In an elegant Cairo tea salon in the early 1940s, a British woman in an extravagant oversized hat cheerfully pours tea for Egyptian students. Under the hat are permanent scars from a childhood factory accident that tore off her scalp and right ear. And the tea party is a node in a covert pro-Allied propaganda network of tens of thousands, run under the noses of the Axis powers. This episode traces how Dame Freya Stark engineered herself from a frequently bedridden, traumatized child into one of the 20th century's most daring explorers, starting with the copy of One Thousand and One Nights she received on her ninth birthday that rewired her imagination toward the Middle East.

The turning point came at 30, after her sister died following a miscarriage on the conventional path Stark had been expected to follow. She learned Arabic and Persian,  ...