Franklin on #HATM Podcast

Coming soon

Is there a more compelling Founding Father than Benjamin Franklin?¹ Maybe, maybe not. He seems to be everywhere, playing with kites, creating bifocals, printing newspapers, laying the foundations of the most powerful empire in the history of the world, that kind of stuff. So it seems odd to me that we haven’t seen him appear in film and series more often. Of course, who would really want to follow the late Tom Wilkinson’s portrayal in John Adams anyway?

Fortunately Michael Douglas believes he is up to the challenge. And so too friends, are we. Franklin debuts on Apple TV Friday the 12th with a three-episode salvo, followed by single episodes each week. Here is the trailer:

We will be recapping the episodes each Monday, relating to you the histories of what we saw and our reactions to the episode. This podcast miniseries will operate a bit differently. We’re going have a permanent guest host and a rotating number of scholars each week. As you can see, it is an awesome lineup. I thought maybe you might want to see.

First, our guest host:

Kelsa Pelletiere is the guest host for the duration of the Franklin podcast miniseries. I sought out someone who is an absolute expert on the man and his life and seemingly everyone came back with Kelsa. She is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on early diplomatic history in the United States, specifically Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution. Her teaching interests include eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century American history; Revolutionary America; U.S. diplomacy; and the Atlantic world.

Our guests:

Episodes 1-3, dropping April 15:

Craig Bruce Smith is an associate professor of history at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era and co-authored George Washington’s Lessons in Ethical Leadership. He specializes in American Revolutionary and early American history, specifically focusing on George Washington, honor, ethics, war, the founders, transnational ideas, and national identity. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, and early American cultural, intellectual, and political history.

Episode 4, Dropping April 22:

Lindsay Chervinsky is a presidential historian. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, and the forthcoming book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic. She regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.

Episode 5, Dropping April 29:

Seth Cotlar specializes in the history of the United States in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. His first book - Tom Paine's America: The Rise and Fall of Trans-Atlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic - won the Best First Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He is currently working on a new book project, a cultural history of nostalgia in modernizing America, 1776-1865.

Episode 6, Dropping May 6:

Sara Georgini is the Series Editor for The Papers of John Adams, part of The Adams Papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and author of Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family . Committed to the preservation of and access to rare primary sources, she has worked on the selection, annotation, indexing, and book production of a dozen scholarly editions drawn from the Adams Papers, covering the history of American political life in the era ranging from the Declaration to disunion. Her research focuses on early American thought, culture, and religion. She is a co-founder and contributor to The Junto and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History blogs. She writes about American history, thought, and culture for Smithsonian and CNN.

Episode 7, Dropping May 13:

Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, specializes in early American politics and political culture. Her interest in political violence and political polarization—dirty, nasty, politics—has made her work particularly relevant in recent years. Freeman’s award-winning first book—Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (Yale University Press, 2001)—explored political combat on the national stage in the Founding era.  Her most recent book—The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War—focuses on physically violent clashes in the House and Senate chambers, and how they shaped and savaged the nation.

Michael Hattem is an American historian, with interests in early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory. He received his PhD in History at Yale University and am the author of Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution and The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History. He has taught History and American Studies courses at The New School and Knox College. His work has been featured or mentioned in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. He has served as a historical consultant or contributor for a number of projects and organizations, curated historical exhibitions, appeared in television documentaries, and authenticated and written catalogue essays for historical document auctions.

Episode 8, Dropping May 20:

Liz Covart is a historian of early America who practices scholarly history, public history, and digital humanities, primarily as the Founding Director of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. She is also the host and creator of the amazing podcast, Ben Franklin’s World.

Final Thoughts Episode, Dropping May 27:

Tad Stoermer teaches public history as a lecturer in the Museum Studies (MA) program at Johns Hopkins. He is also the Film and Digital Media Editor of The Public Historian, as well as a filmmaker with his own studio, Størmerlige Productions LLC. Dr. Stoermer is an alumnus of Harvard University, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Virginia, where he earned a PhD in History in 2010, specializing in the American Revolution. He began his career in public history as a historian at Colonial Williamsburg, where he was first responsible for digital history, then assumed oversight of the content of interpretive and media programs, and academic affairs, and was CW’s primary spokesperson on history-related issues. Dr. Stoermer was part of the production team that won an Emmy award in 2013 for “The Global Economy” and authored *Colonial Williamsburg: The Official Guide* (2014). In 2015, Dr. Stoermer became a Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Fellow at Harvard University, helping to create the “Colonial North America” digital history project, and taught public history as an instructor. He returned to Hopkins in 2017 as an adjunct member of the Museum Studies faculty, while serving as an adviser for history content for C-SPAN and the Walt Disney Companies.

Alright! I hope you are as excited as I am! And if you haven’t checked out this week’s episode with Drew McKevitt discussing Robocop, you can find it below:

Hey, thanks for being here and being part of this thing we are trying to build. It means the world to me.

-Jason

1. Please put your hand down, Mr. Miranda. We know.