In 1989, the year after I first interviewed Ivan Illich, he made an extraordinary presentation to a convocation of American Lutherans. He began it by pronouncing a solemn anathema on the contemporary conception of "life." He was thinking of the life that is imagined when one says, "Get a life!" or the life that so many current discourses seek to to conserve and manage. I was intrigued by Illich's argument that life had become a dangerous contemporary idol and sought an opportunity to talk with him about this theme, which had been entirely missing from our first conversation. The opportunity came in the winter of 1992 in Bremen, and the results were broadcast as a single programme later that year. A transcript of that conversation also comprised the final chapter of my book Ivan Illich in Conversation (1992). The broadcast remains in my memory as probably the least commented, and, as far as I could tell, least listened to programme I ever put on the air. It was almost as if neither of us had even spoken. This was especially striking to me because I found Illich's claim so bold, so pertinent, and so illuminating: to my mind, and I have continued to think so, he was doing nothing less than identifying the very shape of contemporary religiosity. In the hope that it will get a better hearing today, here it is...