Benjamin Franklin

Revolutionary Print Networks: Printing the News, 1763-1789

June 26, 2019 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

For the American Revolution to be successful, it needed ideas people could embrace and methods for spreading those ideas. It also needed ways for revolutionaries to coordinate across colonial lines. How did revolutionaries develop and spread their ideas? How did they communicate and coordinate plans of actions?

In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Joseph Adelman, an Assistant Professor of History at Framingham State University and author of Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), joins us to investigate the roles printers and their networks played in developing and spreading ideas of the American Revolution. [Read more…] about Revolutionary Print Networks: Printing the News, 1763-1789

Young Benjamin Franklin (Historians Podcast)

February 22, 2019 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

This week on The Historians Podcast, Pulitzer Prize finalist Nick Bunker discusses his book, Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity. The book follows Franklin through age 41 and his first electrical discoveries. [Read more…] about Young Benjamin Franklin (Historians Podcast)

The Culinary Adventures of Benjamin Franklin

January 23, 2019 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

Can food help us better understand the people and events of the past? Can we better understand a person like Benjamin Franklin and who he was by the foods he ate?

In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History Rae Katherine Eighmey, an award-winning food historian, author, and cook, joins us to explore the culinary tastes and habits of Benjamin Franklin and colonial British Americans with details from her book Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Father’s Culinary Adventures (Smithsonian Books, 2018). [Read more…] about The Culinary Adventures of Benjamin Franklin

Young Benjamin Franklin

October 17, 2018 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

What in the first 40 years of his life made Benjamin Franklin the genius he became?

Benjamin Franklin serves as a great window on to the early American past because as a man of “variety” he pursued many interests: literature, poetry, science, business, philosophy, philanthropy, and politics.

But one aspect of Franklin’s life has gone largely unstudied: his childhood and early life.

In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History, Nick Bunker, author of Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity (Penguin Random House, 2018), joins us to explore Benjamin Franklin’s early life and how family, childhood, and youthful experiences shaped him as a scientist and diplomat. You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/207

Bifocal Lenses and Ben Franklin

December 1, 2017 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

This week on The Historians Podcast, Dan Weaver says a 1768 letter to colonial leader Sir William Johnson casts doubt on the claim by some historians that Ben Franklin invented bifocal eyeglasses. Weaver is history columnist for the Amsterdam NY Recorder, president of Historic Amsterdam League and a trustee of Old Fort Johnson, one of Sir William’s homes.

Listen to the podcast here. [Read more…] about Bifocal Lenses and Ben Franklin

Deborah Read Franklin And Sally Franklin Bache

April 1, 2015 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

Have you heard the saying “behind every great man stands a great woman?”

In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Vivian Bruce Conger, the Robert Ryan Professor in the Humanities at Ithaca College, joins us to explore the two great women that Benjamin Franklin had standing behind and beside him: his wife, Deborah Read Franklin, and his daughter, Sally Franklin Bache. You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/022