Walter Isaacson On Ben Franklin
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(It’s the July 4th holiday. The full Dish — including my weekly column and the window contest — will return next Friday. Happy Independence Day!)
Walter is the Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values at Tulane. He’s the former CEO of the Aspen Institute, where he is now a Distinguished Fellow, and he’s been the chairman of CNN and the editor of Time magazine. He’s currently a host of the show “Amanpour and Company” on PBS and CNN, a contributor to CNBC, and the host of the podcast “Trailblazers, from Dell Technologies.” The author of many bestselling books, the one we’re discussing this week is Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.
As Walter says on the pod, my invitation to him to come talk about Franklin spurred him to propose writing a new, second brief book on Franklin’s meaning for America, especially his hatred of “arbitrary power.” For two clips of our convo — on why Franklin opposed a one-person presidency, and his brutal rift with his son William — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: raised in NOLA in a diverse neighborhood; his work during the recovery from Katrina; Michael Lewis and Nick Lemann as NOLA contemporaries; Harvard in the ‘70s; the benefits of being an outsider; Franklin as the 10th son of a Puritan immigrant in Boston; indentured to his brother as a printer’s apprentice; running away to Philly; his self-taught genius; his 13 Virtues; his many pseudonyms; Poor Richard’s Almanack; poking fun at the elite; his great scientific feats; giving away the patents for his inventions; becoming the most famous American abroad; leaving his wife in Philly; his philandering; struggling to hold the empire together as a diplomat in London; humiliated by elites in the Cockpit in Westminster; returning to Philly as a fierce revolutionary; seeing his son William stay loyal to the Crown as governor of NJ; embracing William’s abandoned son; securing an alliance with France and its crucial navy; the deism of the Founders; balancing faith and reason; power vs arbitrary power; Trump’s daily whims (e.g. tariffs); the separation of powers; judicial review; private property as a check against tyranny; the commons; Posse Comitatus; the Marines in L.A.; Congress ceding power to Trump; the elites’ failure over Iraq and Wall Street; and the dangers of cognitive sorting.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Edward Luce on America’s self-harm, Tara Zahra on the revolt against globalization after WWI, Thomas Mallon on the AIDS crisis, and Johann Hari turning the tables to interview me. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you. Hi there, and welcome to another discast in this summer of our discontent, I suppose, as the Trump |
| 0:36.8 | immigration crackdown begins to reach what we all thought |
| 0:40.5 | were going to be, its inevitable stage, and as we have to figure out what next happens and which |
| 0:47.7 | of these two tribes is going to blink and what happens if neither does, these are difficult times, I know, for many of us, thinking about the country and our |
| 0:59.3 | republic. |
| 1:00.3 | And I thought we should address some of these things a little bit away from the current |
| 1:06.7 | headlines because it's so hard to get perspective, especially when the headlines are coming |
| 1:11.5 | at you from social media and from news updates every five minutes. To take a bit of a long |
| 1:18.7 | view, we did recently with McKinley talking about the last Republican party, the old Republican |
| 1:26.4 | party that favored protectionism, tariffs, and national |
| 1:30.0 | expansion. And we have a very special guest this week. We're going to talk about another key |
| 1:34.6 | American in the history of the United States, probably one of the greatest ones. But before we do |
| 1:39.8 | that, coming up, let you know, we have some wonderful guests coming up. Tara Zara is coming on. |
| 1:44.3 | We're going to talk about the period between the two world wars, because that was the last time |
| 1:49.3 | we had a really big push against globalization, where that came from, what it can tell us. |
| 1:55.7 | Today, and Johann Hari, my old friend's coming on to do our annual thing, which he turns the |
| 2:00.2 | table on me and podcasts |
| 2:01.7 | an interview with me and asks me questions. But today, we're going to talk about one of the |
| 2:07.8 | most extraordinary Americans who ever lived, Benjamin Franklin. I've just finished this book, |
| 2:13.4 | and I've also just dived into the Kent Burns four-hour biography, which I must say is also |
| 2:19.6 | extremely good. My guest is Walter Isaacson. He's the Leonard Lorde Professor of American History |
| 2:26.7 | and Values at Tulane. He's the former CEO of the Aspen Institute, the former chairman of CNN, |
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