418 The Driver's Story

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We often learn about slavery in early America through broad economic or political terms—cotton, sugar, markets, revolutions. But what happens when we turn our focus to the lived experiences of enslaved people themselves? What did slavery feel and look like on the ground? What did survival look like day to day? And what do we make of the enslaved people who were forced into positions of authority over others, like the plantation drivers who were tasked with extracting labor from their fellow enslaved workers? Randy Browne, an award-winning historian and Professor of History at Xavier University, joins us to investigate plantation slavery and its driving system with details from his book The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery. Randy’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/418 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 281: The Business of Slavery🎧 Episode 282: Tacky's Revolt🎧 Episode 289: Maroonage & the Great Dismal Swamp🎧 Episode 295: The Whitney Plantation & Museum🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade🎧 Episode 324: New Netherland & Slavery SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club 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 *Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.
0:04.8	A few years ago, learning about the forgotten meaning of the pursuit of happiness changed my life.
0:11.0	When the founders wrote that famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence,
0:14.5	they meant an ongoing commitment to self-improvement and lifelong learning.
0:19.4	This discovery inspired me to write a book, and in my
0:22.1	new podcast, I explore the founder's lives with the historians who know them best. Plus, filmmaker
0:27.9	Ken Byrne shares his daily practice of self-reflection. Join me for Pursuit, the Founders' Guide
0:34.2	to Happiness. Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast.
0:43.7	I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers
0:47.6	in the history of the world.
0:49.4	These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Vigelin, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark,
0:54.1	and so many other
0:55.0	famous and not so famous adventures from throughout history. Go to Explor's Podcast.com or just look
1:01.0	us up on your podcast app. That's the Explorers Podcast.
1:05.9	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Yeah, they've got the impossible job of trying to satisfy
1:14.9	people who are at war, right? Or at least to be seen as trying to look out for the interests,
1:20.2	both of their enslavers and the enslaved people below them. And so it's this constant balancing
1:25.8	act where they're choosing from a range of bad options and having to kind of decide which side of that struggle they're going to come down on really throughout it every individual day.
1:40.1	Hello and welcome to episode 418 of Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping
1:51.6	you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the
1:56.5	present-day world we live in. And I'm your host, Liz Covart. We often learn about slavery in early
2:02.9	America through broad economic or political terms, terms like cotton, sugar, markets, or even
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Liz Covart, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Liz Covart and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.