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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For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co. Haldane fixed his mouth to a pipe that drew gas from a blocked seam and sucked. Interesting. That taste in the back of the throat smacked of 10% carbonic acid in the air. He stuck with it for 30 seconds. As he broke off, gasping, his companions cast electric light on his face. It had turned blue. His cheeks recovered their pinkness, and there he was, his mouth back on the pipe. He turned blue again. Fascinating, blue, pink, blue, pink blue. He kept going back for more. As s holden's biographer how could i lay claim to that

peculiar experience fairly i can accept that much of a subject's life is beyond my scope i needn't wage war

to write about a general or give birth to write about a mother or suck down

poisonous gas cocktails to write about this scientist. However, one thrill of writing biography

is the chance to step beyond your own era to break out of your life and walk around in someone

else's. How close can a biographer get and how safe is it to try?

I knew nothing of Haldane before I started.

I went looking for the world's greatest serial self-experimentor, and J.S.

Haldane is the man who emerged.

Why did that particular subject appeal?

I liked the strong narrative options of a man testing his body to its limits. It would spike a tale with dramatic high points, and a lifelong habit of self-experimentation would spare me the biographer's ordeal of the late life sag when your subject's life persists with nothing interesting to report from it. However, in

selecting a story of medical self-abuse, was there also an autobiographical pull? Like Haldane,

I have a history of putting my body into alternative environments to examine the results, slums and

war zones, deserts and jungles.

The biographer Richard Holmes coined the term footstepping for the biographical habit of treading

your way into the life of your subject. I once took the concept literally, seeking to understand

Indian holy men by walking as they did, barefoot around a sacred mountain, and then up to its

summit and back. At that mountain peak, I encountered a man who had sat there, solitary and unmoving,

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