Franklin, Jefferson, & America’s First Institutions

The final episode of season one of Great Talks at the APS departs slightly from the format of featuring an APS Meeting talk, instead featuring a paper appearing in a recent issue of Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. We thought it appropriate to close out the season by having a conversation about two figures who loom large in the history of the APS and in the national imagination—Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

On this episode, Dr. Patrick Spero and Dr. John Van Horne discuss Franklin, Jefferson, and their contributions to the founding and early growth of the American Philosophical Society and other Philadelphia institutions. Dr. Van Horne is Director Emeritus of the Library Company of Philadelphia. His essay, "Two Chips off the Same Block: Benjamin Franklin's Library Company and Philosophical Society and the Saga of Their 275-Year Relationship," was published in the December 2018 issue of the Proceedings.