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.

Hello and welcome to the BBC's Democracy Day and Radio 3's part in it.

In free thinking, we're in the radio theatre at Broadcasting House in London,

looking at how modern drama on stage and on television reinforces or arguably undermines the workings of democracy.

Politics and plays have long been bedfellows since Shakespeare's Corrie Alanis failed to whip the vote in his favour by annoying the citizens of Rome.

And long before that, the political satire of Aristophanes and Sophocles, investing the business of politics with personal tragedy and fate.

The latter part of the 20th century often saw Westminster politics as a source of

satire rather than celebration. Yes, Minster, in the 80s, set the standard for knowing

sighs about the serpentine ways of Sir Humphrey and even appealed to Margaret Thatcher. Since then,

we've had, among others, a very British coup, GBAH, state of play, the West Wing, the thick of it,

and recently we got interested in the politics of Denmark, not in Hamlet, but in the parliamentary drama Borgon.

The stage has also revived its interest in the art of politics with Michael Chaplin's walk-on part, based on the diaries of Chris Mullen.

Charles III, The Duck House and David Edgar's take on inter-party negotiations, if only.

But if that's a whirlwind summary of what drama's done for democracy,

what has democracy done for drama?

Here to discuss power plays are Lord Dobbs,

who as Amir Michael Dobbs, wrote House of Cards to play The King and the Final Cut,

novels dramatised by Andrew Davies as a TV trilogy.

House of Cards has, of course, recently been remade in the US with Kevin Spacey,

playing that whip on Capitol Hill.

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