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, I'm Matthew Sweet.

Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate.

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This is the BBC.

And now it's time for another visit to Ambridge, and in Studio 5A in Broadcasting House,

the guests are arriving to assess the semiotic thickness of the archers.

Music The Archers.

And they'll be doing a lot more than that too. On tonight's free-thinking, we roam the British countryside,

as it's conjured in the contemporary novel, in cinema, and in a radio studio in Birmingham,

where a sound effects operator does surprising things with teacups and bales of hay. In a moment,

we'll hear from the film director Clio Barnard, whose tough and poetic new picture, Dark River, makes it seen

on a farm in North Yorkshire. But first, I want to introduce you to my studio guests, who are

gathered with me as expectantly as a small herd of Frisians about to submit to the milking machine.

The poet Elizabeth Jane Burnett, whose book Swims, documents her personal progress through the waterways of her native Devon, as well as Surrey, Sussex and the Lake District.

The novel, whose most recent novel, The Lie of the Land, takes an impecunious family from North London to a suspiciously cheap cottage, also in Devon.

The linguist Rob Drummond, who's poised to give a paper at this week's Academic Archers

Conference at the British Library.

And Simon Jenkins, journalist, author, former head of the National Trust, and a man who

has peered at more English country churches than all those M.R. James characters who were

...