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.

Thank you. I'm going to start with a confession that I think makes me sound a bit soppy.

I recently found myself gazing at the picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton with their new granddaughter, and feeling unexpectedly moved, my response surprised me.

But the image brought back with absolute clarity the moment when my parents came to the hospital to first meet my daughter.

In fact, I have a similar photo at home, and it's one of my favourite pictures of my daughter's first weeks.

So I found I couldn't really disconnect from that emotional response.

But after a week of Hillary tweeting about baby Charlotte,

and then working the new arrival into her midterm campaign,

that moment began to feel completely contrived.

That emotional connection I had felt diminished as it became clear just how packaged that image of Hillary truly was.

Even so, I couldn't shake the feeling

that I somehow knew something about Senator Clinton

that I hadn't known before.

In seeing one of her most personal moments, I recognised a shared

experience, and it was an odd connection. When did this intimacy between our public figures and us

begin? What my experience had hinged on was the photographic rendering of a personal moment for

public consumption.

So perhaps not all that surprisingly, it's a type of politics that starts with the introduction

of commercial photography itself. And it goes back to President Lincoln.

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