Will to Joy: Nietzsche for Life

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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 battling drives is also the basis of all our thoughts and feelings and it even constitutes what we believe to be our unified sense of self.

You will learn how these drives are managed and organised through the construction of positive choice architecture to make the right thing to do the easy thing to do. And you will be introduced to a suite of behaviour change techniques that are proven to be highly effective in improving your self-control—including a couple of lessons from the ancient world. 

Learn to cultivate yourself like a professional and turn that chaotic wasteland into a beautiful, fertile, burgeoning garden. 

🎧 Music: I want to be alone, by Jackson C. Frank

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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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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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-control is acheived. Through the story of a colleague who couldn’t implement a simple behaviour change, we open up the deeper question of self-overcoming. 

Drawing on Nietzsche’s drives-psychology and my two decades working in behaviour change services, I explore why it feels like we are at war with ourselves—and why, in Nietzsche’s view, that’s exactly what we are.

We’ll challenge the myth of willpower, examine Nietzsche's own theory of self-help, and ask what it means to bring a noble order to the chaos of the self. 

This is the beginning of a two-part deep dive into Nietzsche, habit, conflict, and the science of personal transformation.

Music: Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls by Godspeed you! Black Emperor

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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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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"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 anatomy—these are not unimportant surface-level traits; they are our lived reality. They endow power or confiscate it. They elicit pity or admiration. They twist the mind or harden the will.

Are we anything more than our bodies? Nietzsche doubted it—and in this episode, we take him at his word. Exploring how physique and physiology shape identity, quality of life, and destiny. We ask: What does it mean to strive toward Nietzsche’s ideal of “the great health”? Can we come to love fate—even when our fate is written into our very substance?

This is not self-help. It’s the ultimate existential challenge. To embrace your body. To train it. To understand it. To be grateful for it. And above all, to affirm it and the world of which it is a necessary and inextricable component.

Music: Death is Eternal Bliss by ELEH

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Music credit in intro: ViraMillar on Freesound - "Music by UNIVERSFIELD from Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/UNIVERSFIELD"

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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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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, from one another, and from ourselves.

We trace the emergence of consciousness as an evolutionary trade-off: a tool for collective organisation that became a prison of self-surveillance and moral guilt. Along the way, we confront the “hard problem” of consciousness from a wholly different angle—what if the problem is not the mind’s mystery, but the false metaphysics smuggled in by language itself?

Finally, we consider Nietzsche’s Dionysian remedy—a return to the primal unity beneath the illusions of thought, a dangerous dance with chaos that may cost you your “self”… but might just offer something deeper in return.

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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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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 history—it’s a philosophical reckoning. Nietzsche’s naturalism puts the body back at the centre of life, value, and meaning.

We close with a meditative practice to awaken your awareness of the evolutionary story written into your own anatomy.

The takeaway? Your body is not your prison—it is your potential. And far from being sinful, its impulses are the very stuff of life itself. You don’t have a body. You are one. And it’s time to rediscover its nobility—and restore the honour it is rightfully due.

As we continue this exploration, we’ll see that to affirm the body is to affirm life—and that this affirmation is the precondition of strength, of freedom, of power, and of joy.

Music: Misdirection by Dark Rooms

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Music credit in intro: ViraMillar on Freesound - "Music by UNIVERSFIELD from Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/UNIVERSFIELD"

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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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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, physiological mechanics behind your so-called “free will.” No gods, no ghosts—just flesh, force, and instinct. 

If you think you’re in control, think again. Nietzsche’s scalpel is sharp, and by the end of this episode, you may find there’s nothing left of “you” at all.

This week's music choice: Moving by Supergrass

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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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

👉 Follow and connect:

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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 against yourself. You’ll discover why your body is not something secondary or shameful—but the very foundation of your identity, your vitality, and your potential. You’ll learn how Nietzsche’s radical vision can help you reclaim the body as your greatest strength, and begin the journey toward a more unified, powerful, and fearless self. 

Welcome back—to yourself. 

Episode music choice: Singularity by John Hopkins

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If you like it and want more, consider supporting it.

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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

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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 into your daily life, reduce friction, and build momentum towards becoming who you are. The mind loves to wander—but the body loves routine. Train it right, and it’ll take care of business while your mind stays in bed.

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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

👉 Follow and connect:

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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 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 episodes and exercises. Thank you so much for supporting this project.

Here's a Spotify playlist of the tracks I recommend in series 1 of the Will to Joy podcast in the order I recommend them.  Each invokes some variety of Dionysian feeling for me. I hope they can do something similar for you:

👉 Follow and connect:

Instagram | X (Twitter) | YouTube | TikTok | Facebook