Ben Franklin's World

Ben Franklin's World

This is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world. Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Episodes

BFW Revisited: Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site

March 17, 2026 • 61 mins
250 years ago, the British evacuated Boston: driven out by cannon that had traveled 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga. But where did the plan for those cannons take shape?In this Revisited episode, we return to our conversation with Garrett Cloer, now Program Manager for Interpretation and Visitor Experience at Saratoga National Historical Park, to explore the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambr...
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436 Fort Ticonderoga & Henry Knox's Noble Train of Artillery

March 10, 2026 • 87 mins
On March 17, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, driven out by cannon hauled 300 miles through winter wilderness from a crumbling fort in upstate New York. Join Matthew Keagle, Curator at Fort Ticonderoga, as we trace the fort's dramatic history from its French origins in the Seven Years' War, its chaotic capture by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in May 1775, and Henry Knox's legendary expedition to move nearly 60 tons of artille...
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435 Common Sense at 250: The Unfinished Work of Democracy, A Live Conversation

March 3, 2026 • 83 mins
In January 1776, Thomas Paine told the American colonies to break free from their king. But what was supposed to come next? 250 years later, that question still doesn't have a good answer. To mark the anniversary of *Common Sense*, we traveled to Lewes, England, the town where Paine lived before he ever set foot in America, and recorded our first-ever LIVE episode inside Bull House, the building where Paine honed his ideas about ci...
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434 Freeborn Black Soldiers in the American Revolution

February 24, 2026 • 73 mins
What would you fight for if you were free but still not equal? In 1777, brothers William and Benjamin Frank answered that question by enlisting in the Second Rhode Island Regiment of the Continental Army. Freeborn men of color, they gambled that military service would earn them what freedom alone had not: equality, land, and a better future. Historian Shirley Green, author of Revolutionary Blacks: Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers o...
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BFW Revisited: The American Revolution's African American Soldiers

February 17, 2026 • 53 mins
More than 6,000 Black men—free and enslaved—served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Yet their stories remain some of the least told of the war. In this revisited episode, we rejoin Judith Van Buskirk, Professor Emerita of History at SUNY Cortland and author of Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution, to explore what motivated African American men to fight for the Revo...
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433 Entangled Revolutions: Haiti, France, and the American Revolution

February 10, 2026 • 69 mins
What if the American Revolution was never just an American story? Historian Ronald Angelo Johnson helps us uncover the deep connections between the American and Haitian Revolutions to reveal how both revolutions emerged from the same Atlantic imperial struggle for empire, racialized power, and war. Using details from his book Entangled Alliances, Ron will guide us from the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to the Siege of Savannah in 1779,...
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BFW Revisited: The Marquis de Lafayette

February 3, 2026 • 68 mins
What does it take to become a revolutionary in more than one revolution? In this revisited conversation with Mike Duncan, we explore the life of the Marquis de Lafayette—an ambitious young Frenchman who crossed the Atlantic to fight for the American cause and later carried those lessons into the political storms of France. From early idealism to a complicated role in two upheavals, Lafayette’s story reveals how ideas, alliances, an...
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432 How France and Spain Helped Win the American Revolution

January 27, 2026 • 64 mins
The American Revolution wasn’t just a colonial rebellion; it was a global conflict shaped by European rivalries and high-stakes diplomacy. Without the help of foreign allies like France and Spain, the United States might never have won its independence. Historian John Ferling joins us to explore the international dimensions of the Revolutionary War. Drawing from his new book Shots Heard Round the World, Ferling reveals how secret ...
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BFW Revisited: The Common Cause

January 20, 2026 • 58 mins
Before Common Sense could ignite a revolution, colonists had to be convinced they shared a cause worth fighting for. So how did Revolutionary leaders turn thirteen very different colonies into “Americans”—and what stories did they tell to make that unity feel real? In this Ben Franklin’s World Revisited episode, historian Robert Parkinson returns to explore how newspapers and wartime messaging helped forge the Revolution’s “common...
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431 Common Sense at 250: The Pamphlet That Sparked a Revolution

January 13, 2026 • 74 mins
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense turned a colonial rebellion into a full-blown revolution. But how did one pamphlet move so many minds in 1776—and why does it still matter 250 years later? To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Common Sense, historian and Director of the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University, Nora Slonimsky, joins us to explore Paine’s life, the pamphlet’s explosive impact, and what this revolutionary ...
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BFW Revisited: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution

January 6, 2026 • 84 mins
Common Sense didn’t just make an argument for independence—it moved through a world of newspapers, pamphlets, and personal networks that carried revolutionary ideas from one doorstep to the next. So how did political news travel in 1776, and what made print such a powerful engine of persuasion? As we approach the 250th anniversary of Common Sense, Ben Franklin’s World Revisited returns to Episode 156 to explore how early Americans...
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430 The Founding Father of American Medicine: Benjamin Rush

December 30, 2025 • 60 mins
Benjamin Rush was one of early America’s most fascinating figures. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a leading Philadelphia physician, and a thinker who believed that a healthy body was the foundation of a healthy republic. In this episode, historian Sarah Naramore, author of Benjamin Rush, Civic Health and Human Illness in the Early American Republic, introduces us to Rush as both doctor and political philosopher...
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BFW Revisited: Smuggling and the American Revolution

December 23, 2025 • 84 mins
British officials had a problem: Their American colonists wouldn't stop smuggling. Even after Parliament slashed tea prices and passed laws to make legal imports cheaper, colonists kept buying Dutch and French goods on the black market. So what was really going on? If it wasn't just about saving money, what drove thousands of merchants and consumers to risk fines, seizure, and worse? In this revisited episode, we follow the illicit...
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429 Coffee in Early America: Why Americans Really Drink Coffee

December 16, 2025 • 63 mins
Think the Boston Tea Party made America a coffee-drinking nation? Historian Michelle McDonald reveals the truth: colonists were already choosing coffee over tea because it was cheaper. Michelle Craig McDonald, the Librarian/Director of the Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society and author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States, explains how coffee shaped American identity long befor...
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428 America's Forgotten Quest to Link Two Oceans

December 9, 2025 • 61 mins
In the 1820s, American entrepreneurs, engineers, and politicians dared to dream big. They believed they could cut a canal, not through Panama, but through the wild, rain-soaked terrain of Nicaragua. Their goal: To link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and transform global trade forever. But what inspired these ambitious "canal dreamers?” And why did they believe Nicaragua held the key to controlling the future of commerce?  Jessic...
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427 How States Are Planning the 250th: Commemorating the American Revolution in 2026

December 2, 2025 • 51 mins
As we look ahead to the 250th anniversary—the semiquincentennial—of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, communities and commissions across the United States are asking big questions: How should we commemorate this historic milestone?
What’s the right balance between celebration and education? And how can this moment bring people together across political divides, generational gaps, and complex histories? To explore these quest...
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BFW Revisited: The Mayflower

November 25, 2025 • 59 mins
Each November, we Americans come together to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that invites us to reflect on gratitude, community, and the stories we tell about our past. But what do we really know about the origins of this holiday? What did the “First Thanksgiving” look like, and who were the people who made it happen? In honor of Thanksgiving, we’re revisiting our 2018 conversation with Rebecca Fraser, author of The Mayflower: ...
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426 Indigenous Agriculture and the Hidden Science of Native Foodways

November 18, 2025 • 52 mins
As Thanksgiving approaches, many Americans are gathering to reflect on gratitude, family—and of course—food. It's the time of year when we may think about the so-called "First Thanksgiving" and imagine scenes of Pilgrims and Native peoples gathering in Massachusetts to share in the bounty of their fall harvests. But how much do we really know about the food systems and agricultural knowledge of Indigenous peoples of North Ameri...
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425 Ken Burns' The American Revolution

November 11, 2025 • 55 mins
What does it take to bring the American Revolution to life? How can an event that took place 250 years ago be conveyed to us through modern-day film? Ken Burns and his team worked to answer these questions in their new, epic six-part documentary, Ken Burns’ The American Revolution. Their work promises to deepen, complicate, and transform our understanding of the Revolution over 12 hours of film. But how did Burns and his team ma...
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424 Dunmore's Proclamation & the American Revolution in Virginia

November 4, 2025 • 66 mins
In November 1775, as tensions between the British Empire and its rebellious colonies continued to escalate, Virginia’s royal governor made a radical—and to some, terrifying—proclamation: Any enslaved person who fled a revolutionary enslaver and joined the British Army would gain their freedom. Known to history as Dunmore’s Proclamation, this single decree changed the course of the American Revolution in the South. It offered a lif...
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