Clutching at shahs: Iran’s would-be revolutionary

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Economist Podcasts – "Clutching at shahs: Iran’s would-be revolutionary"

Date: January 16, 2026
Host: Jason Palmer
Featured Guests: Reza Pahlavi, Nick Palam, Anne Roe, Mike Bird

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Intelligence explores three significant stories:

1. The political turmoil in Iran, the rise of Reza Pahlavi as a would-be revolutionary leader, and America’s ambiguous response.
2. Economic analysis on the shifting balance between renting and buying property amid global interest rate changes.
3. The obituary and personal history of notorious CIA traitor Aldrich Ames.

The main focus is Iran’s upheaval, the regime crackdown, and whether exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi is truly positioned as a revolutionary figure for a post-theocracy future.

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Key Segment 1: Iran’s Would-Be Revolutionary

Setting the Scene – The Unfolding Crisis

• Jason Palmer provides context on Iran’s deepening unrest:
  • Executed protestors “number in the thousands; many more have been taken into custody.” (01:30)
  • Despite information blackouts, Starlink satellites provide some visibility into events.
  • Notably, protestors have begun chanting for the return of monarchy, a radical shift.

    “Many protesters have called for something that until recently would have begg. Bring back the Shah... and still one name comes up, Reza Pahlavi.” (02:37)

Reza Pahlavi’s View & Ambition

• Reza Pahlavi asserts his relevance:

  “What name has been chanted in the streets of Iran in the last few months?... They have chanted the name of my family, they have called for me.” (03:11)

• Nick Palam, Middle East correspondent, recounts interview impressions:

  • Expectations of Pahlavi as “clown prince” are dispelled; he appears “polished, amiable, and fairly confident.” (03:55)
  • Pahlavi sees himself at a “crucial” juncture to lead Iran’s next chapter.

Context & Stakes

• Nick Palam marks a dramatic escalation in both protests and government repression:

  “You’ve seen protests... sweep the main cities... people describe body bags spilling into the streets. Most Iranians... know somebody who has been killed or arrested.” (04:20–04:57)

• Reza Pahlavi frames events as revolutionary, not merely protest:

  “I don’t call it a protest anymore. This is a revolution. People have had it with this regime. Now is an opportunity to put an end to this misery.” (04:57)

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America’s Role & Ambiguous Signals

• Pahlavi pushes for U.S. military intervention, believing protestors are otherwise doomed:

  “Now we’re talking about a conflict where people are getting butchered and massacred and they have no means to defend themselves.” (05:45)

• He calls the protestors “sacrificial lambs” and likens the movement to “a fort... waiting for the cavalry.” (05:52, 05:59)

• In real-time, news comes in that President Trump (then-president) is rolling back plans for intervention:

  “President Trump has been speaking ... he said, ‘we’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping. It’s stopped, it’s stopping. There’s no plan for executions.’” (06:29, Anne Roe)

• Pahlavi is visibly shocked:

  “I haven’t heard it. I need to hear it on my own and make sure that the veracity of this statement is accurate.” (06:49)

Regime Stability & Prospects

• Nick Palam outlines the regime's desperation and the possibility of a soft landing:

  “So much blood has been spilled. The regime itself is implicated at so many levels. It's really hard to see how they can claw back from that.” (07:42)

• There are fears of civil war if the power vacuum grows.

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Is Pahlavi a Unifier or Revolutionary?

• Efforts to build bridges, including outreach to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard; skepticism remains about these alliances’ realism:

  “Without those institutions, it's really hard to see how Reza Pahlavi will return to stand up a state.” (08:39)

• Transitional vision: Pahlavi insists he simply wants to supervise a fair transition, not rule by decree:

  “It’s not ruling by decree. It’s the necessity of having a transitional government in place...the collaboration of elements...to manage this.” (10:11–10:25)

• Pragmatism: He imagines the urgent need to maintain state functions:

  “The day the regime falls, somebody has to still pick up the trash. Electricity and water has to be provided. The country has to continue to function.” (10:57)

• Nick Palam notes a slightly “delusional, almost entitled” air to Pahlavi’s vision, doubting if he can truly unify a fractured, traumatized nation. (11:05–11:33)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Reza Pahlavi: “This is a revolution. People have had it with this regime. Now is an opportunity to put an end to this misery.” --- 04:57
• Nick Palam: “The man we saw was polished, amiable, confident... A very different face of Iran after the Islamic Republic.” --- 03:55
• Jason Palmer: “It seems clear... Mr. Pahlavi is convinced that he is the man of the moment for Iran.” --- 04:11
• Reza Pahlavi: “Fort, we can hold it only up to a point.” --- 05:59
• Anne Roe (quoting Trump): “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping. It’s stopped, it’s stopping. There’s no plan for executions.” --- 06:29

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Key Segment 2: The Economics of Renting vs. Buying

Overview

Mike Bird, Wall Street correspondent, analyzes the shift in the buy-vs-rent calculus due to rising global interest rates.

• Key takeaways:
  • Cost of buying now exceeds renting by $400/month on average in the U.S.; much more in major cities. (14:25)
  • Building equity is important but not a panacea; lower rent payments free up cash for other investments, sometimes yielding better overall returns. (15:26–17:01)
  • Market specifics (fixed vs. floating-rate mortgages) matter—e.g., in Hong Kong, floating rates have improved buying's odds. (17:10–18:06)
  • Political trends are increasingly in favor of renters, with new rent controls and protections. (19:35–20:41)

Memorable Moment

• Mike Bird: "When the monthly rents are lower than the mortgage repayments, you need to consider the opportunity cost, what else you could be investing in as well." (16:41)

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Key Segment 3: Obituary – Aldrich Ames

Story Recap

Anne Roe, obituaries editor, details the life and betrayal of Aldrich Ames:

• Ames, a CIA officer, became the most prolific traitor to the agency, giving up agents to the KGB for money—not ideology. (21:31–23:00)
  • His leaks resulted in the deaths of at least 10 Soviet agents and massive disruption to American intelligence.
  • Ames’s motivation was personal debt and his wife’s extravagant tastes.
  • Despite reckless life and sloppy spycraft, he evaded detection for years.
  • On being caught and on the deaths he caused, he reflected little remorse, feeling his victims would have betrayed him if their positions were reversed. (27:10–27:40)

Standout Quote

• Anne Roe: “It was, in other words, a catastrophe for American intelligence. And it was all the work of this one man, Aldrich Ames." (23:44)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• Reza Pahlavi: “What name has been chanted in the streets of Iran in the last few months?... They have chanted the name of my family, they have called for me.” — 03:11
• Nick Palam: “He looked visibly shocked. Something in the script had changed.” — 06:45
• Anne Roe: “He was really not sorry that he had done what he did...as he was publicized and arrested and shamed, he felt he was in the same position as them.” — 27:37

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Summary Table – Key Segments & Timestamps

| Segment | Speaker(s) | Timestamps | |--------------------------------------------|-----------------------|-----------------| | Iran's revolutionary moment | Jason Palmer, Nick Palam, Reza Pahlavi | 01:07–11:33 | | Buy vs Rent global economics | Jason Palmer, Mike Bird| 13:24–20:43 | | Obituary: Aldrich Ames | Anne Roe | 21:11–27:40 |

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Episode Tone

The reporting is brisk, analytical, and at times somber (particularly in discussing Iran and the Ames case), but also eager to dissect trends with depth and nuance. Reza Pahlavi’s interview is handled with skepticism and probing questions, highlighting both his aspirations and the huge obstacles ahead.

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Concluding Note

The episode paints a portrait of a nation in upheaval, with history and personal ambition colliding in Iran, interspersed with evidence-driven economic trend analysis and a reminder of the messy, human side of espionage. It offers both a sense of urgency—particularly around Iran’s uncertain future—and the measured insight characteristic of The Economist’s best explanatory journalism.

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Transcript

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[Jason Palmer]

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[Nick Palam]

Did I talk too much?

[Anne Roe]

Can't I just let it go?

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[Jason Palmer]

The Economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. It is, as often said, the biggest financial decision you'll ever buying a house or not. Whether it's smarter to simply rent indefinitely has become a perennial debate, and our Resolute Renter correspondent reckons the answer is now clear. And spycraft is often portrayed as being a principled fight for party or country or philosophy. Often, it's just about the money. Our obituary's editor reflects on the life of Aldrich Ames, a prolific seller of CIA secrets to Russia who got a taste for betrayal. But first, A bit more information is trickling out of Iran thanks to Starlink satellites. But the regime is now trying to choke down that Internet access, too. The big picture is clear. Executed protesters now number in the thousands. Many more have been taken into custody. America's cycle of blowing hot and cold warmed up considerably. An aircraft carrier and its strike group set off from the South China Sea yesterday towards the Middle East. Iran's rulers are more than rattled, and many protesters have called for something that until recently would have begg. Bring back the Shah, the monarch, the kind of government that was booted out in the 1979 revolution. And still one name comes up. Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the very shah who got the boot.

[Reza Pahlavi]

What name has been chanted in the streets of Iran in the last few months? What name do you see be written on the walls? What slogans have they chanted in the recent weeks? They have chanted the name of My family, they have called for me.

[Nick Palam]

Specifically, when people have spoken to me about Reza Pahlavi in the past, they've described him as the clown prince. They've said that he was so disorganized that he couldn't even put together a dinner party. They said that he was a dropout at school, and his team are rookies who have no hope, really, of managing their own household, let alone something as complex as the country of Iran.

[Jason Palmer]

This week, my colleagues, including Middle east correspondent Nick Palam, met with the man who sees himself as crucial to Iran's next chapter.

[Nick Palam]

And yet the man that we saw in the chair was polished. He was amiable, he was fairly confident, and a lot of what he said hung together. It felt like a very different face of Iran after the Islamic Republic that he was trying to show us.

[Jason Palmer]

And it seems clear from even what we've heard already that Mr. Pahlavi is convinced that he is the man of the moment for Iran.

[Nick Palam]

He's been struggling for 46 years to take over from where his father left off, to replace and bring down the Islamic Republic and to install himself at the helm. And he really has a sense now that this is the closest he's come to it. You've seen protests which have escalated from a few hundred in the provinces to sweep the main cities in Iran. And then you've seen this appalling bloodshed to the point where, you know, people coming out of Iran describe body bags spilling into the streets. Most Iranians that I know seem to know somebody who has been killed or arrested.

[Reza Pahlavi]

I don't call it a protest anymore. This is a revolution. People have had it with this regime. Now is an opportunity to put an end to this misery.

[Nick Palam]

This has given him a new sense of purpose. It's helped him try and bring America on board for a campaign for military intervention and for military overthrow of the Islamic Republic. And I think it left a void and a question mark as to who would fill the shoes of any regime that collapsed. And at the moment, Reza Pahlavi looks to be, like, the frontrunner.

[Jason Palmer]

But it's clear to you, or it's clear to him anyway, that rallying America to the cause is sort of part of the equation here.

[Nick Palam]

We repeatedly asked him, and he was in no doubt that without American intervention, given the extent of the brutality in Iran, the protesters were likely to be gunned down.

[Reza Pahlavi]

Now we're talking about a conflict where people are getting butchered and massacred and they have no means to defend themselves.

[Nick Palam]

He calls them sacrificial lambs. And at one point he described the protesters as, as a fort and they were waiting for the cavalry, because this.

[Reza Pahlavi]

Fort, we can hold it only up to a point.

[Nick Palam]

That was all the buildup pretty much throughout the interview where he was expecting American intervention. Indeed, everyone we spoke to in Washington was convinced that Donald Trump would give the order to strike. And yet right at the end of the interview, we got news that Trump was rolling back and climbing down from that assertion. Pahlavi was talking to our editor in chief, Stanley Minton Beddoes, and she had to deliver that news to him of what exactly Trump had said.

[Anne Roe]

Just as we've been speaking, President Trump has been speaking at the White House. And I quote, he said, we've been told that the killing in Iran is stopping. It's stopped, it's stopping. There's no plan for executions.

[Jason Palmer]

And what was his reaction at that point?

[Nick Palam]

He looked visibly shocked. Something in the script had changed.

[Reza Pahlavi]

I haven't heard it. I need to hear it on my own and make sure that the veracity of this statement is accurate.

[Nick Palam]

He repeatedly asked Sani for more information. He said, we don't know the context. He didn't want to believe what she was telling him.

[Jason Palmer]

And with the blackout being what it is, we don't know the context or much of what's happened since.

[Nick Palam]

I think we are hearing two different things from the Trump administration. We are hearing him say, we're rolling back. At the same time, there are these reports that there were refueling craft that were going into the skies to provide fuel for B52s which may be on their way to Iran. There are a whole series of mixed messages. Was the prospect of military intervention a ruse or was it Trump trying to catch the regime off guard by saying, we're going to take you at your word. If the killing has stopped, I'm going to hold fire.

[Jason Palmer]

So aside from what is going on with America's response to all this, give me a snapshot at this moment of the regime's chances, stability. Does it get through this moment?

[Nick Palam]

There are still people going back and forth trying to pass messages to Khamenei's court urging Mr. Khamenei and his son Mujtaba to step aside in favor of, could be a more reform minded military strongman or a reformist, somebody who could stabilize the country as they see it, to somehow let the theocracy fall to the sidelines and for what remains of the regime to continue. What chances of that just so much blood has been spilled. The regime itself is implicated at so Many levels. It's really hard to see how they can claw back from that. I think the only way in which they might convince some Iranians is that they really are staring into an abyss. They're staring into the prospect of chaos. They're staring to a prospect of really the only challenge to this regime being an armed one. There's a fear of civil war.

[Jason Palmer]

And what are the chances that Mr. Pahlavi is the one who can be a unifying figure that can hold together, as you say, what's left of the country? Or is he more of the burn it all down revolutionary bent?

[Nick Palam]

I think there are some before this bloodbath who are positing that perhaps Pahlavi could be the figurehead that could come in and be the glue to hold the country together. There were some who thought that there may be a prospect of a deal between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime's Praetorian Guard, and Mr. Pahlavi. And indeed, it has to be said that Reza Pahlavi himself was reaching out to not just the civil institutions of the state, but also the security forces, and said that, yes, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could be part of his new national army. I think that may just be much harder to sell to his own followers. Again, without those institutions, it's really hard to see how Reza Pahlavi will return to stand up a state. There is a third force in Iran which is secular, which is highly educated, highly motivated, knows Iran really well. Many of them have been in the jails of the Islamic Republic. They've been discussing Iran's future in jail for decades. They could be a third force that would not want to see Pahlavi take over.

[Jason Palmer]

Did you ask him about what kind of leader he is intending to be?

[Nick Palam]

He's taken Sakur from the protests that we witnessed over two weeks in Iran. He speaks of a transitional government of six months. After four months, there would be a referendum as to whether people wanted a monarchy or a republic. And he said that he would respect that outcome. All he wants is to oversee that transition at the same time. That transition. When I asked him would he rule by decree, he evaded the question. I kept asking it.

[Reza Pahlavi]

It's not ruling by decree. It's the necessity of having a transitional government in place. And this transitional government is the collaboration of elements that I am going to bring into the fray to be able to manage this.

[Jason Palmer]

This is all so much in the realm of conjecture, and this notion of the transitional government, I mean, what chance do you give such a government if the country ends up needing one. In the absence of the regime as.

[Nick Palam]

It stands now, he's put together a program for what Iran would look like in the first 180 days of a transition, and he's made it very clear that he can't do it alone. He talks about curfews being imposed in cities. He speaks of national reconciliation, but he's looking essentially to cleave himself onto the existing institutions.

[Reza Pahlavi]

The day the regime falls, somebody has to still pick up the trash. Electricity and water has to be provided. The country has to continue to function.

[Nick Palam]

So there is this huge vacuum that does create an opportunity for Pahlavi to try and fill. There was something when we talked to him where it felt like he was already imagining the day where he was back in Iran. There was something slightly delusional, something almost entitled, that somehow that notion where he was going to be the successor to the Islamic Republic was already driving him. And I think it's going to be a much harder sell to a population that he is going to be the man for a new Iran.

[Jason Palmer]

Thanks very much for joining us, Nick.

[Nick Palam]

Jason, thank you. As always.

[Jason Palmer]

You can see a lot more of that interview with Reza Pahlavi on Economist Insider, our newish video offering for subscribers. It's on our app and website. Nick and our editors and correspondents really dig into the possible future of the Iranian regime and how Mr. Pahlavy might fit into it. The link is in the show notes.

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[Mike Bird]

So in the last four years there has been a huge change in the economics of buying and renting property. That is primarily because of the really rapid increase in interest rates around the world which began in 20.

[Jason Palmer]

Mike Bird is our Wall street correspondent and a host of Money Talks, our weekly subscriber only show on business, finance and economics.

[Mike Bird]

That made mortgage borrowing much more expensive and started to tip the pure financial analysis in favor of renting. This has also been a period in which house prices have stagnated in large parts of the rich world. Things have started to change a little bit recently, but I think there's still some good reasons to think the streak of wins for renters is going to continue.

[Jason Palmer]

Well, run me through the numbers. Talk me through how things were in L A are now.

[Mike Bird]

So if you look back to the period between about 2015 and 2021, and I'm going to use the US for this analysis, but it holds. In many other parts of the rich world, the cost of buying a home was lower than the cost of renting one. Even if you include things like taxes involved, insurance in owning a property, a little bit of accounting for maintenance, the down payment you make, you were in a better position to buy if you could, precisely because interest rates were so low. That has flipped around since in the US the average home buyer pays about $400 more per month than the average ren. That's a huge difference. Now in some of the biggest American cities, the difference is in the thousands of dollars.

[Jason Palmer]

But I guess the point that a lot of people rely on, myself included, is that buying is better because it's not just handing over the money every month. You're building up equity along the way.

[Mike Bird]

That is definitely true. And I should note the calculations used to calculate that $400 figure that the monthly difference between buying and renting at the moment in the US do not include those home equity investments, the repayment and the mortgage. We really are just talk talking about the mortgage interest there. The equity point is really the core of the argument here, and it's what people should think about. You are building up equity in a home by repaying your mortgage. You end up with an asset that the renter doesn't end up with. But when there's a difference in the cost between renting and buying, renting is cheaper than buying. That means the renter has much more money to make other investments, and particularly if they want to invest long term in the stock market. Historically, the returns to doing that are stronger than those of house price appreciation. Arthur Cox, who's a real estate economist at the University of Iowa, looked at the period between 1984 and 2013, which is a period where overall house prices rose. They didn't rise spectacularly, but they rose solidly in real terms, and mortgage rates fell. And he found that people were better off avoiding home ownership in half the cities he looked at. So this depends on where you're buying and it depends also on the future for equity returns. But I think a lot of people think of the home equity buildup as a pure win. You're not throwing away money like you do with renting. That's not quite right. When the monthly rents are lower than the mortgage repayments, you need to consider the opportunity cost, what else you could be investing in as well.

[Jason Palmer]

And you hinted before that you used American numbers to kind of get a finger in the wind here. But broadly, the trend holds everywhere in the rich world.

[Mike Bird]

On the whole, that is true. Most of the rich world went through very similar circumstances. Interest rates are very low from say, 2010 until 2021, and it went up very sharply after that. And that's disrupted the housing market and seen the same shift. It's very true in somewhere like Australia. It's mostly true in somewhere like the uk. There are exceptions if you look at someone like Hong Kong. So in Hong Kong, mortgage rates have come down quite a bit and it now looks like buying may be a better option than renting in Hong Kong. That's partly because in real terms, house prices have dropped by about a third in Hong Kong. But Hong Kong is very different to other rich world countries in that in Hong Kong, mortgage rates float, which basically means that the interest you pay might change month on month, it might change year on year. It changes fairly quickly. And though those short term rates have come down, longer term rates haven't.

[Jason Palmer]

And so if you're thinking about this question, you find yourself trying to decide whether to buy or to rent, whether yours is the kind of city where one thing would be clearly smarter than the other. You also have to take a look then at, well, the mortgage market itself.

[Mike Bird]

Absolutely. The mortgage market and the structure of it is really, really crucial here. So again, you look at Hong Kong mortgages are effectively pegged to very, very short term interest rates, more or less where the Federal Reserve is setting its interest rate because the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US Dollar. In Europe, this lots of people peg mortgages to two or three or five year interest rates to get a little bit of security in terms of what they're paying in the U.S. obviously this is taken to the potentially ludicrous extreme of pegging to 30 year interest rates an extremely long way in the future. Now that's great news in terms of locking yourself into something secure that you can rely on. But long term interest rates haven't come down nearly as much in the last year or so as short term interest rates. There are a lot of worries about the fiscal situation in rich world countries. There's heightened government debt, people worry about long term inflationary pressures, and as a result, long term interest rates seem to be staying much higher than short term interest rates. So if you do want a long term mortgage, if you want to lock yourself into that, you are going to end up paying more. And this is bad news for people hoping to buy.

[Jason Palmer]

So basically, for the most part, renters win this long running battle.

[Mike Bird]

I think so. Now I say this as an inveterate renter. There are perfectly good reasons to buy a house. Large families might find it hard for somewhere to rent. They might want the more secure tenure and that secure tenure, knowing where you're going to live, being able to change your own home, being able to amend it, means a lot to some people. So this is a very bloodless analysis. There is one more thing, I think, weighing in favor of renters, and that's politics. There have been some fairly significant political moves on both sides of the Atlantic and in some other countries in favor of renters. In Britain, the Renters Rights act has made it much more difficult for your landlord to evict you. It's made it more difficult for your landlord to raise rents aggressively. In lots of American cities, politicians have gone in for more extensive rent control and rent stabilization the past few years. Those things are probably bad for the housing supply. They probably mean that less people are going to invest in housing. But they're cynically good news for current renters.

[Jason Palmer]

Mike, thanks very much for joining us.

[Mike Bird]

Thank you very much.

[Anne Roe]

If you were in northwest Washington, D.C. in the 1990s and you chanced to go past a mailbox at 37th and R Streets Northwest, you might have seen a rather strange mark on it, a white horizontal chalk line, and wondered what it was.

[Jason Palmer]

Anne Roe is the Economist's obituaries editor.

[Anne Roe]

This was a signal from a CIA officer, Aldrich Ames, to his KGB contact to tell him that he was arranging a meeting or that he had put some documents and data into a drop box and in this way the two of them were corresponding. Unknown to most people, This was a very fiddly way to have a correspondence. Aldrich Ames didn't like it at all. What he preferred to do was what he'd done in the early days, which began in 1985 when he decided to give two or three names to an official at the Soviet embassy in Washington. And he simply put them in an envelope and handed them in to a duty officer. As he began to transfer more and more papers, he put them in plastic shopping bags. This was the biggest ever transfer of information and intelligence from the CIA to the KGB. It began in 1985 and it resulted in the deaths of at least 10 Soviet operatives working with the CIA and the complete disruption of the CIA's anti Soviet operations. It was, in other words, a catastrophe for American intelligence. And it was all the work of this one man, Aldrich Ames. A little bit of help from his Colombian wife until 1994, when at last the FBI managed to arrest him. He always said it was not ideological. It wasn't that he was a left winger, that he supported the Soviet regime. He enjoyed being at the CIA because it was an extremely heavy, difficult thing to betray trust. But he thought he could justify it. And when he began in his job of transferring intelligence, he thought he could make it a little easier if he actually handed to the Soviets just a little bit of information, which probably they knew anyway because it involved Soviet operatives working for the CIA and presumably the KGB had sent them there. So it was pretty harmless. He thought, what he was doing. He was in debt to the tune of about $30,000. And when he handed over the envelope at the Soviet embassy, he asked if he could have 50,000 in exchange for the information. The reason he needed money so badly was that his first marriage had crumbled and he'd also taken up with a Colombian woman called Rosario, who had very expensive tastes. She loved handbags. The FBI found 16 of them in their house when they searched it when the couple were arrested. She loved shoes. She had 500 pairs in the house. And designer dresses. She liked to phone her family in Colombia. That cost $5,000 a month one way and another. Aldrich Ames was getting deeply into debt and he needed to keep this exchange going just to keep his head above water. There was a part of him that couldn't resist flaunting it. So he spent $540,000 on a house in Arlington, Virginia. He bought two Jaguar cars. He had his teeth capped. He was an avid smoker and his teeth had got rather yellow. So he improved his appearance. He got tailor made suits. His colleagues used to comment when his shiny white Jaguar was parked in the car park at Langley. But although a lot of people began to suspect where all this money was coming from and to grow suspicious of him, they never really got to investigate him properly. There were investigative groups set up, but they kept foundering or stalling, and meanwhile he was going on transferring intelligence. He had always been lucky that way, that although he really wasn't a very good agent and he was not reprimanded when he was on postings in Ankara and Rome, he was very lazy. He was meant to be recruiting agents, but he hardly recruited any. He also had a severe alcohol problem. He would need sometimes the best part of a bottle of vodka to get through a meeting with the Russians. He would often get into traffic accidents. He was very casual about storing papers. He would leave his safe open. And he often left things on the subway or just around the place when they were cryptic and secret, they should not be left behind at all. He was sometimes so undisciplined at diplomatic receptions or agency parties that he would pass out or he'd fall down in the street and he'd have to be taken home. All this was well, deserving of a reprimand and even a request that he should leave the agency. But he never got one. He always seemed to stay just about on the right side of his superiors. He was really not sorry that he had done what he did. After all, the people who had been killed had also been just as prepared, if necessary, to hang out their colleagues to dry to expose him too. He could have been himself in exactly their position, he felt. And in a way, as he was publicized and arrested and shamed, he felt he was in the same position as them.

[Jason Palmer]

Ann Rowe on Aldrich Ames, who's died aged 84. That's all for this episode. Episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is Sarah Larnyuk. And our sound designer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Rory Galloway and Henrietta McFarlane. And our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Jonathan Day and Anne Hannah. And our assistant producer is Kunal Patel, with extra production help this week from Emily Elias. We'll all see you back here tomorrow for the weekend. Intelligence. This week we'll be talking about bald. Well, about much more than that. About beauty standards for men versus those for women and how they're fast changing. About the weird nexus of bald man chat forums and the nastiest misogynistic corners of the Internet. About medical tourism in Turkey, where my colleague Sam Westrin received what he reckons is the most poetic insult ever delivered. It's gonna get hairy. See you. When everything is moving all at once. Your workforce, your tech stack, your business. You don't need more tools. You need one solution that's why Paylocity built a single platform to connect hr, finance and IT with AI driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy experience. One place for all your HCM needs. Start [e-mail] 1.