Benjamin Franklin

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If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

We've come to a fine looking London house for today's programme. I'll I'll just knock on the door. Built sometime around 1730, it was for some 17 years the home of our subject. If I tell you that we're near Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square, that probably won't help unless you guess who's it's going to be. So I'll I'll head downstairs to the basement to see some more clues. They've let me in. Thank you very much guys. Nice to see you. Nice to see

It was the first de facto US Embassy here in London. Not sure if that helps or not. But here on the wall, there's a plaque to the famous man who lived here. A brown plaque, not the customary blue one. Born seventeen oh six in Boston, Massachusetts. Seventeen fifty seven moved to London as agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly. Seventeen seventy six signs the Declaration of Independence, then sailed for France, where he negotiates a treaty that helps the breakaway United States.

Defeat the British and win the war. Welcome, Benjamin Franklin, one of the key founding fathers to Great Lives on Radio 4. I can almost feel your presence in this room. We've come to the top of the house to sit down with my guests. First, our nominator, John Studzinski, another American in London, banker and philanthropist.

first moved here in nineteen eighty four. But before we find out a bit more about you, John, tell us why you're nominating Ben Franklin and about your connection to this house. Well Ben Franklin is the the real deal. He's um someone I have identified with for a long time, I almost feel in the context of living another life, I could have been his apprentice. Uh you know, he had that wonderful quote, it is prodigious the quality of good that may come from one man if it will make it his business.

And he talked about the common good. And a lot of the way I look at life is what are we doing to enhance the common good? But he's as he's as fresh and timely today as almost anyone. And and the house, John? Well the house is a project I was invited to be engaged in as a charity, Ben Franklin House Museum, for twenty years. The only remaining residence

where Franklin actually had lived. He lived here from seventeen fifty seven to seventeen seventy five, and with money from the British government and the American government, we bought this house back as one and the only legacy of Franklin. And of course he was here during that period as the ambassador from Pennsylvania to to England. Is there one thing that impresses you most about him? When I went to the opening night of Hamilton.

in the after party, I said to Lynn Manuel and Miranda, What am I missing? You've got Hamilton, you've got Washington, you've got Jefferson. Where's Franklin? And he said, Oh studs We had to completely leave out Franklin. He would dwarf everyone else because he is with such a big personality

He was not only larger than life, but he embodied everything. Remember, he's the only person out of the original founding fathers that was involved in drafting and signing actually signing. He's the only one that signed. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So he's very unique in terms of his perspective on American history. A polymath.

And we're hardly going to have time to touch on all the things that he he did. Um inventor, politician, scientist, greatest president of the United States, who was never president of the United States. it was said about him. He was born in Boston, when it was a city of some twelve thousand people, and still part of the British Empire. And in a moment we'll find out from our second guess

something about his early life. But but John, what brought him to London a and to this house for that big chunk of his life? Well he was sent as an ambassador. And he ultimately what he did during this whole period, this was the you know, the early seeds of the tension between the colonies and George the Third. And he was a great diplomat, but he also had the ability to bring in the French. By bringing in the French, he brought in the capital.

to actually provide a lot of the financial support for the American Revolution. Has he shaped your career? His curiosity has always shaped my career. And I've always felt that one should never operate in your comfort zone. And when you look at Franklin with his curiosity, not only his inventions but his writings. You know, today, um, you think about who would be the Franklin equivalent today? You know, would it be Elon Musk? Would it be Bill Gates?

Would it be Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloom? He was all those things. Would it be the Prince of Wales when he was being innovative about climate? You know, he redefines polymath. He r he certainly does. And and to help us with that is Kathleen Burke, Professor Emeritor and author of Old World, New World, Great Britain and America from the Beginning. And can we start, Kathy, with Franklin's beginnings? Who w who was this man? Who were his parents? What was he like in his earlier years?

His parents were first generation immigrants from England who came over for economic reasons and for religious reasons. And I think what's important is that as a young boy he has always been a reader. His father wasn't all that encouraging because he wanted him to be a tradesman. And essentially that's what Franklin wanted as well. And he grew up that way and he brought the whole idea of

Tradesman, middling class democracy, drove him all of his life. And always signed his name, Ben Franklin Printer. Absolutely. That's what he put on his tombstone. His father was a tallow chandler. He made candles, which became increasingly necessary in the States. And essentially, Franklin grew up. as the son of what he considered

the ve best sort of type of person to be, which was a tradesman. A tradesman. He always called himself a leather apron man. Yes. And he was the fifteenth child, I believe. He Served an apprenticeship or rather didn't because he broke it in the middle and and ran away illegally. Tell us about that. He was given as an apprentice to his elder brother. The problem was that his brother, Joshua, used to beat him.

And he got tired of being beaten and he ran away to Philadelphia. In some ways what followed in his career was uh not not that he ran away from anything, but he was he was a rebellious person. Yes, that's why his his father decided that no indeed he wouldn't be a minister, because he was rebellious, he was puckish, he did not like authority.

He wanted to make his own life. And he ran off and he did indeed make his own life as we know. Yes, tell us a little bit about your early life. Did you run away? My early life, I um grew up in Peeble, Massachusetts. My parents immigrated as babies to the United States, uh, nineteen nineteen, nineteen twenty. Uh we grew up in a Polish Catholic Italian, Jewish, Irish neighborhood, north of Boston. My mother was a nurse and my father was an accountant.

My mother's great line was, and this is something probably Franklin could have said She's got come in my bedroom in the morning at five AM to put open the curtains and say, Get up, you can sleep when you're dead. And I I almost felt as I as I learned more and more about Franklin that is something he would have said because he was very disciplined about time, he was disciplined about his experiments, he was disciplined about a lot of things.

Uh and of course I I knew Franklin and I followed Franklin certainly long before I moved to London and certainly long before I became engaged with this house and this project. He certainly was disciplined and needed to be disciplined given everything that he packed into his life. He he was a relentless self improver. Here, for example, is Franklin saying how he wanted to improve his writing after reading The Spectator magazine. He said

I thought the writing excellent and wished, if possible, to imitate it. He wrote that to his father. He was also a scientist, wasn't he, John? Well of course, and everyone who's educated associates Franklin with conducting of electricity. from lightning yes uh through the key, through the kite and the key. There are dozens and dozens of things you can read that he discovered. His organizing principle was that he wanted to find out things.

So they would be useful to people. And hence that was the foundation of all his inventions. Yes, indeed he uh um not discovered electricity but turned it to use. As John said, through the key he brought it down from the heavens into a jar, essentially, so he could he could investigate it more. But he then came up with a lightning rod. Hundred and eighty three men over the past period of time had Bell ringers had died because they were ringing bells and

because in those days the idea was this was a this was God and therefore if you rang the bells that helped you against this appalling occurrence. But, you know, ring the bells and all these poor bell ringers got electrocuted. So he was trying to make life better. Again, yes, he invented the battery. He invented uh bifocals, which is a great story in its own.

the Franklin stove, which was modified and then became useful. There's a something called the Baxey stove, which is still used in Britain and it's his ideas. He had a lot of ideas. And the other thing I really liked about him is that when things were going to be done, He would write very detailed descriptions of what you want to do. This is how you're going to accomplish it, pages and pages. So we can reconstruct what he was doing.

because of all the material in his um papers. Let's bring him here to London, uh Cathy. Why did he come here in seventeen fifty seven? Because he was appointed agent or ambassador

Prefer for Pennsylvania by the Assembly, because the Assembly was fighting with the chaps called the proprietors, the Pens, descendants of William Penn, the founder of of Pennsylvania, who didn't want to be taxed.

They wanted uh to be able to tell the assembly what to do. They were treating the state as if it was their private property. Well that's rather what they thought it was, in fact, in essence. So he was lobbying and being a diplomat, trying to get The charter changed so that the people, the middling sorts of people, who as far as he was concerned, were the great part of America, to have some control over their own lives.

If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's a David Martin portrait of him from seventeen sixty seven, where he now is beginning to look like something like an aristocrat. T take a look, John. He looks like a world statesman rather than a a young apprentice who's run away from his job. I think the reality is we haven't mentioned the term enlightenment, but I think we have to remember that Franklin is a great advocate and product

an icon of the Enlightenment. And the Enlightenment is something which really often one doesn't talk about in a transatlantic context very much because it was something you associate with Europe, with France, with Germany. sometimes with the UK, but certainly less so with the United States. and that portrait he looks very much like a a child of the Enlightenment. And remember a lot of the things he stood for

had to do with enhancing the quality of life, the quality of society, and also a lot of his financial prudence. You know, he was an entrepreneur. He sold his own business at the age of forty two. and then turned around and reinvested the money in a number of other initiatives. So he was about as enlightened and proactive, very much a product.

uh of that period. In some ways also he he kind of represented or came to represent the spirit of America, science, the future, technology, curiosity, th those things that they existed in the old world, but he encapsulated them. Now, every American I believe to this day has a relationship with Ben Franklin because if you look at his polymat origins and his character

I don't think and and Kathy can check me on this, I don't think he actually said a penny saved is a penny earned. He's associated with that, but he actually said that education paid the best form of interest. And that's the quintessential example of the American dream. Hard work, education. Advancement. He he he also said that um guests are like fish. They go off after three days. Kathy. They stink after three days is what Franklin actually wrote. Not very elegant, but evocative, I think.

Might I just uh support what John said about the importance of the enlightenment? Because There was something called the Republic of Letters, which was all these communications between the Europeans and Franklin. And what the Enlightenment was was rationality. And you got that by following science, the natural world. And you also didn't get emotional.

So it meant you thought in a rational way, you acted in a rational way, and you tried to influence events in a rational way. That must have been the root of his uh his Freemasonry because he I I I he was definitely a deist, but he he was not a Christian, I don't think. Towards the end of his life He said he was having doubts about the divinity of Christ.

But he did believe in some sort of great divine purpose. Remember the idea was that God was the great clockmaker in the sky in the sky he set the pendulum going and then withdrew, and it was then up to men to decide what to do with it. You're listening to the great life of Benjamin Franklin, businessman, polymath, founding father of the United States, and a man who signed himself printer.

And we're recording today in the Georgian house where he lodged in London, which to day you can visit, both in person and online. Now let's get him back, John and Cathy, to America, and to events for which he's probably best known How involved was he in the revolution? He's he's older than some of the other famous names of that time.

He was involved in the revolution because he had been in London and for uh ways he was treated, the decisions taken by Britain, by the time he got back to Pennsylvania, he was a convinced revolutionary. And after that time he didn't hold back. He encouraged what was happening and did his best to organize things in a way that would facilitate the gathering of arms, the organizing of armies.

And although he was a bit old to take a musket himself, he nominated uh George Washington as the um as the commander in chief of the army, for example. So he was a revolutionary and although he couldn't go out on the arms himself, he did everything he could behind to organize people, to encourage them to fight for America. And and he was furious that the British government were trying to recoup all the debts they'd incurred during the Seven Years' War by

by h hitting the colonies and the colonists with them. And in London he told the colonists described as the lowest of mankind, he wrote, almost a different species from the English, fit only to be snubbed, curbed, shackled, and plundered. Do you think he was always instinctively in favor of independence? He doesn't talk about it, but I think he was always instinctively in favor of human rights and human dignity. And he had a very strong

uh sense of right and wrong. And you know, if i while you talked earlier about him not being a Christian, if you look at his values and his focus on the common good He would have as Kathy said, he would have been inherently repulsed. by a lot of the uh principles he was hearing and and was trying to being put upon the colonies. He was just always focused on fairness

and transparency uh throughout his whole life. So these were these were his principles. He he didn't become inherently political during this period. These were principles that were endemic them in his own character, and now they were being put to very, very powerful use. Uh to widen it out just a little bit, because John is dead right of course on what he's been saying, is that

Franklin did not want revolution. He wanted America to be taken as an integral part of the British Empire. They were proud of being part of the most liberal empire the world had ever known. And he didn't want independence. He wanted the British to treat the Americans fairly. He was not inherently a revolutionary, I do not believe so. I believe he was inherently, as John says, a man going for fairness. So therefore he didn't become a revolutionary until March seventeen seventy five.

Did he live his own personal life, according to the principles of fairness and justice, which he so passionately believed in as a public man? Just t tell us very briefly about his private life. I don't think he was particularly fair in his private life. He made a lot of good friends, casual friends. He had very few long standing friends, and he treated his family very badly. For example, he left his wife

fifteen years altogether and he was in London. He was told she was dying. He was busy flirting and playing chess for political reasons, but he never came back to her. She had a stroke and she died. I would echo Uh, Kathy's point, um, I don't think there's any record at all of Franklin having any very close personal friends, or

even a a reasonable circle of friends, he had a broad range of acquaintances. And a lot of this came from the fact that he A, he liked his own company, B, he was curious, so his curiosity drove him to converse and engage with a broad group of people. And to a certain extent he had put his own personal life on the back burner and had really focused when he was here on trying to follow all these different projects.

science, particularly diplomacy, and other aspects of his character. You would never describe him as a narcissist. You would describe him as someone who was such uh so curious and so ambitious. And impatient. that he w didn't really have much time to build any sort of personal, close friendship. He helped with Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence, and then in 1776 was sent off to France.

where he remained as ambassador for ten years. What was he doing there? What was his mission in Paris, Cathy? His mission in Paris was to try to get the French to give money. and to help with a navy against the British. That's precisely why he was there. Indeed, uh by late seventeen seventy seven he was able to sign a treaty of alliance

with the French, uh and uh a treaty of trade and and commerce. And so he accomplished everything he was sent over to do. He convinced the French that since their largest their biggest enemy was the British, this was a way to get at the British, was help America to become independent and the implication was but it didn't it didn't really work that way. The Americans would then help the French to

Against the British. And it worked. Well, it depends on how you say it worked. He actually uh had the British agree they should keep Canada, because of course French wanted it back. Quebec in particular it was French speaking. Uh but Franklin had enemies in the British political scene and there was a limit to what he could actually accomplish. But what he was accomplished enabled the revolution to go on because without French help the Americans would have lost.

What was his role in drawing up the Constitution? Uh this is after Britain had been defeated and sent packing and the victorious colonies uh all start arguing with each other and threatening to sink the entire project. Where does he come in here? The Constitution was not a million miles away from the sort of organizing principles he'd been trying to im implement since uh seventeen fifty four. It the first plan of union he'd he'd drawn up. What he did with the Constitution was taken.

The thing about Benjamin Franklin was he had a personal magnetism, he was seen as larger than life, and everyone didn't precisely kowtow, but they often agreed with what he said. and what he could do was he had always, since young manhood, decided you don't have confrontational Discussions. quietly so that you in a sense lure people into um into agreeing with you. And he was able to keep all the discussion in the Constitutional Convention.

on a civilized level, and it made it possible for people who didn't agree actually with what was proposed, to agree with him then you give a bit here and the other side gives a bit, and it can be brought together in a perfect piece of furniture. So they met in Philadelphia. They thrashed out a compromise between states rights and federal rights. That was signed in seventeen eighty seven. But John, he was pretty ill by then. He was coming towards the end of his his life.

Yes, but you have to remember he was still pretty um opinionated to to the end. And of course his great line, which uh is very, very relevant today with what's going on in the world, uh with autocracy, democracy being threatened is Kathy can comment on this, but democracy is a fine thing. When they were signing the documents of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, democracy is a fine thing if you're wise enough to keep it.

Hm. And that'll be two hundred and fifty years ago. as of next year. It's not without relevance, is it, today? It's very timely. And he himself knew of the issues and the challenges and the fragility of democracy. He was very wise in that respect and he yet put that challenge in front of the founding fathers. Uh and I think today that challenge remains, you know Quite vivid and quite robust.

Franklin's attitude to monarchy. On the one hand he said that most people like kings. It's a kingly sort of world. But on the other hand, if you th like rational democracy Which includes most people, including mostly the middling people, which is what he wanted. You don't go for kings. Yeah, Kathy, you you say um he had a no king uh philosophy. I think I've heard the phrase no king more recently in the United States.

Yes, uh that's one way, as John might have said, the relevance of Benjamin Franklin is important today. Benjamin Franklin died at home in Philadelphia in seventeen ninety, a huge and important eighteenth century figure not just in America, but in Europe too, aged an impressive eighty four Do you do you think he still matters? He he definitely matters in terms of uh the importance of of respect for democracy if democracy is to be maintained.

His his science, I suppose, is not w now all water under the bridge. What does he mean to you as a modern figure? What is what is he telling you on your shoulder? I think you have to look at his personality, his curiosity, his entrepreneurialism, his i adventurism in terms of wanting to invent and challenge, uh, his interest in di diplomacy, his interest in uh science and innovation, and he's as modern

uh as an eighteenth century product of the Enlightenment as any of the characters today. And what I hope is that more young people will study Franklin robustly and learn from him Uh,'cause I think he's a very powerful role model. He's a timeless role model. And the Franklin Papers are housed at Yale, and one of the things I'm quite hopeful in with artificial intelligence.

that we'll be able to package though reconfigure those papers into some sort of hologram or personages of Franklin and we would be able the three of us to be able to have a conversation in this group with Franklin. through artificial intelligence. It might not be a hundred percent accurate, but it would certainly be illuminating. I wonder what he'd want to say. He probably would have quite a lot to say, uh starting with uh some of the main characters on the world stage right now.

My thanks to you, John Studzinski, and to you, Kathy Burke, and also my thanks to this house. 36 Craven Street, where we've been recording today and where I can almost feel the presence of Ben Franklin with us. Thank you for listening. If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.

This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.