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 is 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's night waves is dominated by a single figure. There are supposed to be lots of her,

though we may discover in the course of this program, that she's dead or that she never existed.

She might turn out to be someone around the studio table here. She might even turn out to be you.

Samuel Johnson was the first person to show an interest,

but it was Virginia Woolf who described her in detail.

The common reader differs from the critic and the scholar.

He is worse educated and nature has not gifted him so generously.

He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others.

Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of hole.

A portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing.

Ellie Kendrick reading from Virginia Woolf's 1925 collection of essays, the common reader.

Since Wolf's death, those handheld devices, the book and the newspaper, have acquired some rivals.

Technology has allowed us to pursue our reading habit

into life's most awkward corners. We read on the bus or the tube, with our face inches from a

stranger's armpit, spaces in which a newspaper couldn't be unfurled. We read in the dark,

and while crossing the road, we can take vast libraries casually to bed or into the

bathroom or worse. Tonight we'll examine how our reading lives are being transformed. Ask what,

if anything, readers now have in common. And at the end, we may discover if a new common reader

...