The Michael Kuhlman Show

Nobody reads anymore. But lucky for you I like to read to people.

This is Part 3 of my deep dive into The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first book and one of the strangest things he ever wrote. If you have ever wondered why a young classics professor got run out of his field for a book about Greek theater, this is where it gets good.

We are talking Apollo and Dionysus. Order and chaos. Beauty and suffering. The two forces Nietzsche thought every great art and every great life is built on.

You...

Don't Fit In

Enjoy this one, check out the substack or other podcasts thanks

95% of creative effort goes nowhere. I'm looking for that 5%.

check out the youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelKuhlman

check out the substack articles: https://substack.com/@michaelkuhlman

Nobody reads anymore. But lucky for you I like to read to people.

This is Part II of my Birth of Tragedy essay series on Substack. If you'd rather sit back and listen than read the essay on your phone, this one is for you.

A few lines from the piece:

"Nietzsche was actually a pretty decent guy in real life. But in his writing he constantly plays the heel."

"First you hate him, then you laugh at him, then his work starts to click and you see his genius."

Nobody reads anymore. But lucky for you I like to read to people.

This is Part I of my Substack essay series on Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy - the book that quietly rewires how you see art, suffering, and the whole Western tradition. We start at the beginning. Why this book matters. Why Nietzsche came out swinging at twenty-something years old. And why two Greek gods you thought you understood are about to get a lot stranger.

If you've ever felt like modern life is missing depth, this book explains why.

Read...

Nobody reads anymore. But lucky for you I like to read to people.

This is it - the finale. We close out Thus Spoke Zarathustra by walking through the last stretch of Part Four: the Last Supper with the Higher Men, the Ass Festival, the Drunken Song, and finally The Sign - the morning, the lion at the cave, and the going-under that's been coming since the Prologue.

I read and we sit with what Nietzsche actually wrote - not the slogans, not the memes, not the bumper-sticker version.

Sixteen episodes. One book...

Nobody reads anymore. But lucky for you I like to read to people.

Episode 15 takes us into one of the strangest and most beautiful moments in the entire book - and then drops us straight into the chaos that follows.

We start with "At Noon" - Zarathustra lies down under an old gnarled tree, and time stops. The world becomes perfect for an instant. He tastes eternity not as an afterlife or a doctrine, but as the depth of this moment, fully inhabited. This is Nietzsche's version of mystical experience translated into his own vocabulary...

Zarathustra encounters the most disturbing figure in his journey, the Ugliest Man, who's done the darkest of deeds. What drove him to this ultimate act? And why does Zarathustra respond not with horror, but with an overwhelming wave of pity, the very emotion he has warned against throughout the entire book?

In this episode, we explore one of Nietzsche's most psychologically dense chapters with help from Jung's seminar analysis. The Ugliest Man represents something we all carry: the shadow so unbearable that it would rather destroy the witness than be seen.

But there's a deeper...

Zarathustra descends one final time — not to the masses, but to the broken, the brilliant, and the almost-great. Part Four opens as a dark comedy of failed seekers, and Zarathustra must confront his most dangerous temptation yet: pity.

In this episode, we cover the opening chapters of Part Four:

Part Three reaches its climax — and Zarathustra finally says Yes.

In this episode, we cover the final chapters of Part Three: The Other Dancing Song and The Seven Seals.

What we break down:

Many scholars consider this the true...

In Episode 11 of Thus Spoke Zara, we tackle two of the heaviest and most ambitious chapters in all of Thus Spoke Zarathustra — "The Spirit of Gravity" and "Old and New Tablets."

These chapters are Zarathustra at his most confrontational and his most visionary. The Spirit of Gravity is the great enemy — the force that tells you life is heavy, meaning is fixed, and your values were decided for you before you were born. Zarathustra calls this the devil, the great drag on the human spirit, and he has one answer: learn to laugh.

Then in "Old...

Zarathustra returns to solitude — and Nietzsche puts sex, power, and selfishness on trial.

In "On Passing By," Zarathustra encounters his own ape — a crude imitator who spits his words back without understanding them. Rage without creation is just noise.

"On Apostates" targets the disillusioned — those who tasted freedom and crawled back to faith because they couldn't handle the weight.

"The Return Home" brings Zarathustra back to his cave. Solitude speaks to him like an old friend. But this isn't retreat — it's preparation.

"On the Three Evils" is the payoff. Nietzsche takes the thre...

Part Three of Thus Spoke Zarathustra opens and the register changes. Zarathustra is alone again — and the book becomes darker, stranger, and more personal.

We begin with "Before Sunrise," where Zarathustra addresses the open sky in one of Nietzsche's most beautiful passages — a vision of existence that needs no justification, no creator, no purpose. Then we move into "On the Virtue That Makes Small," where Zarathustra confronts a world that hasn't become wicked but something worse: small. Finally, "Upon the Mount of Olives" gives us Zarathustra the trickster — laughing where Christ wept, wearing masks, and hiding his deepes...

In Episode 8 of Thus Spoke Zara, we take on four of the most powerful chapters in Part Two of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra — "The Night Song," "On Redemption," "On Manly Prudence," and "The Stillest Hour."

"The Night Song" is Zarathustra at his most vulnerable — a giver who aches for darkness, a light that longs for night. What does it mean to overflow and never be emptied? We unpack the paradox of creative abundance and the deep loneliness that comes with it.

In "On Redemption," Nietzsche tackles one of his most essential ideas — the will's relationship to tim...

The Night Song, Self-Overcoming, and the Sublime | Thus Spoke Ep. 7 (Zarathustra Part 2)

This is Nietzsche at his most raw.

In Episode 7, we hit a stretch of Thus Spoke Zarathustra that most commentators rush past — and it's arguably the emotional heart of the entire book. These five chapters take Zarathustra from loneliness into grief, from grief into confrontation with power itself, and from power into a question he can't quite answer: what comes after strength?

"The Night Song" is Nietzsche's most personal chapter — a lament from a man overflowing with light who cannot receive. Zara...

Zarathustra is back — and he's done being polite.

In Episode 6, we open Part Two of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Nietzsche shifts gears. The prophet has returned from solitude and found his teachings distorted, his followers turned into parrots. What follows is some of the most emotionally charged and philosophically dense writing in the entire book.

We cover:

Episode 5 closes out Part 1 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra — and Nietzsche saves his heaviest punches for the finale.

We walk through the final chapters of Zarathustra's first descent, where the stakes shift from critique to command. These aren't just teachings anymore — they're ultimatums. Nietzsche is drawing a line between the life you're living and the one you owe yourself.

We cover:

→ On the Way of the Creator — The loneliest chapter in the book. What it actually costs to break away from the herd and become a lawgiver unto yourself.

→ On the Adder's Bite — Zar...

In Episode 4, we tear into some of Zarathustra's most provocative teachings — and the ones most people get wrong.

Nietzsche isn't celebrating battlefield carnage in "On War and Warriors" — he's redefining what it means to fight for something worth dying for. Your enemy should make you better, not bitter. And your friend? Zarathustra says most of what we call friendship is just mutual weakness dressed up as loyalty.

We cover:

Thus Spake | Episode 3 — The Pale Criminal, The Tree on the Mountainside, and On Sleep (Part 1 continued)

Zarathustra turns his gaze on guilt, loneliness, and the strange relationship between virtue and sleep — and none of them survive the examination intact.

In "On the Pale Criminal," Nietzsche dismantles how we think about crime, punishment, and the human capacity for self-deception. The criminal doesn't horrify Zarathustra — what horrifies him is the way the criminal lies to himself about why he acted. The deed was one thing. The story he told afterward was the real crime.

In "On the...

Episode 2 — The Last Man, the Tightrope Walker, and the Weight of Going Down Thus Spake Zarathustra | Reading, Commentary & Analysis

Zarathustra has descended from his mountain. He has offered mankind his greatest gift — and they laughed.

In Episode 2, we continue our close reading of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, moving deeper into the Prologue as Zarathustra confronts the crowd in the marketplace, delivers his vision of the Übermensch, and watches the people recoil — choosing comfort, safety, and the Last Man over the terrifying invitation to become.

We unpack what Nietzsche actually means by the Last Man — a...

Episode 1 – Who Was Nietzsche, and Why Does Zarathustra Matter?

Welcome to the first episode of Thus Spake Zarathustra — a podcast dedicated to reading, unpacking, and living inside one of the most dangerous and electrifying books ever written.

In this debut episode, I lay the groundwork for everything to come. We start with the man himself: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the German philosopher who set 19th-century thought on fire and whose ideas — the Will to Power, the Übermensch, the Death of God, Eternal Recurrence — still echo through philosophy, psychology, and culture today. We talk about who he was, what drove...

This is me reading my article on Substack about Phaedo by Plato. It's about death and how to prepare for dying and it's a great dialogue. Enjoy

You can follow me on Substack here:

https://michaelkuhlman.substack.com/p/purge-your-soul-enjoy-your-death

Analyzing the third dialogue called Crito by Plato. Here Socrates discusses why an individual should live the good life and what that means. Enjoy.

This is an analysis I wrote about Plato's Apology - the one where Socrates stands on trial and defends his life of philosophy.

This was a podcast recorded after writing and reading an article I wrote on Substack about Euthyphro by Plato. Read that article here: https://michaelkuhlman.substack.com/p/euthyphro-by-plato-an-analysis

video version found on Youtube:

This is audio from a video I made after writing the article about Euthyphro. I give more thoughts and connect the ideas to why we should care in 2026. If you want more content like this, check out the youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelKuhlman

and read the articles here: https://michaelkuhlman.substack.com/p/euthyphro-by-plato-an-analysis?r=1v11kx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Hello and welcome to the Michael Kuhlman Cast. This first episode is a reading from an article published about Plato and his first dialogue Euthyphro about piety and rational skepticim. Please subscribe if you enjoyed the content