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 welcome. I'm glad you're here because I was just wondering whether you'd mind taking

part in our survey. As part of this year's proms were worrying at the subject of music and the

emotions and we're not the first to worry about it.

So could I just throw these questions out to you,

just to be thinking about in the next 20 minutes or so?

They're from a questionnaire written in 1908.

Are you strongly affected by music?

If so, by what sort?

Do you prefer operatic or more abstract music? Are you peculiarly fond of Wagner?

Do you particularly like modern Russian music or Hungarian? Does music ever seem to you to have a really

mysterious message to you, nervously, spiritually, emotionally, or otherwise. Well, I stole those from

the back of a book by an Edwardian sexologist who went under the name of Xavier Main. The name of the

survey is a categoric personal analysis for the reader, Am I at all a Uranian? You might be able to guess what a uranium is.

So here your emotional response to music is a clue to your true nature.

Now let me introduce you to two people who can tell us how long we've been asking questions like this,

and why? Thomas Dixon is Director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions

at Queen Mary and Westfield College. Last year he published a book on the history of British weeping

and he's now preparing a global survey of anger. He also presented a Radio 3 Sunday feature

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