Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy has been a big influence in my life.

If you listen to the show, you already know that.

But the guy is full of contradictions.

And he's one of those rare philosophers who's managed to cross over into popular culture.

Is that Nietzsche?

You don't speak because of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Far out.

That's from Little Miss Sunshine, an Oscar-winning 2006 movie.

For a 19th century German philosopher, that's pretty mainstream.

And yet, when it comes to his actual philosophy,

his ideas are hard to pin down. He wrote in many different voices and in many different

and often contradictory ways. Nietzsche challenged readers to live heroically, to transcend the banalities of a sick,

decadent culture.

The irony, of course, is that he himself was very sick.

And near the end of his life, while staying in Italy, he suffered a full mental breakdown.

He never recovered.

The contradictions pile up in Nietzsche's work too.

In books like Beyond Good and Evil, he tosses away most of traditional morality.

But he's also trying to warn us about why this is such a catastrophe for civilization.

That has something to do with what he called the death of God.

And trust me, we'll get into that later.

He's notorious for the concept of the Ubrimensch or Superman.

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