Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Libraries Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Blog Pricing

Benjamin Franklin in Podcasts

person

A historical figure who hypothesized about bioluminescence being caused by electricity and lightning in the ocean.

Mentions Over Time

21 mentions
1 related entities

Mentions in Podcasts

The Glenn Beck Program
America’s Secret Reboot: The Making of the U.S. Constitution | The American Story | Ep 8

That was Benjamin Franklin.

Boring History for Sleep
Benjamin Franklin — A Life of Curiosity and Contradictions ⚡ | Boring History for Sleep

Josiah Franklin, Benjamin's father, occupied this middle tier with a kind of solid competence that history has largely overlooked in favour of his more famous son.

Boring History for Sleep
Benjamin Franklin — A Life of Curiosity and Contradictions ⚡ | Boring History for Sleep

This is relevant to Franklin for reasons that will become clear later, but for now, file it under things that make his eventual invention of an improved heating stove feel less like intellectual curiosity and more like deeply personal motivation.

Boring History for Sleep
Benjamin Franklin — A Life of Curiosity and Contradictions ⚡ | Boring History for Sleep

The winters of Franklin's childhood fell during what climatologists now call the Little Ice Age, a centuries-long period of cooling that made European and North American winters significantly colder than anything we experience today.

Boring History for Sleep
Benjamin Franklin — A Life of Curiosity and Contradictions ⚡ | Boring History for Sleep

That is roughly the recipe for Franklin's worldview, and it starts here, in the streets of early 18th century Boston.

Boring History for Sleep
Benjamin Franklin — A Life of Curiosity and Contradictions ⚡ | Boring History for Sleep

It is, in a very real sense, the intellectual environment that produced Benjamin Franklin.

Boring History for Sleep
Benjamin Franklin — A Life of Curiosity and Contradictions ⚡ | Boring History for Sleep

By the time Franklin was born, this theocratic original vision was bumping up hard against the realities of commercial life.