The Declaration of Independence is one of the most iconic documents in United States history. But what do we really know about how it came to be?

In our most recent episode, historian Emily Sneff helped us explore the Declaration through your questions–questions that revealed just how complex, living, and contested this document still is.

So in today’s Revisited episode, we take a listen to the podcast that Emily helped to produce back in 2017: Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft.

Originally part of the Omohundro Institute’s Doing History: To the Revolution! Series, this episode features three distinguished scholars: Danielle Allen, Patrick Spero, and Peter Onuf, Together, these scholars reveal that many hands and minds shaped the Declaration of Independence. They also help us dive into some of the document’s contradictions around slavery and equality.

Emily’s Website 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/415
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration
🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth
🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?
🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock
🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of Happiness
🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preview of Karin Wulf’s book, Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America.

In eighteenth-century America, genealogy was more than a simple record of family ties--it was a powerful force that shaped society. Lineage delves into an era where individuals, families, and institutions meticulously documented their connections. Whether driven by personal passion or mandated by churches, local governments, and courts, these records appeared in diverse forms-from handwritten notes and account books to intricate silk threads and enduring stone carvings.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you picture the Declaration of Independence, what comes to mind?

Most people envision a single, iconic document–parchment, signatures, maybe even a scene from National Treasure. But what if I told you, the Declaration of Independence isn’t just one document, but many documents? And that each version of the Declaration tells a different story–a story not just about American independence, but about the people who printed, read, preserved, and even re-wrote the Declaration?

Emily Sneff is one of the leading experts on the Declaration of Independence. She has spent more than a decade researching the Declaration’s origins, and its different copies. She’s the former research manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard, a consulting curator for Revolution 250 exhibits at the Museum of the American Revolution and the American Philosophical Society, and I’m proud to say, she’s is one of our former interns here at Ben Franklin’s World.

Emily’s Website 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/415
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration
🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft 
🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July
🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?
🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock
🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of Happiness

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we uncover queer lives from the distant past, especially in an era when language and records often erased or obscured them?

What did queerness look like in early America, and how might it have intersected with power, religion, and empire on the eve of the American Revolution? 

John McCurdy, a Professor of History and Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University and the author of Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh, joins us to explore these questions through the remarkable story of British Army Chaplain Robert Newburgh.

John's EMU Webpage | Book 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/414

 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 002: "That's So Gay" Exhibit, Library Company
🎧 Episode 004: Sex and the Founding Fathers
🎧 Episode 013: Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America
🎧 Episode 278: Polygamy: An Early American History
🎧 Episode 354: The Sewing Girl's Tale
🎧 Episode 359: Transing Gender in Early America

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 17, 2025, marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first full-scale battle of what would become the American War for Independence.

Although technically a British victory, Bunker Hill proved that colonial soldiers could hold their own against the might of the British Empire. New England militiamen inflicted 1,054 casualties on the British, 50 percent of the British force. The New Englanders sustained 411 casualties that day, including the man who stood at the heart of this battle: Dr. Joseph Warren.

Who was Dr. Joseph Warren, and why did he risk his life in the first major battle of the Revolutionary War? What drove this physician, political thinker, and revolutionary leader to become the face of the American Revolution in Boston?

Christian Di Spigna, Executive Director of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation, joins us to explore these questions and commemorate this important anniversary with details from his book, Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero.

Christian’s Foundation | Book 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/413
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History
🎧 Episode 301: From Innoculation to Vaccination, Part 1
🎧 Episode 350: The Revolutionary Samuel Adams
🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock
🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, is nearly upon us, and it offers us the perfect moment for reflection.

What do we know about Juneteenth? Where did this holiday begin? And how has it grown from a regional commemoration into a national conversation about freedom, equality, and memory?

In this episode, we return to our conversation with Annette Gordon-Reed in Episode 304. A native Texan and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Annette brings both personal insight and deep historical knowledge to her book On Juneteenth, which is a rich meditation on Texas history, African American identity, and the long arc of emancipation.

Annette’s Website | Book | Bluesky

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/304
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 067: Cattle Colonialism
🎧 Episode 115: The Early History of Texas
🎧 Episode 117: The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson
🎧 Episode 139: The Other Slavery
🎧 Episode 281: The Business of Slavery
🎧 Episode 282: Tacky's Revolt

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It might surprise you, but in the 18th century, people across the globe were reckoning with colder-than-usual weather brought on by the Little Ice Age—a centuries-long chill that made heating homes more urgent than ever.

At the same time, early Americans were cutting down trees at an unsustainable pace to stay warm. Enter Benjamin Franklin.

In this episode, Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin joins us to explore how Franklin tackled this problem by designing five different stove models, and what these innovations reveal about early American science, sustainability, and life with fire.

Joyce’s Website | Book

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/412
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 015: Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit
🎧 Episode 086: Benjamin Franklin in London
🎧 Episode 169: The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin
🎧 Episode 189: The Little Ice Age
🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin
🎧 Episode 397: Native Nations

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress, this episode revisits the origins of the United States Congress and how early Americans built a representative government from revolutionary ideals.

Historians Matt Wasniewski and Terrence Ruckner of the Office of the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives join us to explore how Congress evolved from its colonial and revolutionary predecessors into the bicameral legislature established by the Constitution.

House History Office Website

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/202
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 040: For Fear of an Elected King
🎧 Episode 078: Washington Brotherhood
🎧 Episode 153: Governments of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 179: Governance During the Critical Period
🎧 Episode 338: The Early History of the United States Senate

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two hundred fifty years ago, in May 1775, delegates from thirteen British North American colonies gathered in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress. 

Why was Philadelphia chosen as the seat of Congress? What made the city a critical hub for revolutionary ideas, commerce, and culture? And how has Philadelphia’s early history shaped the broader narrative of American Independence? 

Paul Kahan, a historian of American political, economic, and urban history, joins us to explore Philadelphia’s early American history with details from his book. Philadelphia: A Narrative History, the first comprehensive history book about Philadelphia in over 40 years.

Paul’s Website | Book 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/411
 
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution
🎧 Episode 242: A History of Early Delaware
🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution, Pt 1: Occupied Philadelphia
🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States
🎧 Episode 379: Women Healers in Early America
🎧 Episode 396: Carpenters' Hall and the First Continental Congress
🎧 Episode 402: Clocks, Watches, and Life in Early America

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did friendship between men and women look like in the decades following the American Revolution? Could emotional closeness and intellectual kinship flourish outside of marriage— and without scandal?

In this episode, we revisit our earlier conversation with historian Cassandra Good, author of Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic. Building on our recent exploration of love and advice in 1690s England, we take a closer look at how early Americans navigated the shifting social norms of gender, intimacy, and platonic relationships.

Cassie’s Website | Book

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/094

REQUEST A TOPIC
📨 Topic Request Form
📫 [email protected]

WHEN YOU'RE READY
🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 
👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community

LISTEN 🎧
🍎 Apple Podcasts 
💚 Spotify 
🎶 Amazon Music
🛜 Pandora

CONNECT
🦋 Liz on Bluesky
👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn
🛜 Liz’s Website

SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
💚 Leave a rating on Spotify

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices