Devil in the Details

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Most of us have heard the term devil's advocate used to describe someone who takes the wrong side of an argument knowingly, essentially picking the side the devil would take.

Longtime listeners of this show would know that this term originates in the legal code of the Catholic Church.

As a reminder, in order for a saint to be canonized, an expert needed to take the stand to give their best arguments for why the person shouldn't become a saint.

And the Latin title for that role was advocatus diaboli, the devil's advocate.

The connection between the devil and legal minutiae goes even deeper than that, though.

In fact, the first appearance of the term Satan in the Bible is referring not to a proper name, but a role being performed by another heavenly deity.

The term Satan means accuser or adversary.

In the book of Job, for example, it is one of these Satans who encourages God to punish the devout Job to test his faith.

According to some scholars, the role of this Satan is not as the cause of all evil, but as someone who provokes the advocates of good to prove themselves.

And this connection between the concept of the biblical devil and legal procedure often gets overlooked, likely because legal scholars and biblical scholars work in quite distinct fields.

Then again, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Satan has appeared in legal court documents in the United States, not as a religious reference, but as a defendant.

In 1971, for example, a prisoner in Pittsburgh's Western Penitentiary decided that the only way out of this maximum security facility was to take his grievances to the top.

The 22-year-old man filed a lawsuit, not against the state of Pennsylvania or the judges who had put him in prison, but against the devil himself.

The resulting court case was labeled Gerald Mayo v.

Satan and his staff.

Mayo alleged that the devil devil and his agents had placed roadblocks in his way that guaranteed that he would live a miserable life.

His life, he claimed, was a series of misfortunes that could only mean that he was being set up to fail.

Ultimately, the judge decided to throw the case out, although not for the reason that you might expect.

Instead of flatly labeling the case ludicrous and not worth hearing at all, the judge bothered to write up a procedural reason for dismissing the case.

In his ruling, he determined that Gerald Mayo had filed a lawsuit that would be impossible to execute.

How had he expected the court to serve legal notice to the devil himself?

Moreover, the judge wrote, Mayo would have to prove that similar cases like his were universal, that others who had been targeted by the devil wound up with a similar fate.

Without such examples, he could not prove to the judges that he was not responsible for the actions and decisions that had landed him in prison in the first place.

So, there you go.

With the case dismissed, Mayo returned to prison.

Now his goal for this case would never be fully clear to us for over 50 years.

Perhaps he intended to get media attention that would help him get a more lenient sentence.

Perhaps he wanted to serve a case so ludicrous that the court would have to hear him out.

Or maybe he was just so desperate that even this action was better than none at all, and wasting the court's time was a fair way to spend his days behind bars as any other.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop, as they say.

Well, whatever the real reason, this lawsuit would have a unique legacy.

You see, to this day, it's used by law professors to teach the necessary elements of building a case.

Even in a society where lawsuits are an easy way to address your problems, suing someone isn't just about the grievance, it also requires a target who is subject to the same laws you're using to sue.

Satan, it would seem, is literally above the law.

So, I guess it turns out that he won't be needing that devil's advocate.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way.

He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See CapitalOne.com/slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

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Albert didn't start out making movies.

In fact, had everything gone differently, he might have spent his life in the family business in Long Island.

But in the 1930s, with his head full of dreams and his feet itching for adventure, He struck out west to make a family business of his own.

Albert had tried his hand at farming farming like his father.

He even worked for a time in the family coffin business.

But when he went to visit a cousin who'd become a talent agent, he fell in love with Hollywood.

It didn't hurt that his cousin introduced him to the superstar Carrie Grant.

So in 1933, Albert packed up his hoe and his handsaw and headed to Los Angeles.

Now, Albert tooled around Hollywood for the next 15 years, making friends and making strides.

He worked in the mailroom at 20th Century Fox.

He befriended director Howard Hughes, who made him an assistant director on the 1943 film The Outlaw.

But he quickly found being assistant director mostly meant driving star Jane Russell to set.

When World War II started, he recruited stars to perform for the troops with the USO, and after the war, he worked as a talent agent.

But Albert's big break came in the 1950s, when he realized there was real money to be made as a producer.

At the time, the British government announced that it would give money to films that hired 80% of their crew from England.

Albert and his producing partner were the first to set up shop there, making Anglo-American co-productions that netted them an extra few million dollars.

After a few modest successes with high-flying action films, Albert was looking for his next project when fate intervened in the form of a paperback.

Albert quickly became a fan of books by a former British intelligence agent named Ian Fleming.

In them, a spy named James Bond, number 007 with a license to kill, charmed his way past deadly traps and over-the-top villains.

It was the perfect character to bring to the big screen.

However, Hollywood didn't quite see it that way.

In meeting after meeting, Albert kept getting turned down.

James Bond was too suave, too sexual, and, let's face it, too British.

They didn't think American audiences would buy tickets.

Finally, a friend at United Artists set up Albert with a meeting.

He came in ready to be rejected once again.

To his surprise, 45 minutes later, he had a six-picture deal in place.

They had $1 million to make the first film, Dr.

No.

Now, all they needed was their bond.

While $1 million was a lot in those days, it wasn't enough to get big stars.

Albert's first choice, Carrie Grant, was off the table.

So they needed an unknown to bring Bond to the big screen.

After spending days sorting through headshots and movie reels, it was Albert's wife Dana who actually made the choice.

When a young Scottish actor named Sean Connery appeared on screen, she shouted, cast that one.

He's gorgeous.

And so movie history was made.

And the chances are good that you're probably familiar with what came next.

James Bond has been the subject of dozens of movies and has now been played by six actors.

Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig.

The impact that Albert's Bond movies have had on our collective pop culture consciousness is immense.

Think of James Bond, and the same things come to mind.

Death-defying stunts, ingenious gadgets, beautiful Bond girls, and martinis shaken, not stirred.

In bringing James Bond to life, Albert created a new family business.

In recent years, his daughter Barbara and son Michael have co-produced every Bond film from Albert's death in 1996 until they sold the rights to Amazon in 2025.

Albert carved out a pretty good legacy for himself and his family, but you might be surprised that bringing James Bond to the big screen isn't his only claim to fame.

For that, we have to rewind a bit to when Albert's family lived in Carrera, Calabria.

According to his wife Dana's research, Albert's ancestors claimed to be the first people to cross two vegetables, cauliflower and rab.

This created a dark green tree-like vegetable with thick stalks.

Albert's father and his uncle brought those seeds of this crossbreed from Calabria to Long Island.

On the same farm where Albert worked as a child, his family introduced America to their very own family heirloom.

And the name of that vegetable, well, they gave it the family name.

And here, let me tell you Al's full name and I'll let you figure out the rest.

The James Bond movie pioneer was Albert Broccoli.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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