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.

On tonight's program, sociology and its discontents. And there's no better day to discuss this than today,

budget day, when we're reminded that it's the language of economics and finance that rules the

roost, not the language of the social. Now, it is true that sociology has often thought of

itself as in crisis. In 1932, the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences

characterized sociology as largely demoralised

and undergoing an intense spiritual self-criticism.

But today's sociology is under new pressures,

all the way from the massification of the universities

through to the rise of think tanks paddling in sociology's water,

from lifestyle journalism stealing soft sociology's clothes to the fragmentation of the subject,

which has now become medical sociology, sport sociology.

The list of specialisms seems legion. So, is this the moment to

reimagine sociology? Or better just to bury it? After all, it only came into being in the

19th century. Maybe it's done what it can. Well, to answer this question, I'm joined by Richard

Senate, author of Together, the rituals, pleasures and politics of

cooperation, Monica Krause, who's written a study of managers of aid agencies, Frank Faradie,

author of whatever happened to intellectuals, and Peter Oberen, the journalist, who recently

resigned from the Daily Telegraph saying that its ethics had been inhibited by business

imperatives.

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