Lucy Sullivan
speaker
311 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 10 Sep
Lucy Sullivan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Soon a judge would weigh in on this fight.
That's after the break.
Around the middle of the 4th century BC, the dog philosopher Diogenes was chatting with friends about what should be done with his body after he died.
Here's cultural historian Thomas Liqueur.
Lequeur is author of the book The Work of the Dead.
It begins with the story of Diogenes, a man who lived in a barrel on the street and was opposed to all that was decent.
He thought that humans should be able to masturbate and defecate in public the same way we eat in public.
And so when Diogenes was talking about what should happen to him after he died, he said that he'd like to be thrown over the city walls and disposed of like debris.
I'm paraphrasing here, but the story goes that his friends pleaded with him, saying animals would dismember his body.
Diogenes said, Okay, then put a stick in my hand so that I can fight them off.
His friends said, Well, you wouldn't be able to use the stick because you'd be dead.
To which Diogenes replied, Exactly.
But of course Diogenes is very wrong.
For thousands of years before and for thousands of years after, humanity has rejected his logical proposition.
Although we know we can't use a stick to fight off vultures when we die, most people would never throw someone out like trash.
The place of the dead has always mattered.
Starting in the eighth century, to be a church was to have the body of a martyr, or a relic from one.
And the worst fate imaginable for the faithful was to not be buried near them in the churchyard.
Then of course there's the public cemetery, cremation, open caskets, scattering ashes in the river.
To Diane and Kurt Horning, it seemed like the city was doing just that.
Showing 121–140 of 311 · page 7 of 16
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