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 special download from the BBC Free Thinking Festival.

For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.ukuk slash radio three.

A few months ago, the world was shocked by the collapse of the Rana Plaza Clothes Factory in Bangladesh,

in which over 1,100 people died.

It brought with it a new level of detailed reporting on the links between the lives of South Asia's poor and the economic realities of the retailing of clothing.

And it reinforced the impression that the news sometimes gives of the lives of the poor in the global south as a series of disasters.

A few years earlier, we had a rather different take on those lives with Danny Boyle's

Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, a more joyous and uplifting view of those slums. Yet,

how much can observers from outside, whether artists or journalists, take it upon themselves

to write those stories of the people whose lives, past and present, remain hidden

or voiceless. The social historian E.P. Thompson once talked about writing histories of the

poor that would rescue them from the infinite condescension of posterity. But is it an

acceptable alternative to condescension to place the poor on the six o'clock news or in a Bollywood-style musical?

To ask the question, who has the right to write the lives of the poor?

I'm joined by three accomplished guests.

Gaitra Bahadur has reported on the politics and culture of global migration for the New York Times book review

and The Nation magazine. Her book, Cooley Woman, The Odyssey of Indenture, is about the indentured

labourers, including her own great-grandmother, who was sent to work in the plantations of the

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