An Empire of Reason - The Curious Americans

American Political History · Oct 9, 2023 · 27m

In June 1752, a forty-six-year-old retired printer stood in a shed on the edge of Philadelphia and flew a silk kite into a thunderstorm — and when the spark jumped from the key to his knuckle, Benjamin Franklin proved that the lightning that had terrified humanity since the beginning of time was nothing but electricity, and could be tamed. This is the story of the curious Americans: the lawyers and farmers and country doctors who, with no universities and no academies and no permission, turned the unmapped New World into the most exciting laboratory on earth — John Winthrop opening his…