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.

It's 10 o'clock.

Time now for free thinking with Philip Dodd,

and tonight's edition does contain some strong language.

A society deluged by writings about sex,

a popular thirst for revelations about the sexual lives of celebrities,

the great literary form of the time centred on love and on sex.

If this all sounds like a description of present-day Britain,

it is in fact a description of 18th century England. And it's sex in that century. That's the

subject of this evening's free thinking. Part of the BBC's season about the 18th century a time

that at moments can seem so much like our own. In the previous century, the 17th,

people were still executed for adultery and crime and sin could seem to be at one. Yet over the

next century, England became more secular. London became the largest city in the world,

the novel became the dominant literary form,

and relationships between men and women changed in all kinds of important ways.

So how did these changes manifest themselves in people's sexual lives? And just as importantly

in their sexual imaginations, not to mention their larger moral lives,

will be asking those questions tonight.

And of course, as befits a programme on the 18th century and sex,

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