The Spectral Summit

Send us Fan Mail In this Literary Summit episode, Max Grimm reads four of Walt Whitman's poems, which were written in the days and months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  They explore the country's sense of loss and how Whitman actually saw the President on the streets of Washington when he was volunteering at Army hospitals. You get a feeling of how shocking and raw the crim...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we examine a few key Shakespearean pieces that the legendary actor Edwin Booth performed in the 1860s and beyond. He has the distinction of performing Hamlet more than any other actor in history, including 100 Nights of Hamlet, which he performed just a few months before the assassination. We explore the following pieces: Richard III - Now is the winter of our dis...

Send us Fan Mail In this essay, the second to the last before teen Ben Franklin was found out as the true writer of the Silence Dogood essays by his brother James who published the New England Courant, young Ben examines Boston's night life. In contrast to modern interpretations of the Puritans, Franklin tells us about how teens would hang out, use their own slang and wear out their shoes, mu...

Send us Fan Mail In her twelfth letter to the New-England Courant (September 1722), the widow Silence Dogood turns her sharp wit to a subject as old as taverns themselves: what happens to a man once he's had a bit too much to drink. With her signature blend of humor and observation, Silence notes how a shy man can suddenly find his tongue after a glass or two — and how quickly that borrowed c...

Send us Fan Mail This satirical essay tackles the social and financial anxieties of aging unmarried women. Silence Dogood shares a letter from a fictional petitioner named Margaret Aftercast . Margaret reflects on her youth, admitting that she was vanity-driven and routinely rejected worthy suitors simply because she enjoyed having a crowd of admirers. Now facing old age alone, she expresses deep...

Send us Fan Mail In her tenth letter to the New England Courant, Silence Dogood turns her sharp eye to a problem colonial society preferred not to discuss: what happens to a woman when her husband dies and takes the family's security with him. Her proposal — a fund women could pay into during marriage, to protect against poverty in widowhood — was a strikingly modern idea for 1722. What her r...

Send us Fan Mail Benjamin Franklin published fourteen Silence Dogood essays in the New-England Courant in 1722, slipping them under the print shop door so his brother James wouldn't know who wrote them. It's the first case of a founding father not only trolling his brother but also catfishing when James developed an affection for Silence.   By Essay Nine, Silence had found her footing —...

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we explore the wit and dark humor of Dorothy Parker who is best remembered for her razor wit. "The Telephone Call" which originally appeared in the January 1928 issue of The Bookman, is one of her most psychologically raw interior monologues — strips away the wit entirely, leaving a woman in agony over a phone that won't ring. It's Parker at her most...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to our exploration of The Raven , The Tell-Tale Heart , and Annabel Lee — three of Edgar Allan Poe’s most haunting and enduring works.  In this episode, Kelley discusses the meaning while Max reads three of Poe's classics.  In these pieces, Poe invites us to travel through the darker corners of the human mind. The Raven captures the torment of grief and obsession, as...

Send us Fan Mail In this essay, teen Ben Franklin addresses the importance of Freedom of Speech after his brother James is arrested by the authorities in New England for "Publishing too freely." While his brother is in jail, Ben the apprentice, who was not allowed to publish under his own name, uses his outrage as Silence Dogood to reference an article in the London Journal that addresse...

Send us Fan Mail In this essay, in which Teen Ben Franklin trolls his brother James, Silence Dogood  features a real poem ( An Elegy upon the much Lamented Death of Mrs. Mehitable Kitel ) and dryly praises it as "the most Extraordinary Piece that ever was written in New-England." Ben Franklin then famously includes a satirical recipe for writing a terrible colonial elegy. He instructs re...

Send us Fan Mail Having moved from the countryside to Boston for the summer, Mrs. Dogood sets her sights on one of colonial society's most despised flaws: pride. Franklin crafts a sharp and funny meditation on vanity, describing how pride blinds people to their own faults while making them hyper-critical of others. You have to wonder what Silence would think of today's influencer culture...

Send us Fan Mail In this installment, Teen Ben Franklin uses Silence to push back against a male critic - in today's world, we might call him part of the manosphere- when he suggests that she should criticize women for being lazy before turning her ire to men.  Silence turns the tables and shows that men are just as guilty of pride and idleness and are often the cause of a woman's faults...

Send us Fan Mail In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton argues for a strong, energetic, and single executive (unitary executive) to lead the U.S. government, rather than a council. He asserts that a single president provides necessary accountability, quick decision-making, and secrecy, ensuring effective governance, protecting national security, and upholding the rule of law.   Kelley and Max br...

Send us Fan Mail What does a 16-year-old writing under a fake name have to say about college education — and why does it still sting? In 1722, Benjamin Franklin's fictional widow Silence Dogood took aim at Harvard and the parents who sent unprepared students there, not for wisdom, but for status. Through a vivid dream sequence, Dogood walks listeners into the "Temple of Learning" —...

Send us Fan Mail This is 16-year-old Ben Franklin's third essay as his alter-ego Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow who has some strong opinions about the world around her.  In this shorter but important piece, Silence formally lays out her purpose and promises her readers what they can expect going forward. She acknowledges her civic duty to contribute to society and vows to share the knowl...

Send us Fan Mail In her second letter, Silence Dogood looks back on her childhood — and takes aim at colonial education. Writing as a reflective widow, Benjamin Franklin critiques the limits placed on young minds, especially girls, in early eighteenth-century Boston. Silence describes her brief schooling, her love of books, and the ways formal education often failed to nurture curiosity or charact...

Send us Fan Mail In this first episode,  Kelley explains how sixteen-year-old Benjamin Franklin couldn’t get his writing published — so he invented a widow. In the first Silence Dogood essay, Franklin secretly introduces a witty fictional voice that captivated readers of The New-England Courant and launched his career in satire. It's a founding teen's look at colonial Boston, and his alt...