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. Remember that film

in which Raquel Welsh is miniatured and injected into a senior American diplomat in order

to remove an obstruction from his brain, well, tonight's programme will be a bit like that,

and the part of Raquel Welsh will be played by the neuroscientist Daniel Levitin,

who's here live to tell us how to declutter our mental processes and think in a more

organised manner. But he has some competition for the role, joining us on tonight's fantastic voyage,

a historian of ideas and a political theorist who will investigate whether being human

is a matter of biology, philosophy or politics.

But listen, there are two others here with me in the studio,

suited up to explore the worlds and interstices of the human brain. They're the observer, theatre critic, Susanna

Clapp, and the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. Now, we conducted an experiment on them this week.

We injected them into the National Theatre, which is premiering a new play by Tom Stoppard, called The Hard Problem.

It's set in a scientific institute investigating the nature of the brain and stars Olivia Vinyl,

as a psychologist engaged with the problem of the title.

Can consciousness be explained by a materialist view of the universe?

Well, Susanna and Henry look just about done to me, so let's ask them about the results.

Susanna, what effect did the play exert upon you?

Well, I think everybody who's interested in the theatre will want to see this play

because a play by Stoppard is a major event.

The difficulty for me is it is not one of those Axis plays that he every now and then pulls off. I would cite three in his life.

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