At the outbreak of World War II, president Roosevelt decided to create a single centralized agency to organize the nation’s many competing intelligence services. Not the CIA, which would come a few years later, but the Office of Strategic Services. Before the CIA, the OSS was America’s chief spy service. And before Julia Child was a famous chef on PBS, young Julia McWilliams was recruited by the OSS, where she traveled the world and fell in love with Paul Child and exotic food. Listen to this week’s episode to learn about Julia Child at war: how she was recruited and trained, where she served in the Asian theater of war, and why that experience helped lead her to a Cambridge house with its now famous kitchen.

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