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 is 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.

This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.

The emperors of Ming Dynasty China can take the credit for many things.

They founded the largest state on earth.

They established a tribute system that cemented their great power.

They invented pitch-and-put golf.

Really, they did. I saw the evidence today

at the British Museum. And they continue to shape the West sense of a peculiarly Chinese way

of exercising power, real and fictional, from those antique emperors to Chairman Mao to

Foumanchu and modern Chinese censorship of the internet.

Our conversation tonight will also bear this influence.

We'll be offering our tribute to the poet Danny Absey, who died on Sunday.

The booker shortlisted novelist Neil Mukherjee comes with a tale of Maoist radicals in 1960s Calcutta

and will detect the unquiet ghost of our relationship

with old imperial China in Western responses to this, the sound of pro-democracy protesters

in Hong Kong.

We wish that the chief executive could come up and directly face the students.

First, though, Gertrude Lawrence wants a word or two,

some of them rather eyebrow-raising,

about the appeal of what we should probably call the Mysterious East,

...