When Alexander the Great offered him anything in the world, an old man lying in the dirt told the most powerful person alive to simply step out of his sunlight. That man was Diogenes of Sinope, and his reply may be the most devastating mic drop in ancient history.

This episode traces how a banker's son, exiled in disgrace for debasing currency, reinvented himself as the founder of cynicism. We unpack his radical philosophy that owning anything means it owns you, his relentless public stunts, and his brilliant feuds with Plato, plus the darker, censored writings his own followers tried to bury. Diogenes' uncomfortable question still cuts through our age of status anxiety: what if true freedom means needing absolutely nothing?

• The legendary exchange with Alexander, who said if he were not Alexander he would be Diogenes
• How  ...