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.

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

Tonight we challenge our conceptual understanding of the supposedly timeless laws of the universe,

with theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, and of the human condition reduced to a pair of babbling lips

in a new production of Samuel Beckett's Not I. Out into this world, this world, tiny little thing before it's time and I got for what? Girl. Yes, tiny little girl into this, out into this before her time got for a second hole. Called, cold, no matter, parents unknown, unheard of, he having vanished thin air andness in a button of his breeches she similarly

months later almost at the tick so no love spared that no love such as normally vented on the

speechless infant in the home no nor indeed for that matter any of any kind no love of any kind

at any subsequent age it's a typical affair nothing of any no till coming up to sixty went

what seventy good god coming up to seventy wandering in a fee looking aimlessly for cowlips to make a ball. A few steps then stop, stare into space, then on a few more, a stop and stare again, so on, drifting around when suddenly gradually all went out. Oh, that early April morning light and she found herself on the what? Who? No, she! Lisa Duan, performing not I, and she'll be joining me later. But we start with John Dickie's new book, Mafia Republic, Italy's criminal curse. It challenges all your preconceptions about the three criminal fraternities that have bullied, intimidated and terrorised Italian civil society since the establishment of the state in 1861, the Coza Nostra of Sicily, the Andrangetta of Calabria,

and the Comor of Campania around Naples. The book is a moving and even angry account of their

cruel history, through the years of kidnappings and bombings in the 70s and 80s, the rise of

narcotics smuggling, and the battle of brave magistrates and police chiefs against the political complacency and corruption

that allowed the mafia to establish and nurture such deep roots throughout the nation that endure to this day.

To discuss the mafia's past and how far it still is part of the present and the future, I'm joined by John Dickey

and also by the Italian political journalist Annalisa Pyrras, the author of the film documentary the future. I'm joined by John Dickey and also by the Italian political journalist

Annalisa Puraz, the author of the film documentary Girlfriend in a Coma, which looks at the

devastating effects of organised crime in Italy. And by Claire Longrig, whose book Mafia Women was

published some years ago but is still researching the changing role of women in the mafia.

John, your story begins at the end of the Second World War,

when remarkably Italian politicians created a kind of tabular rasa in the national memory,

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