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.

Hello and welcome to Freethinking. Sorry, that's a bit muted, isn't it? Let me try and give it a bit more Ballyhoo.

Tonight on Freethinking we have marvels, we have prodigies, we have all the fun and the doubt and the unease and the terror of the fair.

Later, we'll be exploring the extraordinary human body through the stories of Victorian turns like Joseph Merrick, the

elephant man, Jojo the dogface boy, and Chang Wu Gao, the Chinese giant. And we'll encounter

Todd Browning's monstrous masterpiece Freaks, a film that caused outrage in 1932. We'll

discover what it stirs in our guests in the studio.

But as you can hear, I'm not in the studio now. I'm on London South Bank, where another sort

of carnival is being set up, another show that promises a sensation.

Karsten Holler's Circus is in town, the Belgian artist who used to work in insect science

and now uses gallery goers in his mad and maybe rather pleasurable experiments.

There's a massive strobe light being tested on the concrete walls of the Hayward Gallery here

and Holla's giant shiny metal spiral slides have also been bolted to the side of the building.

Inside, we're promised moving beds and a land of giant mushrooms.

And inside, the art critic Charlotte Mullins is waiting to join me for a bit of fun.

So in through the door of the Hayward, and two doors with cubes above them, with A and B, asking me to choose an entrance.

This is the first decision of the day. I'm going to choose A.

So we emerge into... Oh, it's like a kind of air vent.

Made of aluminium.

It's very dark in here.

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