Today a cynic is someone jaded and suspicious of everyone's motives, but the original Cynics of ancient Greece were the opposite: joyful, hopeful seekers of total freedom who made their own lives a public critique of society. This episode traces the movement from Antisthenes, a student of Socrates who magnified his teacher's indifference to wealth, through Diogenes of Sinope, the exiled coin-defacer who lived in a ceramic tub and declared himself a citizen of the world, to Crates of Thebes, the wealthy heir who gave everything away and married Hipparchia in a scandalous street wedding.

We explain the origin of the dog label, the Cynic diagnosis of tuphos, the psychological smoke of false beliefs, and the training regimen of askesis and anaideia that worked like exposure therapy against fear of poverty and social shame. The discussion then f ...