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. Oh, what a lovely savash.

Janjang, Senso.

Over the past few months, we become almost deafened by the approaching sound of the guns of August.

But what you can hear now is Zachmi-Sinemden's Turkish gazelle,

A Wound in My Chest, performed by Kudsi Ergunner.

The war shook London, Berlin and Paris, but it also changed lives forever in Istanbul, Tokyo and Beijing.

Soldiers didn't just die in the sodden trenches of Flanders' field.

They also waded in deadly mud by the banks of the Tigris in Mesopotamia.

In 1914, the British Expeditionary Force made its way to France.

In 1918, the Japanese Expeditionary Force thrust its way into Siberia.

Today, on free-thinking, we're asking why people as far apart as Turkey and Japan

chose to join the war to end all wars.

With me is Naokosemazu, Professor of Japanese History at Birkbeck College London, and

Kamala Shamsi, whose new novel A God in Every Stone tells the story of Indian soldiers in

World War I and the aftermath.

And down the line in Istanbul is the historian Sean Mekin, author of the Berlin Bad Dad Express, and a new book July 1914.

For most of us, World War I is associated with particular vivid, violent snapshots, mud and blood at the Somme, cheering crowds in London or Berlin.

I'm wondering what's the one image we might conjure up of the war outside Europe.

Nalko, what about something from the Japanese front? Well, the Japanese entered war on August 23rd,

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