Ben Franklin's World

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense turned a colonial rebellion into a full-blown revolution. But how did one pamphlet move so many minds in 1776—and why does it still matter 250 years later? To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Common Sense, historian and Director of the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University, Nora Slonimsky, joins us to explore Paine’s life, the pamphlet’s explosive impact, and what this revolutionary text still teaches us about democracy, communication, and civic life. ITPS Website Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:06 Thomas Pain's Early Life and Influences00:05:53 The Institute for Thomas Paine Studies00:07:51 Thomas Paine as an English Excise Man00:13:34 Paine's Ideas for Reform of the British Government00:19:27 Reception of Paine's First Pamphlet00:21:48 Paine's Intellectual Life in England00:27:30 Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin00:31:44 Paine's Migration to Philadelphia00:35:55 Paine's View of the American Revolution00:39:15 The Story of Common Sense00:50:34 Measuring the Reach of Common Sense00:59:34 The Legacy of Common Sense and Thomas Paine01:02:54 Time Warp01:05:02 Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of Common Sense01:08:17 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 127: American Enlightenments🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause🎧 Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of HappinessSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Common Sense didn’t just make an argument for independence—it moved through a world of newspapers, pamphlets, and personal networks that carried revolutionary ideas from one doorstep to the next. So how did political news travel in 1776, and what made print such a powerful engine of persuasion? As we approach the 250th anniversary of Common Sense, Ben Franklin’s World Revisited returns to Episode 156 to explore how early Americans shared, debated, and embraced revolutionary ideas. You’ll discover how print and networks spread the Revolution, what made Common Sense a publishing phenomenon, and how media shaped political debate and public opinion. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/156RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 091: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes in Early America🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks🎧 Episode 375: Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America🎧 Episode 428: America's Forgotten Quest to Link Two OceansSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Rush was one of early America’s most fascinating figures. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a leading Philadelphia physician, and a thinker who believed that a healthy body was the foundation of a healthy republic. In this episode, historian Sarah Naramore, author of Benjamin Rush, Civic Health and Human Illness in the Early American Republic, introduces us to Rush as both doctor and political philosopher. We’ll explore: How Rush developed an “American system” of medicine His groundbreaking ideas on mental health and addiction And why he believed the human body modeled the ideal form of government. Rush may be what Sarah calls a “B-list Founding Father,” but his influence on early American science, politics, and public health was anything but minor. Sarah’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/430 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:06 Episode Introduction00:04:48 Who Was Benjamin Rush00:13:52 Benjamin Rush's Medical Practice00:17:01 The American System of Medicine00:22:30 Rush's Ideas about Civic Health00:29:07 Rush's Approach to Mental Health00:33:53 Rush's Views on Addiction00:48:00 Rush's Legacy00:52:13 Time Warp00:55:00 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 174: Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams & Jefferson🎧 Episode 263: The Medical Imagination🎧 Episode 279: Benjamin Rush, Founding Father🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 2SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

British officials had a problem: Their American colonists wouldn't stop smuggling. Even after Parliament slashed tea prices and passed laws to make legal imports cheaper, colonists kept buying Dutch and French goods on the black market. So what was really going on? If it wasn't just about saving money, what drove thousands of merchants and consumers to risk fines, seizure, and worse? In this revisited episode, we follow the illicit trade networks that connected colonial port cities to the "Golden Rock,” Sint Eustatius, a tiny Dutch island that became the Atlantic World's busiest smuggling hub. You'll discover why American merchants risked everything to trade there, how these underground networks shaped revolutionary resistance, and what Britain's crackdown on smuggling reveals about the deeper economic and political tensions that ignited the Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/161 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 021: Smuggling in Colonial America & Living History🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773🎧 Episode 121: The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World🎧 Episode 159: Dangerous Economies🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea🎧 Episode 288: Smugglers & Pirates in the 18th-Century Atlantic WorldSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Think the Boston Tea Party made America a coffee-drinking nation? Historian Michelle McDonald reveals the truth: colonists were already choosing coffee over tea because it was cheaper. Michelle Craig McDonald, the Librarian/Director of the Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society and author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States, explains how coffee shaped American identity long before the Revolution. You'll hear about Revolutionary-era women storming a Boston warehouse to seize hoarded coffee and sell it at regulated prices. You'll discover why Parliament protected coffee while taxing tea. And you'll learn how enslaved Caribbean laborers made America's favorite beverage possible. From colonial coffee houses to debates about caffeine addiction in the early republic, discover how one imported commodity became distinctly American. Michelle's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/429 EPISODE OUTLINE 00:00:00  Introduction 00:03:20  Meet our Guest  00:04:35  Coffee vs. Tea in Early America 00:06:50  Coffeehouses and How Coffee Was Served 00:08:04  Medical Concerns About Coffee 00:09:12  Coffee Production 00:12:35  Attempts to Grow Coffee in North America 00:14:04 The Use of Enslaved Labor in Coffee Cultivation 00:19:50 The Early American Market for Coffee 00:22:21  Early American Coffee Connoisseurs 00:29:57  Early American Coffeehouses 00:34:48  Coffee and the American Revolution 00:36:40 The Boston Coffee Riot, 1777 00:42:48 Coffee in the Early Republic 00:45:00 Coffee and the Haitian Revolution 00:47:53 Early Republic Attempts to Grow Coffee 00:50:55 Early Republic Coffee Culture 00:53:56 Time Warp 00:58:31 Conclusion RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution🎧 Episode 288: Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World🎧 Episode 294: 1774, The Long Year of American Revolution🎧 Episode 319: Cuba: An Early American History🎧 Episode 401: Tea, Boycotts, & Revolution SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices