The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet: The Favorite Founder’s Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity by Michael Meyer

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet: The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity by Michael Meyer The incredible story of Benjamin Franklin’s parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia—a deathbed wager that captures the Founder’s American Dream and his lessons for our current, conflicted age Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump‑start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. In Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, Michael Meyer traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and silversmiths, trade schools and space races. Over time, Franklin’s wager was misused, neglected, and contested—but never wholly extinguished. With charm and inquisitive flair, Meyer shows how Franklin’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play to this day, and offers an inspiring blueprint for prosperity in our modern era of growing wealth disparity and social divisions.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss live books response here from thecrisponshow.com thecrisponshow.com hey we're coming to your podcast who knew we'd do another we've been doing this damn thing for 12 bloody years. I think it goes on 13 here in August.

12 years, and we did another podcast. No one saw that coming, I'm sure. But thank you to you all who subscribed. Be sure to refer to the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. Get them to subscribe to the show. Leave a great referral on iTunes if you can. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Hit the bell notification button.

Go to goodreads.com. That's Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. All of our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, the big LinkedIn group. Join that thing. 131,000 people have a LinkedIn newsletter. It is killing it over there. So make sure you go follow me and the show over there on LinkedIn. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out.

It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

Or order the book where refined books are sold. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. He's the author of a multitude of books. Very interesting discussion we've been having in the green room. His name is Michael Meyer. Not the one in the Halloween series, evidently. That was Michael Myers, I believe. But Michael Meyer is here with us, and he's much better at sharing his knowledge than, of course, the aforementioned Halloween movie star.

Sorry, Michael. I is late all the time well i mean as long as you don't get confused on your tinder profile so there you go his latest book we're having too much fun at this point michael or benjamin franklin's last bet the favorite founders divisive death enduring afterlife and blueprint for american prosperity you're going to want to check out this interview because this is amazing stuff i don't even know this is going on with some of the stuff that he talks about in his book michael meyer took a wide route to the story of Benjamin Franklin's remarkable afterlife, starting when Meyer was sent to China as one of its first Peace Corps volunteers. Beginning in the last days of old Beijing, he authored three critically acclaimed reported books set there, as well as numerous stories that appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Time, Smithsonian, and This American Life.

A Guggenheim Fellow and Widening Award winner. Clearly, I haven't won the award, and I've never won one. Has also received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the New York Public Library's Coleman Center for Scholars and Writers, McDowell, and Rockefeller Foundation's Blagio Center in Italy. I can spell Blagio. I'm from Vegas. Currently a Fulbright scholar in Taipei and fellow

at Oxford University's Center for Life Writing. He is working on a biography of Taiwan. He is a professor of English and he's already failed me at the University of Pittsburgh. He's non nonfiction writing. And he lives a few doors down from Fred Rogers' old house in Squirrel Hill.

Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great, Chris. That whole intro was fantastic, and you made me sound a lot smarter than I really am, so I appreciate that. There's a lot in there. I feel stupider now. I'm just kidding. Well, I should tell listeners I'm old old so it's not like i did all this when i was 22 right but let's talk about benjamin franklin let's not talk about me okay well let's do that so give us your let's start with your plugs if you don't mind first where can people find you and get to know you've been on the interwebs and order up your fine book sure i'm on twitter at meyer writer y-e-r-w-r-i-t-e-r and. And actually Michael Myers with his mask on is my little avatar there.

On that Twitter feed, I post a picture, at least one picture every day from here in Tai Bay where I'm working on a book. So if people are interested just to see what's going on over in Taiwan, what do the streets look like on a given day, I post that there. So you can connect with me through Twitter. There you go. So what's it like working with your sister, Christy? What's her face? No, hold on. That's Michael Myers. Sorry, I got that confused. What motivated you want to write this book? So frankly, you mentioned in the intro that I took

a wide route to the story. I never thought anything. If you said the name Benjamin Franklin, I would have thought of the kite or I would have thought of him on the $100 bill. He's kind of become like Yoda at this point in America, right? He says, you hear these cute sayings of his. Didn't really know much about the guy. And when I came back from working in China, the State Department invited me to a lunch for then President Hu Jintao. And the wisdom of our government was that we can have one writer come to these things. You can't, it shows we have a little class, but maybe you don't invite two writers because

they'll just sit and complain the whole time about the thing. So I walked in to the stage, sweating through this cheap suit. And the elevator door opens and you walk into this room. It looks like an 18th century sort of movie set, right? It has those curtains that always catch fire in those old movies. And beautiful wood floors and Paul Revere's silver and so forth. And Colin Powell was talking to Barbra Streisand and Yo-Yo Ma was playing his cello. And I thought, I don't fit here.

This isn't me at all. And so I walked into a side room and I put my hand on a table to rest. And a voice said, don't touch that. And I snapped to attention, looked over. It was a Marine guard standing by the wall. And he said, that's the table where Benjamin Franklin signed the Treaty of Paris. And immediately I thought, I don't know what the Treaty of Paris is. And so the Marine and I started talking. And he was saying how Franklin was the first expat and he lived most of the last 30 years of his life overseas. And I was like, I didn't know any of this stuff.

And so throughout the whole lunch, I felt really stupid that I knew a lot about Chinese history because I'd been living and writing in China and I knew very little about the founding of my own country. And so when I got back to the room, I started Googling Franklin, as one does, and that led me to reading his last will and testament. And I thought, how do I not know the story of his will? How is there not a book about this story? And it's time to write a book when the book you want doesn't exist, right?

And so I started researching this remarkable will and this bet that he put on America before he died. So tell us about that. Because I was reading it and I was like, holy crap, I've got a couple of books on Ben Franklin. I never heard anything about this. That's crazy. Yeah, the stories, these biographies are like as thick as a railroad tie, right? You really have to be committed to get through them. And they usually end with his death. And yet, right in the months before he died, Franklin added a wager to his will. The last thing he added to his will was codicil saying, I'm going to put a thousand pounds, which was a lot of money back then,

in an account for Boston and a thousand pounds in an account for Philadelphia. And those two cities have to have someone manage for free. Someone has to step forward and manage this for free, small loans for business people. And I want to go to tradespeople who are ending their apprenticeships, want to start their own businesses, hang their shingle out as I did when he became a printer in Philadelphia, want them to be loaned this money at a small interest rate, pay it back over 10 years. The principal will grow due to compound interest. And then after a hundred years, I want Boston and Philadelphia to get together in their cities, get together and decide to spend a

bulk of the money that I leave them on something that benefits the common good. But he wasn't done. Then he said it for another hundred years. I want that money lent to tradespeople to start their own businesses. And then after 200 years, I want Boston and Philadelphia to get together and spend all the money. And he had figured out that if you put a thousand pounds in each pot, he figured after 200 years, it would be worth 4 million pounds. So it's hard to do historical money, but it was a lot, right? So it was a lot when he left the money to begin with, but after 200 years, it was really, you referenced Vegas and Bellagio. He really thought it was going to be a jackpot after these 200 years. So the book story of this money, of this bet and why he did it. I didn't even know about this. This is crazy, man. And so

all this time up until, I think you said up until 1991, someone's been overseeing this and doing it and collecting the loans. Tell us how that's been working. What's amazing is that the money's still out there today. And so I don't know spoilers, but you can physically walk into something in Boston, a place and see Franklin's money at work. If you're a young person in Philadelphia wanting to learn crafts or trade, they've expanded the definition. You can apply for money to do this if you don't want to get a four-year degree and go that track instead. And so that's what blew my mind is that when I started looking into the story that not only can you go to Boston and Philadelphia into archives, open the loan

books, follow the money, right? Look at the bricklayer or the glazier or the tailor or the carpenter who received the loan. You can then follow them over those 10 years to see, well, did they make good? Did they pay the money back? Were they successful? And then, because this is a very American story, there's also lots of lawsuits. And so it was fascinating too to look at how many people sued Boston and Philadelphia, including Franklin's descendants over the last 30 years saying, well, you're not managing the money well, or Frank was visionary in so many ways, but he was wrong in thinking the apprenticeship system was going to stick around. And maybe we should expand the idea of what a tradesperson is like a worker in 2022

is a lot different than in 1792. Right. Well, it's fascinating to look at how that money has grown and changed along with our definition of the United States. Right. Franklin felt very strongly that skilled workers, that tradespeople were so crucial to our democracy because they worked literally at the ground level. They interacted with people of all different classes and religions and races. They were self-taught, knew the impact of taxes on our government policy, right, on daily life, on their business. And so that fascinated me too, because now I think the number always changes, but more than half Americans identify as working class, but less than 2% of Congress people have ever held a working class job, right? So Franklin would also be distraught that, oh,

it's cool, my money's still going, but look at our government today and how many of those people really know what it's like to own a small business or not have a four-year degree to take a different path, right? It was really interesting to me. I sat down over, I think a couple of years ago and well, not, I think it was last year. I sat down with the constitution and read it. And I probably read it as a child or as a kid in school. And you're're not really concerned you're reading it because there's a cute girl over on aisle nine there in the in the rows and that's about it and the history teachers teach and you're just like i'm 17 i don't care about any of this crap and some of it's stuck but you know everyone runs around like chicken heads going pear heads going i don't know what the cost the Constitution says. You should do it this way.

I remember one guy on our, this is a sidebar, but I remember one guy on my post recently who's like, what is it, the Preposition 2? That's not a preposition. The Amendment 2, the gun thing, is more important than the Constitution. And I'm like, dude, are you freaking kidding me? You can't have the Bill of Rights without the

Constitution. You're an idiot. It's like, we need a Constitution. All we need is the amendments. You're like, okay, well, welcome to America. But my point being is I got a chance to sit down and read it, and of course a lot of things that went on in the last year, last year and a half, January 6th, the election,

it really was amazing how not only Ben Franklin, but many of the founders really saw so far into the future these guys had a vision that was astounding and so that that's what really blows my mind too about this thing he saw 200 years in the future or just tried to plan for it and i think two things that what you just said too like a the constitutional convention blows my mind because they hated they really didn't get along a lot of these guys right This ties into the will too, because I saw Franklin's will as sort of a, on camera, waggled the fingers on the nose sort of thing. Like I saw him, he knew he was the oldest of the founders. He was the first to die of them. And he knew his will was going to be published. And so throughout the will,

we can talk about his bet and the loans to tradesmen, which is certainly part of this. But throughout his will, he's making points, publicly shaming some of his heirs, you get nothing. And making sure you get a lot. And here's why and really making his values known. And I think the wagers, the funding of the tradesmen was another sort of FU toward his fellow founders saying, none of you are going to do this, something like this. You don't have the imagination to do this. You don't have the working class background that I have. Will starts, I, Benjamin Franklin, printer. He put his trade before any of his other accomplishments, inventor, statesman, and so forth. But I see it in the book. I'm looking at this as given how fraught his reputation was at his death. There was no state funeral for Franklin when he died. His American eulogy wasn't delivered until almost a year after he had passed. And then

it was read by his biggest enemy, a guy that had bandered him as fathering his first son with a prostitute publicly shaming him and so forth. And this loan scheme was really him telling his fellow founders to like, I'm different than you. And I'm going to make sure that my vision for what America should be and who should be in our government is carried forward 100 years and then 200 years. It was almost like he was ensuring that his name would be in the headline right now, because how many of us really talk about John Adams? Great vision.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. be in the headline right now because how many of us really talk about john adams great vision yeah yeah yeah i mean there's that beef he didn't have with george washington because it was ben franklin's cherry tree that he cut down no i'm just kidding that's a joke people don't queue in on that crap that's a joke so give us i mean we can't of course divulge the whole book give us some of the maybe standout stories that you liked in the book of how the money was used or how it was applied or maybe how it appreciated. Yeah, I like when you sit down with the ledgers and you open them and they're crinkly old pages and they smell of the leather binding and so forth. I liked when I started reading right away in the ledgers that I could see the Boston and Philadelphia looked like in 1791 because the people who got the loans were like a bricklayer, a tailor, a house painter, a baker, a hairdresser. You were sort of populating the village. And you start cheering for these people. You start hoping that as you turn the page, they're going to make their payments every year because it means their business is thriving.

Some of the people, they really did fulfill Franklin's idea of what this should help. One guy became mayor of Boston after starting a shop. Another guy moved out to Indiana to Franklin County, of all places, and became a state senator and then a judge. Franklin would have loved that. Other people fell behind on their payments and start trying to catch up, and they disappear from the page. Or their sureties or guarantors step in, like Paul Revere stepped in and paid off his son-in-law's loan after his son-in-law went mad, maybe from lead poisoning. We don't know. And so I love those early stories.

And then the War of 1812 happens. Philadelphia loses its status as capital. The Erie Canal opens. So Philadelphia loses its status as great port. And then you start seeing into the 1800s, Andrew Jackson becomes president. There's a whole new wave of what's important in American politics and job training. Then you start seeing the changes in our country. And then in the Civil War, you start seeing different people getting loans. And this is around the same time

in Boston that they invented something called the investment bank. And they invented something called the trustee, right? And now you start seeing this other vision for Franklin's money, which is a very American brand of philanthropy, which is that in America, we have this weird hybrid idea that if you leave money behind, you shouldn't just give it away. You should invest it and it should earn money. And part of that should go out, right? And then you see the tax deductible charity donation come into play during World War I. And so as the book is going on, I'm tracing for readers the evolution of our understanding of money, our understanding of investment, our understanding of what philanthropy should be as well. And then I could go on for hours about this, but to bring this to a conclusion,

I love that in the 20th century, a bunch of people inspired by Franklin come forward and start donating their own money. And among those, Carnegie says, oh, I should be a philanthropist like Franklin. And then you start seeing Franklin's money building thing in Boston and Philadelphia, trade schools, museums, science institutes that you can still go visit today. And again, to wrap this up, I just love that as you keep going forward, you see Franklin's money changing. It's growing, but it's also funding different kinds of trades people, including nurses, including firefighters, now computer coders, people who fix HVAC systems, you know, that our definition of what a trades person is changed over time as well. And this is really amazing. I mean, it ben franklin's ultimate pay it forward program it is yeah this is like when i used to go to this is like when i used to go to starbucks in vegas

and some early in the morning would pay the first person's thing and just go on only this goes on for 200 freaking years did that really ever happen to you i've always wondered if that's true yeah it used to happen it was always at my starbucks in las vegas did you get mad it was your turn to pay it forward yeah how much to pay you're like i don't know is how many people are in the car behind me i don't want to screw this up i suddenly have pressure i'm just trying to wake the fuck up and drink some goddamn coffee and i've got pressure you know it's like peer pressure in the morning like who needs that crap i could do a stand-up on this bit so you're looking at the car behind you going how much does that asshole drink because this asshole in front of me paid for this shit they got the matcha latte when you just want

a cup of black coffee yeah you're just like i don't know maybe they're one of those people who takes like 50 ingredients they're one of those women who are just like i gotta have mackey milk and the almond butter and the god knows you know there's people that pay like 15 bucks for that crap anyway, but it was the ultimate thing. So my question to you that I'm leaning into a long way around with as much comedy as possible, or no one's laughing at that is the Walmart workers qualify for this, but no, really, it seems like he really wanted the presence on owning your own business. And it's interesting to me how still important that was after 200 plus years. He's this guy.

He's got all these contrasts in him and that he's always embarrassed at his lack of education because he only had two years of formal schooling. He does all charitable philanthropic organizations in Philadelphia. He builds the first library or raises funds for it. And then he admits no one benefited more from that library than he did. Right. Because he's always in there reading. or raises funds for it. And then he admits no one benefited more from that library than he did, right? Because he's always in there reading. And so he has this need to help people who like himself feel maybe stupid

or on the side of society when in fact they should be at the fore. And so you're right, the 200-year thing, I call him in the book, he's a forerunner of microfinance, this idea of a little can go a long way. He's also a forerunner of the open source movement. He believed really strongly that he should not, the patent office wasn't open when

he was alive. That was Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s. But Franklin could have gotten exclusive commercial licenses for his inventions, like his stove, lightning rod, and bifocals, and swim fins, and the catheter. He refused. He said, I benefit from technology. I benefit from other people's ideas. People behind me, other generations should benefit as well. And so he did this with his money. He said, look, when I got to Philadelphia, I was broke. I was penniless. I gave some of my last money to a woman and a child on the boat who were continuing their journey. I was lucky that when I landed in Philadelphia, people took me in. His future wife, Deborah's family took him in, lived above her father's shop.

People came forward and lent him money. He had a business partner that turned out to be a drunk. And some friends came forward and said, Franklin, you got to buy this guy out. He's going to bring your print shop down. And so when Franklin was dying, he said, I want to do the same thing. Like you said, I'm going to pay it forward. I receive money from people. I want to pay that help forward as well.

But the remarkable thing, as you just said, it wasn't just, I'm going to do this for a year. Here's a thousand pounds, right? I'm going to do this for 200 years. 200 years. Wow. And he assumed that people would always be into it, right? That people would step forward and manage this account for free and keep track of the loans and that the people who got the loans would pay it back. And remarkably, many of them did. I think he sort of assumed everybody had the same engine he did, part of the ethic and the responsibility.

And of course, a lot of people are gold brickers. They don't want to pay it back, right? They got the money and they fled. But that's few and far between going forward. What was the average loan? Is there an average set amount loan or is that just whoever is the trustee? That's a good question. So it was 1,000 pounds originally, which is about 4,000 bucks at the time,

but worth hundreds of thousands because you, again, a guy would make a pound a week back then on his job. But it was a thousand pound pot and then 60 pounds for each loan. And then when the dollar became official currency in the 1790s, it was set at 300 bucks, which was enough to start a business back then.

And then some other people kicked in some money. So it rose to 500, 600. And then some other people kicked in some money. So it rose to 500, 600. And as we go through the book, the amount increases. And the crazy thing to me was that when you look at the 10 trades that got loans in 1791, when this started, in the 1950s, Philadelphia said, well, is this thing still viable? Do we still have tradespeople in Philadelphia? This was after World War II and the Industrial Revolution and everything else. And they did a survey. They found that the 10 trades that received money from Franklin in 1791, those 10 trades were still operating in Philadelphia. And in fact, the electrician, the masons, the shoemaker, the jewelers, et cetera,

of bakers, of course, they were still operating in Philadelphia. So they were receiving loans that were still enough to open a business at that time. Wow. I didn't know that inspired Carnegie. That's really amazing. And a lot of other philanthropy. Was he America's first philanthropist, technically? Franklin was.

I call him that in the book. And I'm not saying that for a blurb or a pull quote. But it's strange to me when, I mean, you read these doorstop biographies of Franklin or you see his monument in Philadelphia and we always hear, oh, he's a statesman, he's a diplomat, he's an inventor. And I never hear him credited as being a philanthropist because he absolutely was. Now that term wasn't around in his time. It was charity.

But absolutely. And remarkably too, he refused to have his philanthropy named after himself. And that really differentiated from Carnegie, right? That Carnegie, Carnegie, Carnegie slapped his name on everything. And partly that was because after the bloodshed at the Homestead Steelwork, Pinkerton and striking workers were killed in the 1890s. Carnegie started this this waterfall of giving to sort of wash the bloodstains from his name. And there were a lot of american cities that refused the carnegie library so you can't you can't buy your reputation

here in our town people criticize carnegie saying you're putting your name on everything franklin never did that so different than today right now it's like an advertisement for yourself but franklin was unique in that regard yeah if i loan money to people i make them get a tattoo with my name on it. You think I'm kidding, don't you? Anytime I need to send collectors out, I'm like, yeah, just look for this boss on his hand. Is that maybe why we didn't hear about it as much? Because the fund isn't named after him?

I think so. We don't see. It's the Philadelphia Academy, not the Franklin University. Really? Wow. Yeah, he wouldn't put his name on things. And he said, the reason he did is he could have invented the matching grant. So the idea that now if you give to your radio station, a hundred bucks, my corporation will donate a hundred dollars. Yeah, he counted that among his favorite inventions. That's how he got the Pennsylvania

Hospital built. Pennsylvania Hospital is still functioning in Philadelphia today. He said that if you don't put yourself forward as the inventor of a scheme or of a cause, more people will sign on. If you go forward and say, it's the Franklin Hospital, then why would some other guys say, oh yeah, I want to kick in some money for that because I'm giving you glory, right, instead. At the same time, Franklin said that usually the people with the least money are the most charitable.

I think that's still true today. They don't want to look like they're poor or they know how important a little donation can be. And the last thing he said is that it is true though, that when you're raising money, you should make the list of givers public, which is annoying today. When you walk into an American university or a library, you see that big poster or that plaque of who gives. I'm always happy when I see anonymous. I've yet to see a university building named anonymous in the anonymous hall, but Franklin knew our tendencies. He thought America was real charitable and willing to give, but at the same time, he didn't want to put himself forward. And maybe that's why the loans needed rescuing

after a hundred years. Like you said, maybe we don't know about it more because there isn't something called the Franklin Loan or the Franklin University or the Franklin Trade School, right? Or maybe he just wanted to not make it popular so he knew you would write a book in 240 some odd years. And he had that much foresight. These guys were amazing to me, reading the Constitution and really sitting down and absorbing, not just blaze through it, read it like a playboy or whatever. Just for the, you just read the comic parts of it. The centerfold on it is amazing, though, in the Constitution.

It's the Bill of Rights. Yeah, there you go. There you go. It's quite the layout. Let's put it that way. The bikini shots are amazing. But I don't know about the wigs, though. The wigs are kind of need to be updated.

Anyway, but reading through that and the Federalist Papers on how they designed the Constitution, the foresight was amazing. I mean, we would not have a democracy right now if it had not been for, I believe, Madison and a couple other founders that said, if we let the government control elections at the federal state, it's easier to be seized by one man and one power. That's right. And the fact that it was with the states is the reason we're still a democracy right now. After the more we're uncovering from January 6th. And the foresight these guys had when you read the Federalist Papers to see into the future and into what they did.

And I probably need to read a book on the Congress of itself where they were arguing over all these points. But it's just really amazing to me how foresight and visionary these folks were. And I also like in the book, I talk about how I agree with you on that. I also talk about how wrong they were on a lot of things. And I was amazed. Franklin's always so visionary. He's so incredible. Look at these inventions. He had a lot of bad ideas too. He said we should have a new alphabet that takes away the letters Q, X, and Y. Maybe that's not a bad idea. I don't know. It didn't catch on. But at the Constitutional Convention, he would not drop this idea. He felt that elected officials should not have a salary. They should not be paid. And you could argue back and forth on why that's bad or good. But at the time he had said, if our offices are places of profit, we're only going

to have greedy people who want to promote themselves. But he refused. So when he was, his other delegates just were like, oh, we're going to humor old Ben here. Madison wrote like, everybody kind of nodded and it's old Ben, so we'll listen to him. But no one took it seriously. But Franklin then took that idea and made this wager on the working class because he was appointed governor of Pennsylvania for three years, and he refused his salary. And so the money that Pennsylvania owed him as governor, he said, I'm going to take that money and pay that forward to the working class in this loan scheme. And even then, his fellow founders mocked him. John Adams, long after Franklin had died,

said he made a fool of himself with this idea that politicians shouldn't be paid. The idea was so stupid, but he wouldn't drop it. He even put it in his ridiculous will, right? Which, again, is funny because Adams kind of did the same thing in his will. Adams had two sons who were called alcoholics, and he ensured that the children of these sons would be taken care of in life. And he kind of did the same thing Franklin did, where he put a pot of money aside for them and said, compound interest is going to accrue on this and you can withdraw it in small amounts. So, yeah, Franklin, again, like some of these guys, brilliant. And at the same time, I always say they're ahead of their time, but they're very much of their time. Right.

Slavery, obviously, Franklin was unique in that regard. He presented the first petition to abolish slavery to the Senate, which he was roundly ridiculed for that. You're a former slave owner. What are you doing, Franklin, bringing this forward to us? They didn't think ahead in Pennsylvania. He's ensuring that everybody in his will knows that the bulk of his estate is going to his beloved daughter. And he even puts in the will, hey, husband of my daughter, this isn't for you. I think you're a great guy. Her own independence, my gift to her, right? So again, the will is fascinating to me. And I talk about this throughout the book and that he's leaving these little nudges, right? These little needle to his fellow founders about, look, this is the way you do it. Note to self, have my will drawn as a weapon that's going to last for 200 years is a big fuck you to people. Totally.

Thanks. No, actually, you said, was it Q, X, and Z you want to remove from the alphabet? See, he saw into the future that wheel of fortune contestants would lose over stuff like that that's how much of a fucking visionary this guy was amazing pat sajak owes him everything i don't know i don't know what that means alcoholism i don't know anyway enough about pat sajak at his own admission so i'm not picking on the guy he's a lovely gentleman so anything more you want to touch on or tease out about the book before we go? I hope people read it as a page turner. Look, I was the kid in school that sat and stared out the window that was never paying attention. As a teacher now, I love my favorite

students are the kids that sit in the back and look out the window and don't pay attention. I really did. I looked, I stood before that shelf of Franklin books and I thought, good Lord, these are big. Look at all this, all these words about Franklin. And they kind of repeat the same stories over and over again as great as they all are and i wanted to do something really different and my folks are in construction i'm the black sheep of the family because i went to college my mom can read a blueprint and price a job i can't do that she's smarter than i am i wrote this book very much with her in mind saying am i going to hold her interest i'm doing a good job because franklin really did see himself as a trades person before anything else. And he did think that field workers are important to our democracy. So please, I just want listeners to know this is a book for everyone.

This is the history. This is a real page turner. There you go. And I think you're doing it too, to make sure she keeps you in your will and doesn't pull Ben Franklin. That's the ultimate goal. There you go. Gotta keep on those good That's the ultimate goal. There you go. You got to keep on those good sides as parents. Yeah, there you go. Anyway, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Michael. Very entertaining and funny as well. Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. Give us your plugs one more time as we go out so people can find you on the interwebs. Look for me on Twitter at Meyer Writer. M-E-Y-E-R-W-R-I-T-E-R at Meyer Writer. There you go. Guys, order at the book wherever fine books are sold. Remember, don't go to those alleyway bookstores unless you have a tetanus shot or you want to get stabbed. Go to the fine bookstores. Order up Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet,

The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity. Go to goodreads.com, Forrest S. Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, Forrest S. Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, Ford says Chris Voss. Our group's on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those places the Chris Voss Show is at.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.