"Message the show" Dionysus wants to make you stronger, more evil, more profound – and more beautiful. In this second part of the season finale, we follow that cosmic pied piper into the heart of Nietzsche’s most explosive idea: the will to power. Last time, we dismantled the myth of free will and showed that selection is the basic logic of reality – from molecules to memes. Now we pick up those threads and begin to trace their connection to Nietzsche’s patron deity. We explore Dionysus...
"Message the show" Free will is the sacred cow of our modern civilisation. Everyone believes they have it but no one can justify this belief. In our season finale of The Will to Joy, we put that belief on the chopping block. I start by offering up a simple challenge: demonstrate free will. When that inevitably fails we follow the chain of consequences and travel into the deepest strata of Nietzsche’s philosophy. This is the first part of a three part episode and it's most ambitious epis...
"Message the show" As Nietzsche writes, "he who cannot obey himself, will be commanded". The ability to obey oneself - to have an internal locus of authority rather than an external one - this is how, in our era of purported equality, a master is distinguished from a slave. But what about you? Who or what do you obey? And, in obeying, are you compromising yourself, or are you maintaining your own integrity, your own autonomy, your own authority? This episode in an extra recording from the Wil...
"Message the show" Special Episode: An Economy of Bodies – Nietzsche, Sex, Beauty, and the Will to Power This week’s episode is something different. I’m sharing the recording of my presentation at the annual Friedrich Nietzsche Society conference at Queen's University in Belfast (6th September). My paper, An Economy of Bodies, brings Nietzsche’s philosophy into dialogue with evolutionary psychology and behavioural science to explore sex, beauty, culture, social status, destiny, and what Nietz...
"Message the show" Recorded on the rugged trails of the Lake District, with a stupidly heavy pack, sore knees, and a wild Nietzschean esprit! In this episode, I yomp alone through across 40 miles of peaks and silence, sleeping out, drinking from streams, and thinking deeply about beauty, power, shame, and the weight we carry—both physically and psychologically. Topics include: – The brutality and exhilaration of hiking peak-to-peak solo – Extracts from my upcoming paper: An Economy of Bodies ...
"Message the show" This week on the Will to Joy podcast – Can suffering be more than something to endure? Nietzsche thought so. In a world obsessed with comfort, safety, and minimising pain, he argued for the discipline of great suffering as the forge of strength, depth, and creativity. We explore the difference between meaningless and meaningful pain, the dangers of a life anaesthetised from hardship, and how struggle feeds the will to power. From Greek tragedy to modern grief, we ask:...
"Message the show" We continue our discussion of Nietzschean self-overcoming and explore a range of techniques for changing behaviour that scientific evidence tells us work. You will descend into the world of Nietzsche’s drives psychology and discover that each of us is inhabited by a rabble of unruly drives all competing for expression. Their jostling causes us confusion about what we really want from life and hinders our attempts to get it. You will discover that the noise created by these ...
"Message the show" Why Won’t You Do What You Want You to Do? You know what you want. You want to be fitter, healthier, stronger, more focused, more creative. You want to stop scrolling, quit drinking, wake up earlier, stop saying yes to people who don’t deserve it. And yet—you don’t do it. Why? In this episode, we explore the tension between desire and action, reason and impulse, intention and failure. We delve into the fragmentary and conflicting human psyche to understand how self-con...
"Message the show" "The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit." Beyond Good and Evil, 75 In this episode, we begin with a plunge into the sacred animality of the body: sensation, desire, and the ecstatic collapse of self into the immediacy of flesh. From there, we spiral outward—into vignettes of shame, overcompensation, resentment, and neurosis. Fatness, baldness, shortness, beauty, disability, disease, all the contingencies of anat...
"Message the show" Socrates claimed the unexamined life isn’t worth living—but Nietzsche wasn’t so sure. What if our acute self-awareness is the source of our suffering? In this episode, we journey from the carefree contentment of grazing cattle to the haunted introspection of the modern human. We explore Nietzsche’s radical claim that consciousness is not our crowning glory but a socially evolved disease—a by-product of language, hierarchy, and domestication that alienates us from nature, fr...
"Message the show" What if history’s greatest heresy wasn’t the rejection of God—but the rejection of the body? In today’s show, we follow Nietzsche’s assault on the Christian hatred of the flesh. From medieval monks who saw filth as virtue, to saints who mutilated themselves in pursuit of ‘purity,’ we uncover a disturbing legacy: the systematic degradation of the body in the name of the soul. Christianity didn’t merely neglect the body—it waged war on it. But this isn’t just religious histor...
"Message the show" What if your precious soul was just superstition? What if your thoughts, feelings, and identity weren’t the whispers of a divine spirit, but the murmurs of your gut, your glands, your genes? In this episode of Will to Joy, we dissect Nietzsche’s radical physio-psychology—his claim that you are your body and nothing more, period. Join me for a guided meditation exercise as we vivisect the soul, dissolve the illusion of mind-body dualism, and expose the raw, physi...
"Message the show" Join me for an important announcement about the future of the show. Your thoughts on this news most welcome using the "message the show" hotlink. Support the show If you value Will to Joy (formerly Becoming Übermensch) and you want more, please ensure its continued existence by supporting the show If you are interested in delving deeper into this work and are hungry for greater challenges, I also now have a Patreon. Become a De Profundis Member and access exclusive episod...
"Message the show" You have been taught to despise your body—to believe that your true worth lies in some hidden soul, while your flesh is merely a burden or a prison. But what if that is one of the greatest misunderstandings of the human condition ever? What if you are not a spirit trapped in meat, but the body itself—living, powerful, beautiful, and brimming with deep intelligence? In this episode, we tear away the numbing illusions that have kept you weak, confused, and divided...
"Message the show" In this bonus episode, I share with you a proven, evidence-based technique for embedding positive behaviours in your life: the establishing of habits.In this bonus mini-episode of Becoming Übermensch, we explore the art of forming positive habits through the lens of Nietzschean self-overcoming and modern behavioural science. Nietzsche wrote that “the body is a great wisdom”—so how do we train it well? You’ll learn a simple but powerful routine to help you hardwire exercise ...
"Message the show" Something different this week. Join me as I re-attempt a 100 mile hike along the South Down's Way in Southern England in just three days, wild camping along the way. Naturally, there will be talk of Nietzsche and a little about your devoted host's personal background and the events that brought about this Becoming Übermensch project. Put on your walking boots and shoulder your pack. As the Romans used to say: "it is solved by walking." Support the show If you value Wi...
"Message the show" In this episode of Becoming Übermensch, we plunge deeper into Nietzsche’s concept of will to power as the underlying principle of life, reinterpreting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs through this radical lens. We explore how all living organisms—plants, animals, and humans—express a form of power not through conscious intention, but through their very being itself. Human consciousness, Nietzsche argues, is simply the latest elaboration of a deeper, inexorable, evolved, physiolo...
"Message the show" What is power? Is it dominance over others, or something deeper—an intrinsic force woven into the very fabric of life itself? Nietzsche famously declared that “life as such is will to power.” But what does that really mean? In this episode, we explore power beyond human ambition, tracing its organic expressions in nature, biology, and physiology. From the survival struggles of animals to the hedonic escalation that drives human motivation, power is not just about control—it...
"Message the show" “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power itself. What is happiness? The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.” Nietzsche’s Will to Power is perhaps his most compelling yet widely misunderstood idea. It’s not simply about dominating others; rather, it’s about our fundamental craving for overcoming challenges and experiencing growth. Power is complicated—we’re both drawn to it and suspicious of it. It excites and unsettles ...
"Message the show" Why do we always yearn for more? Why does happiness seem forever out of reach? In this episode of Becoming Übermensch, we dive into the inescapable cycle of desire, fulfilment, and renewed longing—tracing its roots from the bleak resignation of the Buddha's and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche’s radical revaluation of suffering. Through the lens of Darwinian evolution, we uncover the hidden function of dissatisfaction: a relentless drive sculpted by natural selection, ...