Citation Needed - Benjamin Franklin

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1706][Note 1] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher.[1] Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the first United States postmaster general. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his studies of electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among others.[2] He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department,[3] and the University of Pennsylvania.[4] Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, and as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation.[5] Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat."[6] Franklin has been called "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become." He also holds the distinction of the longest opening Wikipedia paragraph of any subject we've ever covered.

And so I explained I don't need to meet your family because we're not that serious at this point and how does she react to that? Okay, do you guys want to hear how I got stabbed or not? Let me just get to it. Oh, yeah, I definitely want to hear it. Yeah Oh Ben there they are Greetings gentlemen. What whoa Benjamin Franklin. Yeah, yeah, you like let me me use the tie machine. Cecil, you're having ice cream with him on Thursday. Not cool, man. That's not cool. Come on. Think about all the things

that Ben can teach us. He's the perfect guest for this week's episode about him. Can't even eat ice cream. Indeed I am. And of course, we shan't do anything while this one is present. What me? Why not me? What are you talking about?

I mean, he's clearly an Irishman. Look at the air in the box. Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot. You're pretty racist. Also, this one with the beard seems like you may have a touch of the octorune in him. Have you tested his purity? What did you just say? Okay, I you know what Ben?

Why don't we just do something fun? Huh? We could podcast in a bit. How's that? Okay. Tell me where is the nearest brothel? I'm feeling someone older tonight. Perhaps a 15 year old. Wow. You know, I'm going to just set it back in the machine. That seems like a good idea.

Yeah, just get rid of them. And I'm Italian. Literally. My god, he admits it. Okay, put the time machine back. Why do we have this? Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and I'll be hosting this very special episode about one of our founding fathers

And I'm joined by panel of experts who understand better than anyone else the greatness of America for white guys For white guys Tom sees a little any I am white enough for for white that for I am white enough for for white guy for for for Very white. Okay, but I'm so white do that sometimes I yell at cops just so I can watch them not shoot Look he if I don't record my thoughts as an MP3 how will people know Podcasting is the white guy's thing. Wow. I just keep doing it.

All right. No. Founding father. Are we going to be talking about today? Today, we're going to be talking about Benjamin Franklin. All right. And why Benjamin Franklin? Well, I can tell you why it isn't.

Right. So Ben Franklin is one of those weird individuals whose biography is only like a third of the way over by the time he turns 50. Though he'd already distinguished himself as a printer and a writer. He did the vast majority of his historically important shit that he was ever going to do after he turned 46, thus proving that even in late middle age, a person can still have a big enough impact on the world to earn a place on the hundred dollar bill.

So I definitely did not choose him as a subject because I'm turning 46 later this week. That is a coincidence. I picked him for like a nerdy history reason or like some atruscant thing or something. All right. No, but you better bring it home with the French orgies in this last third year. I barely even imagine I'm sorry, Eli. And look, I get that there are plenty of reasons to hate this so-called founding fathers in general and plenty of reasons to hate Ben Franklin in particular. He was viciously racist. He treated his wife like a servant. He treated his kids like a tyrant. He's the Godfather of mansplaining. And though he did come around to an abolitionist position, late in his life, he only did so after a lifetime of owning the slaves. And that's a really hard list to put that being said after, but that being said, it's still somewhat like even knowing that it's kind of hard not to like the like the interesting interviews.

He was just trying to be an interesting interview. Well, I'll give it so the bullet points of Ben Franklin's career are impressive as any you will find anywhere in history, but his historical reputation is also so a vunkiller that he's like, he's the one founding father you can imagine asking you to pull his finger. Far Proud, the uncle Franklin. Far Proud. Exactly.

Right. So obviously we're going to go over all these points and details, but to give you an idea what we're working with here, let me just read you the opening sentence of his article on Wikipedia quote, Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath who is active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. End quote. And I mean, that might not seem all that impressive in a world where every fourth person you meet as a producer, director of singers, songwriter, freelance hacker, greatest sword fighter in the world.

So I need to emphasize that he made a historical impact on every one of those eight fields. Y'all. As you yourself have pointed out, no, it was a lot easier to invent shit and be an expert in things when nothing had yet been invented. And there were like four books total on any given. I feel like everybody thinks they would have invented shit if they live bed like I would have invented fucking calculus if I was there before.

I would have invented calculus. That being said, I think I actually would have invented sliced bread. Like if that was the shit out of some bread for sure. Right. Now, the men, I've not invented it until 1928 in a serious mess. Now the myth of Ben Franklin is that of a self-made man, but that comes with a huge grain of salt. The dude started his life off in a three story house. And like,

I mean, I guess for a guy who grew up in a three story house, he's as self made as you can really get, but still the three story house in question was on Milk Street and Boston Massachusetts. And Ben was born in it in January of 1706 to Josiah and Abaya, Franklin. By the time he was born, his father had seven children by a previous marriage and seven from the new one. So little Benny was his mom's eighth kid and his dad's 15th. Jesus. Yeah, they'd go on to have two more before they were done.

Does the second string wife make the kids that sit on the bench? I guess. Yes. So Ben was better educated than the average kid in the American colonies at the time, but not by much. Okay. And also more than the average colonial kid is a really low ball like, like what does that even mean?

Like he still thought goats were Satan's familiars, but he could read and write his last name. That's a big deal. Honestly, like his failure to think that goats were Satan's familiars became a problem for him. So his dad wanted him to enter the clergy, right? So he sent him to the Boston Latin School. But after a couple of years, it was super clear that he wasn't

pastor material. And Josiah was damned if he was going to pay good money for an education that was going to go to something secular and useful. So Ben didn't graduate. Instead, he was apprentice to his brother James at the age of 12 and learned the printing trade. Jokes on dad turns out later in life, Ben, he would be a lusts of us. No, okay. He played totally platonic games of Chess against women, a third of his age while they were in the bathtub. Eli totally.

Anyway, a few years later, James Franklin started one of America's first independent newspapers and little Benny desperately wanted to write for it. His brother said no. Now history generally paints this as James being jealous of Ben's writing acumen, but what we know about James, we largely know from Ben. Of course, we know it about him because of Ben's writing acumen. So who's to fucking say? Anyway, the key is that his brother wouldn't land him right for the paper. So he crafts an alternate persona and start sending in

anonymous letters that James ends up printing anyway. And this alternate persona, a middle-aged widow named silence do good ends up being the talk of the town. Now at the age of 17, Ben ran away from his apprenticeship and moved to Philadelphia. He would later portray this in a very dekinsian fashion as though his brother was some kind of cruel slave driver and he had to take an underground railroad to get away. But one way or the other, in 1723, he showed up in Philly with nothing but a few dollars, an in-demand trade, a better than average education in centuries worth of family connections to call upon.

After a few years of following, get rid, all the hell weighed a London in back. He settles down in Philly and gets a job with a printer. Yeah, I mean, he could have tried waiting out his inheritance, you know, you just need to wait for his father to die and his sibling and his other sibling and his other sibling and his other sibling. Okay. Yeah, you probably need to get a job. Yeah, I got to get a job.

Yeah, what helped for sure. No, it's at this point in his life where he really starts getting active in civic improvements. This includes depending on who you ask, starting America's first library. It definitely includes hiring America's first librarian. Excellent. Can you unpin your hand and shake it out for us? Yeah, well, probably the glasses on.

Yeah. I'm going to be very loud. So, yeah, so a few years later, he would organize America's first volunteer fire department. And a few years after that, he founded the American Philosophical Society. All three of the aforementioned organizations are still in operation more than 250 years later. Oh, hang the fuck on up until now there was nobody putting out fires. No, like this is what I mean by low bar for inventing stuff.

I wish I put fires out. Oh, look at a big brain and old bad over there. Well, you would try to put your own shit out if it kind of made your neighbors become a very libertarian sister. Yeah. Dude, your house is on fire. Who's John golf? Now, along the way, he also got hold of a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette, where he was finally able to really showcase his skills as a writer and he had some mad skills as a writer, especially when it came to sad tire. Guys, quick, no ascendance fell through a time warp to 1993, saving. Oh, it's going to get even worse.

One of the, I have to tell you about this is amazing. One of the greatest flame wars in all of history was this ongoing exchange that Ben Franklin had with a rival printer who Franklin accused of being dead. Okay, so good. So good. They went back and forth for so long because the dude never got the fucking joke and he kept printing these belabour.

I am too alive and Ben Franklin's a son of a bitch responsible and then and Franklin would print something like, well, see now my esteemed colleague would never stoop so low as to call me a son of a bitch. Further evidence that he was replaced by imposter's long ago. I'm watching your fans. Fuck you. You, if you printed that today, 500 QAnon followers would show up outside the Pennsylvania Gazette headquarters and wait for FDR to reappear.

No, over the same period, he wound up with a common law wife and an illegitimate son, no relation. His marriage to Deborah Reed was as near as the historical records shows, loveless from pretty much the start. Their letters were kind of formal. He spent years away from her with only token indications that he missed her at all. And in an era where like having 17 children wasn't all that uncommon, their union produced only two at one of whom died a smallpox by the age of two. We actually don't know who

mothered Franklin's other son, William, and neither did the kid. Okay. It feels like you're saying the kid died of smallpox because mom and dad didn't love each other. Okay. kid died of smallpox because mom and dad didn't love each other. Okay, right. No, I see. We cannot know that for sure. No, okay. We cannot know that for sure, but the wood cuttings of Franklin rubbing his kid all over

like the poxy guy in town are definitely just. I just I was trying to get a lot of boring shit in the one period. Okay. So all of this gets us to 1733, which is when Franklin bursts onto the national stage. This is when he starts to publish what would be his most successful venture to date poor Richards, all men. So like back in the pre internet pre TV pre radio days you kind of had to get an all men act every year, right? Somebody in your little local area had to. in a cab every year, right? Somebody in your little local area had to, it would tell you the moon phases and the tides and apparently you need to know that shit when you're a farmer, it would tell you when the fuck Easter was going to be that year. It was sort of like the Google of it's that you blame Carmen Sandiego. You got to get the new one for the obviously

right. Exactly. And Franklin's all that could end up being by far the most popular in the 13 colonies, right? You couldn't buy the British, Oh, man, I could be useless to you. So he wrote it as poor Richard, a thoroughly middle class and somewhat miserly guy who peppered the Oh, man, I quit moral parables and more importantly, little aphorisms in the margins. These aphorisms are a great indication of just how dominant Ben Franklin could have been on Twitter. Many of them are still familiar

to us today. A penny saved is a penny earned, which is a misquote of something he said. But anyway, early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise is his three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Never leave that till tomorrow, which you can do today. Guests like fish begin to smell after three days. I feel like bathing has helped that last one a little bit. A little bit suggested murder with the secret one, right? Yeah, he did. Yeah, absolutely.

Um, wait, there's, there's, there's nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. He came up with that one after poor Richards, but, um, lost time has never found again. The, that list could keep going on for the rest of the fucking essay. When asked to write an epitaph for a family friend's pet squirrel, he may very well have coined the term snug as a bug in a rug. He probably didn't, he probably actually stole that from an Irish playwright, probably stole most of the other ones too, honestly. So like I said, he would crush it on him. The wealthy, wealthy and wise one is like, fuck you, man.

If I ever get to be a millionaire, I am sleeping in each ship. Ben Franklin. So interesting enough. So did he. Yeah. He ate shit. No, I'm. Ben Franklin.

Shit, eater. Interesting. I don't know that he didn't. Yeah, I guess. Okay. Maybe. My favorite quote from his Dalman act is aphorisms is he that I'm not. He'd eat her. Interesting. I don't know that he didn't. Yeah. I guess.

Okay. Maybe my favorite quote from his dogman act is aphorisms is he that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. And I got tricked, but I thought that was like, like I thought it was good. Right. I thought you were like, no, you'll be all set. If you fall in love with him, you got to love that self. And then you know, nobody will lose. You always win. Looks out the window over the retirement home one day.

Oh, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like that at 40 fucking dark. So another famous quote. So another famous quote that could be attributed to Franklin is, of course, no step on snack, right? He was the designer of the infamous Don't tread on me flag that remains popular with shitty people that suck even to this day. And shitty people that suck by the way, they can find a lot to like in Franklin. Okay, he's, he's the kind of patron saint of the bootstrap mentality. His writings are filled with musings about how lazy people will get if you have a robust social safety net form. He was staunchly conservative. And he was very much a white supremacist.

Like Rush Limbaugh talking points are far from the worst things that you'll find littered in his writings. He was also an early advocate of colonial unity. Long before the no step on snack, he produced a different famous snake based imprint that showed the various colonies as segments of a chopped up snake over the caption, join or die. How do he think snakes work? They're not Voltron, man. Yeah. Like, it doesn't make any sense.

Your backwards on this at the very least. Yeah. It was full before. And South Carolina was the last one. That one. Like, obviously, obviously, the way we had a spare Carolina, I don't know, the clack, the clack of matters. Now, he was appointed postmaster general to the colonies in 1737 as part of that job and presumably to get away from his wife, he traveled the colonies way more extensively than most. He was also a key contributor to the Albany Congress's plan of union in 1754, which laid a lot of the groundwork for both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. In fact, his advocacy for colonial unity has led some people to call him the first American, though to be fair, the bootstrap bullshit and racism are probably

better qualifiers for that title. One way or the other. He was also the first person to demand a t-shirt for finishing a big play to ribs. So that's actually crazy. Anyway, by 1747, he'd amassed a pretty substantial fortune. So he backed away from his printer duties and started the process of transferring that business to a partner that would continue to pay him for like two decades after he retired.

And so it was that well into his 40s, he retired from the job altogether and then went on to log another four lifetimes worth of achievements before checking out. Okay. I can't decide if I hate him or love him. Right. He's making the first library, but then he's like old timey iron ran, but then he's actually kind of like John Gaul, like for real though, doing stasis. You get in jive.

But okay, but he's slave owner shitty racist. So I hit him as where I landed, but like first, you know, he had some good stuff in there. All right, well, we'll see how it goes with the rest of Ben's life, with the old Ben's life. But first, a quick break for some opera pove, nothing. In addition, a man must earn by the sweat of his brow and nothing more else. He should become a layabout of the highest order.

Excuse me, Mr. Franklin, your breakfast is ready. Oh, thank you, slave, Michael. Dance, slave, Alice, I shall be down to eat it shortly. Oh, okay, what are you, what are you right there? Oh, I triatist on how to be a self-made man. I worry for the spirit of this land, slave, Michael. I worry. I bet.

Hey, maybe I could read it when you're done. I actually, I taught myself to read at night after you've fall asleep. Maybe I don't know offense Michael, but I think this would be above your head. It's about gumption and short spots. Not really your thing. Sure. Yeah, I get it.

Also, by the way, your brother sent another check for your column that you write in his paper and your father wants to know if you'd be so kind as to dying with his friend that's in town, they have a job offer for you apparently. Oh, again, fine. Very good, Mr. Franklin. Oh, and today, Michael. Yes, sir. Can you acquire me a kite and a key?

I'd like to try to get struck by lightning. I thought you'd never ask, sir. And we're back. When we left off, Ben Franklin was a very confusing combination of like a littlely dead, but also with a a Kant book, the critique pure reason, but also a musket. Nobody knew how to deal with them. It's very confusing. Yeah. And he had just retired at age 46 from the printing business. What's next?

Okay. So obviously nobody invented or even discovered electricity. Fish can make that shit. And that was noted in the historical record as far back as 2750 BCE. And no listener, I wanted it to be by the Atroskin's too. It wasn't a Egyptians. The first records of static electricity go back to 600 BCE to the also frustratingly non-Atroskin thales of Meletus. Hell, by the time Franklin came along, we even had the lightened jar, which was a device that would store a pretty

substantial static charge. But to that point, electricity had mostly been used for things that ended in, eh? Right? But Ben Franklin was among the first to look at lightning and go, you know, I bet that's the same shit. And he was most likely the first person to prove it. And even if he wasn't the first, like the French guy who beat him to it was like

basing his proof on Franklin's experience. Okay, I'm thinking about that light in jar. I'm just, I'm trying to think of what a non-prank war reason to have a jar of electricity would be in 1747. I'm very happy to say that I can't think of a single non-prank war reason to have a jar of electricity. A lot of fuck stuff you could open. Okay, so I would you open it up in electric eels, shoot out.

It's just like this. stuff you could. Okay, so I would you open it up in electric eels, shoot out. So, but honestly, it would be hard to overstate Franklin's contribution to electrical research. Um, he's Thor, the thunder god there. Did it? Don't you feel stupid? No, no, Franklin contributed way more to electrical research. Anyway, foundational experiments that he did that laid the groundwork for later scientists. And to emphasize the importance of his contribution, I have another list of Franklin coinages for you. He was the first person to use battery to refer to an electrical storage device.

He was the first person to use positive and negative to describe electrical charge. He invented the term electrical charge. He also coined the terms armature, condenser, conductor, discharge, electrician, and, and perhaps telling finale, electric shock. Yeah, up till then, orchestras had to call their boss arm-wavy guy. It was the war. You know, there's a different conductors, right? Like his name.

He does not know that. No. I'm a fun. So at the same time that his electricity experience, so we're making him an international celebrity, he was also hard at work inventing shit. His most famous invention, of course, is the lightning rod. And that's obviously an extension of his work with electricity. But it made for some super easy, prometheus comparisons in the worldwide media. He also famously invented bifocal lenses and less famously, the first flexible urinary catheter. Really? Okay, I just feel like somebody would have thought of that the minute we even considered putting in an inflexible. Somebody would be like, well, why don't we just not have it? Don't make a lot of assumptions, Heath. Remember up until Franklin every time there was a fire, they just like shrugged and built

a new house, I guess. Yeah. Now, they would buy up the land and burn them on purpose as we learned last week. He also invented, by the way, the Franklin stove. I don't know that that really matters. As much people always mention it though. And much to the chagrin of iron, and her ilk, he never patented any of his inventions, saying instead that quote, we should be glad of an opportunity

to serve others by any invention of ours. And this we should do freely and generously and quote. Franklin also did important scientific work studying why oil and water didn't mix. And I only bring that up for two reasons. One is that biographers love to seize on this experiment, stealing the waves as an analogy to his later work as a diplomat. But the other is because it led to an amazing invention that I love so goddamn much. He made a cane with a hollow spot inside that he'd keep like vegetable oil in it or something.

And then when he would see a little inlet that was particularly perturbed, he could go up to it and he would say, come yourself in temperate waves and he would smack it with his cane. And then he would like hit the secret switch or whatever that opens the reservoir. And freak everybody the fuck out. Everyone's just politely clapping and he's like, oh, sure, but when Moses does it,

it's all right. So by 1757, Franklin was by far the most famous person in America. He's America's best selling author. It's most revered scientist and its widiest satirist. He's also been active in Pennsylvania politics and civic groups for decades at this point. So when the Pennsylvania assembly had to send somebody to England to settle a dispute with the colonies per priors, Franklin was the logical choice. He would remain in London for the next 18 years on a mission that would morph from

him trying to get the king to do something about the pens to trying to stave off a war between the colonies and their mother country. He would of course fail on both counts and return to the colonies in 1775 on the eve of war. Proving that before America was even America, failure would not be deterrent to political success. No, not a lick. No, I should know by the way, during that 18 year stint, he only came home once and it was really brief. What's more, his wife never so much has popped over to England to see him for a week.

And now obviously popping over to England, a bit more of a commitment in the days before transcontinental flights. But still 18 fucking years. She would die the year before transcontinental flights, but still 18 fucking years. She would die the year before he made it back. And after a long illness that he knew all about, anyway, he took his son, William, with him on the trip. And eventually the British tried to like gain a measure of control over Ben by making William Franklin, the governor of New Jersey, and then threatening to take that away if he

pissed him up. What that actually ended up doing was creating a rift between the two that saw him fighting on opposite sides of a war, and that rift was never rectified. Okay, you know all the garbage that sits for days and the streets in New York. Well, when that finally gets hauled away, you get to be governor of that.

How's that? Hey, that garbage is my backyard, sir. How dare you? And it gets picked up every day. We just make that much more. A lot of people are losing. That's right. So by the time he got back to Philadelphia in 1775, the Revolutionary War had already

started. The opening shots at Lexington and Concord were about two weeks old. And the Pennsylvania Assembly was called upon to name a delegate to the second continental Congress. They chose Franklin, unanimously. So in June of the following year, he winds up on the committee tasked with drafting the Declaration of Independence. I feel like Ben Franklin showed up to draft that. And he's like, okay, so I write a

satirical slam poem full of bon mo about how England is actually dead as a good, little, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, as a good no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no a misunderstanding here. A lot of people are under the impression that America was founded by a bunch of old white rich racist, misogynistic, tax evading slave owners, but reality, some of them were quite young. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was 33 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton, all at 21 and he wasn't even the youngest. That honor goes to Virginia Sprintley representative James Monroe, who was only 18 years old. Ben Franklin, though, was the oldest at 70. He was also disabled through a huge chunk of the proceedings by Gout. So mostly he was attached to the endeavor because of the prestigious, his name. That being said, he did ultimately play a key role in both the drafting of the declaration and the part where they had to convince everybody to sign the damn thing. It's also a spot for another great coinage.

This is where he's supposed to have said that everyone then must, quote, all hang together or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately and quote nice. Now, of course, the Septuaginary in Franklin was far too old to serve any real purpose or travel great distances at this point, except no, no, no, fuck he wasn't. So he became America's ambassador to France in December of 1776. And then he headed back across the Atlantic during wartime when the other guys maybe dominated that particular ocean and set about convincing the French to openly ally with America in their

fight for independence. And along the way, he would add America's greatest diplomat to his growing list of superlatives. Hell that title until Robert Oppenheimer and Oh, she's Oh, shit. Remains the greatest we have. Yeah, no, I think you're right, actually. Now, this was actually a pretty easy assignment in a sense right because France

fucking hated England France had always hated England and they wanted nothing more than to break up their American empire, especially the parts that butted up against their New Orleans claims. So, uh, but on the other hand, of course, this war was being framed as a battle for independence and democracy and the French aristocracy had some well-founded reasons to be terrified of that idea catching on world. What? Franklin, though, was the darling of the Enlightenment and his electricity experiments

had made him an a-list celebrity in France. Yeah, the French really got a charge out of him. Didn't they? So I'm embarrassed by that. So he said about appreciating himself with the who's who of Paris to unabashed hedonism, the letters that John Adams wrote about it. God damn amazing, but, but it was successful hedonism, right? It will in the sense that he got a lot of ass for a 70 year old, but also in the sense

that he ultimately convinced France to join the war effort and then helped broker the peace in Paris when the whole thing was over. Most of your Franklin, I was unsure of your cause until I saw just how much Poon you were slaying. Frances, are me as yours to come out? What is it? Isn't that very, very French? Oh, you actually use a loan too. Any chance you like magic with such dirty ears, perhaps we could get. So Franklin could cross back over the Atlantic one more time in 1785 and enter the country

he'd helped create for the first time, but in his absence, of course, the people in charge of things had fucked it all the way up with their articles of Confederation. So in 1787, the now 81 year old Franklin would head off to the constitutional convention of 1787 and play a key role in drafting that founding document as well. Now granted the key role he played was largely in hammering out the bullshit system where each state gets two senators, even if they have a smaller population than Milwaukee. But it is depends what he wanted was a unicameral legislature that was as democratically elected as was possible at the time.

He just recognized that that nonsense was as close as he was going to get and hope that we'd have gotten our shit together enough to fix it by now. Now, obviously, by the time the Constitutional Convention wrapped up, the now octogenarian statesmen had contributed all that he had to offer to society. Accept his posthumously published autobiography, which he started writing in 1771 and continued to work out throughout his life in which many regard as the first great work of American literature. He eventually got around a dying in 1790 at the age of 84. And by all accounts he used his last words to be a smart ass douchebag, his daughter Sally,

who was caring for him at the time, told him to roll over onto his side so he could breathe more easily. Franklin replied, quote, a dying man can do nothing easy, end quote, and then die. I'm not rolling over. I'm just going to die. Everything's a pain in the ass. I'm out. Right. So approximately. I'm just going to die. Oh, I'm sick. Everything's a pain in the ass. I'm out. Right. So approximately 20,000 people attended his funeral. Now that's a big number,

but it's all the bigger when you consider that this country had four million people in it that that's like one out of every 200 Americans was at his funeral. God damn right. There were memorial services held from around the world in an in France, the government declared three official days of mourning. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I should have at least learned to fly a kite by now. I'm way behind. All right, Noah. I will go first. Ben Franklin was a notable cad into his 70s, which he could do because a he never left for tomorrow. Who he could do for today.

I like it when you make it easy. I mean, it's a it is a God. You guys are so good. I know. Let's go back to that, that snake that jumps into like one big snake. It's like pieces of a snake. What is the best name for a giant combining macasnake? I love it. Hey, bitey morphin power Rangers. Motron, C, anaphylactic shockwave. Constricted cons. Oh, just because I want to say it with my own fucking mouth, it's got to be C anaphylactic shockwave.

You are correct. Yes. Brilliant. It's pretty good. That's pretty good. All right. No, I'm frankly, I'm pretty, but we have a lot to learn from old people. What did today's generation of octogenarians have to teach us?

Oh, no. Cut this question. How to watch daytime TV on purpose? Beef. How to sell your house for 9,000 times what you bought it for. But still be poor. See how to glorify a pre-segregated America with a straight face or D. How did die of COVID?

Oh, shit. Agents secret answer. E, I don't want to die of COVID. Oh shit. Agents. Secret answer, E, I don't wanna say anything now. That is absolutely correct, no, really. Oh, I know, listen to your numbers. They can't hear this podcast. I ran the table, so I would like an essay next week from Cecil. All right, well, for Tom Noah, Eli and Cecil, I ran the table. So I would like an essay next week from Cecil.

All right, well, for Tom Noah, Eli and Cecil, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, Cecil, be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on Cog of the Distance, and you can hear Eli know in myself on God of the Movies,

skating atheist, skeptic rat, and D&D minus, and sometimes Tom and Cecil on skeptic rat, and it's so much fun too. And if you don't feel like buying our NFTs, you can make a purpose. So no such a step, we don't have. You just go to Patreon.com slash citation pod. Or if you do want to do the NFTs,

you can just email Ethan right at you by the way. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, this is the best episodes. I'm so glad you're here. We'll take a look at the show notes, check out citationpod.com.