412 The Franklin Stove
Ben Franklin's World
Liz Covart
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | But he did think that there should be better stewardship of the resources and conserving |
| 0:09.8 | trees was something that all colonists should be engaged with. |
| 0:15.0 | So in one of his almanacs, he publishes the scheme of a friend to really have kind of modern forestry that certain kinds of trees are |
| 0:23.7 | preserved or even planted and then harvested very, very carefully. So this is an ongoing |
| 0:29.3 | concern of his. How many trees do we have left? What is the fuel situation? |
| 0:33.5 | Music Hello and welcome to episode of |
| 0:43.7 | Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how people |
| 0:50.7 | and events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in. |
| 0:55.4 | And I'm your host, Liz Covart. |
| 0:58.1 | Actually, I'm not your host today. |
| 1:00.6 | Instead, this episode was produced and hosted |
| 1:02.9 | by my friend and colleague, Joseph Adelman. |
| 1:05.5 | Now, you may remember Joe from several of our earlier episodes, |
| 1:09.0 | where he was the first person besides myself |
| 1:11.3 | to host an episode. |
| 1:12.8 | He did this with episode 156, |
| 1:15.1 | The Power of the Press, |
| 1:16.1 | during the American Revolution, |
| 1:17.6 | which was back in 2017. |
| 1:19.8 | Now, Joe has helped out a lot over the years. |
| 1:22.4 | So when I decided to make this podcast |
... |
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