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, 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.

Hello. And this discussion comes to you, courtesy of a little inspiration from the late HG Wells,

because Radio 3's time machine is set on fast rewind as we head eons back into the abyss of deep time.

If you're puzzled by our destination, well, here's a clue.

Geologists believe that the Earth is 4.567 billion years old. Well, even a baby millipede doesn't have enough digits to do that particular type of maths. And when it comes to long waits,

perhaps only people who have been expecting a cancelled

train on Waterloo Station have some idea of what that length of time might mean. But what we need

to do tonight is to readjust our watches, from hours and minutes to millions of millennia.

And that way we can see how the long stretch of time has affected the way that we understand our own,

perhaps rather puny, time on earth as a sentient species.

Well, to help me reset the bezel on the wristwatch of eternity, I have two fellow explorers

captured in my capsule this evening.

On my Holocene side is the geographer Nicholas Crane,

presenter of BBC TV's Coast series,

and author of a new book titled The Making of the British Landscape.

And on my Triassic side is geologist Ian Stewart, also well-known to TV viewers as the face of the series, Men of Rock.

Both of them are familiar with this kind of vast temporal perspective. It's simply part of the

way that they understand our world. Ian, it was a geologist who was responsible for setting up the

notion that we now call deep time. So I think I'm going to start with you. What do you understand

...