LESSON FOUR:All About the Benjamins

GET BIG ON BEN: Learn more by reading Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2004), by Walter Isaacson. Or, if you want the highlights, check out the author as part of the Gilder Lehman Institute of American History lecture series. And if that is still too much work for you, you can read and watch a biographical sketch. I’d recommend studying up though to take the Ben Franklin quiz. 

Walter Isaacson: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

In this lecture, Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, traces Franklin's career from his early days as an apprentice in his brother's Boston print shop to his involvement, at the age of eighty-four, with the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

Benjamin Franklin - Full Episode

Benjamin Franklin went from a youthful printer's apprentice to member of the Continental Congress to signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The Benjamin Franklin Quiz

Inventor, statesman, writer and notorious prankster Benjamin Franklin is often called "the first American" for his myriad contributions to life in the early United States. Can you ace our quiz on Ben?

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GO DEEPER ON DIVERSIFICATION: If you put all your money on one number when spinning a roulette wheel, you can win a lot if you get lucky. But spreading out your bets gives you a better chance of a more modest take and a lower chance of breaking the bank. A perfect example of diversification at work, or rather at play. Read up on the magic of more. 

How Investment Diversification Works

Think of investing like a game of roulette. If you bet on a single number in roulette and win, you get paid off 35-1 odds. That's a nice payoff, but the odds are 37-1 that you'll get it wrong. If you want to increase your odds of winning, then you should bet on more than one number at the same time.

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GO MAVERICK: Enjoy an alternate perspective from billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. Cuban says diversification is “for idiots.” He of course made all his money from the sale, at the height of the internet mania, of broadcast.com which didn’t quite have the staying power of the Franklin stove or the lightening rod. So, in a single lesson, I’m basically telling you to go ignore advice from Warren Buffet and an Internet billionaire with an NBA championship ring. What can I say? Buffets are where you eat, and Cubans are for smoking. 

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HAVE FUN WITH FICTION: Check out Disney’s National Treasure (2004). Benjamin Franklin Gates, played by Nicolas Cage, is a historian adventurer, and hey, aren’t we all? He’s out to find a lost Templar treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers, at least those, including Benjamin Franklin, who belonged to the secretive sect of Freemasons. Yes, it is a poor man’s Dan Brown novel. Disney, poor? Jeez, how many American icons can you insult in one lesson? 

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Virtual Stock Exchange - MarketWatch

Free stock market game with community trading discussion, player rank, profiles, earnings game.

TRY, TRY, TRY TO DIVERSIFY: Or don’t, it is your choice using this simulation where you can put together one or more portfolios and then see how they do over time on Market Watch’s Virtual Stock Exchange. 

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​GET UP AND ADAMS: See the mini-series, John Adams, on HBO Now or HBO Go. Episode Four introduces the puritanical Adams to Franklin in France at the height of his Parisian powers of persuasion. Sparks fly.

John Adams

The official website for John Adams on HBO, featuring full episodes online, interviews, schedule information and episode guides.