In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with Eric Weiner, author and award-winning journalist, about his book Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder’s Formula for a Long and Useful Life (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, June 2024). Weiner chronicles the Founding Father’s multiple transformations: from tradesman to inventor, statesman, and leader, and the different aspects of Franklin’s personality that emerged as he reinvented himself from idealist to pragmatist to possibilist. Weiner’s account humanizes Franklin and shares why his insight could be relevant in today’s changing times. An edited version of the conversation follows, and you can also watch the full video at the end of this page.
What is your book about?
My book falls squarely into the category of bio, memoir, travel, and humor, which is a category I invented. It is a combination of a biography of Benjamin Franklin, which details the narrative arc of his life, and a memoir, which shares some of my own life.
It’s humorous because I like to think I’m funny on the page just as Franklin was. It’s also part travelogue because I travel in the footsteps of Franklin. He was the best-traveled Founding Father of his age. In fact, he logged 42,000 miles and crossed the Atlantic eight times. So the book is some of everything, and hopefully the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
What are you hoping your book will do for Franklin in 2024?
I’m hoping the book will make Benjamin Franklin accessible to readers who might not otherwise ever pick up a book about him and certainly not one of the 900-page tomes that are out there. I don’t know where in the publishing industry it was decided that serious biographies about serious people must be at least 800 pages long and be rather dry. But it’s not something Ben Franklin would have agreed with. He was always espousing the benefits of brevity and humor. Therefore, I tried to write a book that is part biography, part memoir—the kind of book that Franklin himself would have wanted to read.
What do you mean by ‘Franklin is the least dead of the founders’?
When we think of other Founding Fathers, say Washington or Jefferson, the image that comes to mind is a gray, lifeless, serious person. But with Franklin, what you think of is someone who’s very much alive: three-dimensional in every sense of the word. He’s the founder you most want to have a beer with or, more accurately, a glass of Madeira, because that was his favorite beverage.
We have something to learn from Franklin, something that is absolutely relevant today, whether it’s about civic discourse, aging well, the beauty of music, or the art of compromise.
I can’t picture Jefferson, Washington, or Adams at a café in San Francisco typing away on their MacBooks while wearing noise-canceling headphones. But I can picture Franklin doing that. I can picture Franklin inventing noise-canceling headphones. I can picture him inserting himself into our current discourse and in his gentle, charming way, trying to steer us back toward a more constructive dialogue. One of the main points of my book is precisely that. We have something to learn from Franklin, something that is absolutely relevant today, whether it’s about civic discourse, aging well, the beauty of music, or the art of compromise. It’s all there in his words and in his life.
What do you mean when you call Franklin ‘a possibilian’?
There’s an important distinction between a pragmatist and a possibilian. A pragmatist looks at a problem and says, “OK, what’s the best possible solution we can come up with working with what we have?” A possibilian, a term that comes from neuroscientist David Eagleman, looks at the same problem and says, “What if? What if we did this? What if we thought outside the box? What if we took some chances with materials or with structure or with anything?” So the possibilian is more far reaching and open to something that doesn’t yet exist.
Perhaps that sounds a bit obscure. Benjamin Franklin actually believed quite firmly that there was intelligent life out there. Now, we have no proof; he had no proof. But the possibilian is open to that possibility, and even to something like SETI [search for extraterrestrial intelligence]. That was very much Ben Franklin.
Despite all of our love of technology and all the talk about AI, in many ways we are actually thinking smaller than people did in Franklin’s time.
Despite all of our love of technology and all the talk about AI, in many ways we are actually thinking smaller than people did in Franklin’s time. Franklin was a man who was born when the printing press and the printed word was the medium of the time. He took that and he ran with it, establishing newspapers in Philadelphia and a publishing industry—things that did not exist. No, they were not digital, and they were not AI. But in a way, they were a greater leap than we have today.
Any ‘possibilians,’ especially in Washington, DC, your hometown?
Washington, DC, where I am now, could learn a lot from Benjamin Franklin about the art of the possible. Franklin was both hard-nosed and an idealist at the same time, which is a rare combination. He would look at a problem and come up with the most inventive solution.
He also engaged in what I call “analogous thinking.” For instance, when he was conducting his famous experiments in electricity, he applied his knowledge of economics and the world of business to this new field of electrical science: positive and negative charges. We live in an age of specialization where there is often very little analogous thinking. If you’re an economist, you use the jargon of economists. If you’re a biochemist, you only use the language of the biochemists.
Franklin was able to move in these different circles. If I were to list everything he accomplished, we’d have no more time for this conversation. But very briefly, he was a diplomat, a statesman, and an assemblyman. He was also what we’d call a scientist today, what was termed a “natural philosopher” back then.
He was a traveler, a botanist, a humorist, and more. One thing I really admire about him and that time is that people weren’t siloed. Part of the problem with our discourse today is that everyone’s in their own silo, with their own experts and expertise. We’re not talking to one another, but Franklin would talk to anyone. He had only two years of education. He was a tradesman, a printer by craft. He would talk to the printer down the street, and he met with four kings over the course of his lifetime. We don’t have many people like that anymore.
Franklin was also an enslaver for much of his life. Yet you are clearly a fan.
In writing this book, I wrestled with this dark side of Franklin. Over the course of his long life, (he lived until age 84) he enslaved approximately seven Africans. While seven slaves are a lot less than the 600 who Thomas Jefferson enslaved, one enslaved person is one too many.
When I shared this with my daughter, 18 years old at the time, she said, “Dad, what can we learn from this man when he treated other humans like this?” Franklin not only treated slaves that way, but he also profited personally from the slave trade. His newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, carried ads for runaway slaves, for enslaved people for sale. To put it mildly, enslavement does seem to be a dark blot on Franklin’s record. Other people also enslaved at the time, but that’s no excuse. Not everyone enslaved others; there was an early abolitionist movement.
There are a couple of elements to note. The first is that if we’re looking to learn lessons from saints, we’ll never learn lessons from anyone. I’ve written about another historical figure, Mahatma Gandhi, father of the Indian nation, nonviolent activist. Yet Gandhi was also a pretty bad husband and father who had deep flaws in other ways. But there’s a lot to learn from Gandhi, and likewise from Franklin. I’m not suggesting that we ignore this dark side of Franklin. I’m saying that we can learn from it.
Second, unlike Thomas Jefferson, for example, Franklin changed his mind about slavery. He changed it very late in life, well into his 70s and 80s. By the time he was 81 or 82, he was an ardent abolitionist. He was president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. He was speaking out against the institution of slavery and writing satires that mocked it. For me, that’s the bright spot. When presented with fresh experiences and fresh data, Franklin was able to reach new conclusions. That’s a valuable lesson for all of us today.
As the title says, this is really about Ben and you.
Every book and author meet at a certain point in the author’s life. I don’t think I could have written this book when I was 20 years old. I didn’t have the background or the inclination to write it. But I wrote this book at time when a milestone birthday was approaching. I was beginning to question what I’ve accomplished in my life. I’ve had some success as a journalist and writer. But what does that add up to? What’s the legacy I’m going to leave behind? What good have I done in the world?
Along came Franklin inserting himself into my life. Here’s a man whose last third of life was by far the most dramatic, productive, and interesting. The first two-thirds were absolutely fascinating. Yet at age 69, he switched sides: he went from being a British loyalist to a full-blooded American rebel. He also changed his mind about slavery. He embarked on a mission to France at age 70 to convince the French to support the American cause. He became the oldest delegate at the Constitutional Convention. He was living fully, and he didn’t stop learning.
He didn’t whine and complain about his various ailments, such as gout and kidney stones, and other ailments. So he’s a pretty darn good model for not only how to live but how to age well and to use your wisdom to make the world a better place.
Writing this book has changed me in the sense that I do ask these questions now: What good am I doing in the world? Am I useful?
Franklin was not religious in the traditional sense. His “G” word was not God, but good. What good have you done in the world? Every morning, he would start by writing a question, “What good will you do today?” Every evening, he’d write a question, “What good have you done today?” These are simple questions, but we don’t ask them often enough. Writing this book has changed me in the sense that I do ask these questions now: What good am I doing in the world? Am I useful?
People will complain, “Oh, so-and-so is just using you. You shouldn’t let them use you.” But what is the point of life, if not to be used—to have the candle burn fully and cleanly? That’s the way Franklin lived. He burned fully, completely, and brightly.
How would you define success in light of so much already having been written about Franklin?
A long time ago, I gave up defining success by the number of books sold or by the number of positive reviews written. A book is successful if it finds its readers—people for whom this book was meant. Those readers could be history buffs or Franklin fans. But beyond that, I would consider the book a success if someone who had only a glancing knowledge of Franklin’s life and who would never buy a book about Franklin—certainly not a 900-page tome—would pick it up. If such a person were to pick up this book, enjoy it, and discern some life lessons from it, then I’d consider the book successful.
