You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.

At Radiotopia, we now have a select group of amazing supporters that help us make all our shows possible. If you would like to have your company or

product sponsor this podcast then get in touch drop a line to sponsor at radiotopia

fm. Thanks. We're supposed to learn from our own mistakes that

other people's errors can be instructive too, from efforts to control the weather that

went disastrously awry to the untimely death of the Segway boss.

History is a treasure trove, mishaps and meltdowns, and teach us all.

I'm Tim Harford, host of Cautionery Tales, the podcast that minds the greatest

fios of the past for their most valuable lessons. Listen to cautionary tales

wherever you get your podcasts. I read a lot of books about the CIA while working on my recent mini-series,

not all propaganda is art, and a lot of the best ones were written by the same guy, the intelligence scholar

Hugh Wilford.

In fact, I spoke to him about two of the three main characters in my series,

Dwight McDonald and Richard Wright.

Hugh Wilford did seminal research

into the CIA's relationship with both men.

Hugh Wilford has just published

another book on the CIA.

This one is about the early years of the organization.

It's a group biography that focuses on some of the agency's most seminal figures, men like Kim Roosevelt,

Edward Lansdale, and James Angleton. The book is called The CIA and Imperial History and it's about America's paradoxical relationship

with empire. Paradox that affects all of the men in this group biography. Like all of his other books this one is

...