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.

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What's that van, mysteriously driving around the quiet back streets

of the suburbs of Britain?

Why? It's the Google Maps truck,

slowly and surely, recording the length and breadth of the land.

For decades, the most worrying thing that a map could do

was to refuse to fold back neatly in a howling wind

on a camping holiday in the peak district.

But now, in an age when even the German Chancellor

needs to worry about who's got her phone number,

the increasing ability of map makers to chart our planet is giving

rise to increasing interest, but also increasing concern. The power of maps, though, is not new. Throughout

history, making maps has been a way to control geography and political reality. And to explore

that question of why maps are still so powerful and how their power is

changing, I have with me two cartographic champions. Vanessa Lawrence is head of the Ordnance

Survey, the organisation that we tend to think of as the nation's mapmaker. And Jerry Brockman is

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