We take it for granted, but American independence was not a foregone conclusion. The Revolutionary War was long, more than six grinding years between the first shots at Lexington and Conquered and the British surrender at Yorktown, and they all too oft an unpaid, ill equipped, underfed patriots were almost always playing defense, one battle away from total defeat and the very real risk of capital punishment as traitors to the crown. Father of his country. George Washington earned that title, but Washington wasn't at Saratoga in upstate New York, site of arguably the most important turning point in the war. In the summer of seventeen seventy seven, about eight thousand troops under British General John Burgoyne came down from Canada and through the Hudson River Valley, expecting to join British troops moving up from New York City. The colonies would be split into a classic divide and conquer and the rebellion would be put down. But those other British troops didn't show, and on September near the town of Saratoga, the British Burgoyne met a line of American troops after an initial bloody confrontation, the British and the Americans, under the cautious leadership of General Horatio Gates, engaged each other indecisively for almost three weeks. Then, on October seven, the British launched an attack, trying to break through American lines, but before Gates could issue a command, another American general flew into action. No man shall keep me in my tent today, this general raged. I am without command, and I will fight in the ranks. But the soldiers, God bless them, will follow my lead. Cursing, rallying the patriots, he charged out on horseback, straight into the fray. He was our fighting general. A comrade later wrote, as brave a man as ever lived that general's name, Benedict Arnold. Anyone would be hard pressed the point to a officer in the Continental Army who was a better general. In the first years of the Revolution, Arnold's horse was shot from right under him. He suffered a terrible wound to his leg, but he and his men prevailed, routing the British. Ten days later, Burgoyne surrendered. As a result of that victory, the French entered to the Revolutionary War on the side of the Patriots. As the writer R. W. Apple Jr. Put it, it marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire, and it breathed life into the United States of America, in no small part thanks to Benedict Arnold. This is the hidden part of Arnold, the Arnold before he went back, but just three years later, Benedict Arnold, the hero of Saratoga, would betray his country, his name consigned to infamy. Whom can we trust? Now? That was the question that Arnold made all Americans face. This episode will tell you the story of Benedict Arnold before he became synonymous with treason, and will tell you the surprising backstories of some of history's other villains. You have summoned the Prince of Temptation fo what Purpose? From CBS Sunday Morning and I Heart I'm Morocca. And this is mobituaries, This mopit Benedict Arnold, Peanuts and satan before they went bad. You know what are you doing studying my script? I'm in the school play. Oh it's wonderful, I'll plan Benedict Donald, Benedict Arnold. Yeah, it's a great part. Well, it is if you like being a trader that's from a nine two episode of The Brady Bunch. Middle son Peter Braby gets cast in the school play as Benedict Arnold, and it's making him a pariah, so much so that he fakes being sick to get out of the play. I want you to level with us. You don't want to be in that play, don't you. No. I don't why, Peter, you said you were going to be the best Benedict Donald ever. Well, you don't know what it's been like. Everybody riding me, booing and hissing me because I'm playing a trader. I understood Peter's predicament. I don't know about the kids today, but when I was growing up, to be called a Benedict Arnold was a really insult, wasn't it. Oh? Absolutely, but it was weird. My mom always said her hero was Bennedicgonald, and so that just confused me as a kid. Bennedicdonald epitomizes being a trader, being evil. He is the snake in our garden. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of three books on the American Revolution, including Valiant Ambition, about the relationship between Benedict Donald and George Washington. But hold on a second, what was your mother's rationale for saying he was her hero? She was a contrarian. But I think back in the day she read ken Robert's series of novels about the American Revolution, and Benedicdonald is portrayed largely as a sympathetic character. Kenneth Roberts was a popular writer of historical fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote a couple of books focusing not on Arnold's eventual treachery but his earlier military daring do But my mom latched onto this with a vengeance because it just appealed to her, being against the grain of most people's thinking. Now, I know some of you may be thinking focusing on Benedict Arnold's early heroics for this episode is kind of like talking about how great Richard Nixon was for creating the e p A without mentioning Watergate. But Nixon was kind of great for creating the E p A. People are complicated, get over it. Don't worry. We'll get to Arnold's betrayal in the third act. But first, what kind of a family did Benedict Donold come from? He came from a large, lead dysfunctional family of a family that was living in the shadow of their forebears. Those forbears were also named Benedict Arnold. Our protagonist was the fourth born in seventy. Arnold's great grandfather, the first Benedict, was a governor of the Rhode Island Colony. But after Arnold's father left Rhode Island to start a life in Norwich, Connecticut, multiple tragedy struck. Four of Benedict Arnold's five siblings died before the age of ten. Benedict Arnold and his sister Hannah would be the only survivors, and his father went to drinking and Arnold his later life I think would be kind of a repudiation of his difficult childhood because he had a chip on his shoulders from the very beginning, and he wanted to make something of himself, because I think he had this sense of coming from a place of shame. After a seven year apprenticeship with an apothecary, he started his own pharmacy and bookselling business in New Haven. He was doing okay, but young Benedict had long craved adventure. He wanted to be the person that he idealized the swashbuckling man of action, and physically he was fearless, you know, he was a kind of athlete. One person described him as the best skater he had ever seen skater as an ice skater. Yeah, it's a funny observation. But there are several anecdotes about his youth that he was a daredevil. There was a water mill in Norwich and he would grab onto the water wheel, rided all the way up and then dive off into the stream. He was not a big guy, but one of those guys with that kind of athletes swagger and built very solidly, and someone who could intimidate other people, not only in terms of yelling at them, you know, just his physical presence. It's funny because you write that he claimed he was a coward until fifteen years of age. He said that his bravery was learned, and so, according to his own account, at about fifteen, you know, which is a time in life when all sorts of stuff is usually happening in the life of a teenager, he made this decision, I'm going to be a badass, and that's what he would be. By the time Arnold was in his twenties, he had taken to the high seas a successful merchant, captaining his own ships, sailing as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Canada. He began to build what would be, if he had ever finished it, the most opulent house in New Haven. Who was a man on the make, a man to be admired, and a budding patriot. When the British wanted to tax the Americans without giving them representation in Parliament, you remember all of that, Arnold found a cause he could fight for. He became a smuggler, rating his businesses in open defiance of the British tariffs. He joined the Sons of Liberty, the secretive group that carried out the Boston Tea Party. Then on the morning of April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five, the British fired on colonial militiamen at Lexington. The Revolutionary War had begun, and Benedict Arnold lapped into action. When I heard about Lexington conquered, he led a group right to the Boston area. You know, getting on a horse and riding around and giving orders was exactly the kind of thing. Ben MacDonald was wired for his years as a merchant and a Mariner had prepared him well for this moment, and because of his knowledge of the geography of New England and Canada, he realizes that strategically, the Americans need to have control of Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain wasn't just a crucial waterway just to its south, stood for ty con To Roga with more than sixty cannons firepower that George Washington's Continental Army desperately needed. So he proposed to the powers that be in Boston that they take Fort Ticonda Roga, a kind of extraordinarily aggressive move, but the Powers that Be agreed with him and gave him a commission to go up there. At off he would go, leading one of the most important military actions of the beginning of the American Revolution. Arnold took Fort Ticonda Roga, though he had to share credit with Vermont or Ethan Allen. Yes, Ethan Allen was a real person, not just the name of a furniture company. Neither man liked sharing credit, but soon Arnold would surpass Allen in heroics with an audacious attempt to capture the British Canadian province of Quebec and make it our fourteenth colony. This involved a legendary and brutal three hundred fifty mile trek through the wilderness of Maine. It was the fall of seventeen seventy five. The weather was getting bad, but Arnold was all for it, and Washington, who was impressed by Arnold, sent him on this desperate journey through the wilderness. Almost half the men would desert or die or starve. It was just one of these incredible tests of endurance, but somehow Arnold would make it and be dubbed the American Hannibal. I traced his route through there, and that part of Maine is still so remote that just about every road you see has Arnold on it, as if he was. About the last time anyone was up there was when Arnold went up there during the American Revolution. Are you serious that their roads still named after him? Yeah, They're a part of the landscape up there in the wilds of Maine. You can see tangible evidence of Arnold's bravery and adventurous ambition. I'm thinking these areas are so remote they still haven't heard about the betrayal that happened later on, hasn't, right, it's still news. Yeah. The Siege of Quebec all timidly failed. Arnold's left leg was shattered in battle and the Americans retreated. But Arnold's actions helped slow the British down, and for his valor he was made a brigadier general. George Washington praised him as a persevering and enterprising officer. In some ways, was he a more talented general than George Washington? Judged by the evidence, yes, I think you'd have to say that. And the thing is, Benedict Arnold knew he was that good. The brash confidence that made him a hero on the battlefield was matched by an arrogance off of it. What did Arnold's men think of him in the midst of battle? They loved Arnold. He was someone who, in the heat of the moment, behaved with a quiet calm and yet a forceful, inspiring charisma. The trouble with Arnold occurred after the battle. You know, he was prickly. He could be completely condescending and judgmentel. He did not brook any kind of what he perceived as incompetence, and as a consequence, there were just as many people who despised the man. And when I say despise, I mean they hated him. There's two reactions, and there's no one that seems in between. You either love the man or you despise him. Someone who despised Arnold early on was a militiaman named John Brown. No, not the nineteenth century abolitionist. This John Brown was part of the force that had seized for Takonta Roga. Soon after that, he accused Arnold of attempting to defect during that battle. Arnold was cleared to that allegation, but Brown would go on to write in a pamphlet words about Arnold that proved prophetic quote. Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country. We'll continue with the story of Benedict Arnold on the other side of the break, but first, before they went bad, Philippe Petan. During World War Two, Francis Philippe Petan betrayed his country by collaborating with Nazi Germany. The German juggernaut rolls on on to Dunkirk, on to Paris. After Hitler's Germany seized France in nineteen forty, Petan was appointed head of the nominally independent French state known as v she France. He soon proclaimed that collaborating with Hitler was the only way to repair the ruin caused by Germany's conquest of France. I say, obviously, actually John the accipi. The French puppet government put up no significant resistance to Nazi demands and voluntarily implemented anti Jewish legislation, even rounding up Jews. Over seventy five thousand French Jews would die in the Holocaust. Payton's very name became a byword for collaborationist quizzlings, which is quite the turn for someone whose first act was so honorable. As an army general in World War One, Payton was in charge of halting the seemingly unstoppable German offensive on the French city of their Done over what would be the longest and most brutal battle of the war. Initially pneumoniaus stricken and commanding troops from his sick bed, Payton skillfully reorganized the French front line, made innovative use of artillery, and inspired his demoralized and outnumbered rank and file Miraculously verdon held Pathan emerged a national hero and was awarded the title of Martial, one of France's highest military distinctions. Three decades later, the story was much different. This is the Pali de Justice, where peta marshal of France and Hiro Verda, is on trial for his life on charges of plotting against the internal security of his country and collaboration with the enemy. After Payton's conviction for treason in French, leader Charles de gaul is said to have remarked, the Marshal is a great man who died in ninety five. I think we forget how frightening a revolution is. The whole underpinnings of what was your life have been ripped apart, and suddenly you have to make decisions about a future that you have no idea where it is headed. And so I had sympathies for loyalists and patriots. That's historian Nathaniel Philbrick again. He says that throughout the revolution the colonists were a lot more divided than we might like to imagine. I don't know what I would have been. You know, I love my country, I love America. Basically, they are a third of the Americans are definitely in the patriot cause, and the third of the Americans are loyalists. To say, you know, why are we having a revolution? We are the freest, most prosperous society on earth. What is wrong with this picture? And then there's the other third who really don't care. They just want to live their lives. Remember, this is three years into a war with Great Britain and Empire, with vast resources at its disposal. It's really no wonder that there were lots of colonists who thought the British would ultimately prevail. But early in the Revolution, Benedict Arnold continued to prove himself a patriot on land and see. In the fall of seventeen seventy six, at the Battle of Valker Island, Arnold commanded America's first naval force. He supervised the construction of part of the fleet, and while the British won that battle, Arnold successfully stalled them long enough to prevent a larger incursion. He is clearly the most talented general on Washington's staff, and he's up for promotion. At this point, Arnold was a brigadier general looking to become a major general, but due to the Continental congress As rules on military promotions, a bunch of lesser generals kept getting promoted past Arnold. Arnold had an important friend in George Washington, though, who very much disapproved of Congress passing him over. Washington couldn't believe that this had happened. He told Arnold, please hold on, I'll check into this. But Washington's please on, behalf of arn Old went nowhere. For a military guy, it's all about the rank, and here five people who were below him and who had had shown none of his talent and abilities had been elevated past him. Arnold finally did get his promotion after getting his horse shot from under him twice at the Battle of Ridgefield, but the damage to his ego had been done. By the time of his heroics at Saratoga, where we began this episode, Arnold was already embittered. It didn't help that at Saratoga his leg was crushed after his horse was again shot from under him. Being Benedict Donald's force was apparently the most dangerous job during the American Revolution. During his long recovery, Benedict Arnold brooded and seethed over the credit he hadn't been given. And so this is where the demons begin to whisper in Arnold's ear, why are you doing this? In seventy eight, George Washington made the now physically compromised general the military governor of Philadelphia. But the city of brotherly love was in a state of near civil war, fiercely divided between patriots and loyalists. You needed someone of great compassion and judgment to try to keep a lid on this. That was not Arnold. It was the worst possible situation. So Washington, trying to do as well by him as as he could, I think, actually put Arnold in the position that would lead him down the road that he would eventually followed to treason. Philadelphia wasn't just politically riven, it was a hotbed of corruption. Opportunities for profiteering abounded. Benedict Arnold, who had left a lucrative business behind to take part in the war, who had spent much of his own fortune in the fight, and who felt unthanked for his sacrifice, was not about to hold back. He thrust his hands into the into the treasury and through the till exactly and starts taking advantage of every opportunity he can. And he's not the only general doing this. I mean, all of these officers aren't getting paid and they're running out of money, But no one goes at it with the fervor of Benedict Donald. It's a volatile situation just looking to explode. At the same time he's lining his own pockets. Arnold begins cozying up with Philadelphia's British loyalist set and meets Peggy Shipping, the daughter of a prominent family suspected of loyalist leanings, and falls desperately in love with her. Arnold is older than she is. Arnold's approaching forty. He's injured, but in kind of a sexy way. His left leg is shorter than the right, he has to put it up on a chair and all that, but he's resplendent in his major general's uniform and they have fallen love. One of the ways Arnold woos her he reuses parts of a love letter he wrote to someone else. He thought the letter was pretty darn good because he would basically reuse the entire paragraphs, if not pages, of this letter when he sent it to Peggy, cutting and pasting a mash note. I know he's really starting to sound like a jerk, and I think this is an index to character. You know, he has social ambitions, he has romantic conditions, but you know there's no need to get too carried away here. If you did a good job the first time, you can reuse it. You know, there's a certain utility there. Now. It's not entirely clear what role Peggy plays in Arnold's betrayal, but she had long maintained a correspondence with a British spy named John Andre and only a month after marrying Peggy Benedict Arnold makes his first contact with the British Army and they begin a secret correspondence in which Arnold begins feeding them information about what's happening on the Patriot side while also negotiating a very good settlement. If he should actually be of some use to the British, is he putting men in mortal danger? Absolutely, he is feeding information about troop movements. He informs the British that the Americans are woefully under manned in Charleston, South Carolina, that Washington is unable to get the arms and men they need to defend that city. At the same time that this is happening, Arnold stands trial in a military court for his profiteering activities. The court martial trial results in a slap on the wrist for Arnold, but and this is important. Under pressure from Congress General Washington for the first time ever publicly rebukes Benedict Arnold. After this, there is no turning back for Arnold, and I think Washington was the one figure that was keeping him potentially in the Patriot camp. In the summer of sev Arnold asks for command of the strategic stronghold of West Point. Washington still a believer in Benedict Arnold. Despite that, court martial says yes, west Point became the locusts for the most infamous betrayal in American history. Could he have gotten George Washington killed? Yeah, he could have. I mean, this is a psychopath. This is someone who really doesn't care what ultimately will happen to those he at one time loved, if not revered. Benedict Arnold breaks bad after the break, but first before they went bad. Peanuts banned from schools, kicked off of airplanes. In recent years, it hasn't been smooth sailing for America's formerly favorite snack. E er Visits among kids from food induced anaphylaxis have been on the rise for years, and the proteins found in peanuts are the biggest culprit. Indeed, because of allergies. Some schools have declared themselves peanut free zones, and some airlines have put peanuts on the no fly list. Quite a reversal of fortune for a snack with a proud history. Native to the Andes, peanuts were offered by Incas as a sacrifice to the gods. Over the centuries, peanuts would become staples in cuisines throughout Southeast Asia and India. Enslaved Africans were the first to bring peanuts to North America. In both Africa and America, peanuts were an important part of their diet. Wealthier white Americans initially used peanuts primarily for animal feed, but by the late eighteen hundreds, the peanut had become a popular snack. P. T. Barnum started selling hot roasted peanuts in his circus tents. On the sports front, peanuts became one of the go to snacks for baseball bands. Take me out with the braun, peanuts and bragg. I don't carry if I never get Meanwhile, on the scientific front, George Washington Carver, the first African American to hold a master's in agricultural science, pioneered the use of peanuts to restore nitrogen to soil depleted from the growing of cotton. Peanuts were a hit, and not just with people. In A boy named Elliott used a trail of peanut butter candies to lure an extraterrestrial out of hiding and into his home. But once peanut allergies began exploding in the mid nine nineties, things got sticky. Planters killed off Mr Peanut in a Super Bowl commercial. Right, maybe that, but the peanuts future may not be so brittle. That's the best I can come up with. An increasing number of experts are suggesting that schools relax their restriction on peanuts, and in the FDA approved a drug regimen to treat peanut allergies. Maybe that's why later in that same Super Bowl, Planter has brought Mr Peanut back, has a baby? Is that a baby nut? Ps? A peanut isn't actually a nut, it's a legume. I think Washington saw a lot of himself in Benedicdonald. I'm talking with historian Nathaniel Philbrick. Temperamentally funded, mentally, George Washington was a lot like benned Iccdonald if he had not consciously changed his behavior. Philbrook says George Washington had been a hothead and impulsive in his younger days, but as he got older he figured out how to manage his anger. He consciously strove to be someone he naturally was, which is an extraordinary characteristic. I think most of us are who we are and there's not much we can do about it. And Arnold was that kind. There was no filter with Arnold, no ability to step back and say, wait a minute, you know, get Ahold of your anger. Here you see Washington doing that all the time. Arnold was incapable of that kind of filter. He was who he was and who Benedict Arnold was in the fall of seventeen eighty was the commander of West Point, a vital defense for the Patriots and a bargaining chip for Arnold. September, The Treason of Benedict Arnold, You Are There. In one episode of CBS's seminal historical reenactment series You Are There, host Walter Cronkite explained the stakes. For five long years, the rebellious American colonies have been fighting a desperate, defensive war. If the British forces now occupy New York City were to strike northward, uniting with British forces coming down from Canada. They could divide New England from the southern colonies, cut the Americans in half, and conquer each half separately. But in order to do that they must take the Hudson Valley, and in order to do that, they must first capture the American stronghold on the River, the strategic center of the rebellion, the forts at West Point. All things are as they were then, except you are there. Can I just say I wish I could call on Walter Cronkite to set the stage for me on every historical turning point. In the special, we watch as Arnold welcomes a British spy named John Andre. He's the one Arnold's young wife Peggy had introduced him to. Who's how smain that of a friend of his Majesty and his Majesty's parlam Arnold reviews the terms of their devilish deal about let us to business. Twenty pounds was the agreement equivalent rank and the British Army while the war continues, and half pay when it is concluded, military commissions for my sons and a pension in London for Mrs Arnold. In other words, the Brits would pay Arnold twenty thousand pounds and make him a commander in their army in exchange for West Point. What's more, Arnold told the British when George Washington would be present at the fort, putting his former ally, mentor and supporter in mortal danger. On the way out the door, John Andre refuses to shake Benedict Arnold's hand. You refuse my handswer, and yet you are in this as deeply as I am. I am a soldier honoring a trust. You are a soldier betraying one. I hope, sir, you recognize the difference. That response from Andre is what the kids today call a pretty sick burn. It's also a bit of dramatic license from the you are their producers, but it gets at an important distinction between the two men. John Andrea was loyal to something, in his case, the Crown. Arnold was just a turn coat. Now, Benedict Arnold's plan almost works, but long story short, Andre is intercepted by three Patriot militiamen. They discover the deal's plans and take him prisoner. When the word gets back to Arnold, he makes a run for it and narrowly escapes a or the British warship fittingly named the HMS Vulture. John Andre is hanged as a spy on the banks of the Hudson River, and American officers and British officers alike mourned Andrea's passing, viewed him as the victim of Arnold's betrayal. Arnold starts a new life as a brigadier general in the British Army. He leads attacks on towns in Virginia and Connecticut that leave them devastated, but make a little difference militarily. Of course, as we all know, the British ultimately lose the war. Arnold receives only a fraction of the agreed upon some for his betrayal, since the plot to surrender West Point failed. That's right, he didn't even succeed in selling himself out. How did Americans react to the news of his treason? This was I think incredible wake up call for the American people. You know, they had spent all these years fighting the British, only to discover that the real threat is not the British but ourselves. This is a test of character, This is a test of our ability to function as an alternative to Great Britain, and are we up to this? Just a year after the betrayal came to light, the Americans are victorious in the Battle of Yorktown, the last major conflict of the Revolutionary War. Arnold tried to frame his defection as a noble cause in an open letter he wrote to the American public, but his name was ruined. American General Nathaniel Green lined Arnold's treason to the fall of Lucifer. Ben Franklin compared him to Judas and George Washington, once his greatest champion, or judge his men to hang Benedict Donald if they ever captured him. Arnold was burned in effigy in Philadelphia and in cities and towns up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The graves of his father were violated by the angry citizens of Norwich. He became a figure as archetypal in his own way, as Washington of an evil incarnate of the trader of the Rock within the rock with it exactly, and I think a troubling figure two, because everyone had to acknowledge he was one of our best. As Washington would say when he first heard, whom can we trust? Now. Arnold lived out his final days in disrepute in London, and after a long battle with gout, died June fourteenth, eighteen o one. He was buried without military honors at sarah Toga National Historical Park, site of perhaps his greatest feat of heroism. There's a monument dedicated to Benedict Arnold. It's a boot carved from stone, representing the leg he injured in service of the Revolution. The monument describes a brilliant soldier who was desperately wounded in the decisive battle at Saratoga, but it doesn't bear his name. He has been written out of the scriptures of America. That boot is the only thing left of Arnold worth respecting. We leave you now with one final installment of Before They Went Bad, Satan, get the behind me, Satan, let's face it. Satan has an image problem when blamed for the fall of man gets laid at your feet. That can happen, but let's give the devil his you. Before descending into hell and getting branded lord of the underworld, Satan was riding high as an angel in heaven. He had fame, wisdom, authority, and power, and he was great looking. The poet John Milton describes a being with hair that bristles like the tail of a comet. In fact, Satan's alias Lucifer means light bringer. But Satan became blinded by that light, grew resentful of God, and began viewing himself as an equal to God. Is it possible that Satan loved God too much? Was he actually jealous of God's love for those far less perfect beings known as humans? Some believe so. Regardless, Satan's designs didn't endear him to his creator, who kicked him out of the house and down into Hell. In time, Satan reinvented himself and began a fruitful career of leading us into temptation. Here he is slithering around Eden in a video series from the people behind the popular Beginner's Bible. It's nice food, isn't it. Why not give it a shot? Just a tiny, tiny key. God probably won't even notice. Satan has always made for great reading material. He gets name checked fifty six times, and the King James Bible is the unlikely protagonist of Milton's Paradise Lost, in which he proclaims better to reign and hell than serve in heaven. He also pops up in Dante's Inferno in the infamous Ninth Circle of Hell frozen into a block of ice. The story of Satan's fall is a warning to the venal and virtuous alike. Disregard your better angels, and you too can be in for quite a tumble. So times I think we're not recome. We are that there's such a big world up there, I'd like to give it a trung. Now. My favorite modern depiction of Satan comes in South Park movie. This Satan is tender and love lorn, is emotionally abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein, and badly disenchanted with the nether world. This Satan longs to quit his fiery home and to send to brighter, earthly shores. I really hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask all you loyal listeners to please rate and review our or podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries Wednesdays. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book Now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Morocca, Jake Harper, Aaron Shrank, and Wilcome Martinez Cacceto. It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Josh Hahn, with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is Neon Humm Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Peg, Reggie Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Robert Marston, Maureen Dowd, David Dacovny, and Alberto Rebina. The Indubitable. Aaron Shrink is our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by Yours Truly and as always, thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries

We take it for granted, but American independence was not a foregone conclusion. The Revolutionary War was long, more than six grinding years between the first shots at Lexington and Conquered and the British surrender at Yorktown, and they all too oft an unpaid, ill equipped, underfed patriots were almost always playing defense, one battle away from total defeat and the very real risk of capital punishment as traitors to the crown. Father of his country. George Washington earned that title, but Washington wasn't at Saratoga in upstate New York, site of arguably the most important turning point in the war. In the summer of seventeen seventy seven, about eight thousand troops under British General John Burgoyne came down from Canada and through the Hudson River Valley, expecting to join British troops moving up from New York City. The colonies would be split into a classic divide and conquer and the rebellion would be put down. But those other British troops didn't show, and on September near the town of Saratoga, the British Burgoyne met a line of American troops after an initial bloody confrontation, the British and the Americans, under the cautious leadership of General Horatio Gates, engaged each other indecisively for almost three weeks. Then, on October seven, the British launched an attack, trying to break through American lines, but before Gates could issue a command, another American general flew into action. No man shall keep me in my tent today, this general raged. I am without command, and I will fight in the ranks. But the soldiers, God bless them, will follow my lead. Cursing, rallying the patriots, he charged out on horseback, straight into the fray. He was our fighting general. A comrade later wrote, as brave a man as ever lived that general's name, Benedict Arnold. Anyone would be hard pressed the point to a officer in the Continental Army who was a better general. In the first years of the Revolution, Arnold's horse was shot from right under him. He suffered a terrible wound to his leg, but he and his men prevailed, routing the British. Ten days later, Burgoyne surrendered. As a result of that victory, the French entered to the Revolutionary War on the side of the Patriots. As the writer R. W. Apple Jr. Put it, it marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire, and it breathed life into the United States of America, in no small part thanks to Benedict Arnold. This is the hidden part of Arnold, the Arnold before he went back, but just three years later, Benedict Arnold, the hero of Saratoga, would betray his country, his name consigned to infamy. Whom can we trust? Now? That was the question that Arnold made all Americans face. This episode will tell you the story of Benedict Arnold before he became synonymous with treason, and will tell you the surprising backstories of some of history's other villains. You have summoned the Prince of Temptation fo what Purpose? From CBS Sunday Morning and I Heart I'm Morocca. And this is mobituaries, This mopit Benedict Arnold, Peanuts and satan before they went bad. You know what are you doing studying my script? I'm in the school play. Oh it's wonderful, I'll plan Benedict Donald, Benedict Arnold. Yeah, it's a great part. Well, it is if you like being a trader that's from a nine two episode of The Brady Bunch. Middle son Peter Braby gets cast in the school play as Benedict Arnold, and it's making him a pariah, so much so that he fakes being sick to get out of the play. I want you to level with us. You don't want to be in that play, don't you. No. I don't why, Peter, you said you were going to be the best Benedict Donald ever. Well, you don't know what it's been like. Everybody riding me, booing and hissing me because I'm playing a trader. I understood Peter's predicament. I don't know about the kids today, but when I was growing up, to be called a Benedict Arnold was a really insult, wasn't it. Oh? Absolutely, but it was weird. My mom always said her hero was Bennedicgonald, and so that just confused me as a kid. Bennedicdonald epitomizes being a trader, being evil. He is the snake in our garden. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of three books on the American Revolution, including Valiant Ambition, about the relationship between Benedict Donald and George Washington. But hold on a second, what was your mother's rationale for saying he was her hero? She was a contrarian. But I think back in the day she read ken Robert's series of novels about the American Revolution, and Benedicdonald is portrayed largely as a sympathetic character. Kenneth Roberts was a popular writer of historical fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote a couple of books focusing not on Arnold's eventual treachery but his earlier military daring do But my mom latched onto this with a vengeance because it just appealed to her, being against the grain of most people's thinking. Now, I know some of you may be thinking focusing on Benedict Arnold's early heroics for this episode is kind of like talking about how great Richard Nixon was for creating the e p A without mentioning Watergate. But Nixon was kind of great for creating the E p A. People are complicated, get over it. Don't worry. We'll get to Arnold's betrayal in the third act. But first, what kind of a family did Benedict Donold come from? He came from a large, lead dysfunctional family of a family that was living in the shadow of their forebears. Those forbears were also named Benedict Arnold. Our protagonist was the fourth born in seventy. Arnold's great grandfather, the first Benedict, was a governor of the Rhode Island Colony. But after Arnold's father left Rhode Island to start a life in Norwich, Connecticut, multiple tragedy struck. Four of Benedict Arnold's five siblings died before the age of ten. Benedict Arnold and his sister Hannah would be the only survivors, and his father went to drinking and Arnold his later life I think would be kind of a repudiation of his difficult childhood because he had a chip on his shoulders from the very beginning, and he wanted to make something of himself, because I think he had this sense of coming from a place of shame. After a seven year apprenticeship with an apothecary, he started his own pharmacy and bookselling business in New Haven. He was doing okay, but young Benedict had long craved adventure. He wanted to be the person that he idealized the swashbuckling man of action, and physically he was fearless, you know, he was a kind of athlete. One person described him as the best skater he had ever seen skater as an ice skater. Yeah, it's a funny observation. But there are several anecdotes about his youth that he was a daredevil. There was a water mill in Norwich and he would grab onto the water wheel, rided all the way up and then dive off into the stream. He was not a big guy, but one of those guys with that kind of athletes swagger and built very solidly, and someone who could intimidate other people, not only in terms of yelling at them, you know, just his physical presence. It's funny because you write that he claimed he was a coward until fifteen years of age. He said that his bravery was learned, and so, according to his own account, at about fifteen, you know, which is a time in life when all sorts of stuff is usually happening in the life of a teenager, he made this decision, I'm going to be a badass, and that's what he would be. By the time Arnold was in his twenties, he had taken to the high seas a successful merchant, captaining his own ships, sailing as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Canada. He began to build what would be, if he had ever finished it, the most opulent house in New Haven. Who was a man on the make, a man to be admired, and a budding patriot. When the British wanted to tax the Americans without giving them representation in Parliament, you remember all of that, Arnold found a cause he could fight for. He became a smuggler, rating his businesses in open defiance of the British tariffs. He joined the Sons of Liberty, the secretive group that carried out the Boston Tea Party. Then on the morning of April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five, the British fired on colonial militiamen at Lexington. The Revolutionary War had begun, and Benedict Arnold lapped into action. When I heard about Lexington conquered, he led a group right to the Boston area. You know, getting on a horse and riding around and giving orders was exactly the kind of thing. Ben MacDonald was wired for his years as a merchant and a Mariner had prepared him well for this moment, and because of his knowledge of the geography of New England and Canada, he realizes that strategically, the Americans need to have control of Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain wasn't just a crucial waterway just to its south, stood for ty con To Roga with more than sixty cannons firepower that George Washington's Continental Army desperately needed. So he proposed to the powers that be in Boston that they take Fort Ticonda Roga, a kind of extraordinarily aggressive move, but the Powers that Be agreed with him and gave him a commission to go up there. At off he would go, leading one of the most important military actions of the beginning of the American Revolution. Arnold took Fort Ticonda Roga, though he had to share credit with Vermont or Ethan Allen. Yes, Ethan Allen was a real person, not just the name of a furniture company. Neither man liked sharing credit, but soon Arnold would surpass Allen in heroics with an audacious attempt to capture the British Canadian province of Quebec and make it our fourteenth colony. This involved a legendary and brutal three hundred fifty mile trek through the wilderness of Maine. It was the fall of seventeen seventy five. The weather was getting bad, but Arnold was all for it, and Washington, who was impressed by Arnold, sent him on this desperate journey through the wilderness. Almost half the men would desert or die or starve. It was just one of these incredible tests of endurance, but somehow Arnold would make it and be dubbed the American Hannibal. I traced his route through there, and that part of Maine is still so remote that just about every road you see has Arnold on it, as if he was. About the last time anyone was up there was when Arnold went up there during the American Revolution. Are you serious that their roads still named after him? Yeah, They're a part of the landscape up there in the wilds of Maine. You can see tangible evidence of Arnold's bravery and adventurous ambition. I'm thinking these areas are so remote they still haven't heard about the betrayal that happened later on, hasn't, right, it's still news. Yeah. The Siege of Quebec all timidly failed. Arnold's left leg was shattered in battle and the Americans retreated. But Arnold's actions helped slow the British down, and for his valor he was made a brigadier general. George Washington praised him as a persevering and enterprising officer. In some ways, was he a more talented general than George Washington? Judged by the evidence, yes, I think you'd have to say that. And the thing is, Benedict Arnold knew he was that good. The brash confidence that made him a hero on the battlefield was matched by an arrogance off of it. What did Arnold's men think of him in the midst of battle? They loved Arnold. He was someone who, in the heat of the moment, behaved with a quiet calm and yet a forceful, inspiring charisma. The trouble with Arnold occurred after the battle. You know, he was prickly. He could be completely condescending and judgmentel. He did not brook any kind of what he perceived as incompetence, and as a consequence, there were just as many people who despised the man. And when I say despise, I mean they hated him. There's two reactions, and there's no one that seems in between. You either love the man or you despise him. Someone who despised Arnold early on was a militiaman named John Brown. No, not the nineteenth century abolitionist. This John Brown was part of the force that had seized for Takonta Roga. Soon after that, he accused Arnold of attempting to defect during that battle. Arnold was cleared to that allegation, but Brown would go on to write in a pamphlet words about Arnold that proved prophetic quote. Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country. We'll continue with the story of Benedict Arnold on the other side of the break, but first, before they went bad, Philippe Petan. During World War Two, Francis Philippe Petan betrayed his country by collaborating with Nazi Germany. The German juggernaut rolls on on to Dunkirk, on to Paris. After Hitler's Germany seized France in nineteen forty, Petan was appointed head of the nominally independent French state known as v she France. He soon proclaimed that collaborating with Hitler was the only way to repair the ruin caused by Germany's conquest of France. I say, obviously, actually John the accipi. The French puppet government put up no significant resistance to Nazi demands and voluntarily implemented anti Jewish legislation, even rounding up Jews. Over seventy five thousand French Jews would die in the Holocaust. Payton's very name became a byword for collaborationist quizzlings, which is quite the turn for someone whose first act was so honorable. As an army general in World War One, Payton was in charge of halting the seemingly unstoppable German offensive on the French city of their Done over what would be the longest and most brutal battle of the war. Initially pneumoniaus stricken and commanding troops from his sick bed, Payton skillfully reorganized the French front line, made innovative use of artillery, and inspired his demoralized and outnumbered rank and file Miraculously verdon held Pathan emerged a national hero and was awarded the title of Martial, one of France's highest military distinctions. Three decades later, the story was much different. This is the Pali de Justice, where peta marshal of France and Hiro Verda, is on trial for his life on charges of plotting against the internal security of his country and collaboration with the enemy. After Payton's conviction for treason in French, leader Charles de gaul is said to have remarked, the Marshal is a great man who died in ninety five. I think we forget how frightening a revolution is. The whole underpinnings of what was your life have been ripped apart, and suddenly you have to make decisions about a future that you have no idea where it is headed. And so I had sympathies for loyalists and patriots. That's historian Nathaniel Philbrick again. He says that throughout the revolution the colonists were a lot more divided than we might like to imagine. I don't know what I would have been. You know, I love my country, I love America. Basically, they are a third of the Americans are definitely in the patriot cause, and the third of the Americans are loyalists. To say, you know, why are we having a revolution? We are the freest, most prosperous society on earth. What is wrong with this picture? And then there's the other third who really don't care. They just want to live their lives. Remember, this is three years into a war with Great Britain and Empire, with vast resources at its disposal. It's really no wonder that there were lots of colonists who thought the British would ultimately prevail. But early in the Revolution, Benedict Arnold continued to prove himself a patriot on land and see. In the fall of seventeen seventy six, at the Battle of Valker Island, Arnold commanded America's first naval force. He supervised the construction of part of the fleet, and while the British won that battle, Arnold successfully stalled them long enough to prevent a larger incursion. He is clearly the most talented general on Washington's staff, and he's up for promotion. At this point, Arnold was a brigadier general looking to become a major general, but due to the Continental congress As rules on military promotions, a bunch of lesser generals kept getting promoted past Arnold. Arnold had an important friend in George Washington, though, who very much disapproved of Congress passing him over. Washington couldn't believe that this had happened. He told Arnold, please hold on, I'll check into this. But Washington's please on, behalf of arn Old went nowhere. For a military guy, it's all about the rank, and here five people who were below him and who had had shown none of his talent and abilities had been elevated past him. Arnold finally did get his promotion after getting his horse shot from under him twice at the Battle of Ridgefield, but the damage to his ego had been done. By the time of his heroics at Saratoga, where we began this episode, Arnold was already embittered. It didn't help that at Saratoga his leg was crushed after his horse was again shot from under him. Being Benedict Donald's force was apparently the most dangerous job during the American Revolution. During his long recovery, Benedict Arnold brooded and seethed over the credit he hadn't been given. And so this is where the demons begin to whisper in Arnold's ear, why are you doing this? In seventy eight, George Washington made the now physically compromised general the military governor of Philadelphia. But the city of brotherly love was in a state of near civil war, fiercely divided between patriots and loyalists. You needed someone of great compassion and judgment to try to keep a lid on this. That was not Arnold. It was the worst possible situation. So Washington, trying to do as well by him as as he could, I think, actually put Arnold in the position that would lead him down the road that he would eventually followed to treason. Philadelphia wasn't just politically riven, it was a hotbed of corruption. Opportunities for profiteering abounded. Benedict Arnold, who had left a lucrative business behind to take part in the war, who had spent much of his own fortune in the fight, and who felt unthanked for his sacrifice, was not about to hold back. He thrust his hands into the into the treasury and through the till exactly and starts taking advantage of every opportunity he can. And he's not the only general doing this. I mean, all of these officers aren't getting paid and they're running out of money, But no one goes at it with the fervor of Benedict Donald. It's a volatile situation just looking to explode. At the same time he's lining his own pockets. Arnold begins cozying up with Philadelphia's British loyalist set and meets Peggy Shipping, the daughter of a prominent family suspected of loyalist leanings, and falls desperately in love with her. Arnold is older than she is. Arnold's approaching forty. He's injured, but in kind of a sexy way. His left leg is shorter than the right, he has to put it up on a chair and all that, but he's resplendent in his major general's uniform and they have fallen love. One of the ways Arnold woos her he reuses parts of a love letter he wrote to someone else. He thought the letter was pretty darn good because he would basically reuse the entire paragraphs, if not pages, of this letter when he sent it to Peggy, cutting and pasting a mash note. I know he's really starting to sound like a jerk, and I think this is an index to character. You know, he has social ambitions, he has romantic conditions, but you know there's no need to get too carried away here. If you did a good job the first time, you can reuse it. You know, there's a certain utility there. Now. It's not entirely clear what role Peggy plays in Arnold's betrayal, but she had long maintained a correspondence with a British spy named John Andre and only a month after marrying Peggy Benedict Arnold makes his first contact with the British Army and they begin a secret correspondence in which Arnold begins feeding them information about what's happening on the Patriot side while also negotiating a very good settlement. If he should actually be of some use to the British, is he putting men in mortal danger? Absolutely, he is feeding information about troop movements. He informs the British that the Americans are woefully under manned in Charleston, South Carolina, that Washington is unable to get the arms and men they need to defend that city. At the same time that this is happening, Arnold stands trial in a military court for his profiteering activities. The court martial trial results in a slap on the wrist for Arnold, but and this is important. Under pressure from Congress General Washington for the first time ever publicly rebukes Benedict Arnold. After this, there is no turning back for Arnold, and I think Washington was the one figure that was keeping him potentially in the Patriot camp. In the summer of sev Arnold asks for command of the strategic stronghold of West Point. Washington still a believer in Benedict Arnold. Despite that, court martial says yes, west Point became the locusts for the most infamous betrayal in American history. Could he have gotten George Washington killed? Yeah, he could have. I mean, this is a psychopath. This is someone who really doesn't care what ultimately will happen to those he at one time loved, if not revered. Benedict Arnold breaks bad after the break, but first before they went bad. Peanuts banned from schools, kicked off of airplanes. In recent years, it hasn't been smooth sailing for America's formerly favorite snack. E er Visits among kids from food induced anaphylaxis have been on the rise for years, and the proteins found in peanuts are the biggest culprit. Indeed, because of allergies. Some schools have declared themselves peanut free zones, and some airlines have put peanuts on the no fly list. Quite a reversal of fortune for a snack with a proud history. Native to the Andes, peanuts were offered by Incas as a sacrifice to the gods. Over the centuries, peanuts would become staples in cuisines throughout Southeast Asia and India. Enslaved Africans were the first to bring peanuts to North America. In both Africa and America, peanuts were an important part of their diet. Wealthier white Americans initially used peanuts primarily for animal feed, but by the late eighteen hundreds, the peanut had become a popular snack. P. T. Barnum started selling hot roasted peanuts in his circus tents. On the sports front, peanuts became one of the go to snacks for baseball bands. Take me out with the braun, peanuts and bragg. I don't carry if I never get Meanwhile, on the scientific front, George Washington Carver, the first African American to hold a master's in agricultural science, pioneered the use of peanuts to restore nitrogen to soil depleted from the growing of cotton. Peanuts were a hit, and not just with people. In A boy named Elliott used a trail of peanut butter candies to lure an extraterrestrial out of hiding and into his home. But once peanut allergies began exploding in the mid nine nineties, things got sticky. Planters killed off Mr Peanut in a Super Bowl commercial. Right, maybe that, but the peanuts future may not be so brittle. That's the best I can come up with. An increasing number of experts are suggesting that schools relax their restriction on peanuts, and in the FDA approved a drug regimen to treat peanut allergies. Maybe that's why later in that same Super Bowl, Planter has brought Mr Peanut back, has a baby? Is that a baby nut? Ps? A peanut isn't actually a nut, it's a legume. I think Washington saw a lot of himself in Benedicdonald. I'm talking with historian Nathaniel Philbrick. Temperamentally funded, mentally, George Washington was a lot like benned Iccdonald if he had not consciously changed his behavior. Philbrook says George Washington had been a hothead and impulsive in his younger days, but as he got older he figured out how to manage his anger. He consciously strove to be someone he naturally was, which is an extraordinary characteristic. I think most of us are who we are and there's not much we can do about it. And Arnold was that kind. There was no filter with Arnold, no ability to step back and say, wait a minute, you know, get Ahold of your anger. Here you see Washington doing that all the time. Arnold was incapable of that kind of filter. He was who he was and who Benedict Arnold was in the fall of seventeen eighty was the commander of West Point, a vital defense for the Patriots and a bargaining chip for Arnold. September, The Treason of Benedict Arnold, You Are There. In one episode of CBS's seminal historical reenactment series You Are There, host Walter Cronkite explained the stakes. For five long years, the rebellious American colonies have been fighting a desperate, defensive war. If the British forces now occupy New York City were to strike northward, uniting with British forces coming down from Canada. They could divide New England from the southern colonies, cut the Americans in half, and conquer each half separately. But in order to do that they must take the Hudson Valley, and in order to do that, they must first capture the American stronghold on the River, the strategic center of the rebellion, the forts at West Point. All things are as they were then, except you are there. Can I just say I wish I could call on Walter Cronkite to set the stage for me on every historical turning point. In the special, we watch as Arnold welcomes a British spy named John Andre. He's the one Arnold's young wife Peggy had introduced him to. Who's how smain that of a friend of his Majesty and his Majesty's parlam Arnold reviews the terms of their devilish deal about let us to business. Twenty pounds was the agreement equivalent rank and the British Army while the war continues, and half pay when it is concluded, military commissions for my sons and a pension in London for Mrs Arnold. In other words, the Brits would pay Arnold twenty thousand pounds and make him a commander in their army in exchange for West Point. What's more, Arnold told the British when George Washington would be present at the fort, putting his former ally, mentor and supporter in mortal danger. On the way out the door, John Andre refuses to shake Benedict Arnold's hand. You refuse my handswer, and yet you are in this as deeply as I am. I am a soldier honoring a trust. You are a soldier betraying one. I hope, sir, you recognize the difference. That response from Andre is what the kids today call a pretty sick burn. It's also a bit of dramatic license from the you are their producers, but it gets at an important distinction between the two men. John Andrea was loyal to something, in his case, the Crown. Arnold was just a turn coat. Now, Benedict Arnold's plan almost works, but long story short, Andre is intercepted by three Patriot militiamen. They discover the deal's plans and take him prisoner. When the word gets back to Arnold, he makes a run for it and narrowly escapes a or the British warship fittingly named the HMS Vulture. John Andre is hanged as a spy on the banks of the Hudson River, and American officers and British officers alike mourned Andrea's passing, viewed him as the victim of Arnold's betrayal. Arnold starts a new life as a brigadier general in the British Army. He leads attacks on towns in Virginia and Connecticut that leave them devastated, but make a little difference militarily. Of course, as we all know, the British ultimately lose the war. Arnold receives only a fraction of the agreed upon some for his betrayal, since the plot to surrender West Point failed. That's right, he didn't even succeed in selling himself out. How did Americans react to the news of his treason? This was I think incredible wake up call for the American people. You know, they had spent all these years fighting the British, only to discover that the real threat is not the British but ourselves. This is a test of character, This is a test of our ability to function as an alternative to Great Britain, and are we up to this? Just a year after the betrayal came to light, the Americans are victorious in the Battle of Yorktown, the last major conflict of the Revolutionary War. Arnold tried to frame his defection as a noble cause in an open letter he wrote to the American public, but his name was ruined. American General Nathaniel Green lined Arnold's treason to the fall of Lucifer. Ben Franklin compared him to Judas and George Washington, once his greatest champion, or judge his men to hang Benedict Donald if they ever captured him. Arnold was burned in effigy in Philadelphia and in cities and towns up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The graves of his father were violated by the angry citizens of Norwich. He became a figure as archetypal in his own way, as Washington of an evil incarnate of the trader of the Rock within the rock with it exactly, and I think a troubling figure two, because everyone had to acknowledge he was one of our best. As Washington would say when he first heard, whom can we trust? Now. Arnold lived out his final days in disrepute in London, and after a long battle with gout, died June fourteenth, eighteen o one. He was buried without military honors at sarah Toga National Historical Park, site of perhaps his greatest feat of heroism. There's a monument dedicated to Benedict Arnold. It's a boot carved from stone, representing the leg he injured in service of the Revolution. The monument describes a brilliant soldier who was desperately wounded in the decisive battle at Saratoga, but it doesn't bear his name. He has been written out of the scriptures of America. That boot is the only thing left of Arnold worth respecting. We leave you now with one final installment of Before They Went Bad, Satan, get the behind me, Satan, let's face it. Satan has an image problem when blamed for the fall of man gets laid at your feet. That can happen, but let's give the devil his you. Before descending into hell and getting branded lord of the underworld, Satan was riding high as an angel in heaven. He had fame, wisdom, authority, and power, and he was great looking. The poet John Milton describes a being with hair that bristles like the tail of a comet. In fact, Satan's alias Lucifer means light bringer. But Satan became blinded by that light, grew resentful of God, and began viewing himself as an equal to God. Is it possible that Satan loved God too much? Was he actually jealous of God's love for those far less perfect beings known as humans? Some believe so. Regardless, Satan's designs didn't endear him to his creator, who kicked him out of the house and down into Hell. In time, Satan reinvented himself and began a fruitful career of leading us into temptation. Here he is slithering around Eden in a video series from the people behind the popular Beginner's Bible. It's nice food, isn't it. Why not give it a shot? Just a tiny, tiny key. God probably won't even notice. Satan has always made for great reading material. He gets name checked fifty six times, and the King James Bible is the unlikely protagonist of Milton's Paradise Lost, in which he proclaims better to reign and hell than serve in heaven. He also pops up in Dante's Inferno in the infamous Ninth Circle of Hell frozen into a block of ice. The story of Satan's fall is a warning to the venal and virtuous alike. Disregard your better angels, and you too can be in for quite a tumble. So times I think we're not recome. We are that there's such a big world up there, I'd like to give it a trung. Now. My favorite modern depiction of Satan comes in South Park movie. This Satan is tender and love lorn, is emotionally abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein, and badly disenchanted with the nether world. This Satan longs to quit his fiery home and to send to brighter, earthly shores. I really hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask all you loyal listeners to please rate and review our or podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries Wednesdays. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book Now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Morocca, Jake Harper, Aaron Shrank, and Wilcome Martinez Cacceto. It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Josh Hahn, with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is Neon Humm Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Peg, Reggie Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Robert Marston, Maureen Dowd, David Dacovny, and Alberto Rebina. The Indubitable. Aaron Shrink is our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by Yours Truly and as always, thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries