Scrappy, Snarky, and Brilliant Benjamin Franklin

He was born into nothing, educated himself, endured an abusive older brother, ran away at 17, and then spent the rest of his life fighting the most powerful empire in the world with a printing press and a pen name. This week Cydni and Sher dig into the brilliantly ridiculous life of Benjamin Franklin. Including the fart essay, the fur cap in France, the blue suit revenge, and the moment an 81-year-old man saved our Constitution by asking a room full of arguing geniuses to just pray. He wasn't perfect. He knew it. And he kept trying anyway. This week's episode is "Scrappy, Snarky, and Brilliant Benjamin Franklin" and we are so glad you are here!

This Week's Challenge
In honor of Benjamin Franklin, be more amused and less annoyed this week. 

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Show Notes

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Transcript

Scrappy, Snarky, Brilliant Benjamin Franklin

[00:00:00] 

Cydni: Throughout history, there are so many examples of people who point out a real problem, but then they find a solution, and I think that's why we love history so much, is people took action.

And where I'm really inspired right now is by this problem here is actual wording from the person we will be talking about. "It is universally well known that in digesting our common food, there is created or produced in bowels of human creatures a great quantity of wind." That the permitting this air to escape and mix with the atmosphere is usually offensive to the company." There is the problem pointed out. Farts. Someone great in our history- ... pointed out that farts offended others, and he had a proposal, a solution.

"The prize question therefore should be to discover some drug wholesome and not disagreeable to mix with our common food or sauces that render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies, not [00:01:00] only inoffensive but agreeable as perfumes."

 I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks about this essay on farts when they think about Benjamin Franklin, and I'm just so excited to sniff out this episode with you. 

Cydni: Welcome to the Cydni and Sher Podcast. 

Sher: that you've let that all out, Cydni, maybe we can get started here. We are going to be talking about Benjamin Franklin, just like you said. 

Cydni: Who wrote a very famous essay on farting, and the solution. Which honestly is brilliant because everybody does it. Actually, Do you by chance know how many times the average person farts- No

in a day? 

Sher: I do not. 

Cydni: 14. 

Sher: Oh. 

Cydni: I know that off the top of my head. I did not look it up, I just know it, because once I looked it up. 

Sher: And that Kind of information you don't ever let go once you 

Cydni: have it You never let go of it. You just hold it in. 

Sher: I had a feeling you would like Benjamin Franklin because he is so snarky, and he's also very funny. He's brilliant. He's very [00:02:00] scrappy, and he's definitely a self-made man. 

Cydni: Yeah, he's absolutely absurd and ridiculous, and he may be my favorite person to read about right now, so thank you. 

Sher: You're welcome. I'm glad you liked learning about him. So let's get started with where he was born. He was born in Boston in 1706, and he was the 15th out of 17 children, His family could only afford for him to go to school for two years, and so he mainly just educated himself. He read every book he could get his hands on. At 12, he became an apprentice to his older brother, James, as a printer's devil, and this was the lowest rung at the print shop, so he was in charge of cleaning type, hauling ink, and really just doing any of the yucky work that nobody else wanted to do. But every day after work, he would read, and read, and read. 

Cydni: And speaking of books, could we just add that at age 10, he wanted to learn how to swim, and it was by reading and applying images he saw in a book, he went [00:03:00] out and taught himself how to swim. I love that about him. 

Sher: Which is amazing because Years ago I read a book about Benjamin Franklin, and one of the things that just stuck in my brain forever, was when he was in London, they were on a boat crossing the River Thames. And One of his friends was telling the group what a great swimmer Benjamin Franklin was, and they didn't believe that he was such a fantastic swimmer. So he literally stripped down in his birthday suit and jumped into the water, and was swimming under the boat and keeping up with the boat as it was crossing the river. They estimate he swam four miles. So he was a fantastic swimmer when he was a youngin. 

Cydni: I need to find out the exact book he read, because I need to read it. I'm a horrible swimmer. I could doggy paddle and stay afloat a little bit, but he was brilliant in the water, a little merman. 

Sher: Yeah. He was a merman. Well, back to his younger days. So he was working as a printer's devil, like I said, [00:04:00] but at 17 he ran away to Philadelphia, and the reason he did is because his brother James was physically abusive, and he was also extremely angry because he found out that Franklin had been up to something.

He had been writing anonymously for the paper that his brother James was printing, and when he found out that it was Benjamin that had been writing all of it, he was really mad. All right, Cydni, I know you love this part. I do. So why don't you talk to us about Benjamin Franklin at 17 years old, what he was up to.

Cydni: Yeah, I think he ran away when he was 17, but at 16 years old, he portrayed himself as a middle-aged woman who was a widow. Because his brother refused to print anything that he wrote, he pretended to be basically me. minus the widow. But the age. 

Sher: I love how He found his way around it. He's like, "Fine, you won't let me do it? I'm gonna find a different way." 

Cydni: I adore it so much, and he would slip these [00:05:00] letters underneath their door and mysteriously find them, and his brother James loved the letters so much that they published them for months, for six months. And I have a few of his writings as Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widower. Which he's a 16-year-old boy. I 

Sher: know, which makes it 

Cydni: even better. Oh, it's funny. But he's really brilliant. Here are some important things silence Dogood said, "Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it does not hurt or control the right of another."

That's a 16-year-old boy. 

Sher: he's so brilliant. 

Cydni: he actually says in another time that he really hated the culture of people who judged the authors of articles and books by who they were and their status. He didn't like that people would first look at their status and decide if they wanted to read.

So I think that's where this [00:06:00] motivation comes he was wise enough to know that a boy writing this probably wouldn't be well received, especially by his brother, as we know. 

Sher: Apparently, since his brother was angry and continued to beat him after that, so yeah.

Cydni: Exactly. He also wrote, whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech," which I find so interesting I've heard this said over and over again, but to see it began here is really interesting.

And the letters ran and were published until October 1722. And then in December, his brother, in a desperate move, sent out an ad asking for more information.

He wanted her back. He was like, " Does anyone know who she is, and how we get her back?" And at that point is when Benjamin- ... confessed to his brother it was actually him. I can only imagine, because Benjamin Franklin says that of all of the vices he had, [00:07:00] vanity and humility He danced too much with- not being humble and being way too prideful. I just feel, sibling to sibling, this moment must have been just absolutely incredible for him, to be like, "Oh, you love it that much?" And I think it got the best of him, 'cause that's where he confessed to his brother. I think he needed his brother to know, for his own enjoyment and amusement, that it actually was him that he had been publishing. And another little side note I loved is that he received several proposals during this time. 

Sher: Oh, really? Yes. Oh, no, that's hilarious. 

Cydni: Yeah, men would write in and offer, ... their hand in marriage. But it was to Benjamin Franklin. 

Sher: Oh, I love that. 

So after his brother found out that it was really Franklin writing the letters, Benjamin Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, he had absolutely nothing. But within a few years, he owned his own print shop in Philadelphia, and he started publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette.

He also started publishing Poor Richard's [00:08:00] Almanac, which was a best-seller in the colonies for 25 years. And this is where we get sayings like, "Early to bed, early to rise," or, "God helps those who help themselves." Or how about this one? "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." So all of these little sayings that are actually quite famous still in American culture. 

Cydni: I've heard several people call him the first motivational speaker but I found a few others that I love so much. I'll just tell you a couple. "He is a fool that makes his doctor his heir."

He also wrote, "The proud hate pride in others." 

Sher: That is so true. He's just so witty- I 

Cydni: know ... 

Sher: and 

Cydni: I've been really trying to figure out, where does this humor and this passion come from?

'Cause we know he grew up in a huge family, and his brother was terribly abusive to him, and I feel like he must have just somewhere had this, passion in him that, "What's the worst that can happen? 'Cause I've already been beat. Like, I've been punched in the face enough times. What are you gonna do?" And I think it [00:09:00] just put this freedom and sense of, spread your wings and fly personality in him. 

Sher: Yeah, he had nothing else to lose, so- Nothing to 

Cydni: lose ... 

Sher: just go for it. 

Cydni: I love this about him. 

Sher: And at this time, the British controlled almost all the printing presses, and there was no such thing as freedom of press or freedom of speech.

But there were a few Americans, like who we talked about last week, Mercy Otis Warren, and now Benjamin Franklin, that were not afraid to push the limit freedom of the press and freedom of speech. And as we've been talking about, Franklin often wrote anonymously, and he had dozens of pen names, which Cydni already mentioned one, which was Silence Dogood, and then he also used Poor Richard.

His full name is Richard Saunders for his almanac. And then also he had Anthony Afterwit, which this is a quote about what Anthony Afterwit wrote about. He was a henpecked husband writing humorously about his wife's spending habits, dragging him into debt. [00:10:00] The whole piece is a comedy of marriage and money.

So he had that one. Then he also had, this is one of my favorite ones, Alice Addertongue, and adder is a snake. This is an unmarried and economically independent woman who wittingly argues that only immoral blockheads complain about backbiting and gossip, pointing out that those who condemn it as the worst of crimes simultaneously charge all womankind with it, making them guilty of exactly what they condemn.

She cheerfully defends scandal as a public service, and franklin is making fun of gossip by making this woman completely self-unaware and delightfully shameless, and that's just a quote about what these two people were writing about, which I loved reading it.

It's just so funny, and I understand, I really loved learning about Mercy last week, but she was so far above my IQ level, it was really hard to understand what she was actually saying. I [00:11:00] had to get AI to help me understand it. But Ben Franklin, he kinda writes a little bit more on my level, so I understand it just a little bit better.

Cydni: I think I'm in the same boat, and he also wrote so many funny articles. I read through one that's Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress. 

Sher: I saw this one, Cydni. This one was good. 

Cydni: Oh, it cracked me up, and he does start as his first option that he would like to suggest is marriage.

 He said marriage was the best way to handle our violent natural inclinations, and I thought that was really funny. But He wrote an article or essay on how to choose your mistress if you absolutely can't go with the first option of marriage, and it's outrageous to me. But he does suggest an older woman, which I respected that.

And then he gives eight reasons why, and he does say that it's because women cease to be handsome, but they do study to be good, and they learn to [00:12:00] do 1,000 services small and great most useful, especially when sick. And I won't read all eight of them, but I really loved that he does say with older women, that they will take better care of you when you're sick. There's less sin, there's less drama, and there's no risk of pregnancy. 

Sher: He's a smart man. 

Cydni: I sent all of these to Ben. I was like, "I hope you appreciate this. This is what you got at home." Yet you should know, Sher, he ended the article with, "Still, I advise you to marry directly." 

Sher: Franklin is so clever because he's taking something, making fun of it like, "Oh, no, I'm for this," but then he'll turn it so much that you can say, "Wait a minute, I don't think he really is for that. He's just being snarky and making fun of you," is what he's doing. I 

Cydni: know. I agree. I told Ben that he seems to be very pro-marriage for someone who's accused of cheating a lot.

I know. 

Sher: So continuing on though Franklin also used his wit and his printing press against Britain. He [00:13:00] wrote essays, satires, fake letters that talked about the hypocrisy and the corruption of the British. He even leaked a secret letter from the Massachusetts governor to the British, and the governor was urging Britain to go after and crack down on all the colonists and all the shenanigans that the colonists were up to.

when Benjamin Franklin published this letter, the colonists were extremely angry, and this is gonna push them closer to writing the Declaration of Independence. Britain, on the other hand, was also furious, and they actually made Franklin appear before the British Privy Council in London, and he had to stand in the area known as the cockpit while the British lords publicly humiliated him and made fun of him.

They also did personal attacks. They were not kind, they called him a thief and a traitor, and this went on for over an hour, and everyone there that was involved in making fun of Benjamin Franklin thought it was hilarious. There was a crowd there that was watching, and they [00:14:00] also found it very humorous, and Franklin didn't move.

He showed no emotion, and he just took it. Cydni, the things that were said to him were so bad that the reporters that were there could not print it in the paper, so we don't know exactly what was said to Benjamin Franklin. And this happened in the year 1774. Four years later, in 1778, Franklin was in Paris signing the Treaty of Alliance with France, France was joining and helping us fight the American Revolution against the British, and he wore the same blue suit he had worn when he was standing in the cockpit, and when asked why he chose that suit to wear, he replied, "To give it a little revenge." So,

Cydni: that's such a great story. 

Sher: Isn't it great? But Franklin also used his humor to encourage Americans to leave Britain, and to also teach about life. He wrote an essay called Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One.

This [00:15:00] was written in 1773, and it was a mock how-to guide for Britain on how to lose its colonies, and he starts this essay by saying, "A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges." And then he goes on to mock Britain and say, "Everything you're doing is going to reduce your empire."

The colonists loved that one. He also wrote An Edict by the King of Prussia. So what he did is he wrote about a fake royal decree claiming that Britain owed Germany taxes. Since Germans had originally settled England long ago, he used this to make fun of Britain taxing the colonies. He said that since Germans settled Britain a long time ago, and Britain has now prospered, and therefore Britain now owes Germany taxes.

And the thing that Franklin loved is that a lot of British citizens fell for this and thought it was real, and they were very upset about it, and Franklin loved every minute of it. ... [00:16:00] So his humor taught and explained to the colonies what the British were doing in a way that common people like me and Cydni could actually understand.

Cydni: And pay attention to. I think that's why I could pay attention to his history better, is because of the humor, and I found that the humor is really present in the beginning stages of his life, and then people get more serious about his biography, and I did have a harder time listening from there. Mm. I was like, "I need some more humor," 'cause he maintained humor, and youthfulness, and joy, and play his entire life.

Sher: He did. He made things that were very serious very understandable for the common folk- I- ... like us ... 

Cydni: he reminds me of a quote that I've been living by. Someone once said, "You can choose to either be amused or annoyed". And I have decided to just always be amused, and it makes me laugh at times I shouldn't because I'm like, "I'm gonna choose to be amused in this moment". And I feel like he lived that way. He chose to just be amused all of the time and see the humor, and I just freakin' love that. 

Sher: I would [00:17:00] agree. And As you're learning about him, you really can see the joy he had for life in general. Going back to how he inspired America to leave Britain, he also made the Join or Die flag. I think we've all seen it. It's a snake that's cut up into pieces. That flag was very famous back in the day, 

Cydni: I believe it's the first political cartoon ever made.

Sher: That's pretty cool. 

Cydni: Mm-hmm. 

Sher: Way to go, Franklin.

Cydni: And if that's not true, I mean, the chances of anyone actually checking that- ... is so low. Let's just leave it in. 

Sher: Sounds good to me. When Franklin went to France to try to get France to join us in our fight for independence against Britain, we really needed him to come through for us.

And so Franklin went all in, and he played a character. He wore a simple fur cap and plain clothes, giving the French the stereotype they absolutely wanted and craved, and then he just leaned into it. It absolutely worked. The French loved it, and he became [00:18:00] Mr. Popular. France loved him. In fact, King Louis XVI reportedly got so tired of hearing about Franklin, Franklin, Franklin, that he gave a chamber pot to a noble woman who wouldn't stop praising Franklin, and in the chamber pot was Franklin's face painted on the inside of it.

Cydni: Everyone's got jokes. 

Sher: Yep. So Franklin and John Adams both went to Paris to try to get France to join us, and with their very extremely different styles, they were able to convince France to help us. Another thing about Franklin is he never stopped thinking. I don't think his brain ever shut off, Cydni, ever.

So these are just a few things that he invented during his lifetime. The lightning rod, he proved that lightning is electricity with his kite experiment. He invented bifocals, the Franklin stove. A glass harmonica. A flexible catheter for one of his brothers. He invented swim fins when he was 11. He [00:19:00] invented the odometer. He invented a long-arm grabber tool, America's first liberal arts academy, which is now the University of Pennsylvania, America's first hospital. He also came up with America's first mutual insurance company, also the first public lending library in America, Philadelphia's first fire department.

He was the postmaster general for the United States, and he made it actually work efficiently. He came up with the idea of daylight savings times, but he was being snarky. , He was making fun of people changing their clocks, and then our later politicians read that and took it seriously, and that's where they came up with the idea.

Cydni: I was gonna say, that's the only one I'm not feeling right now. 

Sher: Yeah, it's 'cause he was making fun of it, so thanks a lot people who don't know how to read Franklin's humor. Ugh. And then also, he came up with a phonetic alphabet, which he just thought we had too many letters, like C and K, that made the same sound, and he was trying to just make it more simple, [00:20:00] but we didn't buy into that one, apparently. And then as far as his own family goes, he had a son from his younger days, but he refused to say who the mother was 

Cydni: probably an older woman Probably

Sher: But his common-law wife, Deborah, she helped raise him as her own, and they raised him together. His name was William. And Cydni, you know what this kid did? He grew up to be the royal governor of New Jersey and remained loyal to Britain. 

Cydni: Oh, he was rebelling. He did not like his dad. Sarcasm.

Sher: Apparently not. Oh, no. And so They had a falling out and really didn't talk to each other much, And Franklin was so disappointed in William that he didn't join the revolution. 

Cydni: i'm disappointed in him, too. 

Sher: I am, too. Deborah and Franklin had a son, Francis, who died when he was still very young. I think he was a baby, actually. And they also had a daughter, Sarah, who he affectionately called Sally, and she stayed loyal to Franklin. She, in fact, organized thousands of women to make shirts and sew other supplies for [00:21:00] Washington's Continental Army. She also melted down her own personal jewelry to help fund the war effort.

So while Franklin was still in London Deborah got very ill, and Sally took care of her until Deborah passed away. Unfortunately, Franklin was still in London,

Cydni: With his mistress, though. I'm pretty sure there's proof that he had a mistress there. 

Sher: I don't know. 

Cydni: You don't know? 

Sher: I have no idea. He was very flirtatious. 

Cydni: But- I feel like there could be, like you said recently in podcast episodes, that whatever you're looking for, you're probably gonna find enough to find either he was faithful with a lot of the stuff he wrote about and said, or that he wasn't with some of the things he wrote about and said.

Sher: Exactly. No, that's exactly it. And I think we were also talking about, when it comes to our Founding Fathers, these people were not perfect. But I don't know what's going on. There's like a phase right now that we like to look back in time and find the vice or the sin that person had and only focus on that. And I hope [00:22:00] that the future gives me a lot more grace than that because people are a lot more than their worst sin. 

Cydni: Well said. And especially not being here to defend why they said or did something. 

Sher: Exactly. 

Cydni: Which we wouldn't probably listen to anyway. 

Sher: That's true. 

Cydni: The opinion has already been formed, sir.

Sher: So going back to his daughter Sally, she and her husband had eight children, and Franklin absolutely adored his grandchildren. And then Franklin lived with Sally and her husband when he could no longer take care of himself.

also The man had a true belief in God. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was the oldest delegate there at the age of 81, and it got very heated at one point, and people were just ready to walk away without anything at all holding our new little country together.

And at that moment, Franklin stood and gave one of his best speeches ever, and a lot of people give Franklin credit for saving our Constitution. He asked the [00:23:00] delegates to start opening each session with a prayer, and then he said, "I have lived a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men.

And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?" This speech, again, often gets credit for saving our country. He believed in God and that God was actively involved in each of our lives and the life of every nation. He also lived by the following 13 virtues. Which are temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility . He used to only have 12 virtues, but he decided to add humility because a friend told him that he was very proud and overbearing. But he admitted, [00:24:00] like Cydni said, that he never really quite mastered that one. 

Cydni: I love so much that he added it because a friend pointed it out. That's actually pretty humble, to have listened to that feedback. 

Sher: That's true.

Cydni: And speaking about him not being perfect, I loved this quote because he did care so much about these virtues. I think a lot of the times you think if someone's going to say, "Do this," they're automatically probably good at that, but he wasn't.

The more he worked on his virtues, the more he realized he's very far away from perfecting them. And he has a quote that said, "On the whole, though I've never arrived at perfection, I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short from it. Yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it." 

Sher: I think that as we read about and learn more about Franklin, that we're naturally drawn to him because he's not perfect, but he's somebody that seems more normal that's just trying his best to improve himself, and [00:25:00] I love that about him, that he is just who he is, and he's trying hard, and he falls short just like the rest of us do, but he's trying to be better.

Another thing I love about Franklin is he understood that in order to be free, we needed to be virtuous. He said this: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." And I think Franklin really understood this. You pointed out that he started writing about this when he was a teenager, so this is something that he definitely believed.

He also said, "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power." So he was writing about these things, and I think this was definitely a man that lived up to his calling that God had for him So as we've said Franklin wasn't a perfect man, but he might have just been the man that saved our Constitution by getting the men at the convention to pray and include God in their decision-making.[00:26:00] 

He understood liberty, and he truly loved God. This is what he wrote about God. "Here is my creed. I believe in one God, creator of the universe, that He governs it by His providence, that He ought to be worshiped, that the most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to His other children, that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting its conduct in this."

I just think that's so beautiful that Franklin, for all the good and bad and in between, that he had a true testimony of God. And he wasn't afraid to bring his testimony up in a time that this country truly needed it.

And then finally, Franklin's last words was this: "A dying man can do nothing easy." Which I just love because he even went out of this world being snarky. His last words were still hilarious. And he teaches us that even though we're [00:27:00] all imperfect, we can learn to embrace life with a smile and a little bit of snark, but most importantly, to not be afraid to invite God into our lives, and especially into difficult situations.

Cydni: We challenge you this week to be more amused and less annoyed, and to also write your own 13 virtues- ... that you would like to have Sher work on. So how's that? 

Sher: That sounds great. 

Cydni: Send them in to us. Let us know what virtues- ... you would like to see her improve. And I will help her. 

Sher: I think there's a lot more than 13 I need to improve.

Cydni: Well, if everyone sends them in, we'll have 26. 

Sher: And now for our final thoughts. Benjamin Franklin was not a perfect man, but he was scrappy, flirtatious, and admittedly never mastered humility. But he was genuinely alive, curious about everything, afraid of nothing, and always looking for the angle that would make people think, laugh, and ultimately understand.

He built himself from [00:28:00] nothing, fought the most powerful empire in the world with a printing press and a pen name, charmed an entire nation into helping us win our independence, and then sat down at 81 and helped save our Constitution by simply asking a room full of brilliant, arguing men to pray. His last words were a joke.

His life was a masterpiece. And if there's one thing Franklin would want us to take away, it's this: work hard, tell the truth, laugh when you can, and never be afraid to invite God into the impossible moments. This is our prayer- 

Cydni: From Cydni and Sher.

Cydni: is because it, or, or can I just [00:29:00] actually go home? I've suddenly realized I'd like to go home. All right, all right, all We're gonna stay in the other person's lane- ... and ruin everything. Ready? 

Sher: Ready. Go. 

but most, but most l- but most importantly,

Cydni: Sher, here's a few more quotes for you. Beware of the young doctor and the old barber." " Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days." " I guess I don't so much mind being old as I mind being fat and old." And finally, "In order to be happy, you need a good dog, a good woman, and ready money." 

Sher: Thanks for joining us. 

Cydni: We're so glad you're here.