Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg voisen, the host of inside personal growth with another episode of our show and joining me from. Where are you joining me from? What state,

Eric Weiner
Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.

Greg Voisen
So where all the stuff is happening? Washington, DC is Eric Weiner. And I want to let my listeners know that you can go to Eric Weiner books. And I'm going to spell that out.com to learn more about Eric, His books, His engagements, where he's going to be. He's actually going to be here in San Diego at SDSU on October 10, and we're going to be promoting that, so we'll be blasting it out to everybody. I welcome you to come hear his talk, but we'll put a link in it for you to sign up so that you can come to that it's a free event. He also has workshops, and he also promotes events where he takes writers, I think you're headed to

Eric Weiner
where is Utahn in the Himalayan

Greg Voisen
next year, next year,

Eric Weiner
May, 5 to 15th. Join me. I would

Greg Voisen
like for our listeners, anybody believe me, Eric writes wonderfully. He is a exceptional writer. And this is a Simon and Schuster book. And there it is, Ben and me, and I want to thank you for sending that as well. So Eric is the author of New York Times bestseller, The geography of bliss and the geography of genius, as well as a critically acclaimed man seeks God and His latest book, well, this is an old one, the Socrates Express, because the newest one is Ben and me in the search of life lessons from dead philosophers. So former foreign correspondent for NPR, he's reported for more than three dozen countries. His works appeared in the New Republic, the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal and an anthology the best American travel writing. He lives in Silver Springs, as he said, with his wife and daughter, and he's just a pleasure to have on he was on podcast. We'll put a link. I think was 569 back in 2016

Eric Weiner
but, but who's who's counting, right? Greg, yeah, but

Greg Voisen
he, well, which this Ben and me, book. What number is that for you?

Eric Weiner
It's number five, believe it or not, it's Book number five. So,

Greg Voisen
so, so when Eric writes, he doesn't just write to write. He's really got a purpose for his writing. So let me ask you this first question. You know, in Ben and me kind of explore, obviously, Benjamin Franklin, many people have seen the Docu series that came on with Michael Douglas, an amazing series that he did as more than just a historical figure, but also as a guide to living a long, meaningful and useful life. Obviously, that's so true. What inspired you to delve into Franklin's life from this unique angle, because other authors have done this as well. You're not the only one in New York Times bestseller who's actually wrote a book, written a book on Franklin. I think Friedman wrote a book on Franklin, didn't he as

Eric Weiner
Walter Isaacson 20 years ago? Yeah. Yeah. A good biography, but, but, and I have great respect for Walter and his work and the book on Franklin, but that was a straightforward, a well written, but straightforward, chronological biography of Franklin, some I think, 700 pages long, and I set out to write something different. I didn't even think of myself as writing about Benjamin Franklin. I thought of myself as having a relationship with Benjamin Franklin, engaging with him, encountering him, you know, as if he were back with us today, or I were back in the 18th century. So my my goal from the beginning, as you suggested, was to tease out these life lessons, both for us, for us, us as individuals, but also collective lessons for our nation. Because I think it frankly, could time travel back to forward rather to 2024 he'd have a lot of advice to offer us as a nation, and to look at Franklin that way, but also to as you see, reveal something of myself and my struggles. So it is, it is really Ben and me. It's doesn't fit into a neat box this book, which is blessing and a curse in the publishing world.

Greg Voisen
So tell me you just mentioned something, and I'm just curious what you think, because you spent a lot of time documenting and studying. Frankly, what advice do you believe he would have for us in these crazy political times that we're in today, and what might he be telling the people who are running our country,

Eric Weiner
he would suggest that we pause for a beat, because Franklin never rushed anything. He would, I think, be appalled at the screen fest that is cable TV news these days, and frankly, so Franklin was famous, a great writer, but famously reticent in public with people he didn't know. He was also not a very good public speaker. Not many people know that, and he believed in getting along. I don't know if it's because he came from a family of 15 kids or what it was, but he thought that people needed to get along, so he would, he would holster his his anger. And he had all kinds of techniques. We'll get into that in a bit, for how to how to channel his anger into more productive means. But he made it a point to not just express anger, because he's feeling it at the moment, even though today we think, oh, you know, you can't hold anger in. You have to, you know, let it out and you'll feel better. Franken saw that anger, if you act on your anger, can be very destructive. He also, you know, would really reach out across the aisle, the other side of the political spectrum, whatever it was, whatever it is, and make friends with the other. He had many adversaries, but no enemies. And these days, we really seem to have made enemies of one another. And frankly, would not, would not approve of that. Just a couple suggestions.

Greg Voisen
Well, I think you're right on with people trying to get along and pausing right to give it some thought, and

Eric Weiner
some don't. He was also a great humorist, and would probably encourage us to lighten up a bit. Yeah, I know there's a story that he apocryphal or not, but it's a great story that you know, in 1776 they were casting about for someone to write to draft the Declaration of Independence. And Benjamin Franklin was an obvious choice. He was sort of the elder statesman by then, of the young United States, and a writer and a printer. But the story goes that they did not give him the job of writing the declaration of independence because they were afraid he would insert a joke in it somewhere. It sounds like the kind of thing he he would do, and so he used humor as as a bridge to other people. You can use humor, you know, Greg, in different ways. You can use humor to sort of shut people down. You know, maybe someone's talking to you and they get a little too close to the bone, and you just don't make a joke to sort of change the subject. That's a sort of negative use of humor more positive uses, well, satire, where you can say things in satire that you can't say directly you or in my writing, I do use humor, and I try to use it to illuminate the truth and not to conceal it.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you know, use you mentioned as you're speaking about him. Obviously, wasn't a great public speaker. He had all these other attributes, and you say he was a man of many contradictions, and even the documentary that Michael Douglas did did portray these contradictions, and he fall from being an enslaver to abolitionist and then from a loyalist or revolutionary. Now those are huge swings on the spectrum. Yeah, what do you think prompted these transformations? And this was in his later years, because in his earlier years, obviously that's the way he was. But I don't think a lot of people remember what we just said here. They only remember the good parts of Franklin,

Eric Weiner
right? And no, he was no saint, and I make no bones about that, he disappoints me in many ways, because, again, I'm in this relationship with them. And you spend enough time with someone, even someone you like or love, and they're going to disappoint you. And you know a couple of them, and we'll get into this is slavery. He enslaved seven people when he was a younger man, and his family relationships were not great. He was estranged from his brother, William. William remained on the other side, the British side during the war, and Franklin never forgave him for that. So he was by no means a saint. He had his flaws, but he was pretty open and honest about them. Now, to get to your question about changing your mind, most of us, as we get older, we get less flexible, we get more set in our ways, you know, just kind of hunker down with our viewpoints that we've always had. And Franklin was the opposite. Yeah, as you said, he was 69 years old, um, just a little bit younger than you. I believe when, when he jumpsides from being a loyal subject of King George the Third to becoming an American rebel. And if you think about it, that's pretty remarkable to become a rebel at age 69 I mean, he, he had more to lose and less the gain than any of the other founders. You know, he was a good generation or two older than them, older than Jefferson and Madison and even Washington So, and he changed his mind about slavery, actually becoming a very vocal abolitionist toward the end of his life and freeing his slaves. So why the changes? What made him different? I think he had this, this one trait that psychologists have identified that all creative people have, and it sounds obvious, but it's actually very important, and that is openness to experience. Are you open to new information? Are you open to the experience, not just information coming in a sort of objective way, but also your subjective experience as you experience the world. Are you willing to reassess your theories about the world? Most of us are not. Franklin was, you know, he was a great scientist, electrician, and he sort of applied the scientific method of sort of hypothesis test, hypothesis test to all of life, to morality, to his relationships with people. So I think because he remained open to experience, to new information, he was able to change his mind, which is not still, not easy, but that's the first step. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
yeah. He he had that amazing ability in his later years to be in flux, and to actually make these shifts, and his mindset had to because, you know, he'd been exposed to so much by that time over the course of his life. And in this chapter you have called resting Ben, you explore Franklin's final years, right? And according to the documentary, you know, look, he had gout. He was dealing with a bunch of medical issues. You can verify this or not, but that's what was portrayed, right? He wasn't really doing well physically in many cases, right? He was making right?

Eric Weiner
He did the Michael Douglas series. And Apple TV was accurate in some ways, and that was one way it was accurate. He did have health issues in his 70s and 80s. He lived until 84 he suffered from gout, kidney stones.

Greg Voisen
But you said, Eric, that he was incredibly productive, which he was. If you watch the mini series, you can see what this man did from 69 to 84 he was crazy. So what lessons can my listeners learn from Franklin's approach to life and productivity in later years? I mentioned to this to you before you know, Chip Connolly, who's a great author, has got this thing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where people gather and they go through midlife. Well, midlife now is occurring much later than it used to. We're seeing people in their 60s saying it's midlife, right? Whereas we used to say somebody in their 50s, now it's 60s or 70s, and people are exploring what it is they missed and what they would like to change about their life. Before the end, he was someone who was extremely reflective about this, or at least it seemed to be, can you help us with understanding

Eric Weiner
he was reflective and not too reflective. Okay? He gave up on metaphysics, sort of these big philosophical questions, metaphysical questions. At least when he was a young man, he he subscribed to the belief that truth is what works. If it works, it's true. Always experience, always experience first, like, say, you know, someone approaches you and says, you know, I want to be a runner. Is it good for my health? And and you can give them all kinds of data about how running is good for their health, and send them to studies, and they can research it and watch YouTube videos about it, or they could just go running, you know, they don't need to know the the reasons behind it. And so Franklin was kind of a utilitarian in that way, if it worked, it was good. And so he was focused. He was more, let's put it this way. He was more interested, less interested in the meaning of life, and more interested in leading a meaningful life. He was a man of very well put area, yeah. So when it came to public service, he had a philosophy, never to seek out an office, never to deny it if it's offered to you, and to never resign. And he pretty much stuck to that. The one thing he was a complete failure at was retiring. He attempted many times at age 40, when he had conducted his electrical experiments and he was world famous, he thought, this is what I'm going to do the rest of my life. Kind of be a gentleman scientist. And no, he was needed in the Pennsylvania assembly and then London and other places. So this, this idea of usefulness, was really his North Star. It sounds simple. We all say we want to be useful, but we have very mixed feelings about usefulness. Someone might come to you, Greg and say, Oh, that guy down the hall, he's just using you, Greg, and that means that you, Gregor, somehow have a character flaw, not just your friend down the hall, that you're allow yourself to be taken advantage of. Think Franklin's view was we only have a brief period on this planet. We're like a candle burning, and he wanted to burn down to

Greg Voisen
the all the way to the end. Yeah, yeah. Mother

Eric Weiner
Teresa. He found it. He found this usefulness to be great fun, almost like a game. He invented the matching grant, which is really a way of tricking people into being more generous versions of themselves. He was not beyond using a little helpful deceit. I think he would call it to do good deeds.

Greg Voisen
Well, I love the way you phrase it. Helpful deceit is a good way to put it. I mean, now we get text, you know, for making donations to these campaigns, it's like, hey, we'll match the donation eight times to whatever money you're going to give. And so I

Eric Weiner
he invented that back in the 18th century in order to he was raising money to build a hospital in Philadelphia, and he went to the Pennsylvania assembly said, Hey guys, if I can raise $2,000 a lot of money back then, will you guys match it? And they said, Yeah, because, as Franklin explained, they thought they had all the benefit of looking generous without having to be generous, because they thought there's no way he's going to raise that money. He raised $2,500 and they coughed it up. So yeah,

Greg Voisen
yeah, no. So I want you to either verify or deny this. So I have read many times you were talking about the way he looked at life, and this isn't one of the preformed questions. When he would sit in a, I was told, a rocking chair with a rock in his hand and a bucket, or a 10 bucket that would fall in and he'd go into theta estate, right? Like of meditation, because you said, Hey, he wasn't so philosophical that way. Is that true or not true? And what actually did he do if he didn't do that?

Eric Weiner
Okay? I think you're conflating two stories.

Greg Voisen
Now that's why I wanted to make sure Benjamin

Eric Weiner
Franklin did. He invented many things, we know, the lightning rod and the bifocals, probably. But He also invented a rocking chair, where, as you rocked, it would fan you at the same time. Okay, I think what you're thinking of is someone holding marbles or rocks in their hands, just falling off to sleep, and then the rocks falling wake them up. Right? That was, that was Thomas Edison.

Greg Voisen
Okay, so I wanted to make sure it was not Franklin. It was Edison.

Eric Weiner
The idea is, he thought his best ideas would come in that sort of marginal territory between awake and asleep. Good

Greg Voisen
for me to get clear on that. Now I know it's Edison now grounded Ben, you talk about Franklin's interest in empirical evidence. So he was a more evidence kind of guy, and even they depliced him in this movie with Michael Douglas as somebody who was looking at but he seemed to be quite a I'm going to put this lightly, had the ability to manipulate and deceive in a positive way, especially the French. Okay, so how do you think his scientific mind influenced not only his inventions, but his broader approach to politics and diplomacy? Because, you know, it's one thing about his inventions, it's another thing about his political diplomacy. I thought it was quite clever. Yeah, that's

Eric Weiner
a really good question. So, you know, if we're lucky, we challenges are presented to us at the right phase of our life. So this great challenge of representing the very young United States still at war with Great Britain. In Franklin's job fell to him when he was 70 years old. If it fell to him when he was 27 or 37 or even 47 I don't think he would have been up to it, but he brought his full self to the experience in his job in in Paris at the time. And, you know, he was a great flirt. Okay, let's get that out of the way. He loved the flirt, whether he did more than that, we don't know. Some scholars believe that it was his ability to flirt which made him a great diplomat as well. It was that kind of charming way he had he would make it think it was if you were doing something, you would have you believe it was your idea, not his idea. He knew when to push and when not to push. That's one of the great skills of a diplomat. He was never in a hurry, right? Always willing to pause. He also engaged in something that today is known as the Ben Franklin effect. Have you heard of it? I don't think I will tell you. So the Ben Franklin effect came about in the 1730s Franklin's working as a young man as a clerk at the Pennsylvania assembly, and there's one member, much more senior, who doesn't like this young Ben Franklin guy, and Franklin knew he's going to make life miserable for him. Now, most of us at that point would kind of suck up to that guy and do him favors and be nice to him. Franklin took the opposite tech. He asked the man to do a favor for him. Hey, I hear you've got a rare book in your library. Can I borrow it for a while? The man said, Sure. And from that day on, after Franklin returned the book, they went on to become fast friends. Now recently, psychologists have done studies. There are a few of them out there that confirm this is in fact, true. Now it's known as the Ben Franklin effect, the way to get someone to like you is not to do favors for them, but to get them to do favors for you. And It sounds counterintuitive, but it kind of makes sense, if you think about it, you know, we like to be useful, and we like to have the opportunity to be useful. Also, there's this concept of cognitive dissonance. You know, we don't like to have two competing ideas in our head at the same time. So if you know, let's just say, for argument's sake, I don't like Greg, just theoretically and but then Greg asked me to do a favor for him. So wait, I'm doing a favor for Ben, for Greg, but maybe, but I don't like him, maybe I do like him. We sort of resolve the cognitive dissonance that way. So make sense. It makes sense. And also we like to be useful. We like that. So Franklin's over there asking the French to do favors for the young United States. We need money. We need uniforms. We need soldiers. We need ships. And he also, while he did appeal to their mercenary instincts, hey, if you support us now, there'll be this new market in North America, he also knew that people need something bigger to motivate them. And he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, our cause is humanity's costs. Is what he said, essentially, that by supporting us, you're supporting something bigger than just us,

Greg Voisen
and you're calling this the Franklin effect.

Eric Weiner
The Franklin effect is particularly this notion that in order to get people to like you, you have asked them to do ask them to do a favor for you. Maybe not a new car, maybe something smaller than that, you know, but because it creates a bond, you know, between you and the other person. So he that was all in his bag of tricks in France. In fact, John Adams, who was there for a while with Franklin, they did not get, yeah, that did not go all very called Franklin the old conjurer. The old conjurer is the old magician. And Adams did not mean it as a compliment, but I bet Franklin took it that way. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
the two of them did not get along well at all, but, but it was, it is what it is. Now, look, you introduce Franklin as this possibility, right? The guy, possibility, possibility, possibility, and I gotta make sure I get that right. Yeah, in the chapter resting bin, how does this concept, because the first I've heard of it in his personal and professional life, shape the way he faces major obstacles. Because I had not heard of that term, which is why I mispronounced it. So maybe I need to look at,

Eric Weiner
I get the credit to neuroscientist David Eagleman, who invented it one day, and it's just a wonderful term that I think applies to Franklin. I mean a possibility. Is open minded, willing to think that there's the possibility, for instance, of life on other planets, which was something Franklin believed in a chorus of worlds. He thought that surely there was life out there. This is back in the 18th century. So a possibility is open minded, but active too, and they do something about it. I mean, I think this is there's a subtle but important difference Greg, between being an optimist and being a hopeful person. The optimist just sort of believes that everything somehow will work out. The hopeful person also believes that everything will work out, but takes certain steps to ensure it doesn't just leave it up to the fates, and, and, and that was, that was, that was Franklin. He never gave up hope on the United States or no, he never did, yeah, and so, but he took action to do something about it. Very

Greg Voisen
determined person and a very determined personality. And he would find ways to, actually, I don't want to use the word manipulate, but to change things around so that people thought it was good for them, right? So, yeah,

Eric Weiner
helpful deceit. And another trick in his back of tricks was what I call his masks. So he would write, sometimes anonymously, often under a pseudonym, and he would take on these personalities in his letters or his articles. He wrote for newspapers back then. He wrote as a middle aged widow in Boston. He wrote as a single mother of five from New Jersey. He wrote as the King of Prussia. He wrote as an Algerian here as an enslaved black person. And he was very convincing. He was so convincing that here he is in Boston. He's only 16 years old, and he's writing in the voice of silence. Do good? Middle Aged widow and his brother, unbeknownst to him, gets these letters just under the door and says, I'm going to publish these. That's how things work back then. And readers men started writing into the newspaper proposing marriage to this silence do good not knowing that she was 16 year old. Ben Franklin, so I think that is another key sort of tool when you're trying to influence people, is an ability to empathize with different roles, to take on different roles. Franklin was what the British philosopher Ellen Watts called a genuine fake. You know, a genuine fake is not a con artist. Genuine fake is an actor fully inhabiting a role, you know, just inviting that, inviting that role, embodying it and that, that was Franklin. He was a genuine fake. And I mean that as a

Greg Voisen
compliment well. And I appreciate you mentioning Alan Watts, because Mark Watts is going to be coming on here, his son. Oh, to do a podcast. Yeah, yeah, Alan, I was a big and still am a big fan of Alan Watts's works and his all of his audios and his

Eric Weiner
tapes. Now old enough to have met him. I

Greg Voisen
did not meet Alan Watts, but I have met George Leonard and Michael Murphy, there you go. So both of those guys, yeah, that that's right, they all were hanging out at Esalen So, and they used to teach there. But I do have the pleasure of having spent four hours in George Leonard's living room interviewing him, and he's just a gracious, wonderful man. Now, look, Franklin, it was misunderstood founder, Wendy, we get that. And what is, do you think is the business biggest misconception people have about Ben Franklin? And how does Ben and me your book, which I'm going to hold it up here, or the listeners you're going to go out want to get a copy of this? Believe me, it's very well written. Eric writes exceptionally well. This isn't like your normal book that you pick off the shelf. Anything that Eric does, he does with a lot of thoughtfulness involved. So what would you say is this biggest misconception, and how does your book seek to correct that?

Eric Weiner
I mean, one of the biggest misconceptions is that he was this cartoon figure, really, you know, the the guy with the Ben Franklin with the kite, flirting with the ladies of Paris. He was, he was much more than that. He was much more well rounded in every sense of the word. Then, then we

Greg Voisen
realize well rounded he was that too

Eric Weiner
in his older years, when he was younger, was quite buff. He was a boxer and a weightlifter and an expert swimmer. Fun fact, Ben Franklin is the only I did not know that. I did not the only founding father inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. My goodness, gracious. Wow. Another big misconception, and I can see where this comes from, is that he was a rabid capitalist. Now, he was a businessman, successful businessman. He did believe in free trade, but I think he also had almost socialist tendencies. To be honest, in some of his writing, he talks about how there should be a limit on how much land you can own, just you shouldn't be allowed to own more than a certain amount of land. He thought that taxes were good and should be a bit higher, as long as you have representation, of course. And he did not apply for a single patent. Patents existed back then for any of his many inventions, because he had a pay it forward attitude. He believed, he thought, that he benefits from the inventions of others. So why shouldn't they benefit from his inventions? And I think even

Greg Voisen
though, even though the others were filing patents, even back then

Eric Weiner
they were, I mean, he took a generous approach to it, look. I mean, he it is a rags to riches stories, the first American rags to riches story. When you think of the American dream, you're really thinking of Benjamin Franklin. So he liked money, and as he grew older, he liked the finer things in life, especially a good bottle of Madeira wine. But he always took the broader societal view, I think because his face is on the $100 bill, that's kind of an important part of this, of why, why he's, you know, every time there's a news story about inflation or the Fed cutting rates, you see these $100 bills running off the printing presses, and there's Franklin's face. So what was,

Greg Voisen
what do you know, what his land holdings and net worth were in the dollars back then, when he passed away at 83

Eric Weiner
when he passed away at 84 he he did not have much land. He had some kind of not very useful land in Nova Scotia, but he did amass. He had a nice house or compound in downtown Philadelphia. He was not as wealthy as the land of Gentry founders like Jefferson in Washington, there were certainly wealthier Philadelphians. But I'll tell you an interesting thing is that he left maybe off here by a little bit, about 510, or $10,000 when he died, which was a lot, a fair amount of money back then. Yeah. And before he died, in his will, he set up a fund for two cities, Boston and Philadelphia, place of birth and place where he came of age. And it was a rolling Investment Fund. And here I'm getting over my head, over in over my head financially, but a rolling Investment Fund, fund where the interest is reinvested. And he said, keep doing this for two centuries, wow, and then 200 years later, in 1984 it what's the term, came to fruition, or it matured,

Greg Voisen
and how much was in it. It

Eric Weiner
was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Wow, and the city of Boston and the city of Philadelphia put it to use. And I actually met a man, Roy Goodman, who was the last one to actually receive help with his mortgage, was, is not a wealthy man because of the Franklin fund. And he was a, he's a Franklin fan, awesome.

Greg Voisen
I think I remember this now. Is the Franklin fund, the one that's in existence with mutual funds, is that as a result of, well, no,

Eric Weiner
I think lots of people have borrowed the name, okay, and planner in the Franklin fund, but this was an actual fund set up specifically to help working class people like Franklin in those two cities, but to have this, like 200 year view, you know? And I believe he did calculations, it was pretty close to guessing how much it would be worth, which is pretty amazing. So well,

Greg Voisen
you know, compound interest, it's, it is

Eric Weiner
compound interest.

Greg Voisen
It's pretty phenomenal when you think about it. So look, Franklin's philosophy, as you said, he wanted to use himself up until he was 84 so you call it usefulness, per permeates the book. This is about being useful. How do you think this idea of being useful applies to modern life and particularly to our individual pursuits, meaning the listeners that are out there listening right now and want to know, how can I be more useful? What can I do?

Eric Weiner
Yeah, um, I want to be clear that Franklin was not Mother Teresa, you know, no, yeah, and, but he may he, you know, he did not have a particularly strong belief in God. I don't think he was a full on atheist, but for his times, he was much more toward the atheist or agnostic, agnostic spectrum. So he said, at a young age, he developed these articles of belief, and he basically prayed to something he called powerful goodness, which is a wonderful phrase, powerful. And he thought he was not a religious man. He did not go to church, but he saw the benefit the utility of religion if it compelled people to do good in the world, world. So he thought anything that compelled people to do good was in itself good. So he was in favor of churches and religions that encouraged people to do good. He also, as I said, found it to be fun, kind of a game. He also, in what we know today, through many studies, that if you want to feel good and feel happy, don't spend money on yourself, spend it on someone else. You will feel better. So there is an endorphin hit that we get from being useful. So Franklin definitely appreciated that aspect of usefulness, but I also think it's and I experience this as I get older, is I find I want to be useful. Young writers come to me asking for advice, and I will give them advice and spend time with them, and I'm not going to benefit from it. I mean, maybe they go on to become the next John Updike, but I'll be long gone by the time that happens. So there's no quid pro quo. I think it just it makes me feel powerful, to be honest, to be useful, but in a good way, and you feel like you're expanding your circle of being because a narcissist has a very and a selfish person. They have very small circle of being a helpful, useful person. Their circle is huge.

Greg Voisen
Well, as you were speaking, because I'd never heard that term before, I actually typed it in. And thank God for Google. Dost thou love life. Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. And then there's actually this Ben Franklin's daily schedule. So you get up in the morning, right? You rinse, wash and address powerful goodness, contrived days business, and take the resolution of the day and and then he says, Read and overlook my accounts and dine work. Then he had but when you look at the schedule, it's like, so simple, but he didn't go to sleep. Now, get this everybody. He was up at five in the morning, and he did not go to sleep, according to this little schedule, until 1pm so in other words, if that 1pm or 1am 1am 1am I'm sorry, 1am meaning he used a full day. It wasn't like, I'm going to bed at nine o'clock. He was like, I have five more hours here.

Eric Weiner
So when I stumbled across that schedule that he came up with at age 23 by the way, I felt very vindicated, because I had this obsession, almost fetish with paper planners, like trying to get just the right one to schedule my day. And here

Greg Voisen
you go, I still have one.

Eric Weiner
There you go, I recommend. And so, because if you're self employed, if you're self employed, as I am, you, you don't have structure automatically, you have to create structure in your day, right? Was essentially self employed for much of his life, and he did what he could to create structure. He would also schedule downtime to listen to music, for diversions, you know, to read poetry. So he wasn't even though, you know, we have these sayings about Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, which he did say for his poor. Richard salmanac, it makes him sound like he was less fun than he was. You know, he also built in time for fun. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
he did. And I, I'm not trying to promote these guys, but there's a wolf and iron feed the wolf be the iron, and they've actually got this whole Ben Franklin schedule, and they're selling planner pages and all kinds of things. So people might want to check that out. Now, in wrapping up our interview here, Eric, we kind of fast forward. If Ben Franklin was alive today, how old would he be? By the way, died at 83

Eric Weiner
he died at 84 and he would be over 300 years old.

Greg Voisen
300 okay, because

Eric Weiner
he was born as he was born in 1706 so we had he would be 318 years old, something like that.

Greg Voisen
Okay, so look, if he were alive today from your because this has been a knee this isn't just Ben, it's you're you're in here too, right? And you've been contemplating your own life issues. And it's very relatable for people. What do you think? How do you think it adapt to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, particularly as it relates to technology, science, AI, politics, all of the stuff that's really moving this world at lightning speed? What do you think Mr. Ben would say?

Eric Weiner
That's a really good question. So Franklin, look what he was, a futurist. He once said that he regretted he wasn't born 100 years later to see all the scientific advancements that would come. He predicted air travel and aerial warfare in the 18th century. So very much a futurist, very much a scientist. And I think that explains why Elon Musk, for instance, has said that Franklin is his hero and he admires Franklin. I'm not so sure that Franklin, if you were to come backward, admire Elon Musk and people like him in Silicon Valley, because while Franklin was always interested in innovation, it was innovation for a real point of helping people. And I think it's safe to say that not all, maybe certainly not all, the inventions and apps and technology coming out of Silicon Valley is helpful, is useful. So I think, yeah, I think he would be more of a social entrepreneur. I think he would use technology. He'd be on Twitter or x. I can see him with a MacBook Air Pro and noise canceling headphones, but he would use it towards social means, I think he'd be a social entrepreneur. I'm trying to think of an example. I mean, more like Bill Gates than Elon Musk,

Greg Voisen
actually? Oh, definitely, yeah, because, you know, he wasn't trying to, as you said, he didn't, he didn't even apply for patents when he probably could have earned a lot more money. So, I mean, you know, it wasn't about I, it was about we with Ben and I in to a large degree, right? We may not say in every area, but that's the way he impressed me as an individual, was he was trying to solve bigger world problems.

Eric Weiner
Yeah, there were puzzles. They were puzzles to him, which made it fun and engaging for a good cause. And I just want to say one last thing that has stuck with me from his life

Greg Voisen
is, can I ask you a question? Yes, sure. What puzzle are you trying to solve? Eric by writing a book like this? How has this helped you?

Eric Weiner
I think it's and this is actually what I was going to say. So great minds think alike. It actually oddly given what a great success Franklin was, it's been most helpful when it comes to failure, because Franklin made mistakes like everyone, and as a printer, he knew that every first edition of book, of a book, including this one somewhere, I'm sure, contains at least one mistake, one typo somewhere, and but printers call these Errata. That's the printer's term still used today, I believe. And what does a printer do? He doesn't fret about the mistake. He doesn't whip himself, he doesn't go crying. He fixes it and reissues a new and improved second edition. And Franklin said, as a printer, he said, This is my approach. I've made errata in my life. He's I've made mistakes, and I always try to correct them and issue a new one, a new addition. And it's a it's a good approach to life and to mistakes. You know, I tend to, I suppose, like many people, to be hard on myself when I make mistakes. And Franklin had this approach of, that's the first edition. Get out the second, third edition. And yeah, when I start a book, I never know, like, which of the lessons will stick with me for years later. And even though the book's only been out in a few months, I can tell that one about errata, about mistakes, is going to stick with me

Greg Voisen
so well put Eric, thank you for being on the show and sharing not only some of Ben Franklin's wisdom, but some of your own personal wisdom as it relates to how we how do you want to say, build our lives, live our lives. Have more meaning in our lives and how the world sees us. And I think, as an author, for as long as I've known you, not super close, every time I have gotten a book from you, it's well thought out, well researched, well documented, and it's very thoughtfully written. So I want to acknowledge you with Ben and me, and I'm going to ask all of my listeners, if you're interested, only if you're interested, go get a copy. Because this isn't like any other book on Benjamin Franklin. This is not like your typical just, you know, biography of Ben Franklin. Oh,

Eric Weiner
it's fun. It's funny, too, Greg, in places, don't forget that. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
and it's funny. We gotta laugh too. But thanks for being on the show, Eric, thank you, Gregor, to seeing you here in San Diego. For all of you that are still listening now after 50 minutes, we're going to be doing an event on October 10 at San Diego State University. It's free, and we'll put a link up there so you can sign up. Eric, thanks so much.

Eric Weiner
Thank you, Greg. Have a useful and happy day.

Greg Voisen
Namaste, my friend.

Eric Weiner
Namaste.