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.

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On tonight's free thinking, the opposite of freedom and how to describe it.

Tonight we're going to listen to the voices of slaves.

We'll hear the recorded testimony of someone who was once regarded as property.

And we'll examine the slave autobiographies

that became a vigorous literary genre in the 18th and 19th centuries. How reliable are they,

and what are we relying upon them for? This afternoon, an adaptation of one of those books,

Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave,

was granted the same number of Oscar nominations,

including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress,

and Best Adapted Screenplay.

There's probably a producer in Hollywood now,

eating salad and declaring that slaves are hot property.

We're going to hear from Steve McQueen,

director of 12 Years a Slave,

and from three people who have studied the world from which his story comes.

First, though, we're going to analyse those Oscar nominations

...