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. The theme of our festival is the limits of knowledge, and today we explore with two leading political voices on the right,

what kind of politicians and thinkers we need to meet the demands of fast-changing societies.

What sort of people do we want to represent us?

And how do they fit into a history that includes arguments about open borders and free trade versus tradition and a sense of belonging?

And Robert Peel, who helped forge the political party as we know it.

Roger Scruton is a leading intellectual, writer and provocateur. In his book, How to

Be a Conservative, he writes, conservatives move quietly and discreetly and catching each other's

eyes across the room, like homosexuals in Proust.

His latest writing presents a picture of the conservative intellectual as something of an endangered species. David Willits was until recently higher education minister with a career

spanning the late Thatcher period to the open-necked call-me-dave era of Tory modernizers.

He's also written on the problems he thinks the baby boomer

generation has bequeathed to those who come after it. So he might well agree with the great Tory

philosopher Edmund Burke who said a nation is a partnership between those who are living, those who are

dead and those yet to be born. Roger, why do you think the conservative intellectual

should feel so beleaguered when you have, after all,

a party in power, albeit in coalition,

for a lot of years,

and many people that think conservatives might feel themselves to be top dogs?

They might do in certain circles, business circles perhaps,

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