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.

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Thank you. B.C. Hello, what does it mean to be sentimental?

Today, if we refer to something or someone as being sentimental, it's almost certain to be in a pejorative sense.

But this understanding of sentimentality is the polar opposite

to how it was defined in the 18th century

when Friedrich Schiller wrote his essay

on naive and sentimental poetry.

Well, to explore what sentimentality meant in the age of the Enlightenment

and how it's undergone a metamorphosis over the intervening years.

I'm joined by a new generation thinker Sean Williams, who lectures in Germanic studies at Sheffield

University and the writer and historian Rachel Hewitt. Welcome to you both.

Sean, you're going to get us going with the heavy lifting, really, of the definition.

Can you give us a rough guide to

Schiller's essay and the background against which it was written? Okay, so a potted summary.

Friedrich Schiller's essay about naïve and sentimental diction or on naive and sentimental poetry

is from 1795. It's about literature, but it's really about culture more broadly.

And what Schiller saw as the malaise of modernity, or the advancement of civilization to the

detriment of culture, which in his view had meant that we'd lost our connection with nature,

...