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, thanks for downloading this edition of the Arts and Ideas podcast, which is recorded

with an audience before one of the concerts

in this year's BBC Proms.

This is the BBC.

There may not be fairies at the bottom of your garden,

but they're certainly making the running tonight here at the Bight Hall, as we look carefully behind the feathery wings of the fairy tale. Ravelle's mother goose began as a piano duet for two children, but like the Sleeping Beauty Briar Hedge, which became a forest, Ravelle's duet became an altogether more complex piece of musical ecology, a full-scale ballet. And in a way, that's

surely what happens to so many fairy stories. Or might it be the other way round? Powerful stories

of love, lust, and justice get shrunk to the literary equivalent of bedtime cocoa for tiny tots.

So tonight, we're going to bring back the terror and the therapy in the fairy story.

Now, with me to talk about the deeper roots and symbolism of sleeping beauties, snow whites, and snow queens,

we have Catherine Langrish, whose reflections on fairy tales can be found in her book,

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, and the composer Kerry Andrew, whose debut novel Swan Song is inspired

by a deep immersion in the oral traditions, songs and tales of these islands.

Catherine Langellish, fairy tales are not just for children, are they? In fact, when you think

about all the darkness within them, I wonder if they're even for children at all. The moral

message, most of the ones I can think of, even for children at all. The moral message,

most of the ones I can think of, seems in some ways to be rather bleak, rather dark.

I think children actually do appreciate the darkness in fairy tales. It's often bowed

and taken out of fairy tales, particularly for very young children. And I do think that there is an age below which it's perfectly acceptable to have, you know, fairies in pink frilly dresses and little, little wings.

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