400 episodes

This is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history. It is produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Ben Franklin's World Airwave Media

    • History
    • 4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

This is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history. It is produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

    380 The Tory's Wife

    380 The Tory's Wife

    The American Revolution was a movement that divided British Americans. Americans did not universally agree on the Revolution’s ideas about governance and independence. And the movement’s War for Independence was a bloody civil war that not only pitted brother against brother and fathers against sons; it also pitted wives against husbands.
    Cynthia A. Kierner is a professor of history at George Mason University and the author of the book The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America. Cindy joins us to lead us through the story of Jane and William Spurgin, an everyday couple who lived in the North Carolina Backcountry during the American Revolution and who found themselves supporting different sides of the Revolution.
    Show Notes:https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/380



    Sponsor Links
    Colonial Williamsburg Foundation John D. Rockefeller Jr., Library The Virginia Gazette
    Complementary Episodes
    Episode 085: Bonnie Huskins, American Loyalists in Canada Episode 126: Rebecca Brannon, The Reintegration of American Loyalists Episode 237: Nora Doyle, Motherhood in Early America Episode 325: Woody Holton, Everyday People of the American Revolution Episode 330: Brad Jones, Loyalism in the British Atlantic World Episode 356: Paul Peucker, The Moravian Church in North America
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    Helpful Links
    Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

    • 1 hr 5 min
    379 Women Healers in Early America

    379 Women Healers in Early America

    Women make up eight out of every ten healthcare workers in the United States. Yet they lag behind men when it comes to working in the roles of medical doctors and surgeons.
    Why has healthcare become a professional field dominated by women, and yet women represent a minority of physicians and doctors who serve at the top of the healthcare field?
    Susan H. Brandt, a historian and lecturer at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, seeks to find answers to these questions. In doing so, she takes us into the rich history of women healers with details from her book, Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia.
    Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/379



    Sponsor Links
    Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
    Complementary Episodes
    Episode 003: Director of the Library Company of Philadelphia Episode 005: Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and Health Episode 116: Disease & the Seven Years’ War Episode 174: Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic Episode 263: The Medical Imagination Episode 273: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Early Republic Episode 276: Benjamin Rush: Founding Father Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 2  
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    Helpful Links
    Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

    • 1 hr
    378 Everyday Black Living in Early America

    378 Everyday Black Living in Early America

    When we study the history of Black Americans, especially in the early American period, we tend to focus on slavery and the slave trades. But focusing solely on slavery can hinder our ability to see that, like all early Americans, Black Americans were multi-dimensional people who led complicated lives and lived a full range of experiences that were worth living and talking about.
    Tara Bynum, an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and the author of Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, joins us to explore the lives of four early Black American writers: Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, James Albert Unkawsaw Groniosaw, and David Walker.
    Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/378



    Sponsor Links
    Colonial Williamsburg Foundation BFW Listener Survey 
    Complementary Episodes
    Episode 025: Inventing George Whitefield  Episode 083: Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution Episode 328: Free People of Color in Early America Episode 360: Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts  
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    Helpful Links
    Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

    • 49 min
    377 Phillis Wheatley & the Playwright

    377 Phillis Wheatley & the Playwright

    2023 marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Phillis Wheatley's published book of poetry in the British American colonies.
    Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who, as a teenager, became the first published African author of a book of poetry written in English. 
    Ade Solanke, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, has written two plays about Phillis Wheatley’s life to commemorate the semiquincentennial of Wheatley’s literary accomplishments. She joins us to not only explore the life of Phillis Wheatley, but also how playwrights use and research history to help them create dramatic works of art. Works of art that can help us forge an emotional connection with the past.
    Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/377



    Sponsor Links
    Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Exclusive BFW Listener Discount NordVPN BFW Listener Survey 
    Complementary Episodes
    Episode 008: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America Episode 086: Ben Franklin in London Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances Episode 132: Indigenous London Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution Episode 170: New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England  

    Listen!
    Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App
    Helpful Links
    Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

    • 45 min
    376 Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons

    376 Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons

    Colonial America was born in a world of religious alliances and rivalries. Missionary efforts in the colonial Americas allow us to see how some of these religious alliances and rivalries played out. Spain, and later France, sent Catholic priests and friars to North and South America, and the Caribbean, purportedly to save the souls of Indigenous Americans by converting them to Catholicism. We also know that Protestants did similar work to help counteract this Catholic work in the Americas.
    Kirsten Silva Gruesz, a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins us to explore the life and work of Cotton Mather, a Boston Puritan minister who actively sought to counteract the work of Catholic conversion, with details from her book Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas.
    Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/376



    Sponsor Links
    Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Exclusive Listener Deal NordVPN Ben Franklin's World Survey
    Complementary Episodes
    Episode 047: Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England Episode 196: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South Episode 242: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1 Episode 318: Ste Genevieve National Historic Park Episode 334: Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain Episode 371: Estevan Rael-Gálvez, An Archive of Indigenous Slavery
    Listen!
    Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App
    Helpful Links
    Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

    • 1 hr 4 min
    375 Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America

    375 Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America

    Over the past decade, we’ve heard a lot about “fake news” and “misinformation.” And as 2024 is an election year, it’s likely we’re going to hear even more about these terms.
    So what is the origin of misinformation in the American press? When did Americans decide that they needed to be concerned with figuring out whether the information they heard or read was truthful or fake?
    Jordan E. Taylor joins us to find answers to these questions. Jordan is a historian who studies the history of media and the ways early Americans created, spread, and circulated news. He is also the author of the book Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America.
    Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/375



    Sponsor Links
    Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 26th Annual Wood in the Eighteenth Century Conference
    Complementary Episodes
    Episode 144: The Common Cause of the American Revolution Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin Episode 227: Copyright & Fair Use in Early America Episode 243:  Revolutionary Print Networks
    Listen!
    Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App
    Helpful Links
    Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter  

    • 58 min

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5
1.4K Ratings

1.4K Ratings

Tardigras ,

Wonderful Guests, Deeply Informative

Each succeeding episode seems like the best one I’ve listened to yet. I only “discovered” BFW some 43 podcasts ago but your format is eminently “binge-able.” Super guest list. I want to matriculate with a major in American History all over again.

Honest Abby ,

Hands down my fav podcast.

I look forward to each new episode. So professional and enlightening. Thanks Liz Covart!!!

scottD125 ,

A shell of its former self

This show has gone off on a weird tangent, far from where it started. Not really a history podcast anymore. More of a social commentary, mostly of race, ethnicity and gender. I listen to old episodes, but anything from the last year or so is uninteresting and unlistenable.

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