Ben Franklin's World

It’s November, the time of year when we Americans get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday. Although the federal holiday we know and honor today came about in 1863, Thanksgiving is a day that many moder...

12 Nov 202448min

The North American continent is approximately 160 million years old, yet in the United States, we tend to focus on what amounts to 3300 millionths of that history, which is the period between 1492 to ...

5 Nov 20241h 1min

Ben Franklin’s World Revisited is a series where Liz surfaces one of our earlier episodes that complements and adds additional perspectives to the histories we discuss in our new episodes. Given the c...

29 Okt 20241h 40min

“Monday, September 5, 1774. A number of the Delegates chosen and appointed by the Several Colonies and Provinces in North America to meet and hold a Congress at Philadelphia assembled at the Carpenter...

22 Okt 202442min

When we think about the American Revolution, textbooks, documentaries, and historic sites have trained most of us to think about American triumphs in battles or events when American revolutionaries ov...

8 Okt 202455min

What did Thomas Jefferson and the members of the Second Continental Congress mean when they wrote “the pursuit of Happiness” into the United States Declaration of Independence? And why is pursuing hap...

24 Sep 20241h

The Constitution is a document of “We the People.” The ways Americans have supported, debated, and interpreted the Constitution since 1787 have played a vital role in the rise of politics and politica...

10 Sep 20241h 4min

What does history have to tell us about how we, as Americans, came to define people by their race; the visual ways we have grouped people together based on their skin color, facial features, hair text...

27 Aug 202452min