You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K.

Welcome to SpyC, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Inber, and it's the first

episode of Camouflage Month, highlighting our new Cammo exhibit, an exploration of the world

of disguise, deception, distortion, and disappearance. And who better to represent deception than Roll Dahl?

Children grew up reading his tales of giant peaches and chocolate factories.

Adults know of the controversy around his anti-Semitic remarks, made in his later years.

But before his life is one of the most successful children's authors

of all time, Dahl worked for MI6, seducing Washington socialites, cozying up to the first family,

all as a way to gather intelligence and exert influence for Winston Churchill in the early days of

World War II. Writer Aaron Tracy delves into Doll's complicated life with a new podcast, The Secret

World of Roll Doll, Out Now. Good morning, Aaron. Welcome to Spycast. Hi. I'm so excited to be here. So Roll

Dole had been a businessman. Why was he drawn into service initially with the Royal Air Force

during World War II? So he was a businessman. He was not just any businessman. He was a businessman for shell oil. It was like the AI of its time because so many, so many exciting things were using oil at the time, the aviation industry and the, you know, budding car industry. And so he was in Africa, working for shell oil. And after a while, he got a little bit bored of it.

And overhead, he was seeing these planes fly as part of the war effort, of course.

And he decided that that is what looked like the next big, fun adventure for him.

So he quit Shell, and he found a car and he drove six hours to sign up for the Royal Air Force. And he had never been inside a plane

before. But Dahl was the kind of guy who was always looking for adventure. And so this just

seemed like an incredibly fun adventure. And he was also

very patriotic and wanted to help Britain in the war effort. And so we signed up. That's something.

And he ended up being a pretty good pilot who saw crashes. He was in crashes. He survived a bad crash in a Libyan desert. Tell us more about what he

saw and what he did. Yeah. I love the visual of it. First, he was six foot six. Dahl was,

...