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.

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

Hello, I'm Ron Amitter. And in this year when we're celebrating the music of Beethoven,

250 years on from his birth in December 1770,

this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast brings you a lecture which uses Beethoven's music

to explore the way we listen and how music links to memory. It was recorded at a pre-concert event

with a proms audience. Hello and welcome to this, the BBC Prom's Lecture, launching the

2015 season of concerts. Our lecturer is the neuroscientist Daniel

Levittin, and we're delighted to have him with us today to speak about one of the themes of this

year's prom's memory. Later in the season, the Aurora Orchestra will perform Beethoven's

pastoral symphony entirely from memory. And the orchestra's feet got me thinking about the huge advances in our understanding

of memory and the mind in the past few years.

We know that the ability of the brain's neurons to recombine is much greater than we'd thought before.

We've moved far beyond the idea that there's a left brain and a right brain

to something that involves lights flashing all over the cortex.

And we've even started thinking about why evolution has made music

such a central part of all cultures ever since cave dwellers started banging on bits of mammoth bones.

So who better to bring all this together than a thinker who straddles

brain science and Beethoven, CT scans and scryabin. Daniel Levitin took the obvious path towards

...