What turned America's most famous British loyalist into its most dangerous revolutionary? What does a public humiliation in a Whitehall chamber have to do with the Declaration of Independence? And, if the man who designed the American constitution believed men were angels, would he have bothered?

Peter and Afua trace how a candle-maker's son who pulled lightning from the sky and a sickly scholar obsessed with the fall of Rome built the architecture of the most powerful republic in history.

0:00 Franklin: the 18th century's global multimedia superstar

6:10 Poor Richard's Almanac and the art of building a platform from scratch

9:45 From kite and key to the Royal Society — Franklin's lightning moment

13:20 A proud Briton in London: the comfortable life that couldn't last

16:00 The Hutchinson letters, a Whitehall ambush, and an hour of public savaging

18:30 The moment Franklin stopped thinking of himself as British

21:00 Enter James Madison: the smallest man in public life and the biggest thinker

24:30 Two thousand years of history as a laboratory of political failure

28:00 Taxation without representation, the Intolerable Acts, and the radicalisation of Madison

31:30 'If men were angels, no government would be necessary'

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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How did a collection of desperate survivors, religious outcasts, and petty criminals become the architects of the world's most powerful nation? What does it mean to build a society on the language of liberty when that society is entirely dependent on enslaved labour? And are Americans still reckoning with a founding story that was never quite what it seemed?

Peter and Afua go back to the very beginning — from the disaster of Roanoke and the brutal early years at Jamestown, to the transatlantic slave economy that quietly powered the rise of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

00:00 Introduction — what America actually means

03:00 Roanoke and Jamestown — England's catastrophic first attempts

08:00 The colonial economy — slavery, sugar, and the triangle trade

14:00 New York's hidden history — one in five New Yorkers were enslaved

19:00 The contradiction at America's heart — liberty built on unfreedom

25:00 Who were the Founding Fathers — and who was left out?

32:00 Preview — Franklin and Madison up next

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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How does a Siberian peasant mystic end up controlling the most powerful empire in Europe? Could the rumours that destroyed a dynasty have been entirely false — and did they matter anyway? And, without Rasputin, would there have been no Lenin — and would the 20th century have looked completely different? Peter sits down with Sir Antony Beevor — bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin, and D-Day — to dig into his new book on one of history's most mythologised figures: Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian wanderer who charmed the Tsarina, antagonised everyone else, and whose murder was so catastrophically bungled it reads like black farce.

0:00 From Siberia to the Imperial court — how a peasant mystic reached the centre of power

5:30 Holy fools, wandering pilgrims, and why Russia was always fertile ground for figures like Rasputin

10:00 The voice, the eyes, and the seduction: how Rasputin actually worked on people

13:00 The Tsarina's obsession — and why Antony Beevor is certain the rumours were fake news

17:30 How Rasputin's ministerial choices set the railways on fire and sparked a revolution

24:00 Rasputin was right about the war — and then made everything worse anyway

27:30 The assassination: poisoned cakes, Yankee Doodle, and a murder plot of spectacular incompetence

32:00 Putin, Nicholas II, and why historians should be wary of historical parallels

36:00 Without Rasputin, no Lenin? The counterfactuals Antony loves but won't fully follow

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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