After 5 years and more than 270 episodes, Ben Franklin’s World is taking a break between January 7 and April 21, 2020. This break will provide Liz and her teammates on the Omohundro Institute’s Digital Projects Team time to think about some exciting new ideas they’d like to bring to the podcast and time to develop some of those ideas for you. Ben Franklin’s World will be back will all-new episodes on April 21, 2020. In the meantime, Liz and … [Read more...]
Episode 265: Lindsay Chervinsky, An Early History of the White House
On July 1, 1790, Congress passed “An Act for Establishing the temporary and permanent Seat of the Government of the United States.” This act formalized a plan to move the capital of the United States from New York City to Philadelphia, for a period of 10 years, and then from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., where the United States government would make its permanent home. What buildings did Congress have erected to house the … [Read more...]
Episode 263: Sari Altschuler, The Medical Imagination
Did you know that imagination once played a key role in the way Americans understood and practiced medicine? Sari Altschuler, an Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University and author of The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States, joins us to investigate the ways early American doctors used imagination in their practice and learning of medicine. Listen Now About the Show Ben Franklin’s … [Read more...]
Episode 234: Richard Bushman, Farms & Farm Families in Early America
If we want to understand everyday life in early America we need to understand the everyday life of early American farms and farmers. Roughly three-quarters of Americans in British North America and the early United States considered themselves to be farmers. So how did early Americans establish farms and what were the rhythms of their daily lives? Richard Bushman, the Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, … [Read more...]
Episode 233: Gwenn Miller, A History of Russian America
When we think about colonial American history we think about the colonies of the English, the Dutch, the French, and the Spanish. Rarely do we think about the colonies of the Russians. And yet Russia had colonies in North America. Gwenn Miller, an Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, joins us to investigate a history of Russia’s colonies in North America with details from her book Kodiak Kreol: Communities of Empire … [Read more...]
Episode 232: Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora
Before the English settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 or the Dutch settled near Albany, New York in 1615, a group of French-speaking, Catholic settlers established a settlement in Nova Scotia in 1605. By 1755, nearly 15,000 Acadians lived in Acadia. Christopher Hodson, an Associate Professor of history at Brigham Young University and the author of The Acadian Diaspora, joins us to investigate the lives of these early North American … [Read more...]
231 Sara Georgini, The Religious Lives of the Adams Family
Historians use archives to create the histories we love to read, watch, and listen to. So we’re going into one archive to investigate how historians use them and to discover more about the religious lives of the Adams Family. Sara Georgini, Series Editor of The Papers of John Adams, invites us to join her inside the Massachusetts Historical Society so we can take a closer look at the historical details provided by the Adams Papers and the role … [Read more...]
Episode 204: James Lewis, Jr., The Burr Conspiracy
Aaron Burr: Revolutionary War hero, talented lawyer, Vice President, and Intriguer of treason? Between 1805 and 1807, Aaron Burr supposedly intended to commit treason by dividing the American union. How did Americans learn about and respond to this treasonous intrigue? James Lewis Jr., a Professor of History at Kalamazoo College and author of The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis, guides us through what we … [Read more...]
Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic
It’s February 2018 and doctors have declared this year’s seasonal flu epidemic as one of the worst to hit the United States in over a decade. Yet this flu epidemic is nothing compared to the yellow fever epidemics that struck the early American republic during the 1790s and early 1800s. So what happened when epidemic diseases took hold in early America? How did early Americans deal with disease and illness? Thomas Apel, author of Feverish … [Read more...]
Episode 173: Marisa Fuentes, Colonial Port Cities and Slavery
The histories of early North America and the Caribbean are intimately intertwined. The same European empires we encounter in our study of early America also appear in the Caribbean and the colonies in these respective empires often traded goods, people, and ideas between each other. Marisa Fuentes, an associate professor of history and women and gender studies at Rutgers University and author of Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, … [Read more...]
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