From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We are joined, of course, as always with our long suffering super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are you, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. You, guys, I'm gonna set us up with a with a pretty much gimme question. Have you ever been to d C d C comics and it was a place? Yeah? Well I went to Washington, d C. There we yeah, yeah, hold the one. I was there on the day of the Donald Trump inauguration and that town was on fire and felt like a third world country. It was very strange. Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Yes, yeah, I've seen the Liberty Bell, my friends. That's what everyone says. Is it as true? I thought that that's literally my Philadelphia story too, That's all that's so. Is is it impressive in person? It's definitely a bell with a crack in it, old crack. So uh. I'm asking this because today folks. Our episode centers on the formation of the United States in a way, the Founding Fathers in a way, and uh eccentricity in a very real way. We're exploring the strange life and the unknown facets of Benjamin Franklin. But who is Benjamin Franklin? First off, since we already know so much about Hamilton's, how do you I haven't been able to get tickets. I don't know jack about Hamilton's soundtrack never stops at my house. You can get the soundtrack, yeah, you can spotify baby. So. Benjamin Franklin was born on January eleven, seventeen oh six, in a house in Milk Street in Boston. Milk Street, Yes, yes, very very white, Milky Street in Boston. Over the course of two marriages, his father, Josiah Franklin, had seventeen children, how irresponsible, and Benjamin, who was the child of the second marriage, was the fifte kid and the youngest son. I bet he got his as kicked. Oh yeah, just wait yeah. Unlike some Founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin was born in what would later become the United States, but at the time this area was known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His father, Josiah, was a soap and candlemaker, and he was raised Presbyterian. Although his father intended Ben to serve in the church since he was the youngest son, Benjamin Franklin was not, as you might imagine, super into this idea. Yeah, that's a story that occurs a lot. Father has aspirations for the oldest or the youngest a lot of times to become essentially the father, like to continue on the life of the father, right, to follow in the footsteps. Right. At age ten, Benjamin became an apprentice at his father's shop, and Franklin the elder was very concerned that Ben might decide to become a sailor like one of his older brothers, a guy named Josiah Jr. So uh, Franklin the Elder had been joined one of his other older brothers, because again, there's a whole litter of these of these guys. As an indentured apprentice at the printing press, and what does this mean exactly? An indentured apprentice, isn't it sort of like an indentured servant, but you get like work experience, it's like being an intern. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great description. Noal because it means that Benjamin couldn't earn wages that he could keep until he was twenty one. And go into your earlier question about asked kicking. It turns out Ben's brother, James was a nightmare. He was abusive, he was resentful, I think, physically abusive. And part of it, pro Franklin historians will tell you is because James was very mad that Benjamin was already better at printing than he was probably better at like everything. It's Benjamin Franklin we're talking about. I mean, if you know anything about him, you know he was the jack of all trades, a renaissance man. Oh yes, it's very true. And then pretty soon after all of this was going down, James the brother founded this thing called the New England Current. It was the second newspaper in America. And ben was still, you know, doing his indentured work tud thing, and he was he was relegated to setting letters, which is a laborious task, takes forever, it's very difficult, um and it's mostly just time consuming and um exacting. Then he had to sell papers door to door, but he wanted to actually get in on writing stuff that went into the paper. Rather than just doing the mechanical labor of making it happen. And his brother hated that idea. Yeah, he was not into it either, So he, like a lot of writers or aspiring writers, came up with a pseudonym silence do good or dogged dagod silenced good. I think that sounds like the name of like the real life name of us of a superhero character, like a Marvel character from the you know, seventies. Yeah, maybe it was Seilens do go perhaps perhaps, But Silence, if we if we go with Silence had a backstory, right, Yeah, some Silence is allegedly a widow, and Silence had strong objections to arbitrary government and the unlimited power welded by these arbitrary governments. Eventually, Benjamin Franklin gets an opportunity to travel to the United Kingdom. Being like almost anyone his age, he says his Times version of hell yes and travels to England. He returns from London into what will later become the United States and found his own print shop. So Franklin continued to work in Philadelphia as a printer, um also an inventor and an activist. Uh, and then I just want to real quickly. Aside, we did an episode in our podcast other podcasts side podcast, Ridiculous History about how Ben Franklin invented a phonetic alphabets, and a lot of that was rooted in his love of type setting and fascination with the written language and how you know it was different and the spoken language. So that was a big foundation for his his work. Absolutely, and eventually by seventeen seventy five, he is elected to represent the state of Pennsylvania in the Second Continental Congress. We're we're skipping over a lot of his early life here because we want to get to this strange stuff. But we should at least talk about the Revolutionary War, oh yeah, which which happened almost immediately after that. A year later, in seventeen seventy six, Franklin is appointed as a member of the Committee of Five. And these are the people you may have heard about early on in your childhood education. These are the people that drafted the Declaration of Independence, the people who really, I mean, if you want to say founding fathers, you gotta throw them in there, because they made the document, which was another thing that I saw in Philadelphia. It's all coming back to me flooding back Independence Hall. You can go and see that story document um preserved in glass, and you're not supposed to even touch the glass. So go to Philadelphia, a tour of the United States before it was and as it became. You should work for the Pennsylvania Tourism. Boy, that's Matt's secret life. So this was a difficult time for Franklin because he was temporarily disabled by gout. He was unable to attend most meetings of the committee as a consequence, but he reportedly made several small, crucial changes to the draft of the declaration that was sent to him by Thomas Jefferson. Very nice. So he's like the editor that makes those last little changes, and then the other writers are like, oh darn you. Yeah, you know, I think that's accurate in many ways. This this time is when you'll also hear one of his most famous real quotes, as opposed to all the fake stuff you can find on the internet. Uh. He says at the signing, Uh, John Hancock said they all have to hang together, And then Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, yes, we must deed all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. Let's hang together like we're doing right now. That's the way I like to picture. I like the picture like after they signed, John Hancock was doing the version of you know what, let's go get a drink. We should all hang out more often. We should hang together. Can either hang together or hang hang alone, but most assuredly we will be hanged. I think that's no, not quite right. I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying here. Well, be that as it may. Benjamin Franklin was never a soldier. In the lead up to the war and the push for independence, often functioned as a diplomat. In December of seventeen seventy six, he was dispatched to France as Commissioner for the United States, which was, you know, a diplomatic role there. He remained in France until seventeen eighty five. Who's there for quite a while in nine years. He loved it there. Yeah, and his long suffering wife was not too pleas east, but you know, agreed with him that he he was doing important stuff, you know what I mean. It's like the most extreme version of I know, I'm staying late at work tonight, hunt, but I'm making moves in France. In France and making moves in France. He was a bit of a heel though, wasn't he. I mean he was. He was a ladies man. He probably wasn't the most faithful, doting husband that there ever could be, right, And that's good foreshadowing there no In France, he made vital progress in garnering support for the US, even if it's only because they really hated England but really hated Britain. He secured a critical military alliance in seventeen seventy eight. He also negotiated the Treaty of Paris. And we cannot emphasize this enough. Without French support, the Revolutionary War could have had vastly different results. I'd venture to say definitely would have different results without the military might of France. So what happened afterward, So we discussed it. In seventeen eighty five, Franklin returns to Philadelphia. He that's when he left France. Um in seventeen eighty seven he became a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. And this is this is one of those things that Benjamin Franklin, because of his positions that he's held up to this point, he gets this as kind of an honorary position. You're you're you, Benjamin Franklin are appointed to the Philadelphia Convention, sort of like an emeritus position. You know, yeah, you've been or you've been around, you've done enough stuff, you can be a part of this. And he was, you know, a living legend at this time, right, And he also became a staunch abolitionist, eventually leading abolitionist movements in Philadelphia. But it wasn't all trumpets and angel farts and happy endings, because Franklin struggled with obesity and gout throughout his middle age and especially his later years. In fact, he was rarely seen in public after seventeen eight seven, sort of a Marlon Brando kind of figure, but without island of dr Moreau and more gout and perhaps more cowts. Yes, he died from what is known as a pleuritic attack, that's the inflammation of the membranes or ploy that surround the lungs and line the chess cavity at his home in Philadelphia on April seventeenth, seventeen ninety at age eighty four. And today Benjamin Franklin is remembered as the only founding father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States. We're talking the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, as well as the official United States Constitution. That's a pretty big deal. You know. The thing about the Constitution is for something that gets brought up so often in discourse today, I'm always surprised by how few people have actually read it. Is there a constitute an app? I feel like if if somebody puts out an official Constitution app, a lot more people will read it. Or maybe a game there if they gamify the Constitution. There are also a lot of a lot of organizations that will send you a free pocket constitution. You know, if you ever want to look like an incredible nerd in front of your friends just at the bar. Actually article to which you know, any listeners out there that have a pocket Constitution, we mean you, no harm o, no good on you. I think it's actually a really cool thing. Well, I I have one. I just don't want to take it out it out, Yeah I don't. I mean, hopefully I'm not ever going to be in a situation where I have to take out the Constitution and say, you know, pardon me, officer. Yea, the pen is might here, then the gun. I don't think that will end well. But not only was he an incredible politician and states men, I don't believe he ever officially held elected office, did he. Uh? He did serve in a position was very much like the governor of Philadelphia, But he was not, you know, a senator. And I think a lot of people, because he's on you know, the Big Bill, the Hondo, people assume that he he you know, had some sort of elected capacity. Never president as we know, Yeah, exactly, vice president. Hugely innovative, though an inventor um a sort of a Willy Wonka type figure, only you know, with functional stuff, not just stuff that gives you diabetes. Oh yeah. He invented and improved a lot of things that were massively important at the time and continue to be in a way. Bifocals being able to see up close with your glasses as well as far away, depending on how your eyes are functioning. The flexible catheter. Now you may you may say to yourself, Wow, these catheters that are so flexible are terribly annoying and hurt and it stinks using these catheters. Just imagine if they were glass or just stiff, they couldn't move. Nope, I can't imagine it. Thank you, Ben Franklin. Um again as a person who's never used to catherinter Besides on my dog, that's a whole other story we can get into later. Also, the glass harmonica. I'm not sure how important that one truly is. I'm sure some music historian could explain in us it has a spooky story, Yeah, a grizzly rumor about it. Yeah. The glass harmonica, which would be really interesting to you guys as musicians if you've ever seen it. It's a series essentially of nested glass bowls that rotate and such that you can wet your finger and slide it across. You know how You hear the sound when you slide a finger around a rim of glass, and it makes that into a musical instrument. So it's got a a noise that would sometimes be described as eerie, sometimes as irritating. But the the weird part is that it fell out of favor because, as you know, all glass containe well the last majority of glass contained lead at the time, and so there was this urban legend or this rumor that using a glass armonica would be very bad for your health, could drive you crazy if you lead poison. So it fell, uh, it fell to the wayside. But this guy, as as we had said, was so prolific that, you know, you just got to accept, if you're the Tony Stark of your time, that not everything is going to be the Iron Man suit, you know, not every invention. Yeah, he even had his own stove, the Franklin stove, which is sort of the portable cast I would say portable. I mean it's very heavy, but it's the kind of like old timey cast iron stove that you think of maybe being in a cabin that you're renting and in the mountains or something like that. It has than type door where the fire would be and a stove pipe on top to ventilate the smoke and it would heat. It was basically like a space heater and also known as the Pennsylvania Fireplace, which sounds like euphemism or something. One thing that's a I don't want to speak for everybody. For me, it's personally admirable. This this following note about Franklin's inventions. Of all the inventions he made, and we just listened a few quickly. He refused to patent a single one because his argument was that he living in the time he lived, was already benefiting from so many other inventions by earlier people, and he felt it was only fair and just that he provide the same benefits in turn. You know what I mean, Like, he's not giving somebody money every time he uses something that has wheels, so why should he charge someone just for wanting a catheter that is flexible? I yeah, I completely agree with your thoughtsman. I think that is extremely admirable. He went open source in the I was about to say, like, our, do we know the company that makes those little micro processors that you can use to program robotics we're using in like maker type competitions and stuff. They open source all their stuff. You can get the schematics for those, and there are third parties that improve upon them or make different versions of them, and that's par for the course. I think that's pretty cool, very forward thinking fellow that Benjamin Franklin. Yeah, and it's mirroring today's Tony Stark ellen Musk who's doing some of that same stuff with Tesla and uh, you know, that's a very admirable thing. But they're also quite a few strange aspects to the life of Benjamin Franklin. Their myths, rumors, and legends about this America's most eccentric founding father. We we found some that are amusing and some that are, you know, pretty pretty out there true story. He made up around two hundred terms for getting wasted. Two hundred words for getting wasted. This is a known thing. This is true. Yeah, yeah, he because why am I not? Why am I only using like three of them? Well, maybe because you don't have a copy of The Drinker's Dictionary, published in seventy seven, with a list of over two hundred alternative terms for drunkenness that Ben Franklin had overheard in taverns over the years. In his newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette, ah phrases such as he's drank more than he has bled, He's bungy, bungy, He sees the bears piste in the brook. These are just the bees to loaded his cart. Oh, he is chapfallen, Chap falling, He's biggie, bewitched, block and block boozy bows, been at the Barbados, The bug. These are great. You guys, maybe we should take a take a page from his life and start making up our own terms, although I guess we already do that on this show. Lister's right in and let let us know which of those was your favorite that we should use. He's had a thump over the head with Sampson's jawbone. See, I feel like if somebody can say that they're describing someone else who's drunk, if I were drunk and I was trying to say I've had a thump over the head with Sampson's jawbone, I feel like I would stumble on though that you know that Benjamin Bowland, he owes no man a farthing. And to go back to my characterization of him as sort of a Willy Wonka esque figure, he's wamble crop. Wamble crops is the winner for me. And and also when he wasn't, when it wasn't compiling these very humorous things, Uh, he was as as Matt Noel mentioned earlier, a bit of a lithary, a bit of a ladies man lifario right, A man who behaves selfishly and irresponsibly in his sexual relationships with women, particularly so sort of a don juan. And that's your new word for the day. Did we get her style? It will be now. So he was notorious for sleeping around whenever the opportunity presented itself. He had a child out of wedlock, and you know what, to his credit, which was unusual at the time, he admitted to whomever the mother was that it probably was his kid, and he said he would take care of the kid, and he never revealed the mom's identity. He also, has Nuel pointed out, abandoned his wife for years and lived the high high life of hedonism in France. In his own correspondence, Benjamin Franklin laments his uncontrollable libido. Yeah, he was a sex addict, which one of the first. The next one was David Degovney. Yeah. Well, and you know they're even tales of him outright hitting on his friends wives and is the you know, the marriages of his friends, just just in casual conversation with you know, the men present. My you are a saucy lass. Alright, get your bungye. Oh god, he's eating a toad and a half for breakfast. That's another one. So he had several, you know views we would consider eccentric, if not controversial today as well. He was a huge proponent of air baths. That's where you you just sit around naked, regardless of the temperature. You just hang on. You just hanged dong. No, that's all. That's always sunny thing. I just love it. That's my one of my favorite expressions for being nude. Does he hang do? Really? I remember that? Yeah? And he also we we talked about this a little bit. But the rein ending of the alphabet, coming up with the phonetic stuff, that's that's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's that's right, Matt. He he did, he did attempt that. It didn't catch on us. We're not here to talk about his drunken revelry and inventing, are we We're talking. We're here to talk about some some darkness. There is some darkness within this one, and we'll explore it after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. There is a massive amount of conspiracies out there about the Founding Fathers. They arrange all over the place, but uh, we really should just do. Have we done a Founding father's conspiracies? We think we have not yet, And that's something that Paul brought up when when we asked if we asked if there was an episode that he he thinks we should do in the future. Oh yeah, all right, Paul, we'll guess what. We're gonna get to that one, and we're going to start with this one because there are everal specific conspiracy theories surrounding Mr Benjamin Franklin, and the first one, um is one that is common to several other Founding Fathers, including Mr George Washington. Uh, was that Franklin was a member of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the of the Bavarian sort, or you know, some other secret society. And here's the crazy thing. It's partially true. It's true. Yeah, Like Matt said, Benjamin Franklin, like many Founding Fathers, was definitely a Freemason, that's right. In seventeen thirty one, Franklin joined the Masonic Lodge of St. John in Philadelphia. Then in thirty two he helped create the by laws of his lodge. Then two years later he became a grand Master. That same year, seventeen thirty four, Franklin also published the first Masonic book printed in America that was called The Constitutions of the Freemasons. So it's very interesting to me because he's a fairly young man. Well I guess at the time, twenty something isn't that young. But when he joined the lodge for the first time, and he he grew in the ranks very quickly and then started writing inside that world of freemasonry, uh you know, and then just to get up there to become the grand master of the Nine Sisters Lodge in Paris. That's that's pretty big, right. Yeah. He remained an active member for over sixty years until seventeen nine when he passed away, and when he was serving as America's diplomat to France. As Matt said, he became a grand master. So what about the Illuminati. We have a series on the Illuminati. If you have not heard it yet, we're watched the videos. We invite you to check them out. The the Illuminati, historically will refer to the Bavarian Illuminati, is formed by a fellow named Adam Wi Shop may have seventeen seventy six. Again, yeah, I know, all right, right, this is the closest thing there is to a quote unquote verified Illuminati, and they would have been around on the continent while Franklin was in Europe, but there's no solid proof that Ben and Adam came into direct contact. Now, that does not mean it didn't happen, And it is true that Franklin's philosophical viewpoint probably would have jibed by Shop like they would have been feeling it. They would have hit it off. It's more possible those still not proven, that Franklin could have encountered ideas or concepts in Europe. They came from Bishops Group or inspired that group. But back to the actual Illuminati membership thing. If Benjamin Franklin was active in this regard, the guy probably would have talked about it. Why. Well, that's because Mr Benjamin Franklin, h um, Well, he was in this other little secret society. It's one called espionage, one where there are a lot of secrets. But here's the problem. Ben wasn't very good at it. Yeah, Benjamin Franklin was a shitty spy. Yeah. And and I would venture to say it's because of the lifestyle that he kept that he was used to and there was a lot of revelry I'm assuming in Benjamin Franklin's life, and that uh the truth serum that he would take on his own I'm assuming didn't help, right, right, I believe you're referring to alcohol. Yes, yes, uh so, according to a c I a piece that was published internally and later declassified called quote British penetration of America's first diplomatic mission. Uh Benjamin Franklin was just terrible at this. Like he was very good at making connections, very persuasive and brilliant thinker, but not the most talented when it came to security. One of his closest acquaintances blew up his spycraft operation continually as he was sending clandestine cries for support to France. The mole was a guy named Edward Bancroft, who had who knew Ben Franklin from the United States, was one of his most trusted friends. Franklin trusted him so much he made the guy his secretary at the U. S Commission to France, which means Bancroft had access to everything. And furthermore, the British Empire paid him one thousand pounds a year for his assistance, which was nothing to sneeze at. That's smack of donkey money. I don't know what that means. I'm gonna steal that one. You've got Sacca donkey money. So as Commissioner France, Franklin was running all kinds of clandestine operations with Tacit. French aid. They were at the very least turning uh, turning their eyes away, but in most cases they were attempting to help when they could. But what kind of stuff were they doing. We're talking about procuring weapons, all kinds of different supplies for the war effort or the in preparation of war, the money for the American Army, just straight up giving money to the American Army, sabotaging the Portsmith Royal Navy dockyard. Sabotage is a big thing. And if you know you can prove that there's money coming in a clandestine way to do something like that, it's not good for your cause. And of course they negotiated a secret treaty between the United States or America and France. But here's the thing. While all that's going on, Britain pretty much knew everything that was happening. Minute by minute. They're like, okay, this is about to happen. Okay, this is about to happen. This is going down. Here's where this money is going right, Yeah, exactly. There was no op sack or operational security. The public had access to the estate. Sensitive pay Burr's documents were strewn everywhere. Apparently, secret conversations were held, sometimes as loud arguments in public places. It's that's us. Yeah, it's like the way our president takes meetings that you know, this is his club surrounded by diners. Yeah, that was controversial. Later, Yeah, you're talking about Marl logo meetings. Yes, yes, I'm saying like that doesn't doesn't It seems historical president would would make that a teachable moment. There's one more macab's story here. All right, so far we have uh, Freemasonry true, Illuminati difficult to prove, spionage, spycraft true. But he was bad at it, like really bad at it. But there's one more story here, one more conspiracy, and it's maccabb and it's grizzly and it's graphic. Forget the idea of skeletons in the closet, what about bodies in the base? Smith You're you're saying bodies in a basement that Benjamin Franklin like of a home that Benjamin Franklin owned. Was it a murder dungeon. So yeah, okay, because maybe not maybe not a full fledged murder dungeon, but definitely we'll start off with a creepy house. So for almost twenty years leading up to the signing of that fable Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin lived in London at thirty six Craven Street. He just has a talent for choosing terrible street names. Just creepy street names. Craven. I don't know why that sounds creepy to me. Milk streets creepy to Craven. The street right off Milk Street West Elm Street was one block over. Uh. So in seventeen seventy six, is we mentioned earlier, he came back to the States. Um, let's do a little fast forward action to several centuries. Why not? Um, that house was in quite horrible disrepair. So there was like a preservation organization called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House who decided to make some renovations to the four story town house. Um. It was on the verge of collapse, just total structural damage caused by time and in attention. Um, so extensive work had to be done. It's like on the foundation, like you know, pulling out the studs. They had to do some repairs to make it safe enough for construction crews to go back and do repairs. And it's this historical thing, so you have to be very careful about what you're you know, preserving as you're doing this. And by this time, this was the last structure around in which Benjamin Franklin actually lived, so hugely important. It's this, uh, it's this piece of history. And can you imagine being there working on this team, trying to make sure everything is functional so that you can work on it. And then also, you know, trying to get the house to a place where you can have people come in and use it as a museum or something. And then you stumble upon this windowless secret room below the house's garden. There was a murder dungeon. Yeah, so this group, the friends of Benjamin Franklin House, fountain this thing and they discovered something in there, fifteen bodies in the basement. Bet they weren't feeling so friendly then, were they. I would I would not be. I imagine there might have been somebody in the group who said, look, technically, I'm a friend of Benjamin Franklin's house. Not Benjamin Franklin. Here's what they found. The room or or this pit was about a meter wide and a meter deep. All in all, there were over twelve hundred pieces of human bones hidden inside. Experts believe five of the skeletons came from children. The oldest skeleton was that of an elderly male, and the youngest was a baby like a uh, not quite an infant. Baby. Bones were disturbed and damage, showing lens that have been cut or completely hewn through. Some of the skulls showed evidence of trepid nation, which is a let's call it, the controversial medical procedure wherein the back base of the skull is drilled to ostensibly well in hopes of relieving pressure or you know, letting the demons. Yeah, and someone even had the tops the entire top of the skull removed, Yes, exactly. And these were not ancient skeletons from some ill fated massacre of the past, you know, some ancient Roman army or invading force. These were contemporary roughly with Franklin, meaning they most likely died and passed from the mortal veil while he was alive. So was this guy Benjamin Franklin a serial killer. Well find out after a word from our sponsor, and and we're back. For people with anti Masonic leanings, this is often This discovery of bodies is often presented as evidence that Franklin either condoned or participated in a series of murders because he's take place over time. You know, it's clearly on his property, and you know, people who hate Freemasons would would naturally jump to that conclusion. As morbidly fascinating as this sounds, it's likely not true. I don't know if that's a letdown to you guys, or if it's a if it's a relief, it certainly would make me judge him a little bit just for not being very good at hiding bodies. He's a smart man. If he was really wanted to be a murderer, you think he'd be more creative than not put them all in one place. That's a really good point. And he probably invents some sort of sheen, right, yeah, or at least not put him in his own house. I mean, that alone is insane. So sure, it is possible that Franklin was killing people for one reason or another, but given his prolific confessional nature in the way he loved to talk about himself and what he's doing and what he thought. So experts likely would have learned something more about this before the discovery of the bodies, especially given his pensiant for you know, eating a toad and a half at breakfast time, and you know his inability to keep his espionage under wraps. Are you saying he ate the baby? No, that that was another one, and that was the same you're still on the drinking expressions, because we we've we've already discussed and learned that he couldn't keep things that are hugely important but not as important as I am a murderer. He was unable to keep his espionage acts under wraps. If he was a murderer, you'd think something would slip out at some point in one of these debaucherous nights, and maybe just no, but maybe he did and nobody reported it, but because of his stature and his power, But I highly doubt that. You know what, the only counterpoint we would have for that is that he kept the secret of his illegitimate son's identity. But that's the only thing we could find that he really kept secret. And then also I think so was Toad and a half of reference to belching or something. Somebody drinks a lot. Anyway, that's a different episode, right, So yeah, could he have kept his secret? I don't know. I don't know. So where did these bodies come from? If Benjamin Franklin is not some sort of super elite evil James bonds by Master serial killer, historians trace the bones to the activities of one of Franklin's proto Jay's whose name was William Houston. And this man was known as the father of hematology um and was a pupil of the famous anatomist William Hunter. But these two men had irreconcilable differences. Houston appears to have started his own secret, underground anatomy school because that's the that's the thing that you do. It's like fight club but with corpses. Yeah yeah, um, And we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna get into like why there would be all those bodies and you how you could even do that and you could start an amateur school of anatomy in whoa whoa amateur? I mean yes, But this guy Houston started this underground school at his mother in law's house. A woman by the name of Margaret Stevenson, which you know, if I was his woman in law and I found out that he was doing that, I might be a little miffed. I might get awkward at Sunday supper. And this is interesting because here's where the strings start to connect. Stevenson was the landlord of the house on Craven Street where Franklin lived for years and years. And notice how NOL calls this an underground anatomy school. That's because the school was most likely illegal or at the very very least in an incredibly gray area of the law. And that leads us to the story of when Matt, I know you love this story. It's the story of resurrection men. Oh yeah, oh yeah. So today, if you go to your school bookstore and you're in college, you're gonna find your anatomy text books and you're gonna see inside them all sorts of uh, super helpful information about how the human body functions, what each tiny little bit can do, what the cells do, what the what your muscles and your bone structure and everything, how your lungs function. Well, here's the thing, um, people had to go into the human body to find out how all of that stuffed works and to make the illustrations of the venus system going throughout your body and your respiratory system. And for a long time, the let's see, let's say, the the practice or the knowledge of anatomy was considered almost a dark art because of the grizzly stuff you had to do to gain the knowledge. The desecration of the dead, you know, one of the oldest taboos in many cultures. So cadavers were so difficult to legally obtain that anatomists, even well respected and promising ones like Houston Hunter, had to resort to other means, by which, yes, ladies and gentlemen, we mean grave robbings. Sort of like um Mary Shelley's character Dr Victor Frankenstein, who dug up bodies for scientific research and did horrible, terrible things to them, um and reanimated them. Um. This idea of the resurrection men, it's sort of an interesting hyperbole because they're being dug up, but they are in fact still dead, and that's a very important part of this kind of experimentation. It's it's this behavior is not moral per se, certainly more moral than doing it on somebody who's alive. R Killing somebody for the purposes of doing these things right. Vivis section right, So it's still not as bad as VIVI section. But people were strongly against these very controversial So these anatomous would have to go digging for graves themselves, or they could hire shadowy individuals known as resurrection men, which is a little bit of false advertising, because they were just digging them up. They were not, as we said, bringing them back to life. Well, they were giving them new life in the form of a textbook. They became a textbook. They're saying they made the textbooks out of the bodies. No, I'm saying they gave new life to these bodies by turning them into knowledge, by immortalizing them in the field of medicine. That's the Henrietta Lacks argument, isn't it. So thirty six Craven Street, it turns out, was a fantastic location for an illegal anatomy school. Resurrection men could deliver bodies stolen from graveyards to the Tim's wharf at the bottom of the street, very close to the house. Or uh there was a weekly public execution at the gallows that was on the other side of the garden wall, just you know, hey, toss him over this way, and to avoid scrutiny. To go back to that question about why they didn't dispose of the body, is in a better way to avoid scrutiny, Houston would just discard the bodies on the property when he was done. No need in his mind, apparently to rebury them in original or respectful graves. I have a question. We were talking about how this was in a gray area, all of this um and how it was difficult to legally obtain corpses to work on. Was their statute at the time that expressly prohibited this kind of behavior, like where bodies buried protected? Were there's certain cemeteries that had certain laws, would you be more likely to be able to get a good one in like a less prestigious cemetery, Like I was wondering, was this a universal thing or was this sort of a case by case basis. Right, Yeah, that's that's a good question. There was inequality even in death. A lot of cemeteries were separated along religious lines, so you know, there would be a Jewish cemetery separate from say a Catholic or Protestant cemetery. Uh. The one of the things that was fascinating. Is course of our research, we found a mental floss, a mental flass article that said originally it was illegal. It was for all intents and purposes illegal to take a body. But there wasn't a statute there was. It was more like a very complex series of hoops you would have to jump through to legally procure a body for this action. And that's why these anatomy classes and dissection exhibitions were so crowded all the time. So you think about every historical film we see where there's the really steep angled circular room, it's like it's literally like a theater, probably where the term operating theater came from. Right, who could call I bet you, I bet you're right? So it was it was much much faster and less expensive two unfortunately, steal the bodies of the poor and the disadvantaged. Yeah, and for the people who were advantaged and wealthy. There was technology that was coming out that you could set up essentially traps around your grave site and with your coffin that would shoot projectiles out at people that tried to open your coffin. There was all kinds of you know, I mean, it's it's in practice yea. In practice, it doesn't look as awesome as it sounds, And it would be essentially like a bolt, like if you had a crossbow or something that would fire out, like traveling an ancient tomb or something, right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's why resurrection men traveling groups. That makes a lot of sense. Well that's a rough, rough industry to intern in, isn't it. Oh, Because if you die trying to rob the grades, then you just become the product. Wow. Yeah, Oh that's spooky. Well, the good news is that it turns out Benjamin Franklin most likely was not some sort of bloodthirsty original version of the American Psycho. The same year he left to return to America, Houston the Anatomist accidentally cut himself while dissecting a rotting corpse and died of infection. Or did Benjamin Franklin find him in the basement with some bodies and Benjamin Franklin himself put a stop to it, and then he became He became Benjamin Franklin, the serial killer hunter. I mean, I would watch it. You're saying you don't think Ben Franklin like co signed on this. I think he had to to a degree because he was living in the same house. And it's it's as difficult as it is for us to say that he would be a serial killer, I would argue it's equally difficult to say that he was somehow completely clueless right the spell alone? There we go. Yeah, you know something was up, something was rotten in the the seller. Who were these strange men stopping by the house with corpse sized bags? You know, I just for a fellow, who is that clever and that intelligent? I have a hard time believing that this wouldn't occur to him. But there ends our examination today of the dark side of one of America's most eccentric founding fathers. But not our show. We will return very soon, and we'd like you to tune in as we delve into a strange question. Could have thought be alive? A thought like a th h O t at A couple more letters and you'll get there, got it like a thinky brain thought? Not that thought over there? That that train over there? There we go. In the meantime, you can find us on the internet. We're all over the place. 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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We are joined, of course, as always with our long suffering super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are you, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. You, guys, I'm gonna set us up with a with a pretty much gimme question. Have you ever been to d C d C comics and it was a place? Yeah? Well I went to Washington, d C. There we yeah, yeah, hold the one. I was there on the day of the Donald Trump inauguration and that town was on fire and felt like a third world country. It was very strange. Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Yes, yeah, I've seen the Liberty Bell, my friends. That's what everyone says. Is it as true? I thought that that's literally my Philadelphia story too, That's all that's so. Is is it impressive in person? It's definitely a bell with a crack in it, old crack. So uh. I'm asking this because today folks. Our episode centers on the formation of the United States in a way, the Founding Fathers in a way, and uh eccentricity in a very real way. We're exploring the strange life and the unknown facets of Benjamin Franklin. But who is Benjamin Franklin? First off, since we already know so much about Hamilton's, how do you I haven't been able to get tickets. I don't know jack about Hamilton's soundtrack never stops at my house. You can get the soundtrack, yeah, you can spotify baby. So. Benjamin Franklin was born on January eleven, seventeen oh six, in a house in Milk Street in Boston. Milk Street, Yes, yes, very very white, Milky Street in Boston. Over the course of two marriages, his father, Josiah Franklin, had seventeen children, how irresponsible, and Benjamin, who was the child of the second marriage, was the fifte kid and the youngest son. I bet he got his as kicked. Oh yeah, just wait yeah. Unlike some Founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin was born in what would later become the United States, but at the time this area was known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His father, Josiah, was a soap and candlemaker, and he was raised Presbyterian. Although his father intended Ben to serve in the church since he was the youngest son, Benjamin Franklin was not, as you might imagine, super into this idea. Yeah, that's a story that occurs a lot. Father has aspirations for the oldest or the youngest a lot of times to become essentially the father, like to continue on the life of the father, right, to follow in the footsteps. Right. At age ten, Benjamin became an apprentice at his father's shop, and Franklin the elder was very concerned that Ben might decide to become a sailor like one of his older brothers, a guy named Josiah Jr. So uh, Franklin the Elder had been joined one of his other older brothers, because again, there's a whole litter of these of these guys. As an indentured apprentice at the printing press, and what does this mean exactly? An indentured apprentice, isn't it sort of like an indentured servant, but you get like work experience, it's like being an intern. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great description. Noal because it means that Benjamin couldn't earn wages that he could keep until he was twenty one. And go into your earlier question about asked kicking. It turns out Ben's brother, James was a nightmare. He was abusive, he was resentful, I think, physically abusive. And part of it, pro Franklin historians will tell you is because James was very mad that Benjamin was already better at printing than he was probably better at like everything. It's Benjamin Franklin we're talking about. I mean, if you know anything about him, you know he was the jack of all trades, a renaissance man. Oh yes, it's very true. And then pretty soon after all of this was going down, James the brother founded this thing called the New England Current. It was the second newspaper in America. And ben was still, you know, doing his indentured work tud thing, and he was he was relegated to setting letters, which is a laborious task, takes forever, it's very difficult, um and it's mostly just time consuming and um exacting. Then he had to sell papers door to door, but he wanted to actually get in on writing stuff that went into the paper. Rather than just doing the mechanical labor of making it happen. And his brother hated that idea. Yeah, he was not into it either, So he, like a lot of writers or aspiring writers, came up with a pseudonym silence do good or dogged dagod silenced good. I think that sounds like the name of like the real life name of us of a superhero character, like a Marvel character from the you know, seventies. Yeah, maybe it was Seilens do go perhaps perhaps, But Silence, if we if we go with Silence had a backstory, right, Yeah, some Silence is allegedly a widow, and Silence had strong objections to arbitrary government and the unlimited power welded by these arbitrary governments. Eventually, Benjamin Franklin gets an opportunity to travel to the United Kingdom. Being like almost anyone his age, he says his Times version of hell yes and travels to England. He returns from London into what will later become the United States and found his own print shop. So Franklin continued to work in Philadelphia as a printer, um also an inventor and an activist. Uh, and then I just want to real quickly. Aside, we did an episode in our podcast other podcasts side podcast, Ridiculous History about how Ben Franklin invented a phonetic alphabets, and a lot of that was rooted in his love of type setting and fascination with the written language and how you know it was different and the spoken language. So that was a big foundation for his his work. Absolutely, and eventually by seventeen seventy five, he is elected to represent the state of Pennsylvania in the Second Continental Congress. We're we're skipping over a lot of his early life here because we want to get to this strange stuff. But we should at least talk about the Revolutionary War, oh yeah, which which happened almost immediately after that. A year later, in seventeen seventy six, Franklin is appointed as a member of the Committee of Five. And these are the people you may have heard about early on in your childhood education. These are the people that drafted the Declaration of Independence, the people who really, I mean, if you want to say founding fathers, you gotta throw them in there, because they made the document, which was another thing that I saw in Philadelphia. It's all coming back to me flooding back Independence Hall. You can go and see that story document um preserved in glass, and you're not supposed to even touch the glass. So go to Philadelphia, a tour of the United States before it was and as it became. You should work for the Pennsylvania Tourism. Boy, that's Matt's secret life. So this was a difficult time for Franklin because he was temporarily disabled by gout. He was unable to attend most meetings of the committee as a consequence, but he reportedly made several small, crucial changes to the draft of the declaration that was sent to him by Thomas Jefferson. Very nice. So he's like the editor that makes those last little changes, and then the other writers are like, oh darn you. Yeah, you know, I think that's accurate in many ways. This this time is when you'll also hear one of his most famous real quotes, as opposed to all the fake stuff you can find on the internet. Uh. He says at the signing, Uh, John Hancock said they all have to hang together, And then Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, yes, we must deed all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. Let's hang together like we're doing right now. That's the way I like to picture. I like the picture like after they signed, John Hancock was doing the version of you know what, let's go get a drink. We should all hang out more often. We should hang together. Can either hang together or hang hang alone, but most assuredly we will be hanged. I think that's no, not quite right. I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying here. Well, be that as it may. Benjamin Franklin was never a soldier. In the lead up to the war and the push for independence, often functioned as a diplomat. In December of seventeen seventy six, he was dispatched to France as Commissioner for the United States, which was, you know, a diplomatic role there. He remained in France until seventeen eighty five. Who's there for quite a while in nine years. He loved it there. Yeah, and his long suffering wife was not too pleas east, but you know, agreed with him that he he was doing important stuff, you know what I mean. It's like the most extreme version of I know, I'm staying late at work tonight, hunt, but I'm making moves in France. In France and making moves in France. He was a bit of a heel though, wasn't he. I mean he was. He was a ladies man. He probably wasn't the most faithful, doting husband that there ever could be, right, And that's good foreshadowing there no In France, he made vital progress in garnering support for the US, even if it's only because they really hated England but really hated Britain. He secured a critical military alliance in seventeen seventy eight. He also negotiated the Treaty of Paris. And we cannot emphasize this enough. Without French support, the Revolutionary War could have had vastly different results. I'd venture to say definitely would have different results without the military might of France. So what happened afterward, So we discussed it. In seventeen eighty five, Franklin returns to Philadelphia. He that's when he left France. Um in seventeen eighty seven he became a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. And this is this is one of those things that Benjamin Franklin, because of his positions that he's held up to this point, he gets this as kind of an honorary position. You're you're you, Benjamin Franklin are appointed to the Philadelphia Convention, sort of like an emeritus position. You know, yeah, you've been or you've been around, you've done enough stuff, you can be a part of this. And he was, you know, a living legend at this time, right, And he also became a staunch abolitionist, eventually leading abolitionist movements in Philadelphia. But it wasn't all trumpets and angel farts and happy endings, because Franklin struggled with obesity and gout throughout his middle age and especially his later years. In fact, he was rarely seen in public after seventeen eight seven, sort of a Marlon Brando kind of figure, but without island of dr Moreau and more gout and perhaps more cowts. Yes, he died from what is known as a pleuritic attack, that's the inflammation of the membranes or ploy that surround the lungs and line the chess cavity at his home in Philadelphia on April seventeenth, seventeen ninety at age eighty four. And today Benjamin Franklin is remembered as the only founding father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States. We're talking the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, as well as the official United States Constitution. That's a pretty big deal. You know. The thing about the Constitution is for something that gets brought up so often in discourse today, I'm always surprised by how few people have actually read it. Is there a constitute an app? I feel like if if somebody puts out an official Constitution app, a lot more people will read it. Or maybe a game there if they gamify the Constitution. There are also a lot of a lot of organizations that will send you a free pocket constitution. You know, if you ever want to look like an incredible nerd in front of your friends just at the bar. Actually article to which you know, any listeners out there that have a pocket Constitution, we mean you, no harm o, no good on you. I think it's actually a really cool thing. Well, I I have one. I just don't want to take it out it out, Yeah I don't. I mean, hopefully I'm not ever going to be in a situation where I have to take out the Constitution and say, you know, pardon me, officer. Yea, the pen is might here, then the gun. I don't think that will end well. But not only was he an incredible politician and states men, I don't believe he ever officially held elected office, did he. Uh? He did serve in a position was very much like the governor of Philadelphia, But he was not, you know, a senator. And I think a lot of people, because he's on you know, the Big Bill, the Hondo, people assume that he he you know, had some sort of elected capacity. Never president as we know, Yeah, exactly, vice president. Hugely innovative, though an inventor um a sort of a Willy Wonka type figure, only you know, with functional stuff, not just stuff that gives you diabetes. Oh yeah. He invented and improved a lot of things that were massively important at the time and continue to be in a way. Bifocals being able to see up close with your glasses as well as far away, depending on how your eyes are functioning. The flexible catheter. Now you may you may say to yourself, Wow, these catheters that are so flexible are terribly annoying and hurt and it stinks using these catheters. Just imagine if they were glass or just stiff, they couldn't move. Nope, I can't imagine it. Thank you, Ben Franklin. Um again as a person who's never used to catherinter Besides on my dog, that's a whole other story we can get into later. Also, the glass harmonica. I'm not sure how important that one truly is. I'm sure some music historian could explain in us it has a spooky story, Yeah, a grizzly rumor about it. Yeah. The glass harmonica, which would be really interesting to you guys as musicians if you've ever seen it. It's a series essentially of nested glass bowls that rotate and such that you can wet your finger and slide it across. You know how You hear the sound when you slide a finger around a rim of glass, and it makes that into a musical instrument. So it's got a a noise that would sometimes be described as eerie, sometimes as irritating. But the the weird part is that it fell out of favor because, as you know, all glass containe well the last majority of glass contained lead at the time, and so there was this urban legend or this rumor that using a glass armonica would be very bad for your health, could drive you crazy if you lead poison. So it fell, uh, it fell to the wayside. But this guy, as as we had said, was so prolific that, you know, you just got to accept, if you're the Tony Stark of your time, that not everything is going to be the Iron Man suit, you know, not every invention. Yeah, he even had his own stove, the Franklin stove, which is sort of the portable cast I would say portable. I mean it's very heavy, but it's the kind of like old timey cast iron stove that you think of maybe being in a cabin that you're renting and in the mountains or something like that. It has than type door where the fire would be and a stove pipe on top to ventilate the smoke and it would heat. It was basically like a space heater and also known as the Pennsylvania Fireplace, which sounds like euphemism or something. One thing that's a I don't want to speak for everybody. For me, it's personally admirable. This this following note about Franklin's inventions. Of all the inventions he made, and we just listened a few quickly. He refused to patent a single one because his argument was that he living in the time he lived, was already benefiting from so many other inventions by earlier people, and he felt it was only fair and just that he provide the same benefits in turn. You know what I mean, Like, he's not giving somebody money every time he uses something that has wheels, so why should he charge someone just for wanting a catheter that is flexible? I yeah, I completely agree with your thoughtsman. I think that is extremely admirable. He went open source in the I was about to say, like, our, do we know the company that makes those little micro processors that you can use to program robotics we're using in like maker type competitions and stuff. They open source all their stuff. You can get the schematics for those, and there are third parties that improve upon them or make different versions of them, and that's par for the course. I think that's pretty cool, very forward thinking fellow that Benjamin Franklin. Yeah, and it's mirroring today's Tony Stark ellen Musk who's doing some of that same stuff with Tesla and uh, you know, that's a very admirable thing. But they're also quite a few strange aspects to the life of Benjamin Franklin. Their myths, rumors, and legends about this America's most eccentric founding father. We we found some that are amusing and some that are, you know, pretty pretty out there true story. He made up around two hundred terms for getting wasted. Two hundred words for getting wasted. This is a known thing. This is true. Yeah, yeah, he because why am I not? Why am I only using like three of them? Well, maybe because you don't have a copy of The Drinker's Dictionary, published in seventy seven, with a list of over two hundred alternative terms for drunkenness that Ben Franklin had overheard in taverns over the years. In his newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette, ah phrases such as he's drank more than he has bled, He's bungy, bungy, He sees the bears piste in the brook. These are just the bees to loaded his cart. Oh, he is chapfallen, Chap falling, He's biggie, bewitched, block and block boozy bows, been at the Barbados, The bug. These are great. You guys, maybe we should take a take a page from his life and start making up our own terms, although I guess we already do that on this show. Lister's right in and let let us know which of those was your favorite that we should use. He's had a thump over the head with Sampson's jawbone. See, I feel like if somebody can say that they're describing someone else who's drunk, if I were drunk and I was trying to say I've had a thump over the head with Sampson's jawbone, I feel like I would stumble on though that you know that Benjamin Bowland, he owes no man a farthing. And to go back to my characterization of him as sort of a Willy Wonka esque figure, he's wamble crop. Wamble crops is the winner for me. And and also when he wasn't, when it wasn't compiling these very humorous things, Uh, he was as as Matt Noel mentioned earlier, a bit of a lithary, a bit of a ladies man lifario right, A man who behaves selfishly and irresponsibly in his sexual relationships with women, particularly so sort of a don juan. And that's your new word for the day. Did we get her style? It will be now. So he was notorious for sleeping around whenever the opportunity presented itself. He had a child out of wedlock, and you know what, to his credit, which was unusual at the time, he admitted to whomever the mother was that it probably was his kid, and he said he would take care of the kid, and he never revealed the mom's identity. He also, has Nuel pointed out, abandoned his wife for years and lived the high high life of hedonism in France. In his own correspondence, Benjamin Franklin laments his uncontrollable libido. Yeah, he was a sex addict, which one of the first. The next one was David Degovney. Yeah. Well, and you know they're even tales of him outright hitting on his friends wives and is the you know, the marriages of his friends, just just in casual conversation with you know, the men present. My you are a saucy lass. Alright, get your bungye. Oh god, he's eating a toad and a half for breakfast. That's another one. So he had several, you know views we would consider eccentric, if not controversial today as well. He was a huge proponent of air baths. That's where you you just sit around naked, regardless of the temperature. You just hang on. You just hanged dong. No, that's all. That's always sunny thing. I just love it. That's my one of my favorite expressions for being nude. Does he hang do? Really? I remember that? Yeah? And he also we we talked about this a little bit. But the rein ending of the alphabet, coming up with the phonetic stuff, that's that's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's that's right, Matt. He he did, he did attempt that. It didn't catch on us. We're not here to talk about his drunken revelry and inventing, are we We're talking. We're here to talk about some some darkness. There is some darkness within this one, and we'll explore it after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. There is a massive amount of conspiracies out there about the Founding Fathers. They arrange all over the place, but uh, we really should just do. Have we done a Founding father's conspiracies? We think we have not yet, And that's something that Paul brought up when when we asked if we asked if there was an episode that he he thinks we should do in the future. Oh yeah, all right, Paul, we'll guess what. We're gonna get to that one, and we're going to start with this one because there are everal specific conspiracy theories surrounding Mr Benjamin Franklin, and the first one, um is one that is common to several other Founding Fathers, including Mr George Washington. Uh, was that Franklin was a member of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the of the Bavarian sort, or you know, some other secret society. And here's the crazy thing. It's partially true. It's true. Yeah, Like Matt said, Benjamin Franklin, like many Founding Fathers, was definitely a Freemason, that's right. In seventeen thirty one, Franklin joined the Masonic Lodge of St. John in Philadelphia. Then in thirty two he helped create the by laws of his lodge. Then two years later he became a grand Master. That same year, seventeen thirty four, Franklin also published the first Masonic book printed in America that was called The Constitutions of the Freemasons. So it's very interesting to me because he's a fairly young man. Well I guess at the time, twenty something isn't that young. But when he joined the lodge for the first time, and he he grew in the ranks very quickly and then started writing inside that world of freemasonry, uh you know, and then just to get up there to become the grand master of the Nine Sisters Lodge in Paris. That's that's pretty big, right. Yeah. He remained an active member for over sixty years until seventeen nine when he passed away, and when he was serving as America's diplomat to France. As Matt said, he became a grand master. So what about the Illuminati. We have a series on the Illuminati. If you have not heard it yet, we're watched the videos. We invite you to check them out. The the Illuminati, historically will refer to the Bavarian Illuminati, is formed by a fellow named Adam Wi Shop may have seventeen seventy six. Again, yeah, I know, all right, right, this is the closest thing there is to a quote unquote verified Illuminati, and they would have been around on the continent while Franklin was in Europe, but there's no solid proof that Ben and Adam came into direct contact. Now, that does not mean it didn't happen, And it is true that Franklin's philosophical viewpoint probably would have jibed by Shop like they would have been feeling it. They would have hit it off. It's more possible those still not proven, that Franklin could have encountered ideas or concepts in Europe. They came from Bishops Group or inspired that group. But back to the actual Illuminati membership thing. If Benjamin Franklin was active in this regard, the guy probably would have talked about it. Why. Well, that's because Mr Benjamin Franklin, h um, Well, he was in this other little secret society. It's one called espionage, one where there are a lot of secrets. But here's the problem. Ben wasn't very good at it. Yeah, Benjamin Franklin was a shitty spy. Yeah. And and I would venture to say it's because of the lifestyle that he kept that he was used to and there was a lot of revelry I'm assuming in Benjamin Franklin's life, and that uh the truth serum that he would take on his own I'm assuming didn't help, right, right, I believe you're referring to alcohol. Yes, yes, uh so, according to a c I a piece that was published internally and later declassified called quote British penetration of America's first diplomatic mission. Uh Benjamin Franklin was just terrible at this. Like he was very good at making connections, very persuasive and brilliant thinker, but not the most talented when it came to security. One of his closest acquaintances blew up his spycraft operation continually as he was sending clandestine cries for support to France. The mole was a guy named Edward Bancroft, who had who knew Ben Franklin from the United States, was one of his most trusted friends. Franklin trusted him so much he made the guy his secretary at the U. S Commission to France, which means Bancroft had access to everything. And furthermore, the British Empire paid him one thousand pounds a year for his assistance, which was nothing to sneeze at. That's smack of donkey money. I don't know what that means. I'm gonna steal that one. You've got Sacca donkey money. So as Commissioner France, Franklin was running all kinds of clandestine operations with Tacit. French aid. They were at the very least turning uh, turning their eyes away, but in most cases they were attempting to help when they could. But what kind of stuff were they doing. We're talking about procuring weapons, all kinds of different supplies for the war effort or the in preparation of war, the money for the American Army, just straight up giving money to the American Army, sabotaging the Portsmith Royal Navy dockyard. Sabotage is a big thing. And if you know you can prove that there's money coming in a clandestine way to do something like that, it's not good for your cause. And of course they negotiated a secret treaty between the United States or America and France. But here's the thing. While all that's going on, Britain pretty much knew everything that was happening. Minute by minute. They're like, okay, this is about to happen. Okay, this is about to happen. This is going down. Here's where this money is going right, Yeah, exactly. There was no op sack or operational security. The public had access to the estate. Sensitive pay Burr's documents were strewn everywhere. Apparently, secret conversations were held, sometimes as loud arguments in public places. It's that's us. Yeah, it's like the way our president takes meetings that you know, this is his club surrounded by diners. Yeah, that was controversial. Later, Yeah, you're talking about Marl logo meetings. Yes, yes, I'm saying like that doesn't doesn't It seems historical president would would make that a teachable moment. There's one more macab's story here. All right, so far we have uh, Freemasonry true, Illuminati difficult to prove, spionage, spycraft true. But he was bad at it, like really bad at it. But there's one more story here, one more conspiracy, and it's maccabb and it's grizzly and it's graphic. Forget the idea of skeletons in the closet, what about bodies in the base? Smith You're you're saying bodies in a basement that Benjamin Franklin like of a home that Benjamin Franklin owned. Was it a murder dungeon. So yeah, okay, because maybe not maybe not a full fledged murder dungeon, but definitely we'll start off with a creepy house. So for almost twenty years leading up to the signing of that fable Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin lived in London at thirty six Craven Street. He just has a talent for choosing terrible street names. Just creepy street names. Craven. I don't know why that sounds creepy to me. Milk streets creepy to Craven. The street right off Milk Street West Elm Street was one block over. Uh. So in seventeen seventy six, is we mentioned earlier, he came back to the States. Um, let's do a little fast forward action to several centuries. Why not? Um, that house was in quite horrible disrepair. So there was like a preservation organization called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House who decided to make some renovations to the four story town house. Um. It was on the verge of collapse, just total structural damage caused by time and in attention. Um, so extensive work had to be done. It's like on the foundation, like you know, pulling out the studs. They had to do some repairs to make it safe enough for construction crews to go back and do repairs. And it's this historical thing, so you have to be very careful about what you're you know, preserving as you're doing this. And by this time, this was the last structure around in which Benjamin Franklin actually lived, so hugely important. It's this, uh, it's this piece of history. And can you imagine being there working on this team, trying to make sure everything is functional so that you can work on it. And then also, you know, trying to get the house to a place where you can have people come in and use it as a museum or something. And then you stumble upon this windowless secret room below the house's garden. There was a murder dungeon. Yeah, so this group, the friends of Benjamin Franklin House, fountain this thing and they discovered something in there, fifteen bodies in the basement. Bet they weren't feeling so friendly then, were they. I would I would not be. I imagine there might have been somebody in the group who said, look, technically, I'm a friend of Benjamin Franklin's house. Not Benjamin Franklin. Here's what they found. The room or or this pit was about a meter wide and a meter deep. All in all, there were over twelve hundred pieces of human bones hidden inside. Experts believe five of the skeletons came from children. The oldest skeleton was that of an elderly male, and the youngest was a baby like a uh, not quite an infant. Baby. Bones were disturbed and damage, showing lens that have been cut or completely hewn through. Some of the skulls showed evidence of trepid nation, which is a let's call it, the controversial medical procedure wherein the back base of the skull is drilled to ostensibly well in hopes of relieving pressure or you know, letting the demons. Yeah, and someone even had the tops the entire top of the skull removed, Yes, exactly. And these were not ancient skeletons from some ill fated massacre of the past, you know, some ancient Roman army or invading force. These were contemporary roughly with Franklin, meaning they most likely died and passed from the mortal veil while he was alive. So was this guy Benjamin Franklin a serial killer. Well find out after a word from our sponsor, and and we're back. For people with anti Masonic leanings, this is often This discovery of bodies is often presented as evidence that Franklin either condoned or participated in a series of murders because he's take place over time. You know, it's clearly on his property, and you know, people who hate Freemasons would would naturally jump to that conclusion. As morbidly fascinating as this sounds, it's likely not true. I don't know if that's a letdown to you guys, or if it's a if it's a relief, it certainly would make me judge him a little bit just for not being very good at hiding bodies. He's a smart man. If he was really wanted to be a murderer, you think he'd be more creative than not put them all in one place. That's a really good point. And he probably invents some sort of sheen, right, yeah, or at least not put him in his own house. I mean, that alone is insane. So sure, it is possible that Franklin was killing people for one reason or another, but given his prolific confessional nature in the way he loved to talk about himself and what he's doing and what he thought. So experts likely would have learned something more about this before the discovery of the bodies, especially given his pensiant for you know, eating a toad and a half at breakfast time, and you know his inability to keep his espionage under wraps. Are you saying he ate the baby? No, that that was another one, and that was the same you're still on the drinking expressions, because we we've we've already discussed and learned that he couldn't keep things that are hugely important but not as important as I am a murderer. He was unable to keep his espionage acts under wraps. If he was a murderer, you'd think something would slip out at some point in one of these debaucherous nights, and maybe just no, but maybe he did and nobody reported it, but because of his stature and his power, But I highly doubt that. You know what, the only counterpoint we would have for that is that he kept the secret of his illegitimate son's identity. But that's the only thing we could find that he really kept secret. And then also I think so was Toad and a half of reference to belching or something. Somebody drinks a lot. Anyway, that's a different episode, right, So yeah, could he have kept his secret? I don't know. I don't know. So where did these bodies come from? If Benjamin Franklin is not some sort of super elite evil James bonds by Master serial killer, historians trace the bones to the activities of one of Franklin's proto Jay's whose name was William Houston. And this man was known as the father of hematology um and was a pupil of the famous anatomist William Hunter. But these two men had irreconcilable differences. Houston appears to have started his own secret, underground anatomy school because that's the that's the thing that you do. It's like fight club but with corpses. Yeah yeah, um, And we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna get into like why there would be all those bodies and you how you could even do that and you could start an amateur school of anatomy in whoa whoa amateur? I mean yes, But this guy Houston started this underground school at his mother in law's house. A woman by the name of Margaret Stevenson, which you know, if I was his woman in law and I found out that he was doing that, I might be a little miffed. I might get awkward at Sunday supper. And this is interesting because here's where the strings start to connect. Stevenson was the landlord of the house on Craven Street where Franklin lived for years and years. And notice how NOL calls this an underground anatomy school. That's because the school was most likely illegal or at the very very least in an incredibly gray area of the law. And that leads us to the story of when Matt, I know you love this story. It's the story of resurrection men. Oh yeah, oh yeah. So today, if you go to your school bookstore and you're in college, you're gonna find your anatomy text books and you're gonna see inside them all sorts of uh, super helpful information about how the human body functions, what each tiny little bit can do, what the cells do, what the what your muscles and your bone structure and everything, how your lungs function. Well, here's the thing, um, people had to go into the human body to find out how all of that stuffed works and to make the illustrations of the venus system going throughout your body and your respiratory system. And for a long time, the let's see, let's say, the the practice or the knowledge of anatomy was considered almost a dark art because of the grizzly stuff you had to do to gain the knowledge. The desecration of the dead, you know, one of the oldest taboos in many cultures. So cadavers were so difficult to legally obtain that anatomists, even well respected and promising ones like Houston Hunter, had to resort to other means, by which, yes, ladies and gentlemen, we mean grave robbings. Sort of like um Mary Shelley's character Dr Victor Frankenstein, who dug up bodies for scientific research and did horrible, terrible things to them, um and reanimated them. Um. This idea of the resurrection men, it's sort of an interesting hyperbole because they're being dug up, but they are in fact still dead, and that's a very important part of this kind of experimentation. It's it's this behavior is not moral per se, certainly more moral than doing it on somebody who's alive. R Killing somebody for the purposes of doing these things right. Vivis section right, So it's still not as bad as VIVI section. But people were strongly against these very controversial So these anatomous would have to go digging for graves themselves, or they could hire shadowy individuals known as resurrection men, which is a little bit of false advertising, because they were just digging them up. They were not, as we said, bringing them back to life. Well, they were giving them new life in the form of a textbook. They became a textbook. They're saying they made the textbooks out of the bodies. No, I'm saying they gave new life to these bodies by turning them into knowledge, by immortalizing them in the field of medicine. That's the Henrietta Lacks argument, isn't it. So thirty six Craven Street, it turns out, was a fantastic location for an illegal anatomy school. Resurrection men could deliver bodies stolen from graveyards to the Tim's wharf at the bottom of the street, very close to the house. Or uh there was a weekly public execution at the gallows that was on the other side of the garden wall, just you know, hey, toss him over this way, and to avoid scrutiny. To go back to that question about why they didn't dispose of the body, is in a better way to avoid scrutiny, Houston would just discard the bodies on the property when he was done. No need in his mind, apparently to rebury them in original or respectful graves. I have a question. We were talking about how this was in a gray area, all of this um and how it was difficult to legally obtain corpses to work on. Was their statute at the time that expressly prohibited this kind of behavior, like where bodies buried protected? Were there's certain cemeteries that had certain laws, would you be more likely to be able to get a good one in like a less prestigious cemetery, Like I was wondering, was this a universal thing or was this sort of a case by case basis. Right, Yeah, that's that's a good question. There was inequality even in death. A lot of cemeteries were separated along religious lines, so you know, there would be a Jewish cemetery separate from say a Catholic or Protestant cemetery. Uh. The one of the things that was fascinating. Is course of our research, we found a mental floss, a mental flass article that said originally it was illegal. It was for all intents and purposes illegal to take a body. But there wasn't a statute there was. It was more like a very complex series of hoops you would have to jump through to legally procure a body for this action. And that's why these anatomy classes and dissection exhibitions were so crowded all the time. So you think about every historical film we see where there's the really steep angled circular room, it's like it's literally like a theater, probably where the term operating theater came from. Right, who could call I bet you, I bet you're right? So it was it was much much faster and less expensive two unfortunately, steal the bodies of the poor and the disadvantaged. Yeah, and for the people who were advantaged and wealthy. There was technology that was coming out that you could set up essentially traps around your grave site and with your coffin that would shoot projectiles out at people that tried to open your coffin. There was all kinds of you know, I mean, it's it's in practice yea. In practice, it doesn't look as awesome as it sounds, And it would be essentially like a bolt, like if you had a crossbow or something that would fire out, like traveling an ancient tomb or something, right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's why resurrection men traveling groups. That makes a lot of sense. Well that's a rough, rough industry to intern in, isn't it. Oh, Because if you die trying to rob the grades, then you just become the product. Wow. Yeah, Oh that's spooky. Well, the good news is that it turns out Benjamin Franklin most likely was not some sort of bloodthirsty original version of the American Psycho. The same year he left to return to America, Houston the Anatomist accidentally cut himself while dissecting a rotting corpse and died of infection. Or did Benjamin Franklin find him in the basement with some bodies and Benjamin Franklin himself put a stop to it, and then he became He became Benjamin Franklin, the serial killer hunter. I mean, I would watch it. You're saying you don't think Ben Franklin like co signed on this. I think he had to to a degree because he was living in the same house. And it's it's as difficult as it is for us to say that he would be a serial killer, I would argue it's equally difficult to say that he was somehow completely clueless right the spell alone? There we go. Yeah, you know something was up, something was rotten in the the seller. Who were these strange men stopping by the house with corpse sized bags? You know, I just for a fellow, who is that clever and that intelligent? I have a hard time believing that this wouldn't occur to him. But there ends our examination today of the dark side of one of America's most eccentric founding fathers. But not our show. We will return very soon, and we'd like you to tune in as we delve into a strange question. Could have thought be alive? A thought like a th h O t at A couple more letters and you'll get there, got it like a thinky brain thought? Not that thought over there? That that train over there? There we go. In the meantime, you can find us on the internet. We're all over the place. 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