Ten Podcast Episodes on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The very first book by Nietzsche I read, more than 30 years ago, is Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  I'd heard a lot about him from other authors, and I think I remember someone advising me that this was the work to start with, so in my freshman year of college, I bought the copy I still have, and started reading.

Now decades later, it's a work that I teach fairly often, not only in Existentialism classes, but also sometimes in Intro to Philosophy as well.  Some time back, I created a series of core concept lecture videos on book 1 of the work. And then, I converted those into Sadler's Lectures podcast episodes, boosting the sound quality and editing them.

Here are those ten podcast episodes:

• The Superman and Man as a Bridge
• The Last Man
• The Three Metamorphoses
• Suffering and the Afterworld
• The Virtues and One's Own Virtue
• The Body and the Spirit
• War and Warriors
• The Solitary Person
• Values and Valuation
• The State and Superfluous People

These links will take you to the episodes on Soundcloud, but you can also listen to Sadler's lectures on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Player FM, iHeart Radio, and plenty of other places online.  

My hope is that you find these episodes useful, interesting, or entertaining. As always, if you'd like to make a contribution to helping me continue my work making classic philosophical texts, thinkers, and topics accessible for people worldwide, consider becoming a monthly supporter on Patreon. If you'd like to make a one-time donation, you can do so directly on Paypal, or on Buy Me A Coffee.

Seven Podcast Episodes on Friedrich Nietzsche's Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense

One of the authors that my listeners and subscribers have been asking for consistently to be included in my Sadler's Lectures podcast is Friedrich Nietzsche.  In fact, he is a consistent favorite when I create polls about who I ought to produce content on next. 

One of his short essays that I shot a series of core concept videos about several years back is his "Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense," in which Nietzsche argues, among other things that truth itself is something invented:

A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

He says a good bit more about truth and its presumed opposite, falsehood or lying, as well as about the workings and functions of our intellects, and the inescapability of metaphor. 

These seven podcast lectures run to about an hour-and-a-half - so you can download and listen your way through all of them in a workout or commute or two.  Here they are:

• Dissimulation and the Human Intellect
• The Invention of Truth and Lying
• What Is Truth?
• Metaphor, Language, and Concepts
• Rationality, Abstraction, and Anthropomorphism
• Idealism, Natural Law, and Science
• Myth, Art, Metaphor, and Intuition

I hope that you enjoy them and find them  thought-provoking!  

If you'd like to make a contribution to helping me continue my work making classic philosophical texts, thinkers, and topics accessible for people worldwide, consider becoming a monthly supporter on Patreon.  If you'd like to make a one-time donation, you can do so directly on Paypal, or on Buy Me A Coffee.

Ten Videos on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Earlier this spring, as the semester was coming to a close, and I was getting ready for my online 6-week Existentialist Philosophy and Literature class (developed and taught for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, now in its 5th week), I shot a sequence of new lecture videos on a classic and extremely influential Existentialist work.

It's one that my subscribers, viewers, followers, and other fans have been asking me to produce videos about for years - Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra!  I decided to make part one of that book a required reading for the online class (with the Genealogy of Morals a supplemental text)

I've just finished releasing all of those videos, so I thought I'd set links to them all in one place. Here are those videos:

• The Superman and Man as a Bridge
• The Last Man
• The Three Metamorphoses
• Suffering and the Afterworld
• The Virtues and One's Own Virtue
• The Body and the Spirit
• War and Warriors
• The Solitary Person
• Values and Valuation
• The State and Superfluous People

Over 450 Videos in the Philosophy Core Concept Series

Since the beginning of the semester, I have been quite simply swamped with work!  In addition to teaching 5 different courses at 4 different academic institutions, I had my usual duties as editor of Stoicism Today - including Stoicon 2018 and Stoic Week - as well as a heavy load of speaking, meetings with clients, and consulting work.  I did manage to get some video production in there as well.

One type of video I've been routinely creating are "Philosophy Core Concepts".  These are short (10-25 minute) discussions of key ideas, arguments, or distinctions made by major philosophical thinkers.  They span the gamut from ancient philosophy down to 20th century thinkers (check out the list below).  I've produced quite a few of these.  Today, I took a look at the playlist, to see how many I'd done so far.

Over 450!  That's the number of the ones I've publicly released (my Patreon supporters get an early look at these videos before the general public does).  In fact, we hit number 451 today with the latest release, discussing the Epicurean distinction between mental and bodily pleasures.  So I thought I'd step back a bit, reflect, and write a few things about that video series (which I think will likely pass 500 videos early next year!)

Podcasting Has Begun!

Yesterday, I uploaded and released the first three files for my new podcast.  Three short lectures on key ideas in Plato's text, The Apology!  I've created a Soundcloud site, which you can access by clicking here.  You can also go to the Sadler's Sound Files blog where I'll be posting podcast episodes individually and most news about the podcast from this point on.

For years, viewers, subscribers, supporters, and other fans have been asking me if I would convert my massive and growing stock of online philosophy lecture videos into mp3 files.

There definitely are some advantages to doing so.  Many people listen to, as well as watch, my philosophy lectures and presentations.  But streaming video requires a lot more data than downloading a podcast.  So that's one good reason.  Another is that it affords me the chance to edit and improve the sound quality of many of the recordings.

It requires that I carve out additional time from my busy schedule, though, so for a long time that held me back.  What has made it possible now is reaching a sufficient level of support through crowdfunding (if you're interested in supporting my work, check out my Patreon site).  That effectively underwrites the time and work needed to produce the sound files.

I'm starting for the moment with converting videos on Plato into podcast lectures.  In the coming months you can expect to see episodes on six other main thinkers, three from ancient philosophy - Aristotle, Cicero, and Epictetus - and three from the Existentialist movement - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.  I'm hoping to get 10-15 podcast episodes done per month, though greater support will help me work through the videos more quickly, and perhaps eventually get caught up with the videos

The People Have Spoken - Podcasts Start With Plato!

As I start writing this, we are about to hit a major milestone on Patreon.  Thanks to several recent generous pledges, and several longstanding supporters increasing their level of support, we are right on the threshold of another goal!  And once we pass it, I have committed to doing something major.

For several years, viewers, subscribers, followers, and other fans of my main YouTube channel have been asking me to convert those videos into podcast episodes that they could listen to on the go.  I'd say at this point, I've been asked about that well over 1,000 times.  Doing that sort of work takes a good bit of time, so I committed to starting that process once I reach a sufficient level of crowdfunding support on Patreon.  And now we're almost there! (if you'd like to get us over the line, here's where you can become a supporter).

I don't do a lot of "market research" when it comes to my various projects.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I do almost none.  I'm much more about studying and presenting the material in ways that are faithful to the texts and thinkers, rigorous but also accessible to the world-wide audience of people interested in philosophy.  Before starting up the podcast, though, I thought it might be prudent to get some input about what material I should start with,  So I ran a poll, and we've already got some useful results.

Nine Answers to Common Questions About Stoicism

A few months back, I started a new video series - Answers to Common Questions - to address some of the recurring questions, puzzles, and confusions I see coming up in various settings.  Sometimes they are posted as comments on my YouTube videos, during my online events, or in various social media (I'm on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn regularly).  Sometimes they're coming up in various philosophy-related forums or in sites like Quora.

After giving it a lot of thought, I decided that it might be useful to create videos as responses.  It's an engaging medium, to start with, and given my current digital presence, they would probably reach quite a few people.  And, having answers in easily linked-to video forms would allow me to provide some useful information with just a minimum of writing, copying, and pasting.

Since Stoicism is of major interest in the present and will likely continue as such in the foreseeable future, the questions and confusions that come up about that struck me as a good place to begin. There are a number of other Stoicism-related topics that I'll be shooting these videos about in the coming months, but it won't be Stoicism all the time for good - there are a lot of other common questions on a host of other philosophical thinkers and topics I'm hoping to get to down the line!

Here are the videos I have produced up to this point:

• Which Book Should I Read First?
• Why Do The Stoics Only Recognize Four Virtues?
• How Does Stoicism Define Happiness?
• Does Being a Stoic Mean I Can't Have Empathy?
• Is The Philosophy of Stoicism Self Centered?
• Is Ego/Self To Be Embraced or Overcome In Modern Stoicism?
• Does Stoicism Believe in God?
• Doesn't Nietzsche Prove the Stoics Wrong About Nature?
• I'm Practicing Stoicism. Why Am I Still Angry?

So, if those are questions on your mind - or if reading those titles piques your curiosity - click on those links and see if the answers sort matters out for you. As I mentioned, I'll be shooting a lot more of these, both about Stoicism and about other topics in philosophy as well. 

If you'd like to support the work that I put in on these and my other videos, consider becoming a Patreon supporter!

Eight Recent Appearances

Since posting back in September about "A Baker's Dozen of Interviews and Guest Appearances", I've continued to do a number of other appearances on podcasts and radio shows.  These might be of interest to some of my readers, subscribers, followers, and fans. 

So it's about time for another round-up of the more recent  podcast and show appearances since then - what I've been doing over the last five months.  So, here they are - the shows, a brief description of what topics we talked about, and where you can watch or listen to each of them:


The Death Hangout (hosted by Olivier Lavor and Keith Clarke) - what legacy means to us, death and the soul, Stoic views on legacy and life, Martin Heidegger and "being towards death", emotional attitudes towards death – listen here

Zero Books Podcast (hosted by Doug Lain) - my backstory, the Half Hour Hegel project, doing philosophy on YouTube, some Marx, some Nietzsche, modern Stoicism, and the notion of eclecticism – listen here

Image For Hire Radio Show (hosted by The Skrauss on Riverwest Radio) - my work as a “freelance philosopher”, Plato’s allegory of the cave, what philosophical counseling does, what virtue ethics and images have to do with each other, and even some H.P. Lovecraft – listen here

Paul Kovalski Podcast (hosted by Paul Kovalski) - transition from being a traditional academic to a practical philosopher and entrepreneur, lessons I’ve learned, fears and obstacles entrepreneurs encounter, and how Stoic philosophy and other virtue ethics can be useful – listen here

The Panpsycast (hosted by Jack Symes and Olly Marley) - Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, key themes of his works, the death of God and transvaluation of values, and his relevance for the present – listen to the first part here and the second part here

The Stoic Creative (hosted by Scott Perry) - a roundtable discussion on Stoicism and creativity, featuring myself, Chris Gill, Debbie Joffe-Ellis, and others – you can watch or listen here

The Stoic Body Podcast (hosted by Philip Ghezelbash) -  discussing Stoic philosophy as applied to health, veering off into discussion of food, animal rights, and fasting – watch or listen here

Stoic Mettle Podcast: hosted by Scott Hebert, discussing Stoicon and Stoic Week, the growth of modern Stoicism, prospects for Stoic philosophy in the present – you can listen here

If you've got a podcast, video channel, show or site and you'd like to bring me on, reach out to me, and we'll get a conversation going!

November Philosophy Pop-Up Sessions

Since August, I've been engaging in a new sort of interaction with my various subscribers, fans, and followers - Philosophy Pop-Up sessions.  These are streaming sessions, hosted monthly on YouTube Live and Facebook Live.  Participants can watch or listen, and have the chance in real time to ask questions or leave comments, to which I do my best to respond.

I schedule each of these for one hour, but they sometimes go a bit longer.  Originally, the goal was to make them a good bit shorter - closer to 30 minutes in time - but as it turns out, people didn't want the sessions to end as quickly as intended!

The November sessions were devoted to a thinker I talked about quite a bit this month - Friedrich Nietzsche - and specifically to the "three noble responses to the problem of life" laid out in his book The Birth of Tragedy.  If you missed them, here they are:

As always, these sessions are underwritten by the generous support of my Patreon backers.  If you'd like to learn more, or to start supporting the work I do making philosophy accessible world wide, go to my Patreon page!

Seven Videos on Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lying In An Extra-Moral Sense"

I'm slowly making good on some of the video commitments I made to my Patreon supporters.  At the start of the summer, I polled them to find out which thinkers they most wanted me to focus on, and the three winners were Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

First, I created a number of Kant core concept videos, finishing up the sequence I started years back on his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.  Then I shifted focus to Heidegger, and shot an entire sequence of videos on his key essay "What Is Metaphysics?" (available here).  Then I started thinking about what text I wanted to tackle for Nietzsche.

I decided on his own short essay, "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense," (available here) since that also introduces some main ideas of his in a fairly straightforward - though for many readers still challenging - manner, and I created a series of seven short videos covering that work.

Here they are:

• Dissimulation and the Human Intellect
• The Invention of Truth and Lying
• What Is Truth?
• Metaphor, Language, and Concepts
• Rationality, Abstraction, and Anthropomorphism
• Idealism, Natural Law, and Science
• Myth, Art, Metaphor, and Intuition

I hope you find them useful for approaching this major philosopher. Love him, hate him, agree or disagree - Nietzsche is definitely someone worth reading and thinking about! 

What's next when it comes to my work of producing these core concept videos?  Any more Nietzsche coming?  Right now, I'm shooting new videos on John Stuart Mill, Cicero, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Aquinas for the Ethics classes I'm teaching this semester.  But I'm hoping to get back to Nietzsche soon - and to start creating new core concept videos, most likely on his Birth of Tragedy.

The Philosophy Fans Have Spoken!

It is an astounding number, but at this point, I have created over 300 short Philosophy Core Concept videos - check out the playlist here - covering a pretty extensive range of philosophers.

Looking to expand the figures that I included in the series, I decided to get some input from my viewers, subscribers, and social media followers.  So I created a poll.  And the results were quite interesting.

The philosophy fans have spoken!  It looks like this summer - in addition to the other video production I have planned - I'll be shooting, editing, and releasing a lot of new video content on three main thinkers, all of them German:  Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche.  (By the way, I've also created a Patreon page to support that time-intensive video production work)

10 Famous Lines By Philosophers You Should Definitely Read

Every once in a while, a philosopher comes up with a great line, a saying that for one reason or another "sticks", so well that many - even most - of the people who employ the saying couldn't tell you which work the quip came from.  Why is that?  In most cases, it is because they haven't read that philosopher's work, or perhaps anything by that philosopher.  They just know - or rather, think they know - that the philosopher said it.  And it sounds cool, or apropos, or at least relevant.

After seeing yet one more person start out a post ostensibly focused on gratitude by citing Cicero - who did in fact say that gratitude is the "parent of the other virtues" - a post that made it clear that the author either had never read Cicero, or if she did, had managed to forget everything that she had read, I decided it was time, rather than to silently curse the intellectual darkness again, to shed a bit of light.

I put out a challenge in three of the social media platforms I use - Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Here it is: What quotations of philosophers, in your view, best meet these four criteria:

1) the passage is posted online fairly often
2) the passage was actually said somewhere by that philosopher
3) almost none of the the people posting the quote would be able to say what work it comes from
4) most of the people posting the quote have not read more than a bit of that philosopher's actual work

Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy: Euripides and Socrates

A few weeks ago, spurred to do a bit of writing about Friedrich Nietzsche's early work -- The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music -- while rereading and readying myself for producing new portions of an ongoing video series on Existentialism (lectures one, two, and three on the Birth of Tragedy currently available), I started exploring two of the central concepts of that work -- the Apollonian and the Dionysiac.  I've often been struck by how often readers have reduced that book to merely those two concepts -- or, more accurately, those two responses to the problem of existence.

There is, however much more to The Birth of Tragedy than just the distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysiac.  First off, while both of these are primordial -- the Dionysiac arguably more so (at least originally) -- they also do develop, articulate themselves, assume new forms historically, through the processes of culture.  This takes on particular importance in the case of the Greeks, in whose culture these two express themselves particularly through the arts -- epic and lyric poetry, music, dance, sculpture, and drama.  The unstable but productive fusion of Dionysiac and Apollonian in tragedy -- the masterworks of Aeschylus and Sophocles -- is, in Nietzsche view, something novel, unique, and needed.  But, there is yet another response -- one which in the story he tells, supplants both the other two -- one which he identifies first with Euripides, but which he consistently terms the "Socratic-Alexandrian".

Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy: Apollo and Dionysus

At one time, quite long ago -- A period including the end of my undergraduate studies, the early years of my graduate studies, and the interval between, when I worked a series of low-paying jobs, studied languages, and trained obsessively -- I would unapologetically identify myself as a Nietzschean.  That wasn't the hardest thing to do, of course, not least because taking that kind of stance grants a person permission to indulge their appetites and desires, rancor and bitterness, propensities to compete and confabulate, to put others down, to lie to oneself and other under the guise of a higher, more brutal, cleaner honesty.  Transgression becomes, if not a duty -- for really a Nietzschean has only self-imposed duties -- a compensation, an exploratory effort, something to enjoy and to bask in.  One gets to set oneself within an elite as equally opposed to present, philistine elites as to the mass, to the ordinary, dull people -- though, really, that kind of life, for which Nietzsche's ideas and writings provide articulation, represents a certain shape of adolescence, sensitively spoiled as much as revealingly barbaric.

This explains one side of Nietzsche's perennial appeal as a philosopher, an incorporation of his writings into one's lifestyle that I know well myself, having indulged in it, and later, come to feel regret and even embarrassment over.  Later, as I studied him more carefully, I came to see that there's so much more of value, depth, attractiveness, rigor to the thought of the twilight philosopher -- actually, a thinker, with whom I disagree on many points, not usually head on, but at tangents, about overall direction, interpretation.  I've recently started offering a sequence of video lectures exploring Existentialism.  Among other things, this has had me closely rereading his early great masterpiece, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (video lectures one, two, and three available here), a work which I've often taught to students and discussed with colleagues.  I've noticed a tendency in readers, on its first few reads, to take a suggestive, seemingly correct, first path, following which cuts one off from seeing the entirety of what's going on in that early book of Nietzsche.