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, 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 the BBC.

Hello and welcome to the arts and Ideas Download from the Free Thinking team at the BBC.

I'm Philip Dodd, and welcome to this edition of Radio 3's Arts and Ideas programme, Free Thinking.

With withering irony, that great French dramatist, Moliere once wrote that it is the public scandal that offends to sin in secret is no sin at all.

Scandal then, the eruption into the public domain of information that the powerful one to keep secret is nothing new.

But the eruption of scandals amidst the thunderous noise

of contemporary social media gossip

has seemed to grow in number recently.

There is the Enron financial scandal in the US,

the fake milk scandal in China,

and the Hollywood scandal, the sex scandal, that is,

circulating around Harvey Weinstein,

not to mention old scandals such as the Profumo affair.

Lord Astor had issued a statement saying that he had never had sexual relations with me,

to which I answered, well, he would, wouldn't he?

I have never obstructed justice.

And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life,

that I welcome this kind of examination,

because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook.

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