that everyone hated him and he was a bad hang, but his reputation has been scrubbed clean.

[D]

Wow.

[C]

I like that it's a bad hang. It's like everyone's hanging out with it. I feel like it'd be opposite where he's probably a good hang, maybe not doing something.

[D]

Yeah, I would imagine a lot of people wanted to be around him, you know, because of the reputation he had built, fraudulent or not.

[B]

Yeah, you know, well, that was a very brief answer, you know, So I called up Kelsey to hear more of her thoughts. So as she mentioned, one big thing to note is that Kelsey lives in Philadelphia, so she is definitely, I think, seeing more Benjamin Franklin related things than we are. Because when we got this, I remember this. When you were editing this episode, Manny, I was like, I don't really think about Benjamin Franklin at all.

[C]

Yeah, that was my thought too. I was like, how would you even come up with this? Like, who's even talking about this guy?

[D]

Yeah, I had never thought about that theory before, so now I'm happy to hear more.

[B]

Well, we found out that you are on a group chat with Kelsey where she sends you photos every time she sees something Benjamin Franklin related. And I, you know, I spoke to her a couple of weeks ago now, so we have our own. Not a group chat, I guess, because it's only two people.

[D]

But.

[B]

But she now sends me stuff that she comes across that are. That are Benjamin Franklin.

[D]

And it is.

[B]

It's a decent amount.

[D]

It's a lot. If you're in Philadelphia, it seems like, you know, walking around, you will run into a Benjamin Franklin.

[B]

And this is only the stuff she's sending. You know, I'm imagining she's not sending every single Benjamin Franklin thing that she's coming across. So two things Kelsey wanted us to get to the bottom of. It's number one, why does it feel like Benjamin Franklin hasn't had a proper reckoning? So in 2020, we were really examining historical figures.

[D]

Especially the presidents.

[B]

Yes, especially presidents. You know, Obama was being called a war criminal. We were talking a lot about George Washington. George Washington. So why wasn't Benjamin Franklin a part of that conversation?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And then she also wanted us to investigate just sort of the scope of what he's been cred with inventing.

[E]

I think just like the, The. The huge, like, broad brushstrokes of the things he's credited for coming up with or inventing feel like, so categorically, like, all encompassing. Like, I've just heard, like, he invented the concept of insurance. And I'm like, what? Like, did any single person do that? And also like, that. That's like such a big claim. And then same with, like, firefighting, like modern firefighting and like bifocals and electricity. Like, I'm sure he was maybe like a savant, like, genius guy who came up with some stuff. But, like, I think, like, the lack of specificity is what makes me suspicious. Or like. Yeah, it just feels so big.

[B]

So after that episode aired where Kelsey, you know, ripped apart Benjamin Franklin, another front of the pod, Rich was texting us because he's a big Benjamin Franklin. He was incensed, which I didn't know. But, you know, Rich was so down for Benny.

[C]

No, but he's a history buff in his own right.

[B]

But he was.

[C]

And a proud American.

[D]

Yeah, that's true.

[C]

He's a patriot.

[B]

He's a patriot. But Rich, he was very upset. So, Noah, you had a conversation with Rich to. Just to find out why he was so irate.

[C]

Yeah. Rich's main point was it's not fair to say Ben Franklin is basically what we would see as Elon Musk today. He was actually kind of doing this stuff. Mainly he's pointing to his diplomacy. He made the alliance with the French, which helped the American Revolution, of course. And just generally, Rich's main point is you wouldn't send him around to all these things, these high stakes positions. If he's a fraud.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Like he's got to be doing something.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Or at least be well liked and trusted in some sense.

[B]

A fraud would put themselves in ocarina. You wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, you go, yeah, especially how the hell did you get here?

[C]

Especially. He's not the president. So it's like there's no reason to just have this outside, you know, outsider figure, for lack of a better word.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

To do this, like, to trust that stuff with him. There's got to be something there.

[F]

I think the thing about Franklin that this caller seemed skeptical of was his celebrity. I mean, like, the idea of a celebrity is kind of fairly modern, but in terms of the 18th century, he was as close to a celebrity as you could get. The thing is, is that he used that to his cause's benefit in some way. He was like a. A marketer of the American Revolution as much as he was a diplomat and a leading politician. He started arguing for colonial unity, like, decades before even the Declaration of Independence, which, by the way, he also helped Jefferson draft. So not only did he help draft the Declaration of Independence, he also helped draft the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war. So that set the terms for what the country was going to look like. And he also played an important role in the Constitutional Convention. So, I mean, look, he's there at the Declaration of Independence, the treaty that ends the war and helps establish what the United States is going to be, and then the Constitution. I don't know what more you could want from this guy. Did he do some, like, flamboyant public image stuff? Yes, of course. But he was using that to his advantage. He was an interesting guy. I mean, like someone like John Adams, for example. People usually thought he was, like, boring, kind of goofy, annoying. But, like, with Franklin, people loved him.

[D]

And you can see easily how our two friends here, their ideas are in opposition to each other, but you can also see some areas where they're not necessarily like, I think Kelsey's main gripe seems to be all the things attributed to him in terms of, like, innovation, I guess. Yeah. And then, you know, Rich isn't necessarily talking about that aspect of his life. He's just talking about how much of an integral role he played in kind of the founding of the country. I want to see how we can marry these two ideas.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And the personality of it, I think is key too, where that's definitely what led to him being iconic in the sense of being all over Philadelphia.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And then that also is what enriches telling, is what led to him being the one who trusted to kind of convince people to come to our side and that sort of thing too.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, like you're saying they might not be as at odds as we think.

[B]

As they think, even as they think. So we are going to find out if Kelsey is right. Is Benjamin Franklin a fraud or is Rich right? Is he our greatest founding father? After the break, we'll find out. Does Benjamin Franklin actually suck?

[A]

Hi, it's Claire. Thank you for listening to the show. You're currently hearing the free version of this Guy Sucked. So I'm here to tell you about our Patreon. In order to make the show sustainably and independently, episodes switch off between free weeks and Patreon weeks. So if you're a fan of good, accurate public history made by actual experts, consider supporting us and joining our honorary haters club. It's only one tier, which means everyone who subscribes gets access to the same perks across the board. For the price of a pastry at your local hip coffee shop, you'll get to listen to a new episode every week instead of just the bi weekly free ones. And they'll all be ad free for you. You'll also get access to the full episode archive, bonus content, early access to merch, and lots of other fun Patreon exclusives. To sweeten the deal, just head over to patreon.com this guy sucked. Or follow the link in the episode description to sign up.

[D]

I'm Manny.

[C]

I'm Noah.

[B]

And I am Devin. We are joined in a studio by Dr. Claire Aubin. Claire is a writer and historian at Yale. She also has her own podcast, which you may already know, called this Guy Sucked, which was named one of Apple podcasts best new shows of 2025.

[D]

In some great company.

[B]

And some great company along with you all.

[A]

Yeah, I was gonna say that's literally how we know each other.

[B]

And we love this show because it's a show for haters. And we love to hate on this show. Claire, can you give us just your elevator pitch for this guy sucked?

[A]

Yeah. So every week I bring in a new scholar, a new academic. Occasionally we have, like, a comedian or do a collaboration with someone else, but I bring someone who is an expert on a person in to tell us why they don't like that person, basically, and why make an argument for the audience for why they shouldn't like that person either. So we've spanned, like, a huge amount of historical time periods. We talk about people who are very famous, people who are not famous, but should be for bad stuff. The argument being that whether you realize it or not, historical figures have negatively impacted your life today, and you should not like them, and that you can be interested in them without liking them also.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

[A]

Which we'll get into.

[D]

We're familiar with the concept. People who should be famous but aren't. We're getting there

[C]

to do an episode about us.

[A]

So unfortunately, you don't want to be the subject.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I would say. I would say, you know, you come on. But that is actually, in fact, what's happening.

[B]

All right, Claire, so to recap, we have you here because we chatted with two friends of the pod. Our friend Kelsey, who thinks Benjamin Franklin is a fraud. Our friend Rich, who thinks Benjamin Franklin is a national treasure, maybe underrated. So we're going to hand off the episode to you at this point as our historian to sort of break it down. What's the truth about the Benjamin Franklin?

[A]

So part of this is a little bit complicated because the two arguments that he's a fraud and that he's important are not in opposition to one another. So it was funny trying to figure out what the answer to this is, because, like, one could be a fraud and also important and, like, memorable at the same time and like a contributor in some other way. And I think there are plenty of historical examples and living examples that we have of that. So I think they're not actually arguing at cross purposes. Like, they're. They're. They're not against each other in this. They just have different conceptions of why people remember him.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

But I did come up with what I see as the questions that they were asking. I tried to summarize their questions and find answers to them. So questions are like, did he have haters in his day? Would he be taken more seriously if he had been president? Was he stealing credit from other people? Like, they ask a lot of, I think, really interesting questions that help us to figure out, like, how we think about celebrity and history and all kinds of stuff like that. And then the one that I found really interesting is, what are the bad things about him? Yeah, and there are some bad things about him.

[B]

You know, if we want to cancel him, what could we pull up?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Well, shouldn't we talk about the variant? Talk about his accomplishments? I feel like maybe we.

[D]

That's why we know him.

[C]

And then we get to the.

[B]

Let's start with what's real.

[A]

Yeah. Well, what do you know about him as his accomplishments?

[C]

Flying a kite.

[A]

Yeah, sure.

[D]

Discovering electricity.

[C]

Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, he did.

[A]

He did those words.

[C]

He was at these things.

[A]

He's at the Constitution.

[C]

He's a diplomat.

[D]

Yeah, I didn't know that about the diplomat.

[C]

Like, he was building in France. I talked to Rich. So, yeah, he was. He was crucial in getting the French alliance, which helped back us up during the American Revolution. Wow.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

On the. What is it, the $100 bill?

[A]

Yeah, pretty famously, like, all about. All about the.

[D]

I've never seen one of those familiar

[C]

with the smaller bills,

[A]

the penny.

[C]

Don't recognize this cat.

[D]

Who's this?

[A]

Yeah. So most of these things at least have, like, a grain of truth to them. He definitely is, for example, instrumental in securing this French alliance. That's right. A lot of these things are true. He does work on electricity. But I will say work on electricity.

[B]

He didn't discover.

[A]

Well, no. So one of the things I find kind of interesting about this is the idea of, like, whether he was stealing credit from other people for his inventions or not.

[B]

Because he has a name.

[A]

Yeah. The issue here is really just kind of, like, oversimplification. So, no, he doesn't steal credit from people, but, yes, his relationship to the things he invents and does and science are oversimplified. Sometimes he kind of fails to credit his collaborators on things in a sort of classic inventor scenario.

[B]

You know, who does that? Current day. This is.

[A]

I'm ready.

[B]

I don't think you would think this person would come up in this conversation. Travis Scott, straight up, famously, you know, pretend that he does everything by himself to the point where. When I worked at Genius, the music company, we would do these series where we'd talk to the collaborators of big famous people. Right. It's hard to talk to the big famous people. It's easier to talk to a producer or music video director, and he would threaten to sue us if we did videos. Like, they had to take a video down because they worked with. I think it was either a music video he did or a producer. He didn't like the idea that the audience would see that he wasn't the only person doing it.

[D]

Oh, my God.

[B]

He didn't like the idea of being seen as a collaborator. He wants to be seen as, like, the mastermind and a brainchild of the thing. Yeah. We had to take the video down.

[A]

That guy sucks. Yeah, for sure. Also, first time, probably someone has brought up Travis Scott and Benjamin Franklin in the same continuum type of guy. So, like, literally breaking new ground every day.

[B]

Scott and Benjamin Franklin.

[A]

This is what podcasts are for.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But actually, yeah, that does fit in part because one of the issues around Franklin's legacy is that he gets credited with being the sole creator of things that are actually sort of transnational global ideas. So the idea of electricity and lightning being somehow related to electricity predates him. He's not the person to come up with this, in part because, like, ideas don't exist in vacuums. The lone genius scientists scientist guy who is like, I've invented electricity isn't real. That's not actually how science works or how innovation.

[B]

No, no. We wouldn't figure this out if it wasn't for that one guy with the kite. No one else is thinking about this.

[A]

Yeah, like, science is incremental. Innovation is incremental. There's a sort of network of what we would call experimental philosophers and experimental scientists, Although they're not really thinking of themselves as scientists necessarily at this moment, because all these things are kind of mixed together. Like, you're a philosopher and a scientist and a doctor and whatever, all. All together. You're just engaging in sort of questions about the world and trying to answer them, much like yourselves, you, Travis Scott, and Benjamin Franklin. And he is part of this network. We know that he's traveling to Europe fairly regularly and coming back and doing stuff. So I imagine that he exists in this space where he's coming up with things by himself is just not real or possible. We know, for example, that the lightning rod is based in part on European theories around electricity and lightning. There is a Czech priest named Prokop Divis who is also working on grounded lightning rods at the same time. His grounded lightning rod happens about three years after Franklin's, but they're working with the same ideas. So that's not to say that he doesn't do these incredible things, but, like, he doesn't do them by himself, and he doesn't do them in a way that no one else is considering approaching them, because science is also a Very messy and very iterative process. Like, you have to try things over and over and over again and figure them out. And if he's the first guy to do it in America, like, that's great, but he's not the only person on the planet capable of it either.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

It seems like he's benefited from essentially, like, the elementary school curriculum. Right. Like, if the oversimplification happens because they're teaching this to kids.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So he's getting a lot of credit for that. I mean, I didn't read a single thing about him after elementary school, I think. So if I had, I guess the teachings would have been a little bit more nuanced.

[B]

I'm worried about your high school education, but we're gonna leave that there. But I do wonder how much of this is, like you said, Manny, like, the oversimplification of teaching kids things. Even like Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks wasn't the first person to not get up. She also wasn't seated in the front of the bus. You know, like, there's. There's stuff like that. There's nuance to a lot of stuff that when you're a kid, it's like, you know, Kenneth fit in a picture book. It's like Benjamin Franklin, kite lightning. We get the gist electricity.

[D]

Right. You're not going to tell the kid about all the other collaborators.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

About Czech priest, Pro cup divisions. Also.

[C]

We need to go to Prague and see what they're. They're learning.

[A]

I mean, and that's kind of generally a problem with how people understand historical figures. Right. The real problem is, once again, the American education system, unfortunately, in terms of how we like satisfying endings. We like people who satisfy curiosity. We like people who we can hold up and say, this is the guy. Because history itself is a lot messier and more complicated than that, and it's harder to grapple with. So these simplifications really benefit us in terms of our ability to understand things. They're often, though, not really that true or that real. And the issue is further down the line when you're like, ah, well, this is the thing. I know about Benjamin Franklin. And someone has to say, not so much.

[C]

Not that Kelsey's main gripe, aside from kind of the Philly centric angle and, like, the advertisement use, which is obviously way far afield, was kind of like, how could this one guy do all this?

[B]

Yeah, we're talking wide range.

[C]

But to me, this is. My simple explanation is I think about someone like Da Vinci, like a Renaissance man, sort of thing. I'm just thinking, you know, hundreds of years ago, not that many people were educated. So to me, it doesn't seem that crazy that the few people that were highly educated would know about a lot of things and be working in a lot of different fields, whether that be, you know, science, electricity or politics or whatever, or art. And, you know, Franklin, he was writing, he did almanacs, these sorts of things. So it's not that crazy that one guy would kind of have his hand in all these different pots.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, does that make sense?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, like, fully 100% it makes sense. The way that we conceive of like sciences and the humanities or art as these separate categories is relatively recent. Like, historically speaking, the man who is educated is educated in all of these fields, and they're not seen as necessarily separable. So you can say, like, yes, I've learned history, yes, I've learned science or art or whatever, but a person who is educated is well rounded and interested in all of these things. So, like what I mentioned before about this sort of philosopher, physicist, whatever guy, that's very normal because that is part of being educated and interested in the world. The way that we've kind of siloed these things as totally separate is relatively recent because now we focus in on like, becoming an expert in one single thing, becoming the person we. In part, because our approach to things like invention has narrowed further and further because we're getting, we're progressing and. Yeah, we're getting more advanced. Yeah. So you can be like, I do this one thing. Yeah. So a lot of these things really benefit or draw from each other. So the da Vinci renaissance man style guy, it was a much more common person until recently. And like a thing that proves how good you are and how educated you are and how intelligent you are that you can engage with all these, these different things.

[B]

I feel like the similarity happens in, like, youth sports now. Right. Where back in the day, if you were athletic, you would play a bunch of different sports. Now they have like 8 year olds that you're like, you're gonna be a soccer star. You're only playing soccer. Do not play any other sports.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And a lot of older athletes talk about that's not actually great. Like, you should, if your child is athletic, just let them play a bunch of different sports. And like, don't narrow them down when they're so young.

[C]

You can choose that choice later on. It's like, okay, you're gonna make a career of this.

[A]

It used to even more recently beyond that, using the, the sports, childhood sports analogy, being a three sport athlete used to be a type of person in the U.S. like, if you're a person who plays baseball, basketball and football, you are a three sport athlete.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's like, that was a type of high school guy, basically. And now we rarely see that because people are told to do.

[B]

Just do one thing.

[A]

Yeah. Or be like, maybe you should focus on your schoolwork.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And only play one sport. But yeah. So even that is like us narrowing and narrowing. And yeah, all of that is crazy too because it's like, hey, eight year old.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I need you to prepare yourself for a life of CTE.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Starting now.

[A]

Starting now.

[D]

LeBron James was famously a five star football recruit as well. Maybe not maybe four or five stars, I can't remember, but he definitely could have made a lot of money in football.

[B]

But yeah, he's a big athletic guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah. Some great Highlight Tapes on YouTube if you want to go back and check them out.

[C]

Why don't we pull them up right now? We got 20 minutes

[A]

to go back to your question. Some of the other things he's credited with. So the bifocals one is good. Glasses existed. Having different glasses also existed for, for distance and for. For close range vision. From what I understand, things like inventions are not necessarily my specialty as a historian, but from what I understand, in the research I did for this, he kind of perfected an idea that had existed, that pre existed. Or he. He made a thing that people had been thinking about into a thing that existed, if that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Especially because we're like, he invented the bifocal. That's so crazy. But if people are switching between two kinds of glasses, I feel certain someone said, I wish these were one pair of glasses.

[B]

You know, he basically made like a scrub daddy. Yeah. He just put it like, we got sponges.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is a better version of the

[C]

sponge who had a smiley face on

[A]

and you could put your fingers in.

[C]

That'd be perfect. Let me do it.

[A]

Let me get in the lab. To be fair, I am a huge scrub daddy.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Like that's all I got. I have. I've scrubbed mommies too.

[B]

Yeah, scrub mommies are actually better.

[A]

Mommies are better than scrub daddies.

[C]

Can you guys give me the quick pitch on what, what actually is the benefit of these compared to another. A normal sponge?

[B]

I think they're just better sponges. They're thicker, you know, sponges, you know, more. I would say horizontal.

[C]

Yeah. So these are more almost they got more depth.

[A]

Yeah. And the, the wetter they get, the softer they get. So they start out like, kind of crispy in a way that's good for exfoliating. Exfoliating your pants.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear that.

[A]

And then they get softer, so they're. They're more workable, which is great. And they have more crevices.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Crevice options.

[B]

Yeah. And then Tsami has two sides.

[C]

Okay. Like a hard side, like a scrub side.

[B]

A scrub side. And then like a more.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

A softer side.

[C]

I'll try it out. And we're not putting this in until they give us some money.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

At the end of the episode, sponsor us scrub Daddy and mommy.

[C]

Some other things. And these are more like, like infrastructural. That came up were like the fire department, postal service.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Can you speak to that? Like, how, how important was Franklin to those being set up?

[A]

Fire brigades existed.

[C]

Yeah, that was for a long.

[A]

A long time. Pretty famous.

[C]

They certainly had fires before.

[A]

Yeah. And yeah, they did have fires and they did have community responses to fires. Definitely existed.

[C]

Not individual vigilantes.

[A]

Yeah. Benjamin Franklin actually invented fires and fires and the concept of insurance. I don't know. I'm. I also feel confident that that predated him, at least to some extent. With all of these things, we're looking at, like what we consider very obvious concepts now that he might have popularized or he might have formalized in some way. But again, like, I don't necessarily think that these are things that we should be like, that's his thing. That's him who did that. One of the things that I found interesting in the conversation that you had with Rich is he talks a little shit about John Adams in it. And I found that very funny because John Adams kind of emerges as the opposite of Ben Franklin in the way that Rich says. But one of the things he's annoyed at Ben Franklin for and writes in his diaries and in letters about, as in John Adams is writing this, is that Rich Franklin.

[C]

It might be there too.

[A]

In his diaries, Adams is writing that Franklin, like, is getting too much credit for stuff. And he feels frustrated that he's being credited not just for inventions, but for the whole revolution and for all of these ideas. And he feels frustrated that people are kind of laying all of this at Franklin's feet. So this goes also to the did he have haters.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When he was alive? Thing that there was already frustration while he was alive at how people were engaging in this, like, myth making around him.

[B]

Did John want some More credit. Was John like, hey, I'm doing some of this shit too. Nobody's talking about me. Was that. Was that his real issue? Or was it just like, all right, enough.

[D]

This sounds like class. The more classic kind of hating, where it's like, I'm tired of hearing about this guy.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's more of that. I don't think there's as much of John Adams being like, it should have been me. But I do think he's like, okay, there were a lot of us at the Constitutional Convention. Hold on. But, yeah, and even, like, Thomas Jefferson is also writing like, look, he can't be president because his temper is a little too. He says. I think he says he has a supple temper, but that his. He's. He's not suited in terms of temperament to. To the. The difficulties of actual leadership. I mean, there are people who are, while he's alive, being like, hold on. Yeah, like, we can't. This guy is not necessarily everything he's being held up to be.

[B]

So he did have haters, but how widespread was this hate? You know, these people are. Right, you're saying writing this in their diaries. Are they saying this publicly, or are these just whispers behind the scenes?

[C]

It's like, I hate these guys. Yeah. But it's like, that's different than, you know, the little people down below.

[A]

Not as much public hate. It depends on what point in his life you're talking about. The British are really frustrated at him, for example, because they're like, like, man, you kind of messed this up for us.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, the British are like, you know, maybe we wouldn't have succeeded, for example, if he didn't go to France and do this. So that's what we would consider sort of hating from someone who, like, yeah, lost a war.

[C]

I'd be pretty mad if I was,

[A]

you know, so that one is more understandable. The people around him do have these frustrations, and a lot of them end up being kind of frustrations around, like, is he a good employer? The normal stuff. But there isn't, like, this widespread hate movement while he's alive necessarily until you get to his late 70s. He dies in his mid-80s, but his late 70s is when he decides to take an abolitionist turn. And then people who are like, no, we like slavery are like, we hate this guy.

[C]

Interesting.

[A]

That being said, there is another group of people who might hate him, which would be all of the people he had enslaved. And. And.

[E]

And.

[A]

And so those people might hate him, but we lose them in the historical Record, which is a pretty common issue with, with for example, enslaved people who were enslavers, where we lose the voices of the people who had like that level of relationship with him, that level of antagonistic relationship. And so often when we think about them, because we don't have them in the historical record, we're like, everyone loved him. It's like, maybe not the people who couldn't leave his house. You know, it's a pretty sobering thing. But it depends on who you consider a person when you're thinking about like what hating on someone is and who counts.

[C]

Can you walk us through his arc towards abolitionism?

[A]

Benjamin Franklin died in 1790. He takes this abolitionist turn or starts thinking about it. From what I can tell in the early 1770s, he moves fully into, we would call his abolitionist kind of phase In I think 1781, he becomes an open public abolitionist, takes over control of this very public abolitionist group. He's doing all of these things in part because he's like, I think this might be bad. He's also surrounded by other people at this moment in the 1780s where wealthy people living in the north are starting to be like, maybe this isn't good. So this is actually when the fault lines start to appear between who thinks, thinks slavery is an acceptable institution and who thinks it's not. But he, yeah, he takes his weird turn and we think around 1772, 1775, he starts thinking about it more and becomes open and public about it in the 1780s. But before that, when he's asked to comment on slavery, he like outright refuses. So for most of his life, not only does he own slaves or have people living with, with his family as their slaves, he also feels basically fine with it and is like when asked to comment on it, says he's not going to. He also is making money off of slavery because he is the editor and the guy who runs the Pennsylvania Gazette where people are advertising slave markets and slave sales. So he's actively making money off of this. And he also, when people have like missing or, or self emancipated slaves so people who run away, he's allowing these missing and runaway slave ads to be run in his paper. So he like enables slave patrols and slave catchers as well. Not super good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The other thing I would add to the abolitionist thing is at the point that he becomes an abolitionist, he still has people who are enslaved living that he like owns and he puts in his will that when he dies, that's when they can be free.

[B]

How convenient. Yeah.

[A]

And they both, the two that he names in his will, both die before he does. So they die still enslaved.

[D]

Didn't George Washington do something similar?

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Emancipated his slaves only after he died.

[A]

Yeah. This is kind of a classic thing, actually, that people who are think. Classic as in, like, this is a common thing, a thing that happens where people are like, abolition is good. Not yet, though.

[B]

Yeah, wait until I'm gone.

[A]

Yeah, you can't do it. But the next generation might be equipped you, you. You've lived too long like this. I'm too responsible for you. I'm not going to, for example, offer you your freedom and then pay for you to live a life of freedom and take care of you that way financially, which he absolutely could have done and other people did. Instead he was like, when I'm gone, you can go too.

[D]

It's what frustrates me so much about this kind of argument on the right from, like, the Charlie Kirk types that, like, you can't really blame the Confederacy that much because slavery was normal. It was like the norm and they didn't know any better. But this is so much information that disproves that.

[A]

The question we have, even the guys

[D]

who had the slaves were like, you can be free after I die. It's a clear indication that they knew what they were doing.

[A]

Absolutely. And one of the questions we have to ask when that comes up, when someone says, oh, this was normal, it's like, for who? Because again, the calculus then is, who's a person?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If the calculus is a person who. Who enslaved someone and someone who is enslaved, and we don't have the enslaved person's thoughts on the record, and we do have this person, we default to the person who says it was normal.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

The person experiencing it does not think this is normal and good. Right.

[D]

Like, they might even be normal on this, on the basis of, like a society. But it doesn't mean it was like, default. Fine.

[A]

No. And also, yeah, normal doesn't mean good or positive. So it is a really frustrating and kind of circular argument because it really just gets back to, like, well, who do you consider a person? Whose thoughts do you care about? Whose feelings do you care about? Who matters here? You know, to bring John Adams up again, which I think is interesting to head off this, this is normal. All the founding fathers had them argument, you know, who did not have slaves? John Adams, who emerges as kind of the secret hero.

[B]

My boy, John Adams.

[A]

And neither did his cousin, Samuel Adams.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

In fact, of the founding Fathers, we traditionally Think of, for example, when we're looking at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a little over a quarter of them were not slaveholders. So if you can say it's normal to be. To be an enslaver.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

It's also normal not to be as normal as it would be to be, like a vegetarian or something.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Do we know if that was because of, like, historical happenstance or they had a position against it?

[A]

It depends on the person. Sometimes it's kind of both. Sometimes they're like, it doesn't make financial sense for me. They're expensive. Right? Like, not just as in, like, to purchase, but the care and upkeep of another human being is expensive. And so some people couldn't really, like, afford this. And this is just using the sort of like really kind of like cold here. But there's that. There's. Some people did also have, like, a real moral, ethical obligation where they felt like this was not. So those people count, too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think it's interesting that when we think about Benjamin Franklin, we're like, look at all these amazing things he did. The seven people that he, over the course of his life, purchased, sold. At one point, one runs away from him in England, and he goes on this quest to go find this man, discovers that the man is in this other woman's house in England and is having a better time there, basically. And he's like, okay, fine, I guess you can stay here. And he sells the man. So again, this is not like he. He says, you're having a good time. I guess you can stay because you're happy. He's like, so you do need to pay me in this scenario when you can stay in England. But yeah, I mean, he, for almost his whole life, makes money off of slavery and benefits enormously from enslaving people. So I think that should be part of the conversation when you think about if he's important or good or a fraud or whatever. And that goes to the. What's bad about him? That's mostly what's bad about him.

[B]

Okay. On our. We're going to cancel Benjamin Franklin, the slave stuff pretty big.

[C]

It's a bad one.

[D]

It's up there.

[C]

Yeah. I'll speak for Rich and say we don't support that.

[A]

Gary Nash, who's a historian who works on the American Revolution and works on, like, black and white relations during and after the American Revolution, says, like many other white colonists during the years leading up to the American Revolution, the Franklins grew to dislike, dislike slavery, but not so much as to sacrifice their investments. So they don't. They don't like it, but they don't like it. Like, they still like it enough to. To.

[B]

To not change what they're.

[A]

Yeah. To not risk some money, basically. Yeah.

[B]

So just like, we won't do it again. Yeah.

[A]

And they do do it again, though.

[D]

Started over.

[A]

You know, what's interesting is they say, like, well, we don't want to do this, but if you have a kid, that kid's gonna be gonna become a slave, too. It's a really, like. It's a murky thing, and it's a thing that makes people really uncomfortable. Grapple with a whole lot of other stuff about American history when you think about it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But, yeah, that's my argument for the, like, what's bad? He also, you know, does the thing that quite. That a lot of white colonists at this time do, where he says, we need to take the west, indigenous peoples over there. Who cares about them? He's not overtly like, we hate them. We should kill them. He just is like, we should take the west, too. We need more space. We need more people. The way that America is going to survive is by bringing as many people here as possible. And he's not, you know, alone in thinking this, and it's not specifically about wanting to, you know, cause the annihilation of this enormous group of people, but he doesn't have a problem with it necessarily. So you can, I guess, add that as another tick on the. On the list.

[C]

Up next, what did Ben Franklin think about running for president? And older women. Women and farting. All of that after the break.

[A]

Hi, friends. Multitude has a new show out, and it's hosted by my friend and friend of the pod. Your friend, Lots of friends. Medievalist and noted Charlemagne hater, Professor Matthew Gabriel. American Medieval is a podcast about the Middle Ages, but with an American twist. Every week, Matt is joined by an expert scholar to talk about either some bit of the medieval world itself or how Americans have, throughout our history, use the Middle Ages to say something about ourselves. Because if America has never been fully modern, it might be because we've always been a little bit medieval. Matt is the best, and I'm so incredibly stoked that this show exists, if only because now we are very, very close to having a critical mass of historians that can bully all the scientists at Multitude. New episodes of American Medieval are available every Wednesday. Look for them wherever fine podcasts can be found. Next to those podcasts, like, on a lower shelf is American Medieval. So go give It a listen and check out americanmedieval.com to learn more.

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[A]

Would he be taken more seriously if he had been president? Is another interesting.

[D]

Does he have any ambitions to be. To run for office?

[A]

No. He's 81 at the Constitutional convention.

[D]

Oh my God.

[A]

That's old. For context. George Washington is 55 at this point and my whole. I know, completely warped.

[D]

Yeah. What the.

[B]

And this was before 80 year olds were running for president.

[C]

This was not normalized at the time.

[D]

Also is. Is 80 like it's already old today. But like back then that must be like a.

[B]

That's like 120 year old back then.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it's very old.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

I mean he's. He's not like. It's not like insane. There are plenty of 80 year olds that existed back then. Not as often as now because you could get dysentery pretty easily, you know, so like you could get taken out by all kinds of stuff at a younger age. You know, like they didn't have penicillin.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

Some basic stuff.

[A]

Yeah. So I mean there is. There is that.

[B]

So he was in no shape to. It wasn't like they passed over him. It's like, guys, I'm too old. He's like, yeah, I'm not even in running.

[A]

It wasn't gonna. That wasn't gonna happen. That. I don't think that was a real conversation that, that people were really were thinking about. But yeah, it does reframe a lot of this stuff. When you think about like he lived, you know, his whole life other than the stints in Europe, like in the US or what would become the US and he's 81. When we get a constitution.

[C]

He was able to do all this stuff then.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, he had a lot of time.

[A]

Yeah, that's part of this. He's not president, so he can spend his time doing all kinds of. Of going on side quests basically for his entire life.

[B]

You know, a trip to Europe back then was not very quick.

[D]

Yeah, he's getting on the boat, but

[A]

yeah, he's like, he has time to do a million other things because he doesn't hold political office in the same way. So he kind of is given this like guiding grandpa uncle role in a lot of this. Yeah, he is unk. Benjamin Franklin is unk.

[D]

I'm basically curious, like, what he was up to during the war.

[A]

Oh, all kinds of stuff. He was in France. He was. He was like being a diplomat and securing alliances.

[D]

Was he like busy with that or was this is an also a time when he's like kind of doing all the inventions.

[A]

Inventions think kind of simultaneously doing all of these things. But a lot of the inventions do kind of predate the Constitutional Convention. And there's like between. During the war, he's on, off getting alliances, meeting people, hanging out. Yeah. And not fighting because he's 70 years old.

[C]

He's the oldest.

[A]

Like, these all feed into each other though, right? Because he's in France. He's meeting all these philosophers and scientists and whatever and then he's getting ideas. He's coming back. He invents the Franklin stove, which is a stove that is kind of credited with like, he's credited with this new stove technique that by the way is immediately improved upon because it's not that good. But he's still like remembered as this

[D]

guy who we needed to step on. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. But yeah, like his, his relationship to the war is more in like a support, being in other places, doing stuff role. So he has time. He even there kind of has time to dick around. Yeah, he wants to.

[B]

Who would we say is like the modern day equivalent of Benjamin Franklin?

[D]

I don't know.

[B]

Diplomacy and also inventing things.

[A]

Things.

[C]

Yeah,

[A]

it depends on your idea of diplomacy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because there are plenty of like tech billionaire guys who are Gates or something. Yeah. Who are all over the place doing all kinds of weird stuff.

[B]

Yeah, Elon.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But he's not really doing diplomacy. At least Bill Gates has like the charities and stuff.

[D]

Elon skipped the diplomacy stage. He's just directly involved in the elections.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You know, he's not really having conversations, just doing things. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It is kind of weird to compare, like Elon And Benjamin Frank Franklin. Because we're like, okay, well here's our idea of an inventor, like a crazy inventor guy. But because Benjamin Franklin does actually invent a bunch of stuff or like come up with stuff and do stuff. And he also like does objectively help the become a country rather than just be like, let's destroy everything and hire someone named Big Balls to like take over.

[C]

Who's the Big Balls of the original?

[A]

I don't know. But this does fit with. Actually I said that we should talk about his MILF thing. Yeah, the inventors. If famous inventors are freaky guys. It is a long term problem in the US and, and Benjamin Franklin has a lot of like weird creepy uncle stuff that he does. And not, not in like a. Not in like a scary way, but in like a, like a. Do you know Elon in like the waifu stuff?

[B]

No.

[A]

Am I too online for this?

[D]

No, no. Like, he just loves the anime looking.

[A]

Yeah, that Benjamin Franklin is like that a little bit. Well, so who's the anime woman in the.

[D]

Benjamin Franklin?

[C]

Who's the Grimes back then?

[A]

So he. We have letters from him where he does a couple of things. So one of the things he's famous for is writing something called Fart Proudly, which is Fart Proudly. Fart Proudly. Which a fun thing about a lot of guys in the 18th century is they were in. They love talking about farting. So that's a. And that's. That's something that Ben Franklin is really into.

[D]

And so the word fart was like a thing back then.

[A]

Yeah, he invented that. But yeah, he writes this thing that's for. I think it's sort of like a science magazine, like to encourage young men to engage in scientific inquiry. And so he writes this thing manifesto, I don't know how to describe it, about how they should practice farting, basically, and how they should like, like do it as a scientific experiment and like they should undertake special diets. It's crazy. But like we can find. We have him writing like a metaphor at first. No, no, he's talking literally. Yeah. But then he's saying do this and then you'll learn how to engage in scientific inquiry if you do this farting experiment. But like back then they were making fart jokes and being like, you know what teen teenage boys love is fart jokes. And he was like, until today. Yeah. And then. Yeah. And then the other real weird thing that we have from him, it's a letter that's known as advice to a young friend on mistresses. And it's telling this young friend, 71

[D]

years younger.

[A]

He's telling this young friend that having sexual urges, being horny is normal and the way to solve it is by getting a wife. And he said, you know, they're hot when they're old too. Like you get a hot old wife basically. And like it's, you're kind of like, okay and. But some of the things he writes about it are open minded bananas. And I'm sorry to my parents who are probably going to be listening to this. The Wikipedia page on it literally says, whether serious or humorous, the letter is frankly sexual. He says, he talks about things like the lower parts continuing to last as plump as ever and says, and as in the dark, all cats are gray. The pleasure of corporal enjoyment with an old woman is at least equal and frequently superior. Every neck being by practice capable of improvement. So he says, the older she is, the better she is, the more practice she has.

[D]

That is incredible.

[A]

Isn't that an incredible story? So add that to the uncancelation that supersedes slavery.

[C]

Forget it.

[D]

They were assuming by older women he's. Maybe, I mean, back then he could be talking about someone who's 20. What, what, what is the age?

[C]

Like, what cast dispersion.

[A]

No, I mean, he, he has a wife. Like he has an old lady wife

[D]

later on in his life.

[A]

Yeah, he's, he's writing this to a young friend being like, he's saying, hey, I know I got a, I've got

[C]

a hot old lady.

[A]

You could get him more experience. He says, I'm just trying to put holes through this. Yeah. He's like, you're. No, I mean foolproof. Yeah. He says you have urges. You're a young man. Get a wife. And the bonus is it just gets better. It's only getting better.

[D]

All cats are gray.

[A]

All cats are gray in the dark.

[B]

He's saying not take, he said, don't take advantage of her either. Get married to her.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's not saying just go out there and sleep with her. No, make, make her your wife.

[D]

Put a ring on it.

[A]

And he's saying this is the best way to, to fulfill all of these urges is by being loyal to finding more experience. Yeah.

[B]

I can't find nothing wrong with that.

[D]

That's pretty good.

[C]

There's absolutely pretty good.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, it is wild. Every, pretty much every historical figure, if you look hard enough, you're gonna find something crazy like.

[D]

I love that.

[B]

So he wrote this. This was a letter he sent to his friend. Man, if I send y' all some like that, delete it right after you read it.

[A]

Burn it.

[B]

We don't need history to be reading our letters.

[C]

Hey, I don't know what to do. Like, I'm dating. I can't really find someone. And then Devin sends me that. Hey, listen, all Cats are Gray in.

[A]

It does have a very like, uncle at a. At like a barbecue vibe to it, if it makes sense.

[C]

Come over here. Let me tell you something.

[A]

Yeah. Look, you've been single for too long.

[B]

They wrote too much down back then,

[D]

you know, So I always wonder if they know it's going to be read by the public in the future. Like, I imagine in this case, the guy who received the letter, maybe his family, after he died, gave it to a museum or something because they knew who it was from. I always wonder if.

[C]

Yeah, all the letters.

[B]

Some audience.

[D]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

People were writing letters the way that people are, like, tweeting.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, because we would call it an epistolary culture. So, like, letter writing culture. This is like how you get your thoughts out. So people are sending thousands of letters to each other. So this is something that you would just fire off. Like, he was like, all right, I need to give someone advice. Here we go.

[B]

My young boy. You know, like, he was on Twitter.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Directly, he's.

[B]

The guy's tweeting.

[C]

He's tweeting it, like, clavicular.

[B]

Yeah. He's like, listen, I'm horny. What should I do? And then Ben's adding him.

[D]

Was it the original tweet icon? When you click to tweet something, like a quill, like something.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, There you go. He invented that.

[A]

There's continuity, historical continuity happening here. Actually, we're all engaging in epistolary culture.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

At this moment in time, if we still use Twitter.

[D]

That's beautiful.

[B]

So I guess the last question we have is, why isn't he today more scrutinized? You know, a lot of modern day figures, especially post 2020, we were looking at everybody. Yeah.

[C]

Like, Jefferson, they got his ass.

[B]

We were going through all these people. Oh, y' all like him.

[D]

They did this shit here.

[A]

Yeah. Jefferson really, really got it. And he deserved to.

[B]

Jackson.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Jackson got it, too.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

Yeah. Harder than ever.

[B]

Yeah. So why. I don't remember us talking a lot about Benny during that time period. Yeah. Why do you think that is?

[A]

Do you have any memories of this?

[B]

Why'd he get out?

[C]

I don't. But yeah, my only guess is, like, because he's not a president. So we only. We mainly think of him. Of course. We know this diplomacy and stuff, except for Manny.

[D]

But

[C]

we think of the electricity thing as kind of the iconic stuff. I feel like when you're a kid. Right. And then, you know, he's involved in the other stuff. But we don't put that much importance because we don't see him like a George Washington who was the leader of the country. So I think the president's obviously take, you know, the first.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

They're the top founder fathers. And then like the 1B, we got Ben Franklin.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Even though he's probably more famous than a few of those presidents. Really?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And he wasn't like a general or something like that.

[C]

Yeah. So there's not any. There's not like other stories about him in that way.

[B]

I don't know.

[F]

That's.

[C]

That's my only guess for why we haven't had that re. Examination. And then the only other association. Sorry, I'll keep going.

[A]

Please.

[C]

He's on a hundred dollar bills. So it's like all about the Benjamins. We don't like. Like, that's a cool. That's cool aspirational thing. It just. We like money.

[D]

Yeah, that's cool.

[A]

And he's all over Philly and sunglasses and.

[C]

Yeah. All of our friends in Philly see him all the time on ellipticals.

[A]

Yeah. I think there are two answers to this. So the first answer is basically what you've said. He's so fascinating. He does all this interesting stuff. He's all over the place. He has all these side quests. He's going to all these places doing interesting things. And he's doing this while not holding enormous formal state power. So we don't tend to criticize people who we see as being, like, helpers of the machine rather than the machine themselves. And, like, we love the kooky genius guy. Like, that's an archetype that we've been working with for a very, very long time in a lot of different contexts. We. We know the interesting genius dude. Like, that's a. That's. If you, like, go in your head. Head. Climb into your head and think about this. Like, you could probably come up with a ton of, like, wacky guys.

[B]

Albert.

[A]

Yeah, wacky guys who come up with stuff. They look funny. They send weird letters about farting and sex with older women. They're like, they're. That's a guy. Like, that's an archetype of a guy. And so people are like, okay, well, we can Just kind of box him away that way.

[B]

It's a different thing.

[A]

Yeah. And so we don't need to scrutinize him because we're like, oh, he's a founding father, but he's 80 when he's doing it, and he's kind of. He's kind of wacky. And. And. And so that's, I think, part of this, and then the other part is because we don't really scrutinize historical figures that much in general. Actually, like, off the top of your head, when you were like, who are the people that we think of? We're like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, which is like, oh, like the Trail of Tears guy. Like, the people, you know, like, yeah, these are. And. And someone who. Yeah, and we've got Jefferson and Sally Heming. Like, these are things that we're like, oh, pretty famously, they did really, really bad stuff. Not, like, daily level. Everyone's kind of doing bad stuff. Stuff, like, really egregiously.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Bad things. But everybody who doesn't do that or doesn't do things that rise to that level, we often kind of leave them alone. So let me make you a pitch for a podcast. Yeah. Like, everything I'm saying here has been said before by much more knowledgeable people, people on Franklin directly. So I'm just reiterating their ideas. But, like, people are uncomfortable with having to reassess historical figures, because if you reassess the past, it makes you have to think harder about what you're dealing with right now. There's a reason that, like, current modern state policy is about rewriting and erasing parts of the past that are uncomfortable. And specifically the parts that we have started to reckon with, where we've started to be like, oh, at this. At Monticello, for example, or at Mount Vernon, let's have exhibits on the people who were enslaved and living here. Let's have these in national parks. Let's talk about the indigenous people that we've, like, booted off this land or killed or whatever. Like, those are the things that people are trying to get rid of, in part because it makes you, like, think about the time that we're living in right now. And. And so when we reassess people, it feels like. Like, it creates a sense of discomfort. It can also create a sense of, like, satisfaction and relief when we reassess someone to feel like someone is being written back into a narrative. But that often is at odds with the discomfort.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it's less satisfying to say, this person was complicated.

[B]

Yeah. Exactly.

[A]

You know, or this person did some good stuff. Stuff. Also the people who, you know, were forced to work for him for their entire lives didn't think he was that great, actually. Probably that's a, that's a weird thing to like sit with and, and think through, basically. And so often we'll switch to, no, he's great, he's really important and, or no, it's just he's, he's fraudulent.

[C]

But rather it's like all of these are true.

[A]

All of these things are true at the same time. And also he sucks and also he's smart and also. So, you know. Yeah, but we like a one dimensional guy when we think about history.

[C]

So now, after all we've learned about Ben Franklin, we think it's important to bring it back to our original debaters, Rich and Kelsey. So we're going to call them up and see how they feel about all this.

[B]

All right, so we are joined now by our two competing factions of the Ben Franklin legacy. We have Kelsey and Rich from episode one. So we've now talked to our expert, we've talked to Claire. We have some information we want to share with you about good old Benjamin Franklin and then we want to get your reactions. But first of all, thank you guys for joining us.

[E]

Thanks for having us.

[C]

It's very serious, very tense.

[B]

I know, it's palpable.

[C]

Yeah, I'm nervous.

[B]

Tension in the studio right now is. Feels like I'm in court.

[D]

So we'd love to just get some general reactions, thoughts, maybe starting with Rich.

[C]

Yeah, sure.

[F]

So I think that in terms of the main question, was he overrated, underrated, Was he like legit for what he's known for? I think that, yeah, there's a lot of mythology around him around this idea of being a Renaissance man. I think part of that is he was as close to a celebrity as you had back then, but I think that he used to that to his advantage. Yeah, basically the Kardashian of the founding fathers. So I think, yeah, I think he used that to his advantage for his diplomacy, especially with France. And I think that like, if we're talking about like the first, like the premise of this debate, basically, I think that even if you just took his diplomacy with France, which helped bring that them to the war, which ended up winning the war for what became the U.S. i think that is enough for like to be considered a founding father in a real way. I think there's plenty of evidence yet.

[D]

Yeah. Another thing we realized was that your two points of view are not even necessarily in contrast with each other because, Rich, you just think he is adequately credited for the things he. He did in his life. Kelsey's just fucking annoyed at seeing him everywhere. So it's like they're not even necessarily in contrast.

[B]

But.

[D]

Kelsey, just your general thoughts.

[E]

Well, I'm. It's nice to meet you, Rich. And I'm glad that moving forward, friends,

[C]

we could put this in the past.

[E]

I was a little scared to learn that I. I had a potential nemesis out there in the universe around Benjamin Franklin.

[C]

What'd you get into?

[E]

Yeah, no, I'm so excited about everything that we've learned through this exploration. I think that something I'm reflecting on is that this all tracks because I just kind of hate celebrities. So maybe that's kind of what I'm responding to. I also, I think I have some anger at like the kooky little genius guy archetype.

[D]

Oh, yeah, the mad scientist. Yeah.

[E]

And I think, I mean, it's really interesting to think about how my positionality and like where I exist in history just really complicates my ability to even fully understand that as like a norm. Because I feel like I exist in the hive mind era of information sharing and discovery. And so the idea that I kind of live by is like, nothing is original and we're all making everything together and the best things that we do are together. And so the idea that this one little guy could come up with all

[A]

of these things on his own without

[E]

crediting anybody else just like comes into sharp, like, tension with that. But that's a really interesting. I don't know how I would have felt back then, and I'm excited to learn that he's pro milf. That's fascinating.

[F]

That was one of his strongest positions, actually.

[C]

Yeah, he never wavered on that, you know.

[A]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of this Guy Sucked, a member of the Multitude podcast collection. This episode was a collaboration between this Guy Sucked and no Such Thing and edited by a dynamic duo who have never even met each other, Noah Friedman and Julia Sheffini. All of our theme music was written and produced by John Adams Adjacent Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month and access to our full archive of episodes. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or to our [e-mail]. you can also support TGS by giving us a five star rating or a review wherever you're listening to the show or just telling a friend or two to check the show out. That would rock. See you next week. Score big savings this week at Grocery Outlet. Your Extreme Value Headquarters Dinner just got easy. Easier with 1 pound of 93 lean grass fed ground beef for just 4.99. Plan A nacho night with all the toppings or serve up a big pot of warm chili. The meal possibilities are endless when you can stock up without breaking the budget. This deal is only available until March 24th. While supplies last, hurry to your local grocery outlet.

[D]

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