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 Ron Amitter.

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Today's free thinking finds us deep in the past, but not as you know it.

It's a world of Tudors, not from Hampton Court, but from the coast of Guinea,

British bureaucrats who run Chinese governments,

German Jewish warriors in the front line of battle, and, ooh, a whole bunch of stuff that happens

in the stinging spray of a tiny red-rocked island which belongs to Denmark, or Germany, or Britain,

and whose inhabitants speak a different language altogether.

And ladies and gentlemen, it's a world where the English Reformation is made up of erupting disputatious volcanoes across the scree plain of the 16th century.

And then there's 19th century surgery when one Joseph Lister comes along. After him, life for surgeons

was never so much fun again, but it did involve a lot less sepsis and screaming. Yes, it's time to

meet the finalists for the 2018 Wolfson Prize, which marks the very best in history written in the UK.

It's been running now for 46 years,

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