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 free thinking

coming from the BBC tent at the Hay Festival.

It was Uriah Heep in David Copperfield,

who first declared himself to be very humble, sir,

and got roundly mocked for doing so.

But in a century or more since Dickens was writing, could we do with a bit more attention

to humility? Perhaps in an era when we're all told that we're all special and all unique,

we could do with thinking that maybe we're not so wonderful after all. With me today to discuss humility,

I have three writers who have no reason at all to hide their lights under bushels. David Brooks

is one of the New York Times' best-known columnists, and his book, The Social Animal, was said

to be required reading for David Cameron's first cabinet. His new book is titled The Road to Character

and it's an elegy for the loss of traditional values.

Azanafisi sold over a million copies of her memoir

Reading Lolita in Tehran

and her new book, The Republic of the Imagination,

makes the case for more fiction in our lives.

And Tom Holland is one of our best-known historians

whose expertise spans ancient Rome

to the Islamic Middle East. Please welcome them all.

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