Part One: Diogenes: The Greek Philosopher Who Pissed on the Rich
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 717 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Margaret talks to Dana El Kurd about Diogenes, the founder of the Cynics, who was kind of an edgelord and lived in a jar.
Sources:
The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic, Jean-Manuel Roubineau
How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Cynicism, Diogenes (edited by MD Usher)
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16916263
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Greece
https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/ancient-history/ancient-greek-slavery/
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57342/57342-h/57342-h.htm
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.0 | Cool Zone Media. |
| 0:08.9 | Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff. |
| 0:11.4 | Your twice-weekly reminder that I have a podcast, and it's about people who did stuff that I think is cool. |
| 0:17.1 | I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today as my guest is Dana Elkhard |
| 0:22.6 | hi how are you hi thanks for having me yeah Dana is a researcher and writer about |
| 0:29.2 | authoritarianism and once wrote a book called Polarized and Demobilized |
| 0:34.2 | Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine and works does a bunch of stuff. I don't know. Is that who you are? That's perfect. Yeah, that's good. Isn't it great when people are like, here's your bio as if this explains who you are? And I'm like, yeah, totally. That definitely explains. It captures all of me. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I now understand why authors always include the like, lives with her dog or whatever the fuck in her of their bios. Right, right, right. Anyway, we have a producer named Sophie who's not on the call. And we have an audio engineer named Eva. Hi, Eva. Hi, Eva. Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman. I usually am talking about things that happened 100, 200 years ago, sometimes 20 years ago. |
| 1:14.6 | But I've been on this kick by accident where I've been talking about the ancient world, |
| 1:18.6 | going back a couple thousand of years. |
| 1:20.6 | And I discovered this very week that one of my favorite Sesame Street characters was probably based on a real figure |
| 1:30.1 | from history. Oh my gosh. Who is it? Is it Oscar the Grouch? It's Oscar the Grouch. It is totally |
| 1:36.4 | Oscar the Grouch. Okay, that was a guess, but I love it. Do you watch him with Sesame Street as a |
| 1:43.4 | kid? I did not, but my son did. |
| 1:45.5 | Yeah. |
| 1:46.2 | Okay. |
| 1:46.7 | Awesome. |
| 1:48.3 | There is, for the people who live under a rock, eh, or in a trash can on a public street, |
| 1:54.1 | there is a green grouchy man who lives in a trash can, and he hates everything that normal people like. |
| 2:00.8 | That's his whole thing. He's a grouch, and he hates everything that normal people like. That's his whole thing. |
| 2:02.5 | He's a grouch, and his name's Oscar. |
... |
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