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

it. 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. This month, America is marking 400 years since slavery began

when a ship with 16 captives landed at Virginia.

In this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast,

we hear about a lost classic of African-American writing

and current day research into the slave trade.

Here's Lawrence Scott.

Hello there.

On today's program, remembering and forgetting in stories of the slave trade and its legacies,

we'll remember a forgotten masterpiece of American literature from William Melvin Kelly,

the man credited with coining the term, Woke, a word that's having its own revival.

His debut novel has just been reissued after a clue to its existence was found in a second-hand bookshop. I'll also

be exploring some of the latest thinking on the Atlantic slave trade, which spanned four centuries.

How should we analyse and remember this set of harrowing interlocked histories?

And I'll be talking to the Canadian novelist Essie Adujan

about her prize-winning novel, Washington Black,

which manages to be both a rollicking adventure story

and a meditation on the lasting wounds of being unfree.

There is this dynamic of power playing out in who's seen and how the act of being

seen is something that can utterly shift a life. We'll hear more from Essie later. But first,

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