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?

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Hello and welcome to the last of these nightwaves programmes recorded in and around ZSL London Zoo.

We've explored its architectural history and ZSL's ambivalent relationship with the listed structures in its own built environment.

We've explored Angus Wilson's The Old Men at the Zoo, a novel that uses Regents Park as a metaphor

for the State of Britain, which turns out to be a pretty ugly place.

We've talked about the conservation work of the zoo, which seeks to maintain genetically pure

strains of animal life that might be used to repopulate habitats that are fast disappearing.

What struck me most powerfully is the idea of the zoo as a kind of cultural and philosophical

laboratory. Architectural modernism was tested on the penguins first.

They waddled over the white walkways and sky bridges of Lubeckin's penguin pool,

long before the first concrete estates were built.

The zoo's conservation work asks us to consider what life would be like in a world

where human life has supplanted animal life

almost entirely, a thought experiment upon which our future may depend. But the most profound

form of animal testing being conducted at the zoo is, I think, the one to which we're going to devote

this programme. It's an experiment that occurs when you meet one of the higher primates, when you meet

the gaze of an ape. It was first conducted a few yards from where I'm standing now, outside

Decimus Burton's giraffe house. The poet Ruth Badell, who's been organising a series of writers' talks

...