Jane Kamensky
speaker
17 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 11 Jun
Jane Kamensky’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Britain's American colonies had developed as many different systems of governance as there were colonies.
So we need to think about these almost as different countries.
The thing that they shared is they had an extraordinary degree of local control and institutions that were accountable to their local populations.
So there was a sense that when they reached into your pocket for taxation, they also looked you in the eye
The churches are huge institutions in Boston and throughout New England.
And if you look at any engraving of the 18th century Boston waterfront, you see steeples rising almost like a forest.
It's a fractious and disputatious place in ways that descend from Puritanism.
This culture where people expect a direct relationship not only with their preacher but with God, and I think even for non-religious people, that makes it a highly participatory place.
Franklin embodies the kind of social mobility and geographic mobility that is quite common for free people in Britain's Western colonies and entirely uncommon in Home Island's Britain.
By the 1760s, he's become the most famous colonial on the face of the globe.
He's feted as an American original all over London and France.
He is the person whom Parliament calls in to be their America whisperer.
what the hell is going on over there?
The person you ask is Franklin.
And whether someone who was born as he was could have had that steep an ascent anywhere else in the world, I think the answer is no.
I think Samuel Adams had a kind of almost oracular voice, and he was hot-headed.
He's impious, he's impolitic, he calls them as he sees them with a plain, clear voice like a bell.
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