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, Rudyard Kipling's jungle books were written more than a hundred years ago, but they

continue to amaze, excite and frustrate children of all ages, including this one.

They've also inspired a range of responses from other artists, from Charles Cockland's

symphonic poem, Le Banda Logue, featured in

tonight's prom to Disney's two film versions. Each generation, it seems, discovers these

stories anew in different ways. So what is it that keeps drawing us back to Mowgli, the

human child and his adventures with Baloo the bear, Akila the wolf,

Bagheera the panther and Cher Khan the tiger, to name but a few of the inhabitants of the jungle.

Joining me to explore the significance of the jungle books are the writer Francis Harding and academic Sue Walsh from the University of Reading.

Let's start at the beginning, as it were.

How old were you when you first came across these stories

and what kind of impression did they make on you as a child?

Sue?

I must have been seven or eight and I was living in Bokina Faso, French West Africa. My father worked for

the World Health Organization and I read the jungle books then. It was a, you know, pan paperback

with no illustrations in it, but I loved them and for me the stories that really sparked

my imagination were the stories of Mowgli and the wolves and in fact they kind of they kind of

prompted a lifelong sort of fascination and obsession with wolves, in fact.

And that kind of took me further in all sorts of ways.

...