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 moon was once a symbol of the confident human future, the place where Neil Armstrong

took his one small step, a place for a George Mellier's rocket to penetrate, or an H.G. Wells hero to

parley with the Selenites. As a child, television and look and learn and PG tips cards told me

that the moon was a future human home, because look, there was Martin Landau, and there was

Barbara Bain running around it in flared Terrelline slacks.

Space 1999. What a promise that was. Like 2001, it was a year that you felt might never actually

arrive and now it's been and gone, the subject of nostalgia. We haven't been to the moon

since Nixon was president,

and John Pertwey was Doctor Who. So we're either in an interregnum period for human travel

beyond Earth's orbit, or were resigned to doing it by proxy through remote robot eyes,

or through science fiction. On the day we're recording this program, the name

has been announced of the test pilot killed while flying for Virgin Galactic, the putative

commercial spaceliner company. Right now, the final frontier looks beyond the power of frail

human bodies to conquer. So how far have we traveled with the moon and what lies beyond?

Do we regard it with fear or wonder?

Our free-thinking crew are ready for the countdown here.

They're the novelist and video games writer Naomi Alderman,

the critic and cultural historian Roger Luckhurst,

and Alessandro Vincent Telly,

...