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.

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Hello, I want you to take a good look at your life. Do you spend too much on clothes? Have you lied about your taxable income? Are you always at the gin? Have you ever paid for sex? Go on. Are you, if you're really honest? Just not that nice a person.

Well, tonight we want to put you in touch with an 18th century thinker who wants to say to you, good on you, sir.

Keep it up, madam. Do it for England.

300 years ago, in the summer during which Queen Anne died and George I took the throne,

a Dutch exile in London produced a book, a book that made him notorious, brought judges and

theologians out against him, and yet one that still exerts an influence on economic thinkers

today. His name was Bernard de Mandeville, and the work was called The Fable of the Bees,

a group of essays that examined the nature of the mercantile economy of early 18th century

England, and which were preceded by a poem called the Grumbling Hive that set out the same ideas

in a few pages of pithy, provocative dog-roll.

The poem compared human society to that of a beehive,

but one full of drunken, greedy, self-serving insects,

and he found that good.

Thus every part was full of vice, yet the whole mass of paradise.

Flattered in peace and feared in wars,

they were the steam of foreigners,

and lavish of their wealth and lives,

...