Eric Weiner - Ben & Me

27:44It was the kind of place where no one asked you what your name was, where you come from. They simply asked you, what can you do? And Franklin could do quite a lot. And it turned out to be the perfect place for him. I mean, he needed Philadelphia and Philadelphia needed Ben Franklin. Sure. because I think you even talked about in the book how he's portrayed in Boston versus Philadelphia. So I think you talk about like the statues in Boston. Right. And you won't find statues. In fact, where he lived in Philadelphia is now long gone. And you'll find Ben Franklin on the Billboard advertisement or in the TV commercial.

28:25Selling cheesesteaks. You see lots of Ben selling cheesesteaks or, you know, rooting for the 76ers in costume. They do have statues of Franklin, of course, in Philadelphia, many of them. My favorite is on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where he's on a bench reading a newspaper. It's a very laid back statue. It captures his spirit, I think. um so yeah i mean philadelphia was and to some extent still is a looser place than boston when i to quote your book um you say quote the business of philadelphia was business now why i love that is i i moved myself again i as i'm reading your book i'm thinking about my own life and experiences like you talked about your own uh we moved our company and i moved my family four years ago from Seattle to Phoenix.

29:21And the business of Phoenix is business. I mean, that's why people come here. They come here for either owning a business, running a business, finding a job. You know, it's, it's ultimately commercial. And so much of what you explained about the culture of Philadelphia just was ringing in my ears for what I've learned. I've learned and witnessed here in Phoenix. To your point, because no one's from here, right? There's not like a fourth generation in Arizona. And that's a, I technically know a couple, but they're freak shows. But I say that because when you get here, the number one question is, well, what do you do?

29:53Which that's exactly what the question in Philadelphia would be at the time. And I think you pointed out in contrast, you know, in the modern day we live in Philadelphia, it wasn't like a clean place. It's just people could go do commerce there. And I think you talked about what the actual streets were like at the time. Could you explain that? Well, William Penn has set out to create this sort of idyllic planned community, like set up on a grid. And the idea was everyone was going to live, you know, not too close to each other. So everyone had lots of space. Didn't work out that way. Turns out everyone wanted waterfront property.

30:27They wanted to be on the Schuylkill or Delaware Rivers, you know, and they just crowded together in the waterfront in what's now Old City Philadelphia. You can still see it. And it quickly became a kind of wild and woolly place. There was a tavern, I think, for every 10 adult men. There was even a tavern briefly at the local jail, which strikes me as odd, but there you go. So it was that kind of place. And you said they wanted to know what you could do. That's true. But they also wanted to know what you might be able to do in the future. It was filled with a sense of possibility. So when you think about the American dream, you're really thinking about Ben Franklin.

31:10He was the prototype for that. that had no money, self-educated, lands in Philadelphia, the promised land, and makes something of himself. I mean, it wasn't that smooth. It wasn't a straight line. Oh, yeah, yeah. There were lots of detours and bumps. We're glazing over a lot of tribulation and trials. So one of his next, he goes to Philly. He runs into a gentleman who says, I'll give you letters of credit if you go to London. Right. And so on pretty much, again, that wasn't, I would argue that's not reason. That's faith. He had faith in another person to put him in the right place. So he takes off to London.

31:51And what transpires for him initially when he gets there? Well, it turns out in this case, it was misplaced faith. So the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania said, you should open a print shop. We don't have any equipment here, but go to London, like you said, and everyone will know me. And he gets there and turns out there are no letters of credit on board the ship when he lands in London, when they check the hold. And it turns out people do know William Keith, but they hate his guts because he owes them money. And Franklin realized he had been had, you know. And instead of either fuming about it or getting on the next ship somehow, some way back to Philadelphia, he decides to make the most of it and finds work at actually two print shops in London.

32:41And I call it his great year abroad. I mean, great in that it was momentous, but he didn't really become anything special there. He worked in the print shop. He made friends. Um, he had, this is a quote from his autobiography, intrigues with low women. Um, you can imagine what that means and spent a year and a half there before heading home to Philly. Sure. Uh, could you, could you just mention what the asbestos purse was and why it was valuable to him at that time? So he, he knew that the British loved curiosities from the colonies from all over the world, really. So the whole phenomenon of collectibles was really taking off in London.

33:25So Ben brings this purse or wallet made out of asbestos, and he contacts this nobleman who's very successful, very wealthy, and says, you know, I have this rare item from the colonies, and I'm only in town for a few days, so if you want it, let's meet. total lie. He was going to be there for a year and a half, but he meets with the man, sells him the purse for a tidy sum. And at that, you know, he's only 18, 19 years old, and you can tell already he's got a good business sense. Yeah. You mentioned that coffee shops that time were very social places. So that was one place he could meet people in London.

34:11I think you mentioned Ben didn't like talking in public, but he was really a social animal. he liked engaging in discussion and debate. He didn't like public speaking. He was not a good public speaker. I don't think he would do that well in the age of television, to be honest. And when he was with a group of people when he didn't really know them, he was quiet. He was very reticent. But one-on-one or in a small group, like at a pub where he knows everyone, very gregarious, lots of stories to tell. But he needed to know you. He didn't just open up to anyone. Sure. He would have been, I look at it as, let's say you could host like a once every two weeks supper club dinner party with friends.

34:54He'd be like the ultimate friend to have for a supper club where he tells you what he's either learning or where he's going to listen to hear what other people have learned or read or experienced recently, because he liked not only engaging, but he also liked listening and learning. Yes. And he was not one of those people that dominated the conversation. He had this great term of over-talking. He accused someone of much over-talking, which is great. And he didn't do that. He could tell stories, but he could listen as well. In fact, he was an excellent listener. So I'm going to ask, I touched on this earlier, but I want to ask this question, I think, now, because I think it's kind of a good picture since we've got to know quite a bit about Ben.

35:38So I'm going to quote from your book. You know, we talked about this idea of reason and faith, so I'll quote it. quote, at that time, reason and faith had not parted ways speaking of puritanical Boston. So I'm going to ask you a question that I think I know Franklin's answer to, because you also quote William James, who said, truth is what works. And then you have another quote from your book, quote, for Franklin, the ultimate test of a moral proposition was not its truth, but it's utility, which I love that. That's just such an awesome quote. I think that might be the most valuable quote for like, if someone's going to take one snippet out of your book and say, Hey, what's the value to you?

36:21So here's my question. I'm going to ask you because I'd love, I always, I always love thinking about people that are learned in their field. I've studied a lot on something. And I asked this question. Um, so I mentioned Charlie Munger earlier. So there's the Charlie Munger or what I'll call the Elon Musk camp of, we don't have enough people in the world. Okay. And then there's like the Paul Ehrlich camp, or I'll call it more of the scientific community. It says we have too many people in the world. And I love like, you know, in your eyes, how do you look at that? And how do you think Franklin would look at that debate?

36:59Well, he did write about population growth, actually. He wrote a famous essay where he, at the time, he's still very pro-British, and he's making the argument for the importance of the American colonies. And he projected quite accurately, it turns out, that the population in America was growing at such a rapid pace, it would, in the not-too-distant future, exceed that of the mother country, of Britain. So he did get that right. Which camp would he be? And I'm not sure. I think he would ask questions like, well, do we have enough food to feed everyone? Like, how can we make this work? So you talked about truth is what works.

37:46And he was very much a systems thinker in a lot of ways. And I think he would say, like, what system can we come up with that can feed and, you know, house, you know, not just 8 billion, but 18 or 80 billion people on the planet? Well, because I also I ask it because I think of Franklin as kind of a natural optimist. Like, why else would you take these risks and do this stuff and explore? Because he really explored and adventured mentally and physically. No, he absolutely was. He was what I, well, I borrowed the phrase from Dave Eagleman, the neuroscientist. Franklin was a possibilian. Correct.

38:22And I think of like in the possibility. And so, you know, to go back to your quote you use, because I think your quote fits him so well. So you said, but it's utility. Okay. So utility, if I think about like, let's graph, you know, utility curves like they would in economics. I think a lot about, well, what's the total utility, right? We want to produce the most utility possible in society, but also to produce the most possible utility, you've got to have the most people because that produces the most utility. And so I think in a possibility, I think about him is not a truth, but he says, how do we produce the most total human good, thus utility?

39:00I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's an interesting idea. I mean, the formula or formulation of utilitarianism, first articulated by Jeremy Bentham in Franklin's time, was the greatest happiness for the greatest number. So I guess if you increase the greatest number, you have to increase the greatest happiness. And that's the challenge. but you're right. Franklin was an optimist, a possibility and I don't think he would want to cap population on the planet but that's a guess. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management.

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40:22Almost every time we have an author on, I ask that question because it's interesting. And you made a wonderful point in your book. I just, I have to note something you pointed out that I just don't hear people say, but you're right. You point out that we often critique the author and not the writing, okay? Or the talking head on TV or whatever it is. Correct. We first see, you know, who's saying this or writing this. Sure. And then we decide whether it's true or not. And we're very good at fooling ourselves at this. We can think, you know, oh, no, I'm just listening to the message. I'm not considering the messenger.

41:00No. You know, the same statement, whether you're the left or the right, I see this all the time. Totally. Something that infuriates people on the left when they hear it from the right, but when they hear it from their side of the aisle, they make excuses for it. That's okay. I can't think of an example at the top of my head, but it happens all the time. And Franklin went to great pains to, you know, like to read John Bunyan's religious book and listen to the positive message and extract that. But not say, oh, Bunyan was a preacher. He was a religious man. I'm not going to read that. Franklin would watch Fox News.

41:41He'd watch MSNBC. He would go left and right and center and look for the wisdom where he could find it. And we'll come back to some of that, but I agree. To your point, I think our books are better masks for us than our own mouth is, to put it in that term. What do you mean by that? What I mean by that is what I've witnessed with authors is they're so much more pragmatic in their writing than what they might do conversationally separate from their writing, which is kind of a perplexing. In other words, like the book is a mask in a way for them to be very thoughtful and pragmatic. But then if you talk to them kind of like off the script about the book, you'll find more oddities, kind of like the humanness of us that you don't expect when you read the book.

42:24Yeah. My wife says I'm wiser on the page than in real life. But I think that's true for everyone. Maybe that's what you're talking about. And so if I'm acting neurotic, which happens several times a day, she'll say page 232 of Socrates Express or whatever. She's like, you said it there. And I'm like, I know I wrote it, but now I'm in it. So it's, I think the act of writing is a masking, but I don't use masking in a negative way. It's very useful, right? As Franklin would say, it has utility. And so I am wiser on the page, but I know what the target is. I just can't always hit it, if that makes sense.

43:03Since we're making fun of ourselves, first of all, I also loved your references about your wife correcting you in the book. I was like, oh, I have a kindred spirit. I appreciate this world that I know I'm completely fallible and my wife knows all my shortcomings. So I think that was a very humanizing, enjoyable part of your book. Much like Ben's errata, right, where he wrote down things he had done that weren't so smart that like a publisher could correct later, which I thought was an interesting way to use his profession as a way to think about his life as well. And it's a kinder way of treating yourself, actually, because, you know, too many of us, we make mistakes and we pull our hair out.

43:44We beat ourselves up. Terrible person. How could I do that? You know, treat the mistake, even small mistakes, almost like a sin. Sure. And Franklin didn't see it that way. He was a publisher by profession, and an errata is a mistake, a typo or something that appears in the book. And most books, even today, are published with at least one errata in them. What does the publisher do? They don't beat themselves up. They just publish a new and improved edition. And Ben said to himself, why can't I be like that? I make a mistake, I correct it, and I publish a new and improved edition of myself. He didn't always stick to it.

44:24you know, when it came to big things like his relationship with his son, a few other things in his life. But in general, I think it's a pretty good approach, you know, that you can always just start over and publish a new, improved version. Sure. To follow on the errata, he also believed in virtues. And I have to mention this because, again, after I read this book, I thought, I feel like I live in Philadelphia. OK, let me explain real quick. Um, my kids go to a public, uh, charter school that produces a classical education. Okay. Very, you know, UPenn Franklin-esque in, in, in that respect. But they, they teach, uh, uh, I want to say it's 12 virtues there at the school.

45:08I'm like, you know, beauty, truth, you know, knowledge, et cetera. And as I was reading what you're writing about Franklin, that was Franklin. He believed in virtues. And then he also believed that character wasn't God-given. It was produced, or I think you talked about it being imprinted like the Greeks believed to be. He was a big believer in virtue and character and habit. I know habits are kind of hot right now, but Franklin was on to them a few hundred years ago. He thought basically that everyone, most people, knew what the right thing to do was. Sure. like being charitable, being honest, all these things.

45:49They just needed a method to do it. He was a method guy. And so in his early 20s, he comes up with this list of 13 virtues. Probably a lot of them overlap with what your children are learning in school. You know, honesty and industry, frugality, fairness or justice, all these things. I mean, the virtues really haven't changed in the last few thousand years. There's just a few variations. And he comes up with this list, and then he comes up with this plan where he's going to take out a little notebook and draw a grid and go through one virtue per week, focus on one per week. And any time, carry the book around with him during the day.

46:32Any time he strays from, say, the virtue of honesty and he says something dishonest, he'll put a little checkmark there, a little mark. And he thought, oh, this is going to be easy. You know, pretty good guy. Finds out it was not. that he was more filled with flaws than he thought. In fact, the book was so filled with these black marks, he called it a holy book of a different kind. And yet he thinks it was a valuable exercise, compares himself to a young scribe who models themselves after the great calligraphy masters. And even if they fall short, they have improved their hand, their handwriting.

47:16and yeah I feel the same way I tried one of his virtues silence for a week and because as my wife and daughter will tell me I tend to over talk as frankly would say and I didn't know I could not I could not do it but I became aware of when I was talking too much usually when I was anxious or something like that and so it's not all or nothing it's not like either you achieve moral perfection, as frankly called it, or you don't. It's a process. So let's talk about humor, because you're kind of getting to one of my favorite subjects in the book. You talk about it in light of your daughter in the writing, but you talk about how his humor was, his levity.

47:58I think you even commented that if it was up to him, he probably would have slipped a joke into the Constitution. It was the Declaration of Independence. Oh, yeah, Declaration. The founders were casting about for someone to write it. And Franklin made sense. He was a writer, publisher, very respected. But the story goes, and it may be apocryphal, that they nixed the idea because they were afraid he would slip a joke into the document. I don't know if it's true or not, but it sounds like the kind of thing that Franklin would do. Sure. But he would do it with good prose. In other words, he wouldn't just throw a joke in.

48:34And he would use imagery to make fun of something or the king or parliament or something like that. And through a story. Yeah. Just one example is, you know, he's living in Philadelphia and the king and the British are sending their convicts, emptying their jails and sending their criminals here. And crime goes up in the colonies. And he writes a satire called Rattlesnakes for Britain, where he said, dear British people, would be happy to send you our rattlesnakes. They don't have them there, but we have them in the U.S. Lots of American rattlesnakes. We'll even deliver them to your gardens, you know, and your salons.

49:13It's the least we can do to show our appreciation for all the criminals you've sent us. So, rattlesnakes for felons, that's what it was called. That was just one example of his satire. And he would he use humor to make a point often and to to shine a light on truth that he couldn't do otherwise without getting into a lot of trouble. And again, because I think you commented that, you know, you'll often use that with your own daughter. I I have three daughters. Oldest one's 14. The other's 13. They are the toughest audience that I've ever witnessed with a humorous line in my life. Right. No, they're tough.

49:53But here's, I guess here's the point I try to make in the book about humor is I think humor can be used two ways, either to reveal a truth or to conceal it, either to reveal or to conceal. Franklin, for the most part, uses to reveal a truth. And I do sometimes, too, in my writing. But in my life, my everyday life, if I'm having a conversation with someone, they're talking about some feeling something close to me, and it's a little too close to the bone, I'll make a joke to deflect it. And my daughter, who does not appreciate my dad jokes, also says that basically she accuses me of overusing humor to avoid a serious, important conversation.

50:33And she's right about that. Yeah, I get that. So humor can work both ways. I get that. Let's see. On this idea of humor, just kind of levity and lightheartedness. he didn't mind talking about his weight or his gut or his, you know, what he called himself, Mr. Fat, Dr. Fat side. He also talked about, I mean, he was, you wrote about in his book, in your book that he would say, if we could put together a compound and turn our farts into, you know, something better, it would be perfume. Yeah, exactly. He was, he just didn't take things too seriously. And to your point, it wasn't a stuffed shirt thing.

51:12It was like, we're human, we might as well treat ourselves as human. He was fun. And I think that he was a bon vivant, which I think explains why the French adored him so much. I mean, they just loved him to pieces because they saw that he was able to enjoy life while still conducting business. This is when he's in France as the U.S. representative there during the Revolutionary War. And it was a perfect fit because Franklin enjoyed life and he also knew that the French conducted business not over the breakfast table as John Adams would have it, but over the dinner table or the salon or drinks after dinner.

51:52Sure. He goes back to London in 1757. You know, William Penn's no longer alive from what I took from your writing and he has to go back and deal with his two sons. You know, no one ever says Ben Franklin, that loyalist to the king, but maybe not a loyalist to parliament. Could you just explain what he was trying to do with the Penn brothers and why he really just despised parliament? So, yes, he goes in 1757. William Penn is dead and he's representing the colony of Pennsylvania because the Penn brothers are basically absentee landlords milking the colony from London for all it's worth, paying no taxes.

52:33So his mission is first to get them to cough up their share of taxes. The Penn brothers were having none of it. They dismissed this little electrician, as they called Franklin. And then the mission becomes, well, we really hate the Penn brothers. We want to become a royal colony, actually closer to the king. This is the ironic thing. Ben Franklin, founding father of the United States, is on a mission to London to bring Pennsylvania and some other colonies, perhaps closer to the king of England. Sure. because he thought the bad people were the parliamentarians. They were the corrupt ones. They were the problem, not the king.

53:11Eventually, he changed his mind about the king, but it took 15, 16, 17 years for that to happen. Sure. And would you say, because I think you touched on this earlier, but I want to kind of hit the nail on the head. In a way, are you saying that Ben, as a revolutionary, was ultimately sown with the seeds of his anti-elitism? In other words, after experiencing that in London with Parliament and other nobles, to your point, who belittled him, looked down on him, he looked and said, you know, that elitist crowd I want to be no part of, therefore, why not revolt? Is that a fair way of thinking about that?

53:48I think so. I mean, it's obviously more complex than that. And there was a lot going on with the Stamp Act and other actions. But I think if you were to look at it just from a human point of view, the British looked down at the colonists. They saw them as less than. Sure. Right. They were English, but not really. And they had nothing to teach us. And I think Franklin got that message not from his fellow scientists and writers. They respected him. But from the aristocrats, the ruling class of Britain, the message he got in so many words and maybe exactly these words is, who do you think you are?

54:32And this sort of came to a head in 1774 in an incident called the Cockpit Incident, which is a cockpit was this this room where the king's cabinet met. And they dragged Franklin before it. This is just after the Boston Tea Party. And basically used him as a punching bag, saying, you are the prime conductor of all the problems between Britain and its colonies. It's this man. He's not an honest man. And he just gets dressed down by this solicitor. And Franklin just stands there. He's poker-faced, doesn't reveal any emotion. But I'm convinced, and many historians are, that that was the moment for him.

55:11He walked into the cockpit, a loyal British subject, and walked out an American rebel. You commented on how he really didn't fight back in that. In other words, he took it in a way. Right. But that didn't mean the wheels weren't turning and the hamster wasn't running in his brain. It's almost like the person that I walk away thinking about Franklin through your book to be, is he's already thinking about his next steps based on what he's seeing now. You know, to your point, empirically, he's learning that there is no way to stay part of Britain or be a British. He was a chess player and he applied that to his diplomacy.

55:50Absolutely. And, you know, there's a line from from a Hemingway book. You know, how did you go broke two ways? First, very slowly, then very quickly. Yeah. Same thing with Franklin. How did you become an American rebel? Two ways. First, very slowly, then very quickly. And once he flipped, he flipped with the conviction of the converted. And he became even more radical than a lot of the radicals back home. Not quite Sam Adams style, but pretty close. And that's the way he was. I mean, he hated confrontation. So he really wanted to keep the British empire together, the colonies and the mother country.

56:29He just didn't like it when families fought, basically. and so he stuck to, he refused to believe that the British really did not have their Americans' best interest at heart and eventually he did and then when he flipped there was no turning back. So since you, I think you mentioned it twice in the book, you mentioned Hemingway just a second ago and then you also mentioned the sun also rises at one of the end of the chapters. Is that your biggest fiction author that you enjoy the most? No, I enjoy Hemingway, but there are others I enjoy more, I would say. Okay. But, you know, there would be no Hemingway and no F.

57:13Scott Fitzgerald or, it's slipping my mind, Grapes of Wrath. No Steinbeck and others without Franklin, I think. He really was, in many ways, the first American writer. Now, he never actually finished a book, per se. The autobiography is unfinished. But 44 volumes of writing, that's how much he put together in essays and satires and correspondence. And he sort of set the tone for this very honest way of writing that is American, this kind of humorous way of writing, and also a tautness that, of course, we see in Hemingway. I mean, Franklin valued brevity, valued humor. He valued honesty in writing.

58:00And I tried to, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but I tried to write the kind of book he would want to read. Sure. I asked him because whenever my mind goes away from nonfiction, I actually go to Hemingway. I'll pick up a Hemingway book. And so, for example, I also went through Hemingway. You can kind of do the adventure, right? So, for example, For Whom the Bell Tolls, he finished writing that in Sun Valley. And so when it snows late in the book, it's because Sun Valley got snow late that year. He was invited out by the Harriman family who owned Union Pacific Railroad. And so, like, I love the idea of, like, Hemingway is this person that you can read about.

58:37But then you could also kind of adventure, you know, like you go to his house in Key West, for example, and you could go to Cuba. And it makes a difference, I think. I mean, I'm a place person, unabashed place person. Yeah, I am too. Yeah. And I've always believed that, you know, where you are shapes who you are. And I've also believed that you can't just look at it online. You've got to go to the spot where these people walked, where they wrote, where they drank in the case of Hemingway and Franklin. And there's something about being there, even if hundreds of years have passed and and there are very few actual signs left.

59:11You know, as you mentioned earlier, I think, you know, Franklin lived in at least four or five houses during his life. Only one remains standing. It's his house in London on a little street called Craven Street. And it's a townhouse, nothing particularly ornate, but it's where he spent 17 years of his life. And they've turned it into a small museum and you can, and a very simple one, and you can go and walk where he walked. And they gave me free reign when I was there researching the book. and I just hung out in his study when no one else was in the house and that was pretty cool. Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show.

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1:00:22Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. I never heard this story, but I love this story you brought up, is the idea of Franklin as, you know, he's a capitalist. He loves creating and inventing and driving commerce and very Philadelphian of him. But he also didn't believe in vast wealth to an insane degree. So you tell the story of where he's hanging out with a well-to-do person and the person's got some massive house.

1:01:06And he says, why'd you build such a big house? And the gentleman says, well, because I can afford it. Right. And then he gets inside the house and he's like, why do you why'd you build such a big dining table? And he's like, well, because I can afford it. And then Franklin pops back. Well, why didn't you build a hat that big? You can afford it. OK. And it was like he was mocking the idea of just because you can afford something doesn't mean you should have something. That's true. And this I was surprised to find this side of Franklin because he is literally the face of capitalism. Right. On the hundred dollar bill.

1:01:38And look, he was in favor of free trade. He was a very successful businessman, printer, publisher, made a small fortune, not as wealthy as some of the other founders who owned land, but he was in favor of business. But he believed that you should not be able to own as much land as you want. There should be a limit on how much land you can own. I'll give you another example. So he had all these inventions, the bifocals, the lightning rod, et cetera, never applied for a single patent for any of them. And patents existed back then. And you said in so many words, well, since I benefit from the inventions of others, why shouldn't they benefit from my inventions?

1:02:20And so he had non-capitalist, almost socialist ideas as well. And back then you could be both. You could be liberal and conservative, what we call today liberal and conservative. You could be a man of religion, a man of faith. You could be a capitalist in some ways and a socialist in others. So you have a couple of things that came to mind when you're saying that. I would love, I mean, like to your point, we could pull out the Ouija board and we go to Franklin and say, Ben, you know, I think of the Sherman Antitrust Act, for example, a very Franklin approach to America, which is Sherman didn't want there to be too much power in vast combinations.

1:03:03that disrupted what he called the social order. In other words, there was a virtuous order to society in our country. And so I think of that as being very much bend. But we just did a book called Who Owns This Sentence by David Belos. And he points out, to your point on patents, much of the laws we have on copyright and patents, you think someone thought these out really well? No, we kind of fell upon them, and they've come over time in more random ways. And he argued that the social good of copyrights going back to society is exactly what you just said about Franklin, which is that it benefits the wider society rather than benefiting a narrow part of society, which I think is an interesting thing to think about in our day and age.

1:03:49The other thing that came to mind too is as you're talking about the British view of Americans, I think that's America's view of other people today. In other words, I'm American. Aren't I so great? American exceptionalism, if you will. Well, we've become like the people we fought against in some ways. Yeah. In some ways. I think we're still a more looser, freer, in every sense of the word, nation than Britain. But you're right. We've become the elitist compared to the rest of the world. And Franklin really guarded against that. But, you know, like give me the example when he's in France and he is representing the U.S.

1:04:34And and his fellow commissioners, John Adams, John Jay and others are like, you know, we don't we don't need to thank the French. You know, they should thank us for giving them this opportunity to invest in this new startup called the United States of America. And Ben's like, no, we should be grateful. It's in our interest to be grateful. So he was always guarding against that creeping arrogance that can slip into even well-intentioned people. Well, I think you pointed out, too, that when they signed the treaty with Britain in France, from a chess perspective, they didn't have France sign it, too.

1:05:12But he then went to the French foreign correspondent and apologized for – he asked for grace later when he knew it was out of form to do that, but he knew it was the right thing to do for America. He cut the French out of the negotiations, essentially. Yeah. Even though he was told by Congress not to do so, and he knew it would piss off the French, but he was doing what's best for America. And he did go to Versailles and meet with Vergan, the foreign minister, and he apologized. He groveled. He was pretty good at groveling, Ben was. And they had a good relationship by then, the foreign minister and Franklin.

1:05:50And the foreign minister forgave him. and even shortly after gave the U.S. another loan, you know, now that it's an independent country. So Franklin had built up a lot of good goodwill and what we would call today social capital. Yeah, because I think he pointed out earlier in his life, you know, when he borrowed a book from someone who he didn't like or didn't like him, I think it was. He had a stronger relationship with that person because, in fact, they blessed him and people like doing good things for other people. Today, it's known as the Ben Franklin effect. And it's been actually proven in several studies that, you know, if you want to endear yourself to someone, don't do a bunch of favors for them and fawn over them.

1:06:30Ask them to do a favor for you. And that's going to make your bond tighter. And it works. Yeah, no question. Let's see. Two last things. Again, this is like his pragmatism just flowing out. He goes up to Canada late in his life to try to negotiate an alliance with the Canadians. I think it was in Montreal, if I remember correctly. Yes, it was. Crazy mission. And his gout's going crazy. He's just old. And, you know, I just think of being old, getting on a plane, let alone trudging through the wilderness in the snow to get there. And he, looking back, again, I think this is what Franklin did so well, to your point about errata, like the mistakes made.

1:07:15You point out that he looked back and he said, you know what? We shouldn't have actually asked for an alliance. we should have just bought Canada. I've always thought that. If you look at the Canadian population, almost all of it sits within 30 miles of the U.S. border. They should have been acquired a long time ago in like an all-share merger. Oh, boy. Well, I'm a big Canadian fan. I don't know how they would feel about that. No, I love Canada. I trust you. Yeah, I do too. And I think what he was trying to express is, and he expressed it about other situations too, is settling disputes with money is a much better way than settling them with guns.

1:07:50Correct. And and he thought if you did the math about the cost of war, you would never go to war. And he said famously, there's never been a good war or a bad peace. Yeah. And I have a friend who's a sort of foreign policy guy. And he says, oh, that's ridiculous. You know, of course, there are necessary wars. Well, maybe a necessary war, but not a good war. Sure. Franklin would say, OK, the Revolutionary War was necessary, but it wasn't good. It wasn't a good war. And a bad peace, well, if he keeps the peace, it's not a bad peace by definition. So, yeah. Well, yeah, to your point, conflicts are things that can't be solved by money, which is why they cost so much.

1:08:29Right. And I always say to my wife, there are two kinds of problems in the world, the kind of problems that can be solved with money and the kind of problems that can't. You know, you need a new car, it's a problem you can solve with money. You've got stage four cancer, that's a problem that all the money in the world can't solve. Totally. I agree with that. Let's see. One last one, because this is really, you know, again, we think about this principled person, this habitual person, this fun person. I mean, you go through all the great qualities of Ben. And I didn't mention it earlier, but we talked about there was a line in there about forgiveness.

1:09:06And I want to make sure I pull it up. You know, he looked at forgiveness was the best revenge. Or as another person told me one time, they said, revenge is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. Okay. That's how they termed, you know, revenge. That's pretty good. Wasn't, I mean, is that how you kind of look at what ended up happening with his son, William, who obviously was the royal governor of New Jersey, was a loyalist to the king, was on the wrong side of history from a revolution perspective. and we're all expecting Ben to be this virtuous person and he wasn't. So every great person has their blind spots.

1:09:49Mahatma Gandhi was not a great family man. Neither was Martin Luther King Jr. That doesn't mean we have some can't learn from them now. Sure. Franklin could forgive lots of people. He forgave that Governor Keith who sent him on the wild goose chase to London without the letters of credit. He forgave his brother for mistreating him in the print shop. He even forgives the British for fighting the war. But he could not, could not forgive his own son, William. Even though William extended an olive branch once the war was over, he said, basically, I did what I thought was right for my God and my king.

1:10:23I hope you understand. Franklin writes back to him, and of the 15 ,000 letters that he wrote or received, I think this is the most heartbreaking. And he said, basically, yes, OK, I understand that. But there are certain natural rights of a son to his father that are greater than that of a person, a subject to his king or even someone to their God. And he did not follow through on the attempt. He did not reciprocate the attempt to reconcile. And he gets back to Philadelphia as an old man now in his 80s. And what does he do? So he rewrites his will and writes his son, William, out of the will and says, and paraphrasing here, he says, I'm depriving him of the fortune that he attempted to deprive me of and deprive me of my own life.

1:11:10So now this is a sad chapter in Benjamin Franklin's life that as big hearted as he was, he could not see his way to forgive his son for siding against him in a war. It's almost Shakespearean in this tragedy, you know. Yeah, I agree. Because, you know, again, there's just so much, you know, he has, he's such a complex person. And that's what I really enjoyed about reading your book, the complexities of him. For example, like we talked earlier about he wasn't religious, but yet you explained later in the book that he believed that we were spiritual beings and our bodies were just, you know, our bodies are what are physically seen, but we're spiritual beings.

1:11:54So he had all these complex things. And most of the time, those things played off each other in a very pragmatic and what what could be useful, useful ways or paradoxical where they were both true at the same time. And this is the one situation where the paradox breaks down. And it's just Franklin, Ben Franklin, the human that is incomplete. Yeah, we're all incomplete that way. We're all flawed. I think when it comes to looking at historical figures, say the founders of this country, we seem to have either two approaches. One is we put them up on a pedestal and they can do no wrong or we cancel them.

1:12:33You know that we have nothing to learn from Thomas Jefferson. We have nothing to learn from Ben Franklin because he enslaved seven people during his life, which he did. And he freed them and become an abolitionist toward the end of his life. And I think that's a mistake. I think we should, even though cherry picking is a term with negative connotations, I think when it comes to history and historical figures like Franklin, that's exactly what we should be doing. Why would you want the rotten cherries? Why would you want to import the bad aspects of a Franklin or a Jefferson? But look at the good, you know, and learn from the bad, learn object lessons from the bad.

1:13:11So, I mean, I think Franklin is, as we said in the beginning of the conversation, the least dead of the founders. You know, I can picture him here today, and I think he'd have a lot of useful advice for us today. And that's the point of my book, not just to be this fun romp into Franklin land and, you know, easy to swallow history and biography of his life, But to tease out these actionable lessons that you can use today in the 21st century, because even though technology has advanced, the basic human struggles of trust and love and fear and greed and forgiveness, they're all the same. They don't change.

1:13:53I totally agree. what you're talking on about flaws of the past or the past in general, I just saw Inside Out 2 and there's a character in there called Nostalgia that you made me think of immediately that I actually got to watch with my daughters. And to your point, it's understanding the past for what it is, whether there's flaws or not. And it's useful. Again, to come back to Franklin's idea, this is all useful for us to understand and understand what was good and bad about it. Right. So there's a common saying, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. I would counter that with those who forget the good things from the past are doomed not to learn from them, you know?

1:14:31So it works both ways. So just to put some things out there that we didn't talk about, we didn't talk about the Albany plan, which was awesome. I'm really glad you brought that up. It shows you how wise and predictive he often was as a person. What else do you think should be mentioned that we didn't touch on? And, you know, because you explain so many different parts of Ben throughout his life. But is there any parts that we didn't touch on that you think should be mentioned? Well, we covered a lot of ground. And I do have another interview at the bottom of the hour. But, you know, this emotional side to him that we don't often hear about.

1:15:11We talked a bit about the limits of reason. So he loved music and he invented a musical instrument called the glass harmonica, no H. and you can still hear it today if you saw the movie Gravity it's the first sound of that movie if you've seen any of the Harry Potter films it's part of that soundtrack as well and it's this incredibly impractical instrument that involves lots of very fragile glasses and bowls and a moving spindle very expensive very impractical and it emits this very mournful emotive sound I describe it as like whale's mourning. And I thought, isn't it interesting that Franklin, this hard-nosed scientist, this businessman, invented an instrument that is so emotional and so full of pathos.

1:16:02And it shows that he was a man in full and much less narrow than we tend to be in our worlds where we have specialties. We live in a silo. Not Franklin. He hopped around different boxes and didn't even see boxes. Yeah. And by the way, to your point, he got to teach the harmonica to Maria Antoinette, which is just an interesting figure in history. Yes. She studied it. Others studied it. And it was used by Franz Mesmer during his controversial sessions in France. And it went out of fashion for a long time. It was considered dangerous. that you'd go crazy if you played it. And then in the early 20th century, it made a comeback.

1:16:49Well, Eric, I always ask people this. Where can our listeners follow you going forward, whether it be through your titles or do you do anything on social media that they can track down your thoughts on? I do, I'm all over social media, but the best place to find me and my work is ericweinerbooks, all one word, W-E-I-N-E-R, books.com. and yeah I think someone just asked me like who's this book for and I think it's for Franklin fans like yourself obviously but it's for people who would never pick up a book on Ben Franklin or 18th century America I'm trying to appeal to a broader audience you know and and that's my goal yeah next time I have a free time free time in London you actually also made me want to think about the adventure side.

1:17:39Anytime I can find a book where I'm intellectually stimulated and my body can travel, I'm terribly interested. You have to go to Craven Street. Tell them I sent you. They're great people there. There's a small staff that runs this, I say museum, but really you just like walking in his house. And look up Ben Franklin House, London. And they're only open a few hours each week, but try to find the time to go there. I will do. This has been very fun, Eric. Your book has reminded me of the pragmatist, the dreamer and the intellectual that Ben Franklin was. Also, I, as you explained about Ben in your book, believe that people should have fun with aging and never stop working at something to your point just a second ago.

1:18:19Our listeners should go buy a copy of Ben and me wherever you buy your books. If you enjoy this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs. Give us a review. Tell others about great authors like Eric that we get to learn and experience life with and through. For our tribe, if you have a great book that you'd like to recommend, email podcast at smeedcap.com. That's podcast at smeedcap.com. You can also find us on X. Our handle is at smeedcap. Thank you for joining us for a Book With Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smeed Capital Management.

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