Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps

that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds.

This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.

On tonight's programme, crime and punishment in the 18th century, a time when 200,000 people turned out for the hanging of the robber Jack Shepherd, and when novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding said

that London was so dangerous that a man need go out dressed for warfare at midday.

True or not, myths about crime and punishment are part of its history, all the way from the

stories of the glamorous highwayman, remember Adamant stand and deliver to John Gay's The Beggers

Opera. As part of the BBC's immersion in the 18th century, Freethinking asks this evening,

what crime and punishment tell us about the 18th century and whether Dostoevsky was right

when he said that a civilisation can be judged by entering its prisons.

Well, no one can doubt that civilisation in Britain was undergoing its own revolution through the 18th century,

the growth of London, the rise of a consumer society, the impact of slavery and the colonies and much else.

The law itself and new forms of crime and punishment were part of this revolution,

from John Wilkes's forcing the government to publish verbatim accounts of parliaments

to the massive increase in crime subject to capital punishment.

Joining me to explore 18th century crime and punishment

are the author and publisher Antonia Hodgson.

Her novel, The Devil in the Marshalcy,

concerns that debtor's prison in the 1700s.

Norman Poza, biographer of Lord Mansfield,

the leading judge of the Georgian era,

...