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 is 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 download

from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash Radio 3.

Hello and welcome to free thinking.

All this week in the music on the brink season, Radio 3 is focusing on the music of five European capital cities in the lead up to the First World War.

Today was Paris, yesterday Vienna,

and later in the week, you'll hear music from Berlin, London and St. Petersburg.

As part of this season, we're going to be looking at the cultural landscape of those cities.

Tomorrow night, Matthew Sweet will be presenting a landmark edition

about Robert Muzel's Viennese masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities.

But for this evening's programme, we've asked all of our guests to bring to the table an artwork or idea

through which we can capture something of the spirit and atmosphere of those turbulent times.

The cultural historian Philip Blom, whose book The Vertico Years spans the period 1900 to 1914

will be our expert in residence tonight and tomorrow, and joining him here in the studio of the novelist A.S. Biot,

the film historian Neil Brand and former new generation thinker and cultural historian Alexandra Harris.

Philip, let's start with you. Virginia Woolf said

that human character changed somewhere around 1910, which makes it sound like a radical shift,

but did it feel like that? I think it did. I think we tend to consider this time as a time,

this sort of golden afternoon, the Indian summer of the 19th century.

But that would have surprised people back then very much.

It was a time at which life exploded, which cities changed.

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