I'm going to show you how great I am.

This is our fighting power.

I just want to say from the bottom of me heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody.

Hello and welcome to how to Take Over the World.

This is Ben Wilson. Today we are talking about Benjamin Franklin, the American inventor, writer, diplomat, entrepreneur, and statesman.

Benjamin Franklin is an interesting character. I think he's often understood in kind of comic terms.

He seems kind of ridiculous. And that's partially his own doing. He didn't take himself too

seriously. He is, as Walter Isaacson puts it, the founder who winks at us. I think there's

an interesting contrast there with George Washington. I talked a lot in that episode about

how he used seriousness to his advantage. He was a serious person.

Well, I think Benjamin Franklin shows some of the advantages

of not taking yourself too seriously.

But as a consequence, I think people don't fully appreciate

the greatness of Benjamin Franklin.

I think the best way to understand that

is to take each of his accomplishments separately and consider them individually.

So as a scientist, he was arguably the most important scientist of his generation,

like genuinely a groundbreaking scientist who deserves to be maybe not in the top tier,

but just below figures like Isaac Newton, Einstein, Faraday.

If he hadn't accomplished everything

else that he did, he would be highly regarded as a practical scientist and inventor. As a writer,

he was America's first great writer and by far the greatest popular writer of his day. And if he

...