Why Benjamin Franklin Sat Naked Every Morning (And What It Teaches Us About Innovation)

DAVID CARSON: 00:00:01

Benjamin Franklin was into some really weird stuff. Like, really, really weird. Everyone remembers the story about his kite in a thunderstorm experiment that led to most people thinking he invented electricity. Note, he didn't. But fewer people know about his very strange, very raw morning routine, something he called his air bath. And no, that's not some old-timey euphemism. Franklin would literally wake up, take off all his clothes, throw open the window, and just sit there for up to an hour, naked, breathing in the brisk morning air like it was the 18th century version of a cold plunge, except without the water or the dignity. His neighbors must've loved that. Nothing says "Good morning" like Benjamin Franklin's bare ass greeting the sunrise. But here's the thing. In his mind, it wasn't crazy. It was invigorating. It was science. It was Franklin. And the more you look at his life, the more you realize this was kind of his thing, doing odd, head-scratching, sometimes downright dumb stuff that somehow led to great insights. That's why today we're unpacking the strange, wonderful world of Franklin, the inventions, the essays, the pranks, the experiments that made people roll their eyes, but also nudged humanity forward. Welcome to Dumbify. I'm your host, David Carson. Let's get dumb.

THEME SONG: 00:01:45

Dumbify, let your neurons dance, put your brain in backwards pants. Genius hides in daft disguise. Brilliance wears those googly eyes. So honk your nose and chase that spark. Dumb is just smart in the dark. Dumbify. Yelling like a goose. Just thinking wrong on purpose with juice.

DAVID CARSON: 00:02:13

Now, Franklin wasn't just a streaker with a scientific excuse. He had a whole catalog of ideas that made people go, "Wait, you're serious?" And he actually almost always was. After all, Franklin is the same guy who tried to electrocute a turkey with a Leyden jar because he thought it would be a more efficient way to cook dinner. He's the guy who wrote an essay politely suggesting that people should make their farts smell better. I'm not joking. He thought life would be more pleasant if flatulence came in scents like rose or vanilla. Half the time, people thought Benjamin Franklin was nuts, which is why I suppose I'm so fascinated by his life and the way he thinks. How is it that the same guy who helped frame the Constitution of the United States of America is also the guy who air bathes and tried to start a fragrant flatulence movement? That right there is the delightful, bewildering thread I want to tug on today. Franklin simply didn't care if he looked like a complete nincompoop. In fact, he seemed to treat public perception as a kind of optional accessory. He followed his curiosity wherever its peculiar scent led him, be it into a lightning storm, the delicate nuances of intestinal gas, or just a brisk, naked breeze on his 18th century cheeks. And let's be honest, this whole fragrant farting thing, there's a tiny, guilty part of you that's desperately curious. Don't worry, I was too. Consider this your official podcast sanction pardon for wanting to know more. What I stumbled upon in my deep dive is that this oddball anecdote is actually a sort of cheat code for unlocking Franklin's magnificent misfiring-on-purpose brain. His provocations, these goofy, borderline idiotic stunts were never just pranks. To him, they were serious, rigorous, utterly scientific experiments. They were proof, he believed, that foolishness, when wielded with precision and intent, could be its own elevated form of genius. Franklin dutifully put it all down on paper in what's now affectionately nicknamed Fart Proudly. The actual title, bless his heart, was far more respectable, A Letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels. And he doesn't tiptoe around the subject. He opens with a straight-faced observation that, quote-

FRANKLIN: 00:04:56

"In digesting our common food, there is created or produced in the bowels a great quantity of wind."

DAVID CARSON: 00:05:05

That was Franklin's genius. He could take a fart, drape it in the solemn robes of scientific inquiry, and make it sound like a perfectly respectable, indeed, urgent line of academic investigation. He then, with the audacity of a true visionary, pushes further, daring to make his wild claim sound practical. He suggests science should dedicate itself to inventing a pill or tincture, one that would render the odor of our farts not merely inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes. He even paints a picture of a truly utopian future where life would be immeasurably delightful if we embrace this new scented world.

FRANKLIN: 00:05:48

A man may fart in the presence of ladies, and they shall like it.

DAVID CARSON: 00:05:56

That's Franklin. Part prankster, part deadpan futurist, casually pitching a world where flatulence doubles as eau de cologne.But underneath that glorious gag is a far more serious maneuver. Franklin was subtly, or perhaps not so subtly, re-scoping what counted as worthy of intellectual pursuit. He knew the academic game. The academies adored their Latin, their grand obfuscations, their complexity dressed up as profundity. They preferred math proofs that floated serenely above the messy, inconvenient realities of human bodies. But here, Franklin, with a wink and a perfectly timed metaphorical release, drags the conversation back to Earth. He says, kindly but firmly, that the mess, yes, that mess, is precisely where the real opportunity lives. It's very dumbify, actually. Take the thing everyone universally agrees is beneath them, walk toward it with a mischievous grin, and then ask a genuinely useful question. Franklin even sketches out a practical path forward, noting that different foods produced different results. So, he reasoned, why couldn't chemistry intervene?

FRANKLIN: 00:07:16

Suppose that it were made part of our diet to use such medicines as should render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes of roses.

DAVID CARSON: 00:07:31

I just adore that tone. It's mischievous, yes, but never cruel. He isn't merely mocking people who pass gas. No, Franklin is, with a twinkle in his eye, subtly mocking the people who pretend they don't. And that, my friends, is a truly Franklinian art form. Now, we've dipped our toes into Franklin's peculiar morning rituals and his aromatic philosophical ideas. But to truly grasp the peculiar engine of his mind, we have to look at the moments where his ideas weren't just quirky, but genuinely alarming.

SFX: 00:08:09

Oh my God.

DAVID CARSON: 00:08:10

Where his brilliance looked to everyone else suspiciously like madness. Because that's where the real magic of his thinking process lives. It seems to be always in that chasm between perceived absurdity and revolutionary insight. Let's talk about lightning.

DAVID CARSON: 00:08:29

Before Franklin, lightning wasn't merely a weather phenomenon. It was a divine act of God, sort of like God's personal exclamation point. When the sky opened up and a jagged bolt ripped through the air, melting church bells and setting homes ablaze, people didn't think static electricity. They thought wrath. They prayed. They cowered. And then Benjamin Franklin, a man who habitually sat naked at his window, decided he was going to catch it. And not just catch it, but politely escort it into the ground like a bouncer showing a rowdy patron the door. Here's Franklin, this portly printer from Philadelphia, casually suggesting you stick a sharp metal rod on your roof to siphon off the divine fury of God. You probably remember this from science class. Franklin had observed that lightning tended to strike the highest points in town, the steeples, the trees, your particularly tall neighbor, probably. And he'd been playing with Leyden jars, those early capacitors that could store an electrical charge. He'd noticed that sharp, pointed objects could quietly draw off electrical charges from the air without making any noise. So, his incredibly elegant, ridiculously simple, and to everyone else utterly bonkers, idea was this. A pointed iron rod extending above the building, connected by a wire deep into the earth. The rod, he theorized, would silently draw the electrical fire from the clouds, harmlessly conducting it into the ground, thus preventing the catastrophic lightning strike. It was, in his mind, just practical plumbing for the sky. The reaction wasn't merely skepticism. A collective, terrified, "Are you kidding me?" rang through the air. To many, this was an act of profound hubris. They genuinely believed these iron spikes would attract more lightning, inviting a celestial smackdown on their communities. Ministers preached against them. Churches, ironically, refused to install them, standing as defiant, flammable monuments to their faith. And, of course, they burned down again and again. Franklin, meanwhile, watched. He charted. He observed the undeniable horrifying pattern. Churches with his so-called blasphemous rods remained standing, while those without often succumbed to fire. His work was a quiet, relentless campaign against deeply ingrained terror and superstition, fought with nothing more than a bent piece of metal and an unshakable belief in observation. He simply pursued a radical, counterintuitive idea that to everyone else seemed utterly bonkers. And by doing so, he fundamentally altered humanity's relationship with lightning. He took the most terrifying force of nature and, with a wire and a kite, showed us it was merely a puzzle to be solved, not a judgment to be endured.

DAVID CARSON: 00:11:48

Let's pivot a bit to something a little more personal for Franklin, a proposal that struck at the heart of parenthood and primal fear. Franklin's relentless advocacy for smallpox inoculation. In the 18th century, smallpox was a monster. It ravaged families, disfigured survivors, and brought an almost certain death sentence to its victims.There was no cure, only resignation. Then came the idea of inoculation, deliberately exposing a healthy person to a milder form of the disease to grant immunity. This was no mere controversy. It was, to most, an act of sheer madness. You want me to infect my child? On purpose? That's insane. The very notion flew in the face of every protective instinct. How could you willingly invite illness into a healthy body? It felt fundamentally wrong, a desperate, irrational gamble. And for Franklin, this wasn't an abstract debate. His own beloved four-year-old son, Francis, had died of smallpox in 1736, a loss that shadowed Franklin for decades, a regret he carried that he hadn't inoculated his son sooner. Now, Franklin's thinking here was based on a very simple observation. Again, his superpower. He noticed that people who survived a bout of smallpox rarely, if ever, got it again, and doctors had observed that some people had milder cases than others. So, the dumb idea, pioneered by others but championed fiercely by Franklin, was to take a small amount of material from a mild smallpox pustule and introduce it into a healthy person, usually through a small scratch. The hope was to induce a mild case, granting immunity without the full terrifying virulence of the natural disease. It was essentially a calculated risk, a controlled infection to prevent an uncontrolled one, a kind of medical jujitsu. That personal devastation made him utterly fearless in his conviction. He published. He argued. He meticulously shared data, pushing against a tide of fear, misinformation, and deeply held beliefs that resisted such a counterintuitive approach. He often stood as a lone voice, telling parents to embrace a terrifying, illogical-sounding procedure for a greater good. He was asking people to do the wrong thing, the unnatural thing, in order to achieve the right outcome. And he persisted, transforming a terrifying illness into a manageable risk, saving countless lives through an idea that, at its core, looked to almost everyone like sheer folly. This is the essence of Franklin's genius. He wasn't afraid to look like a fool, to champion ideas that appeared outlandish, even blasphemous or dangerous to the conventional mind. His superpower was an almost reckless disregard for what society deemed sensible. He understood that the path to profound insight often involves cheerfully walking off the beaten track, embracing the preposterous, and stubbornly pursuing the questions that make everyone else roll their eyes. And perhaps, intuitively, Franklin understood something we're only now starting to formalize, what some call the Taboo Innovation Law. This isn't some ancient decree chiseled in stone. It's a modern observation, championed by thinkers like entrepreneur and author, Alex Danko, who noticed a pattern. The law suggests that society's most profound embarrassments, its deepest discomforts, its most cringe-worthy taboos often point directly to unaddressed problems, to areas where science and innovation are desperately needed. This then was essentially Franklin's entire MO. Nothing was more socially embarrassing, I suppose, than a public smelly puff of air discharged from one's own anus. Yet, he leaned in. Few things were more existentially horrifying than smallpox, or more viscerally cringe-inducing than the counterintuitive idea of inoculation. Yet, he championed it. And what could be more audacious than questioning the supposed wrath of God by casually diverting lightning strikes? Franklin's track record for great insights birthed from questions or theories that seemed embarrassing, cringe-worthy, or horrifying to society perfectly illustrates this law, that signal, the collective gasp, the nervous chuckle, the averted gaze. That was his cue. It told him precisely where to lean in, not out. He wasn't just being weird for weirdness' sake. He was tapping into a profound truth, the solutions we need most are often hidden behind the problems we're too polite, too afraid, or too conventional to acknowledge. So, what are today's little social landmines, those things that make us all awkwardly clear our throats and change the subject, that old Ben Franklin would absolutely pounce on? Well, for starters, I bet he'd still be knee-deep in human waste management, not just the olfactory challenges, mind you, though I'm sure his fragrant flatulence quest would continue. He'd probably look at our sewage systems and say, "Hold on, we're just flushing all that potential. Can we turn it into clean energy? Drinkable water? Something less gross and problematic?" He'd also likely cast a discerning, maybe slightly mischievous eye at our ultimate discomfort, the permanence of death itself. I wonder if he'd be transfixed with longevity science. It would be the ultimate engineering problem. I'm almost certain he'd be all in on the weird but practical solution of cryogenics, essentially freezing yourself today so you can be rebooted.... whenever future science has a better operating system. He'd probably even establish the world's first temporal hibernation society, complete with membership dues and a detailed app on optimal do-it-yourself brain-freezing techniques. Sounds a bit much, but then again, so was Franklin. And then there's the modern real problem of loneliness, an epidemic we all pretend isn't happening. Franklin, I'm sure, would cook up some outrageously communal, slightly invasive solutions that would make us squirm. But gosh darn it, they'd probably work. For him, the bigger the cringe, the louder the signal. It meant a hidden problem begging for a delightfully counterintuitive, utterly Franklinesque solution.

MB WORD OF THE DAY THEME SONG: 00:19:02

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb word of the day. Dumb word of the day. It's a word, it's dumb. Use responsibly.

DAVID CARSON: 00:19:12

That's right, you magnificent purveyors of the peculiar, it's time for our favorite part of the show. It's time for Dumb Word of the Day. This is where we shine a spotlight on a word so delightfully obscure, so gloriously odd, it makes you wonder if it was invented by a particularly bored lexicographer on a dare. And yet, it perfectly captures the spirit of thinking wrong on purpose. And today's dumb word is kakistocracy. Spelled K-A-K-I-S-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y. Kakistocracy. Just rolling that off the tongue feels like you're trying to say "octopus" while holding a mouthful of marbles. It sounds like something you'd find growing on the back of an old refrigerator or perhaps a particularly uncomfortable yoga pose involving your spleen. But what does it mean? Well, my friends, a kakistocracy is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. Essentially, it's a system where the absolute worst people are in charge. Now, you might be thinking, "David, that sounds less dumb and more terrifyingly familiar." And you'd have a point. But here's why it's our dumb word of the day, and why Franklin would appreciate it. Franklin, our patron saint of looking foolish, spent his life surrounded by people who thought they were terribly, terribly smart. The establishment. The academies. The folks who believed lightning was God's email and that smelling bad was just part of the human condition. They were often, by Franklin's own subtle estimation, operating with some truly kakistocratic ideas. Ideas that were the absolute worst solutions to pressing problems, simply because they were the most accepted, the most traditional. Franklin, with his air baths and his lightning rods and his fragrant farts, was constantly pushing back against this intellectual kakistocracy. He looked at the prevailing sensible solutions and thought, "You know what? This is objectively terrible. This is a kakistocratic approach to life. There's got to be a better, weirder way." So kakistocracy, it sounds ridiculous. It describes something profoundly unsettling. But for us, it's a reminder. Sometimes, the most accepted ways of doing things are in fact the absolute worst, and it takes a mind like Franklin's, a mind willing to be perceived as dumb, to point it out. Ponder that. Kakistocracy. You're welcome. All right. Challenge time. So, this week's dumbify challenge is called Follow the Flinch. And yeah, that sounds like a self-help book your coworker pretends to be reading on a plane, but it's actually a dead simple idea. If something makes you squirm a little, you're probably standing near a problem worth poking at. It's inspired by Benjamin Franklin's odd, almost supernatural talent for walking straight into the things everyone else was too busy pretending didn't exist. This week, I want you to pay excruciating attention to something uncomfortable. Not catastrophic, mind you. No global pandemics or existential threats. Just quietly, universally cringey. Something that everyone notices but nobody, not a single brave soul, dares to mention. It's the kind of thing we silently endure instead of fix. Because fixing it would require naming it, and naming it, well, that would make it real. And sometimes reality is just too much. Let me offer you an example. A humble little domestic tableau that has brought empires to their knees and ruined countless otherwise perfectly lovely Tuesdays. The whole toilet paper roll situation. You know the one. You walk into the bathroom. There it is, an empty cardboard tube, just sitting there alone. A desolate little cardboard monument to someone else's utter baffling disregard. And you feel that familiar tiny spike of primal rage because now it's on you. But here's the genius of the flinch: The problem isn't just the empty roll. Oh no. The problem is the stalemate, the unspoken profound discrepancy over whose sacred duty it is to replace it. Some believe with the conviction of a zealot that the person who uses the very last square is honor bound to replace it. Others believe with equal unwavering certainty that it's the poor unsuspecting sap who finds it empty.Both sides are absolutely, positively, 100% convinced of their righteousness. And the topic itself, it feels too utterly ridiculously dumb to ever bring up. So it festers, it simmers, and occasionally, it devolves into a passive-aggressive bathroom cold war where spouses silently judge each other based on their adherence to the porcelain law. That, my friends, that lingering unaddressed impasse, that's the real discomfort. Not the act of replacing it, but the festering silence around whose act it is. So here's the challenge. How do you resolve your flinch? Take that toilet paper scenario. A Franklin-esque solution might be to install an absurdly elaborate voting system above the holder. Two buttons, one for last square equals your job and one for finder equals your job. Each time someone uses the facilities, they cast their vote. First side to 100 wins. Until then, glorious democratic chaos reigns supreme. LED scoreboard, naturally, is optional, but highly encouraged. Or perhaps the simpler yet equally unsettling fix, do what no couple ever wants to do: formally acknowledge the disagreement. Put it in writing. Codify the existential split, and then like true philosophers of the lavatory, flip a coin. Heads, your rule wins for six months. Tails, theirs. You'll hate it, absolutely loathe the very process, but you'll both have clarity, and dare I say, peace, without ever having to pretend you actually agree on something so fundamentally, tragically important. The point isn't to solve the toilet paper debate for all mankind or to turn your home into a miniature plumbing-centric Supreme Court. The point is to notice where tiny, seemingly dumb frictions hide deeper conflicts, to name them. Because that, my friends, that moment you finally articulate the unmentionable is where creative problem solving actually starts. It's where genius, however awkward, dares to emerge. So go find your flinch this week. Lean into it. Laugh at its absurdity. And see what happens when you stop ignoring the obvious and start getting gloriously, audaciously dumb. We want to hear about your Follow the Flinch adventures. Share your stories, your brilliant insights, or your wonderfully bonker solutions with us at david-carson.com. And that's our show. Thank you for getting dumb with me today. I'm your host, David Carson. Join me next time when we'll learn how to get smarter by thinking dumber, perhaps by exploring the philosophical implications of socks with sandals, or why the instruction shake well before use always feels like a personal challenge. If you want even more glorious dumbness from the Dummify universe, you can get the weekly Dummify newsletter at david-carson.com. Until then, don't just think outside the box. Get naked, throw open the window, and think in the fresh air. It's what Benjamin Franklin would've wanted.