Hotel Bar Sessions

Violence

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0400

Violence is everywhere right now... or is it?

When you press people to define "violence," you'll often find that their grasp on the concept is slippery at best. We think we know what it means, but that certainty tends to evaporate the moment someone asks whether a slur counts as violence, or a system that denies you healthcare until you die counts as violence, or refusing to recognize someone's existence does. A lot of our most heated disagreements about violence happen prior to the moral disagreements we may have which actions count as violent. Our core disagreements are conceptual ones, and we're usually having them without realizing it.

What, if anything, ties physical force to structural oppression? Is there a definition of violence capacious enough to hold both together without becoming so broad it is evacuated of meaning altogether? When the word "violence" gets attached to something, what exactly are we expecting people to do — morally and politically?

In this episode, the HBS co-hosts work through these questions with many disagreements (but no fisticuffs!) along the way. They take up Hegel's argument that recognition is a life-or-death struggle, and Hannah Arendt's claim that violence is always a symptom of political failure. They look at the way entertainment media trains us to see violence as cleaner and more effective than it ever actually is, and how actions that involve "bodily harm" might constitute the easiest, but least satisfying, definition of violence. Leigh reflects on her year directing the M.K. Gandhi Institute Institute for Nonviolence and why she's no longer the pacifist she was then. Jen, as past President of Concerned Philosophers for Peace, draws a sharp line between caring about peace and believing violence is never warranted. Meanwhile, Bob wonders why Americans are not more violently opposed to their lack of basic social securities, like healthcare.

Grab a drink and join us as we slow the word "violence" down and look at what it actually means, and what it does an does not accomplish in our language and lives... all from the relatively safe place of the hotel bar!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/violence

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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

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Possible Worlds

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:05:00 -0400

Philosophy has always been drawn to the question of what's possible, what could be, what might have been, and what we might yet become. In a political moment when the distance between the world as it is and the world as we want it to be feels especially stark, the tools philosophers use to navigate that gap — thought experiments, counterfactuals, ideal theory, and fiction — have never felt more urgent or more contested. Whether we're arguing about moral responsibility, political justice, or the meaning of a science fiction novel, we're constantly invoking worlds that don't (yet, or never did) exist. But how well do those imaginary worlds actually serve us?

When is a simplified, stripped-down scenario a useful device for isolating what we really believe, and when does it smuggle in the assumptions we already had? If we ask what the world would look like had one historical event gone differently, are we doing philosophy or just indulging in fantasy causality? When we imagine an ideal world from scratch, does it illuminate what justice requires, or does the very act of abstraction guarantee that we'll leave out what matters most?

In this episode, Leigh, Jen, and Bob take up possible worlds as a question about philosophical methodology itself. What are philosophers actually doing when they reach for thought experiments, counterfactuals, ideal theory, and fictional worlds? And are those tools fit for the work we ask of them?

Grab a drink and join us as we test the limits of philosophical imagination — and ask whether the worlds we invent help us see this one more clearly, or let us off the hook too easily.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/possible-worlds

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Strange Bedfellows: Adorno and Strauss (with Jeffrey Bernstein)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:13:30 -0400

The word "fascism" gets thrown around a lot these days, sometimes so freely that it starts to lose its edge. But what would it actually mean to develop a philosophy of anti-fascism, a sustained, rigorous intellectual framework for understanding how fascism takes hold and what might inoculate us against it? That question feels newly urgent in a political moment when the ideological infrastructure of authoritarianism is being actively rebuilt, and when the thinkers who laid the groundwork for that infrastructure — including, notoriously, Leo Strauss — are being drafted into its service.

Can a philosopher be anti-fascist in method and intention and still have their ideas weaponized by fascists? Is writing that resists easy comprehension — writing that forces its readers to slow down, struggle, and think — a form of resistance or a form of elitism? And is there a meaningful difference between "thinking for yourself" and "doing your own research," or has that distinction collapsed entirely in the age of the meme and the algorithm?

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Jeffrey A. Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair at the College of the Holy Cross, whose forthcoming book Adorno and Strauss: An Anti-Fascist Philosophy (SUNY Press) makes the provocative case that these two thinkers — usually filed under opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum — are surprisingly complementary resources for building a philosophical resistance to fascism. Jeff identifies four key areas of convergence: their shared use of Jewish thought as a resource for critiquing political authority; their resistance to what he calls "universal communicability" and the fascist reduction of thought to soundbites and slogans; their critique of the primacy of the practical; and their rejection of teleological conceptions of history. What emerges is a picture of anti-fascism that is less about boots on the ground than about rebuilding the capacity to think in a culture that is doing everything it can to prevent that.

Grab a drink and join us as we sit down with two of philosophy's strangest bedfellows — and discover that the most unexpected intellectual partnerships sometimes make for the most urgent conversations.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/strange-bedfellows

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Philosophy on Drugs (with Justin Smith-Ruiu)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 05:00:00 -0400

We are living through a peculiar moment in the long, complicated history of humans and mind-altering substances. After decades of prohibition and stigma, psychedelics have staged a remarkable comeback — not just in underground culture, but in university laboratories, clinical trials, and mainstream news. Researchers are exploring psilocybin and MDMA as treatments for depression and PTSD, and a growing number of philosophers are asking whether the altered states these substances produce might tell us something important about the nature of consciousness, reality, and the self. It turns out that drugs have always been philosophically interesting — but we haven’t always been willing to admit it.

What does it mean to be “sober,” and why has Western philosophy treated sobriety as a prerequisite for truth? If a drug dissolves your sense of self, is there still a philosopher in there doing philosophy — or has philosophy left the building? Is the category of “drug” even coherent, or is it an artifact of colonial trade routes, the war on drugs, and cultural anxieties that have very little to do with what’s actually happening in your brain?

In this episode, we sit down with Justin Smith-Ruiu, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Université Paris Cité, whose new book On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality takes exactly these questions seriously. Drawing on the history of philosophy, his own experiences, and a genuinely eclectic range of intellectual sources, Smith-Ruiu makes the case that the mainstream philosophical tradition has been too quick to sweep altered states of consciousness under the rug — and that taking them seriously might force us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mind, knowledge, and reality.

Grab a drink and join us as we tune in, turn on, and ask what it means to do philosophy with your whole person.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/drugs

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Against the Future (with Simon Critchley)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:38:24 -0500

Philosophers have had many conceptions of the future–metaphysical, eschatological, ontotheological, dialectical, fatalistic, idealist, materialist, and more–and these in turn have been central to discussions of free will and determinism, freedom and constraint, hope and despair. But our guest Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School, is against all of them!

For him, what emerges from Heidegger’s thinking of ecstatic temporality is a radical focus on our historicity, our having-been-ness to inform and improve the present, and this "gritty pessimistic realism” leads him to choose Thucydides over Plato: nothing is ever certain, except for the past, but even the past is a site of contestation and hence not a strong basis on which to make predictions about what is yet to come. Hope for a future is misplaced; instead we must have courage.

So why be “against the future”? Listen in as Simon and the gang discuss the dangers and disasters–ideological, institutional, and philosophical–of investing too much in the idea of the future, and then, after listening to us ramble on about–and against–the future, tell us what you think. Send us your thoughts!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/future

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Family "No Contact" (with Kiran Bhardwaj)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 13:17:22 -0500

There have been many reports in the last several years of a growing trend of estranged families in the United States. For those who make the decision to go "no contact" (or "low contact") with their family members, the response from non-family members can be a mixed bag of support and judgment... often independent of the person's reasons for making that choice.

What’s going on with the contemporary phenomenon of people going low or no contact with their family members? Is such a decision morally acceptable, or is forgiveness and relationship maintenance something we owe to others, but especially our family? What does a "good" family look like? And why do we so often find ourselves in the position of hoping for the best without any guarantees that things will turn out well?

In this episode, we investigate the ways in which our families shape our identities and how the stories we tell about family relationships often determine how we see and understand others. As you’ll notice throughout the episode, it turns out that nothing gets people going like family! We're joined by Dr. Kiran Bhardwaj, whose work centers on these complex ethical issues and who walks us through some philosophical distinctions that may help in navigating the murky waters of distressed family relations.

Grab a drink and join us as we attempt to think through, rather than simply react to, the long and tangled ties of family.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/family

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Food (with Bob Valgenti)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:34:19 -0500

This week, our co-hosts are joined at the bar by Dr. Robert T. Valgenti, philosopher and professor at the Culinary Institute of America to talk about food, the “gastronomic event,” the ethics and politics of cooking and eating, and what it means to be human.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/food
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Anonymity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Anonymity is usually sold as a kind of freedom: the ability to speak without fear, to move through public space without being tracked, to test ideas and identities without immediate consequences. In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, the co-hosts pull up stools to ask whether anonymity actually liberates—or whether it more often dissolves responsibility. Starting with Plato’s Ring of Gyges (and the old moral stress test, what would you do if no one could see you?), the conversation traces a familiar worry: that anonymity invites cruelty, petty opportunism, and moral self-deception, while publicity and accountability form part of the “social glue” that keeps a democratic community from fraying.

But the episode refuses the easy conclusion that anonymity is always corrupting. The hosts distinguish anonymity as a shield for the powerless—whistleblowers, survivors, precarious workers, and people exploring vulnerable dimensions of identity—from anonymity as impunity for the powerful. And then the stakes sharpen: when state agents mask themselves, anonymity stops being a personal protection and becomes a political weapon—an engineered unaccountability that makes contestation nearly impossible and turns “rule of law” into theater. The discussion returns again and again to the unequal distribution of exposure: who is forced to be legible, who gets to disappear, and how institutions (and now AI systems) can hide decision-making behind corporate names, bureaucratic opacity, and algorithmic excuses.

The episode closes by arguing for nuance without moral mush. One can oppose masked, unidentifiable state power while still defending privacy and the selective necessity of anonymity for those at risk.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/anonymity
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

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★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Catastrophic Philosophy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:30:02 -0500

Catastrophe usually sounds like a synonym for disaster—but in this episode, it’s treated as a philosophical concept: a “downturn” that scrambles a world’s legibility and forces a basic question—what can still be believed now? Starting from Greek tragedy (where catastrophe names a plot’s turning point), the conversation traces how ruptures—ancient, modern, natural, political—expose finitude and test the limits (and complicities) of inherited frameworks of reason.

From there, the episode pivots into a philosophy of catastrophe: the work of making horrors intelligible by clarifying the structures that made them possible, while also asking what catastrophe demands ethically—what must never happen again, and what that imperative requires of living, thinking, and teaching after rupture.

Finally, the episode debates philosophy as catastrophe: whether certain ideas don’t merely respond to downturns but actively produce them by breaking prior worlds of sense—recasting what counts as knowledge, power, nature, and the human. The conversation closes with an unsettling contemporary candidate: LLM-generated “philosophy papers” as a potential wheel-smashing shift in how philosophy is produced, circulated, and evaluated.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/catastrophic-philosophy
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Intelligence(s)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0500

What do we mean when we talk about intelligence—and who, or what, gets counted as intelligent in the first place? In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, our co-hosts pull up stools at the bar to tackle the idea of intelligence(s) as a plural, contested, and deeply political concept.

Starting from a working definition of intelligence as the capacity to navigate a domain toward ends, the conversation quickly fans out: human intelligence, non-human animal intelligence, machine intelligence, and even the question of whether rivers, mountains, or viruses might exhibit their own forms of intelligent “fit.” Our co-hosts wrestle with familiar philosophical fault lines—rationality versus embodiment, instinct versus understanding, adaptation versus explanation—while keeping a sharp eye on the troubling history of intelligence as a ranking device tied to exclusion, hierarchy, and power.

Drawing on phenomenology, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, AI ethics, and everyday examples ranging from crows to chatbots, the episode asks what’s really at stake when we measure, compare, or deny intelligence. Is intelligence best understood as a single scale, or as an ecology of overlapping capacities shaped by bodies, environments, and worlds? And if machines are already intelligent in their own way, what follows for how we understand ourselves?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/intelligences

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

MINIBAR: Algorithmic Nostalgia (with Leigh M. Johnson)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Why do AI's fabricated memories "feel" so true?

Hotel Bar Sessions is currently between seasons and while our co-hosts are hard at work researching and recording next season's episodes, we don't want to leave our listeners without content! So, as we have in the past, we've given each co-host the opportunity to record a "Minibar" episode-- think of it as a shorter version of our regular conversations, only this time the co-host is stuck inside their hotel room with whatever is left in the minibar... and you are their only conversant!

AI engineers and designers are currently, and rightly, focused on minimizing the deleterious effects of AI's three primary "memory problems"-- hallucinations, catastrophic forgetting, and bias-- but in this Minibar episode, HBS co-host Leigh M. Johnson argues that none of these problems can be design-engineered away. They are, according to Johnson, baked-in and unavoidable structural elements of any language-based system reliant on an archive.

Borrowing from Jacques Derrida's work on archives, language, and memory, Johnson argues that we should think more seriously about the manner in which LLM's outputs come to us cloaked in the garb of memory. We take AI hallucinations, for example, to be true because they inspire in us a feeling of nostalgia... something that we could have remembered, perhaps even should have remembered, but didn't.

Or didn't we?

Tune in for the first episode of Season 15 on January 23, 2026!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/minibar-algorithmic-noslagia
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

MINIBAR: Uncivil Obedience (with Jen Kling)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0500

What happens when we follow the letter of the law, while refusing to cooperate with its spirit?

This week's Minibar episode features Jen Kling's reflections on civil obedience, malicious compliance, and their relation to (or separation from) violence.

Tune in for the first episode of Season 15 on January 23, 2026!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/minibar-uncivil-obedience-with-jennifer-kling
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

MINIBAR: Pain (with Bob Vallier)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0500

What can the body, in pain, teach us about the hilarity of our own finitude?

This week's Minibar episode features Bob Vallier's reflections on what he learned after a serious automobile-meets-bicycle accident in late-2024. (Bob was on the bike!). The pain, the trauma, the rehab-- and the friendships that showed up along the way to help manage it all-- turned out to be an unexpected lesson in not only what able-bodied people naively assume about their world, but also what insights can be gleaned from the sudden interruption of those naive assumptions.

Turns out, according to Bob, there's a lot more that's funny about our finitude than is immediately obvious in our pain!

Tune in for the first episode of Season 15 on January 23, 2026!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/minibar-pain
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Marilyn Frye's "Oppression"

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 06:00:00 -0500

How might "oppression" be best understood as a "cage"?

This week the HBS co-hosts take a deep dive into a true classic of feminist philosophy: Marilyn Frye’s 1983 article “Oppression.” We unpack Frye’s understanding of oppression and argue about some of Frye’s more infamous examples, such as her claim that men holding doors open for women is sexist. Is she really correct that oppression can occur in the absence of the intent to oppress? Or do people have to know what they’re doing to commit oppression, or uphold the patriarchy?

We also tackle academic philosophy’s tendency to want to clarify and draw clear lines around messy, difficult, urgent phenomena. Frye is seeking to delineate what constitutes oppression: but is that a helpful conceptual project in today’s world? Or should we be focused instead on how to get out of the cage? We worry that, given Frye’s analysis of oppression as an interlocking series of double binds, there seems to be no way out. Depressingly, if she’s right, we might still have agency, but we might always remain pressed down.

Some of us are more cynical, some of us are more hopeful, but at the end of the day, we agree: Frye set the baseline for discussion in an enduring (if a bit dated!) way for feminists and feminist theory alike.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/marilyn-fryes-oppression
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Nostalgia

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0500

"Nostalgia" is a portmanteau coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, combining the Greek nostros (homecoming) and algos (pain, ache). Hofer was a medical student, and he invented this term to describe a kind of melancholia, a somewhat depressive state–- and so, from its inception, "nostalgia" was viewed as a mood disorder. For the Romantics, it was a sentimentality for the past, the good old days of yore, combining the sadness of loss with a joy that that loss is not complete or total.

Nostalgia is also paradoxical, because the past we long for and re-member is a past that was never present. If it is a "homecoming," what one discovers in returning home, as Odysseus does, is that there is no "there" there.

That is, nostalgia is always unheimlich ("unhomely") or more accurately, "uncanny." It always involves a manner of self-deception about what was by distorting or idealizing the past. This can often have negative, even dangerous consequences: individually, socially, and politically.

More than just a "mood," nostalgia is a vector of philosophical investigation par excellence that opens onto a wide range of themes: memory, time, the hermeneutics of personal identity, and even reality itself.

So, pour a drink, and let's see what might be problematic about what we "fondly remember"!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/nostalgia
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Sophistry

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0500

Bad arguments are nothing new, so why does it appear as if they have become so pervasive in public discourse?

When we watch so-called "debate" videos with titles like "Conservative professor DESTROYS woke student" or "Liberal pundit OWNS Conservative Senator," are we actually watching a rational debate? Is anyone learning anything in these exchanges? Or, as is most likely, are we watching the performance of a well-reasoned debate, absent any concern for the truth whatsoever?

The ancient Greeks had a name for this: sophistry. It originally referred to the craft of paid expert-teaching-- especially training in rhetoric-- for success in public life. So, how did “expertise in persuasive argument” later become something more like “specious reasoning in service of persuasion rather than truth”?

Are we actually harmed-- as individuals and as a society-- by bad reasoning, logical fallacies, and the robust critical thinking that might correct them? Pour yourself a drink and join us for this conversation about the historical and current iterations of sophistry.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/sophistry
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The Enshittification of... everything?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0500

This week’s episode takes Cory Doctorow’s term “enshittification” and uses it as a diagnostic for late-capitalist life, not just for tech platforms but for democracy, higher education, and work more broadly. Our co-hosts unpack Doctorow’s three-stage model—platforms start out good to users, then pivot to serving business customers, and finally squeeze both users and customers to extract maximum value for shareholders—and argue about whether this is really a new “platform logic” or just old-school Marxist exploitation and alienation under a punchier name.

We connect this logic to the attention economy and datafication (“we are the product”), then extend it to U.S. democracy, where voters are treated as performers in a hollowed-out system, and to universities, where administrative bloat, metrics, and “students as customers” have produced an enshittified version of higher education, while students are locked-in by massive student debt. What is left for us in terms of resistance?

We look at some real options: exiting platforms, Labor organizing and union drives, “quiet quitting” and malicious compliance (“Bartleby”-esque moves), creative sabotage, and maybe even “enshittification from below.”

Our co-hosts ultimately advocate for insisting on higher standards, rather than accepting the slow boil of lowered expectations. Join us for the shit-show!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-everything/

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Quiet Resistance (with Tamara Fakhoury)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 06:13:46 -0500

Many of us think of resistance as "protest," communicative acts aimed at fighting injustice, and done with others in public. But what happens when that kind of resistance isn’t possible or safe? When showing up, or waving a sign, or making a public speech might get you jailed, or silenced, or disappeared? Is it possible to resist oppression without following Western scripts surrounding protest? This week, we are joined by guest Dr. Tamara Fakhoury (University of Minnesota) to talk about her concept of "quiet resistance."

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/quiet-resistance
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Therapy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0500

What does it mean to be “well-adjusted” in a society that might itself be profoundly unwell? And when we use therapy-speak to explain everything from bad relationships to bad politics, do we risk losing sight of moral responsibility for bad behavior altogether? Is self-knowledge even possible in a world built on historical and political denial?

Grab a drink, get comfortable, and join us for a little collective introspection — no copay required!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/therapy
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Furious Minds (with Laura K. Field)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0500

This week’s episode of Hotel Bar Sessions brings political theorist Laura K. Field (author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right) into the bar to talk about the intellectuals cranking the rhetoric up to eleven while insisting they’re just “doing Great Books.” We follow the trail from Straussian seminar rooms and conservative think tanks to Trump rallies and “no kings” protests, asking what happens when a self-styled aristocracy of the mind decides liberal democracy is played out.

Field guides us through the angry energy behind this movement, the “furious minds” driving it, and why she turns to Aeschylus’ treatment of the ancient Furies (in his Oresteia trilogy) and Abraham Lincoln’s Dred Scott speech to think about justice, vengeance, and the dangers of sacralizing politics. Along the way we talk MAGA as quasi-religion, liberalism as a way of life, why so many young men are adopting Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, and what it means to refuse the invitation to become furious.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/furrious-minds
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Imagination (with Stephen T. Asma)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0500

The imagination has regularly been subordinated to so-called "rational" or "scientific" models of thought. This week, we're joined by Stephen T. Asma (Columbia College, Chicago), who argues that imagination has deep, perhaps pre-linguistic, roots that ought to be recovered. What if we re-centered the powers of imagination, rooted in imagistic thinking and bodily gestures (like dance), instead of dismissing them as mere "fancy"?

Drawing on the esoteric tradition, Asma leads us through an interesting alt-history of human thought and, in doing so, gives us reason to pause and re-think our prejudice against imaginative thinking.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/imagination-with-stephen-asma
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Comedy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0400

This week’s episode of Hotel Bar Sessions on the topic of comedy is a gut buster, not least because one of your co-hosts pretends to be a stand-up comedian at night-- the only job for a philosopher that pays less than being an adjunct professor!

Comedy is a historically and philosophically rich topic, starting with primitive hominids drawing penises on cave walls. Our cohosts' begin with Plato, then try to anticipate what Aristotle might have said about comedy (it would not have been funny!), before turning to the formalist aesthetic of 20th C. stand-up and the banality of crowd-work. We ask: what makes something funny? Is there anything that can never be funny? What does comedy do for us, socially and politically?

Join us for drinks and a few laughs as we discuss an art form that deserves much more philosophical attention.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/episode-202-comedy
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The Hills We Die on

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0400

How do we choose the "hills" that we're willing to die on? Are we actually willing to DIE on them? If not, what would it take to convince us to climb back down the hill and compromise?

This week , our co-hosts are digging deep into the question of our "deepest commitments," trying to find where there is room for compromise, and where the lines we draw are ultimately un-crossable.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/episode-201-the-hills-we-die-on
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Meet the NEW Co-Hosts!

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 06:00:00 -0400

How do we choose the "hills" that we're willing to die on? Are we actually willing to DIE on them? If not, what would it take to convince us to climb back down the hill and compromise?

This week , our co-hosts are digging deep into the question of our "deepest commitments," trying to find where there is room for compromise, and where the lines we draw are ultimately un-crossable.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/episode-201-the-hills-we-die-on
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations on our website here!)
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Eternity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 06:00:00 -0400

What does it mean to speak of eternity? Is eternity best understood as infinite time, stretching endlessly forward and backward, or as something wholly outside of time—a changeless, timeless "eternal now"?

In this episode, the hosts wrestle with these competing conceptions, drawing on philosophy, theology, and personal experience to ask whether eternity is a thinkable concept or a regulative ideal forever beyond our grasp.

The discussion ranges from Aristotle’s view of time as the measure of motion to medieval analogies of rivers and "standing nows," from Aquinas’s theology of resurrected bodies to Nietzsche’s dark thought of the eternal return. The hosts consider whether eternity should be tied to perfection, necessity, or redemption, and explore whether such ideas have anything to offer our day-to-day human lives.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/eternity
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Crowds and Mobs

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 06:00:00 -0400

What makes the difference between a crowd singing in unison at a concert and a mob storming the gates of power?

In this episode, the hosts take listeners into the messy, unpredictable space where solidarity teeters on the edge of chaos. They unpack how naming a gathering as a “mob” is never neutral—it does political work, shaping both public perception and police response. From the joyful swell of protest chants to the frightening intensity of January 6th, this conversation asks: when does belonging tip into violence, and who gets to decide?

Whether you’ve ever felt swept up in the electricity of a rally or uneasy in the crush of a crowd, this episode challenges you to think about what is gained and lost when “we” become something more than the sum of our parts. Tune in, and you may never see gatherings—online or off—the same way again.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/crowds-and-mobs
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Free Will (with Mark Balaguer)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 06:00:00 -0400

When we make choices, are these choices free? That is, are we able to choose one thing over another, to do one thing rather than another, independent of the laws of physics, including the biology and chemistry of our bodies and brains? Or are all of our choices determined by processes that could, in theory, be traced back to deterministic causes, if only we had enough information?

Whether we are free in our willing or not, does it matter? And if so, why?

This week, we are joined by Prof. Mark Balaguer of California State University, Los Angeles to talk about not only whether we are our free, but how free we are, and why it matters that we think more seriously about what we understand "free will" to entail.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/free-will
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

How The Manosphere Killed Cool (with Robin James)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 06:00:00 -0400

This week, we're joined by scholar, editor, and philosopher, Robin James, to talk about her provocative recent essay entitled “We’re through being Cool: Tech Bros, Manosphere Influencers, Ancient Greek Masculinity, and AI,” posted at James' blog, It’s Her Factory.

When we think about "cool," we think about effortless, confident, style... but being cool has always been about more than style. It’s about resistance to authority, overcoming patriarchy, refusal to fit in. Yet, a cohort of manosphere influencers have recently been rejecting "cool" as a way of affirming their masculinity. What happens when "bro culture" asserts old forms of masculinity as new forms of mastery, which then get linked with AI hype, making "cool," well, no longer cool.

If cool is dead, maybe what comes next is something much colder.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/death-of-cool
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The "Expertise" Crisis

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Today, there seems to be an intense distrust of experts in all sorts of fields. From medical experts in the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services, to “elite intellectuals” at Universities and Colleges, no one who has expertise is beyond suspicion. We hear that we should “do our own research” and not trust what those with training and knowledge tell us.

What makes an expert legitimate? What’s the difference between the skepticism that drives science and the suspicion that denies that the experts know? How do we design institutions that are both scientifically rigorous and also democratically responsive and responsible? Let’s talk about how knowledge should be organized, disseminated, and structured so that it benefits the most in a democratic society.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-expertise-crisis
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

MINIBAR: Cancer

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Hotel Bar Sessions is on it's regular "break" between seasons, but we're offering up these "minibar" sessions from our co-hosts (individually) in in the interim

This week, listen to HBS co-host Talia Mae Bettcher talk about her recent run-in with cancer, and the long, dark night of the soul it inspired.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/cancer
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast by subscribing on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

MINIBAR: In Defense of Metaphysics

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Hotel Bar Sessions is on it's regular "break" between seasons, but we're offering up these "minibar: sessions from our co-hosts (individually) in in the interim

This week, listen to HBS co-host Rick Lee talk about what metaphysics really is, how it's often misunderstood, and why it's so important.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/in-defense-of-metaphysics
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast by subscribing on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

MINIBAR: Living in Occupied D.C.

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Hotel Bar Sessions is on it's regular "break" between seasons, but we're offering up these "minibar: sessions from our co-hosts (individually) in in the interim

This week, listen to HBS co-host Leigh M. Johnson talk about what it's like to live in "occupied" D.C. as a new resident.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/living-in-occupied-dc
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast by subscribing on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!
BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.

Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Arendt's "Banality of Evil"

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0400

This week, the HBS hosts discuss Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil.

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann was put on trial in Israel for crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish People. The philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the trial for The New Yorker. Her articles were collected in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, which had the subtitle, A Report on the Banality of Evil. What did she mean by the phrase “banality of evil?” She remarks that there is nothing monstrous, hideous, or outrageous about Eichmann that one could point to as the root of his evil actions. Rather, she argued, he was “thoughtless,” that is, he lacked the imagination to understand the position of others. In this way, the evil he brought about has its source in a kind of unremarkable everydayness. Is her notion useful to us today to think about the multiple evils we confront?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/arendts-banality-of-evil

-------------------
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★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Major Life Changes

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0400

In this week’s episode, the HBS hosts talk about positive and negative major life changes.

While change is a part of life, major changes can cause major upheavals in one’s sense of oneself in relation to the world. Indeed, they may teach us to perceive life anew. What might such changes show us, if anything, about traditional philosophical concepts such as the self, the good life, autonomy, and relatedness with others?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/major-life-changes

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Doomscrolling

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0400

We all doomscroll. Often late at night, we scroll through social media or news feeds for a “minute,” which turns into hours. We seem to be chasing bad news. What are we looking for, if anything? What do we hope to get out of it? Is this a bad habit, or are there good aspects to it? Doomscrolling just might be changing our sense of time, of responsibility, and of witnessing. So put down your phones, stop scrolling, and join us for an investigation into the practice of doomscrolling.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/doomscrolling

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

NPC Energy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Are you even playing the game?

In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, co-hosts Rick Lee, Talia Mae Bettcher, and Leigh M. Johnson dive deep into the meme-turned-metaphor of “NPC Energy,” unpacking its cultural roots and existential weight. Originally a gaming term describing non-player characters who move on rails and repeat scripted lines, “NPC Energy” has become a way to call out people who seem disengaged, overly programmed, or existentially asleep. But is it just a meme—or a diagnosis of modern life under systems that drain our agency and originality?

The HBS hosts explore the difference between NPCs and so-called “main characters,” debating whether the capacity for resistance, awareness, or choice really sets us apart from algorithmic behaviors. With references ranging from Dungeons & Dragons to the DMV, they question if we’ve all become NPCs in a system too vast to escape—and whether flashes of resistance, even subtle or psychological, are enough to reclaim player status. Talia proposes that multiple overlapping “games” may offer exits from oppressive scripts, while Rick and Leigh examine whether our insistence on agency is more therapeutic than real.

As AI develops more dynamic NPCs and human lives become increasingly scripted, the line between the player and the played grows fuzzier. Are we walking into walls of our own making? Or are we being marched along paths we didn’t choose? This thoughtful and provocative conversation calls on listeners to pause, self-interrogate, and maybe, just maybe, write their own dialogue before the simulation resets.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/npc-energy

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Public Philosophy (with Kate Manne)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Is public philosophy just academic outreach in a new outfit, or is it something else entirely? In this episode, we're joined by Kate Manne (Cornell University) to ask what happens when philosophers leave their usual habitats and try to meet people where they actually live. We talk about the push to be legible outside the profession, the risk of being dismissed inside it, and the slippery politics of trying to do both at once. What’s the value of work that doesn’t look like philosophy but still feels like it? And who gets to decide when philosophy has gone too far—or not far enough?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/public-philosophy-with-kate-manne

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Silence

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 06:00:00 -0400

What do we mean when we talk about silence? Is it the absence of sound—or something more complicated? In this episode, we dig into the many meanings of silence: as a weapon and as a refuge, as an imposed condition and a chosen strategy. We consider the roles silence plays in protest, punishment, pedagogy, intimacy, and oppression, and ask whether some kinds of silence can speak louder than words. We dig into political gag orders, awkward classroom silences, and the long pauses that say more than words ever could, asking what’s at stake when speech is withheld, delayed, or denied. Can silence be a form of resistance? Or is it always complicit?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/silence

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The War on "Radical Ideology"

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 06:00:00 -0400

This week, we're unpacking the Trump administration’s war on so-called “radical ideology”—a campaign targeting what it calls “gender ideology” and “equity ideology.” We explore what these terms are meant to signal, what work they do rhetorically and politically, and how they function to delegitimize trans and BIPOC lives. Drawing from Marxist accounts of ideology, we examine how ideology obscures injustice by presenting hierarchies as natural and dissent as dangerous. We also discuss the increasingly viral framing of ideology as something one can “catch,” especially in classrooms, and what’s really at stake when education, protest, and critical thought are labeled as threats. This episode asks: What counts as ideology? Who gets to decide? And what can philosophy offer when reality itself is under assault?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-war-on-radical-ideology

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Sovereignty

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Who or what rules the world today? And by what right?

In this episode, your favorite philosophers-on-tap—Talia Bettcher, Rick Lee, and Leigh M. Johnson—pull back the curtain on one of political theory’s most enduring (and most elusive) concepts: sovereignty.

From dusty monarchs and divine right to corporations, constitutions, and contested rights, they explore how sovereignty continues to shape the world we live in—often in ways we no longer recognize. What is sovereign power? Can it be shared? Is the individual sovereign over themselves—or is that just a liberal fantasy? And in an age of global crises—climate catastrophe, AI proliferation, corporate overreach—does the nation-state still make sense at all?

Drawing on thinkers like Jean Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Agamben, and Judith Butler, this lively and rigorous conversation confronts the paradoxes at the heart of sovereignty, including the terrifying possibility that we’ve inherited concepts that no longer serve us… if they ever did.

Grab a drink and settle in for a provocative, globe-spanning conversation on what it means to rule, obey, resist—and live together.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/sovereignty

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Interpretation

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 06:00:00 -0400

The central debate this week? Whether interpretation goes “all the way down.” Leigh stakes out a position, arguing that even the simplest acts of clarification are interpretive performances grounded in systems of meaning. Talia, donning her analytic hat, pushes back hard—insisting that certain discursive acts, like clarifications and first-person avowals of emotional states, are distinct from interpretation and must retain ethical authority, especially in politically fraught times. Rick mediates, drawing on hermeneutics and pragmatism to suggest that truth itself is an emergent product of interpretation, not a pre-existing ideal.

What results is one of the most spirited episodes yet—complete with sharp disagreements, honest reflection, and even a break to cool off before the bartender makes final call!

Whether you side with “everything is interpretation” or insist on preserving non-interpretive discursive acts, this episode will leave you questioning what it means to make sense of anything. Grab a drink and buckle up—this is the kind of philosophical brawl you don’t want to miss!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/interpretation

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Panic Now? (with Ira Allen)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 06:05:00 -0400

Is it time to panic? In this episode, we invite rhetorician Ira Allen to the bar to explore the possibility that, yes, it might be—and that panic isn’t just an irrational breakdown but a vital, even necessary, affective response to the ongoing collapse we’re all living through. Allen’s recent book Panic! Now: Tools for Humanizing in an Age of Staggered Collapse challenges the neoliberal injunction to “stay calm” and instead asks what might be made possible if we allowed ourselves to feel—and live with—our panic.

Together with co-hosts Leigh Johnson, Talia Bettcher, and Rick Lee, Allen traces how the overlapping crises of climate change, late capitalism, and colonial legacies (what he dubs the "CaCaCo assemblage") have produced a collective emotional numbness, even as our world becomes increasingly uninhabitable. The conversation ranges from the epistemic realism of panic, to historical insights on military discipline, to a speculative politics of reorganization rooted in solidarity, care, and a radical openness to the more-than-human world.

Equal parts sober analysis and mischievous wordplay (yes, CaCaCo is a "shit company"), this episode offers listeners a profound reframing of emotional collapse not as weakness, but as a portal to collective possibility. Whether you're already living in the slow burn of existential dread or just now starting to smell the smoke, you won’t want to miss this disarmingly hopeful invitation to “panic wisely.”

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/panic-now-with-ira-allen

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Private Parts

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 06:00:00 -0400

How can we talk, or think, about "private parts" in a philosophical way?

In this provocative and unexpectedly tender episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, co-hosts Leigh M. Johnson, Rick Lee, and Talia Mae Bettcher unpack the philosophical complexities of “private parts.” What starts as a playful premise quickly becomes a deep exploration of bodily privacy, modesty, and the moral and social codes that govern our most intimate physical boundaries. Drawing from cultural history, personal anecdotes, and ethical theory, the hosts ask why some body parts are marked as “private,” what makes them morally charged, and why euphemisms often stand in for anatomical accuracy in public discourse.

The conversation traverses the gendered policing of exposure, the politics of public breastfeeding, the different textures of shame and vulnerability, and the legal and ideological battles over trans access to public bathrooms. Talia introduces a key distinction between boundary transgression and boundary traversal—highlighting how intimacy requires consented crossings of private lines, while violations mark moral failure. Leigh and Rick connect these questions to broader cultural scripts of modesty and the performance of decency, noting how certain bodies—especially trans, fat, Black, and disabled bodies—are denied privacy altogether.

As the episode unfolds, the hosts reflect on how “private parts” are not just physical zones, but sites of personal storytelling, social construction, and erotic creativity. Drawing on insights from queer and trans subcultures, the trio explores the ways that intimacy, vulnerability, and even pleasure are shaped by the boundaries we erect and the ones we dare to cross. What makes a body part private, they ask, and what possibilities for connection—ethical, emotional, political—open up when we reimagine the limits of privacy itself?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/private-parts

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The Future of the University

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 May 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Can the University be saved? Should it be saved?

In this sobering and timely episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, co-hosts Leigh M. Johnson, Rick Lee, and Talia Mae Bettcher tackle the existential crisis facing higher education in the U.S. and beyond. Nothing is off limits in this conversation! From the increasing defunding of universities to their alignment with neoliberal capitalism, we're looking at the deeper values and societal roles that universities are meant to serve—and how far many institutions have strayed from that mission.

The metastasis of administrative bloat. The erosion of shared governance. The complicity of universities in sketchy politics and business. It's all on the table. Talia laments the pressure to sell philosophy as a vocational asset; Rick draws a poignant line from medieval liberal arts education to today’s hyper-quantified outcomes-based models; Leigh reminds us that universities are increasingly inaccessible, both financially and ideologically, especially for those who have been sold college as the “next step” with little clarity on its value or purpose. All three of our hosts are also here for a critique of recent state interventions in University operations, of course, particularly those tied to the elimination of DEI programs and the suppression of student protest.

In a climate where both the left and right are disillusioned with Higher Ed, we're asking the hard questions: Is the university still worth saving? And if so, what would it take to rebuild it from the inside out? From indictments of NCAA excess to calls for renewed commitment to general education and moral formation, this episode dares to imagine what universities should be—and who they're really for.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-future-of-the-university

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Cringe

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 May 2025 06:00:00 -0400

In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, your favorite philosophical trio—Leigh Johnson, Rick Lee, and Talia Bettcher—dive headfirst into the squirmy, complicated world of cringe. From wedding speeches gone wrong to tone-deaf icebreaker confessions, they unpack the peculiar affective cocktail we experience when someone's self-presentation dramatically misfires. Cringe isn’t just about secondhand embarrassment—it's a visceral, full-body response that blends aesthetic, moral, and even ontological dissonance.

Leigh kicks off the discussion by proposing that cringe moments represent aesthetic failures that are rarely just personal—they feel universal. Drawing on Kant, Foucault, Butler, and even Kierkegaard, the hosts unpack how cringe exposes the fragile choreography of our social performances. Talia and Rick help flesh out how laughter at cringe can be a nervous coping mechanism, an act of social policing, or even a weird kind of solidarity. Whether it's Succession’s Kendall Roy, real-life icebreaker disasters, or awkward philosophical conference moments, they ask what makes cringe feel so charged—and sometimes so politically consequential.

Ultimately, this episode suggests that cringe is a kind of social flare-up: a breakdown in dialogical flow, a misfire in performance, a moment when norms wobble and the audience winces. But it’s also a space for critique. Who gets to decide what's cringe and why? Is labeling something as cringe always an act of control, or can it sometimes challenge the boundaries of the “we” who makes those rules? This episode may be uncomfortable, but it’ll definitely leave you thinking—and maybe cringing at your past self just a little less harshly.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/cringe

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Tragic Temporality (with Sean Kirkland)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 May 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Sean Kirkland unpacks living on the edge of "was" and "not yet."

What if time isn’t just something we move through—but something that shapes us, wounds us, and makes us who we are? In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Leigh and Rick sit down with philosopher Sean D. Kirkland (DePaul University), author of Aristotle and Tragic Temporality, to talk about what Aristotle can teach us about the tragic structure of human life. Together, they explore how ancient philosophy—and especially tragedy—reveals the limits of control, the inevitability of error, and the complicated beauty of living in a time that’s never fully ours.

Expect reflections on fate, failure, and final causes, plus spirited detours into protest songs, pandemic philosophy students, and why Aristotle might be more existential than you think. If you’ve ever felt the weight of trying to do the right thing while knowing you might be wrong, this one’s for you.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/tragic-temporality-with-sean-kirkland

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What is Philosophy?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 May 2025 06:00:00 -0400

In this season-opening episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Rick Lee and Leigh Johnson welcome new co-host Talia Mae Bettcher, a leading voice in trans philosophy and feminist theory, to dive into the deceptively simple but persistently perplexing question: What is philosophy?

This wide-ranging conversation explores whether philosophy is defined by its methods (argument, critique, concept creation), its outcomes (or lack thereof), or the scenes and communities in which it takes place. Along the way, the hosts discuss credentialism in academia, gatekeeping in the discipline, and how philosophy might survive outside the university.

Drawing on thinkers like Graham Priest, Gilles Deleuze, Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, Kristie Dotson, and Pierre Hadot, the trio refuse to close the question. Instead, they ask: Can philosophy remain meaningful in a world that demands clear outcomes and fixed definitions? Is staying with the question itself the real task?

Whether you’re a seasoned philosopher or new to the field, this episode invites you into an ongoing, unfinished conversation—over drinks, at the bar, where the real philosophy happens.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/what-is-philosophy

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REPLAY: Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question (with Zahi Zalloua)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 May 2025 06:00:00 -0400

What can Frantz Fanon and Friedrich Nietzsche teach us about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

[NOTE: This episode originally aired on October 11, 2024.]

This week, we're joined by Zahi Zalloua (Whitman College) to discuss the final chapter of his most recent book The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury, 2024)-- entitled "Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question"-- which offers a fresh lens through which to understand the complex affects and power dynamics that continue to fuel this ongoing struggle by focusing on what 19th C. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment—a deep-seated feeling of injustice and grievance.

Zalloua unpacks how a collective sense of moral outrage on the part of Zionists has been deployed to shield Israel from criticism by accusing pro-Palestinian advocates, and the Left more generally, of a “new anti-Semitism.” He contrasts this with Palestinian ressentiment, which he frames as a legitimate response to the ongoing reality of settler-colonialism and displacement. His work both critiques the complicity of liberal Zionism in maintaining the status quo and challenges us to reframe the way we understand both Zionist and Palestinian anger.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-155-the-palestinian-question-with-zahi-zalloua

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REPLAY: Trans Philosophy (with Talia Mae Bettcher)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 10:13:10 -0400

The HBS co-hosts learn why it's not just about pronouns.

[This episode originally aired in November 2023.]

In recent years, society has witnessed a seismic significant shift in our understanding of gender. For some, the binary notion of gender, once seen as immutable and fixed, has given way to a more inclusive and fluid understanding of identity… a transformation that has brought to the forefront the lived experiences of transgender individuals, who have long grappled with issues of self-identity, societal acceptance, and the philosophical underpinnings of gender itself.

For others, the emergence of trans issues and trans people has motivated a passionate and often violent kind of re-entrenchment. The refusal of trans recognition and trans rights, for those on the political right, is not just a matter of attitudinal disposition or theory, but actual legislation.

Transgender individuals often find themselves at the intersection of various philosophical disciplines, from ethics to epistemology and metaphysics. Questions about the moral obligations society owes to its transgender members, the authenticity of one's gender identity, and the implications of gender fluidity for our understanding of reality are just a few areas in which trans philosophers have made important contributions in the past several decades. Philosophy can also be blamed—or credited, depending on one’s views—with the rise and influence of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, whose rhetoric and views sharply divides not only philosophy Twitter, but the discipline itself.

But discussions about trans philosophy extends beyond academia into the realm of social justice and activism. Trans issues encompass a wide range of concerns, including healthcare access, legal recognition, and the protection of civil and human rights. These practical considerations are deeply rooted in philosophical discussions not only about sex and gender, but also about fairness, equality, and the social contract, adding an urgent and concrete dimension to the work of people like our guest today, Talia Mae Bettcher (California State University, Los Angeles), author of the 2019 essay "What is Trans Philosophy?".

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-117-trans-philosophy-with-talia-mae-bettcher

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Fearless Speech (Foucault on Parrhesia)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Who, if anyone, is speaking truth to power these days?

In the Season 12 finale of Hotel Bar Sessions, we take a deep dive into Michel Foucault’s late lectures on parrhesia, the ancient Greek concept of "fearless speech." But don’t be fooled—this isn’t a dusty historical exercise. With campuses erupting in protest, free speech weaponized by the powerful, and truth-tellers increasingly under threat, parrhesia has never felt more urgent. What does it mean to speak truth to power today—and who is still brave enough to do it?

The HBS co-hosts unpack Foucault’s insights with characteristic wit and depth, drawing connections from Socrates to student protestors, from trans youth testifying in state legislatures to comedians canceled by the White House Correspondents’ Association. Is free speech still possible in a fractured political landscape? Can parrhesia survive in an age of rhetorical manipulation and moral cowardice? And what’s the difference between being “canceled” and actually being in danger?

This episode doesn’t just explain Foucault's concept of parrhesia—it performs it. If you’ve ever wondered whether truth-telling still matters in a time of disinformation, performative politics, and rising authoritarianism, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Tune in for our Season 12 send-off, and stick around to find out who we believe the real parrhesiastes are today.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-177-totalitarianism-with-peg-birmingham

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Are Universals "Real"?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Do universals “exist”? Are they real? And why are we talking about porcupines so much?!

In this episode, Leigh, Rick, and Devonya dive headfirst into one of philosophy’s oldest and knottiest questions: Is “porcupine-ness” a real thing, or just a name we slap on pointy animals?

Starting with the simple question of what makes a beer a beer (and not a Long Island iced tea), this wide-ranging conversation traces the debate from Plato and Aristotle to TikTok documentaries, Sally Haslanger, and Star Trek’s Borg. Along the way, the hosts wrestle with the metaphysical status of categories like “human” and “race,” the political risks and rewards of strategic essentialism, and why it might matter that something can be real even if it doesn’t exist.

Whether you’re a dyed-in-the-wool realist, a card-carrying nominalist, or just someone who likes their drinks served correctly, this episode offers an illuminating, and at times hilariously heated, exploration of how we classify the world—and why it matters.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-179-are-universals-real/

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Totalitarianism (with Peg Birmingham)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Can democracy be saved from totalitarianism?

In this episode, the co-hosts are joined by political theorist Dr. Peg Birmingham (DePaul University) for an urgent discussion on the topic of totalitarianism. Starting with a critique of what counts as “the people” in democratic systems, our conversation unpacks the entanglement of nationalism and racism, the dangerous erosion of the rule of law, and the troubling resurgence of executive overreach in the United States.

Drawing from theorists like Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt, we unpack how nationalistic democracies easily pivot toward authoritarian structures—and why naming, resisting, and reimagining democracy remains critical in this moment of global precarity.

We also detail the signs of creeping totalitarianism, including terror tactics, de-nationalization, and the centralization of political power, while also reflecting on possibilities for resistance. What can be salvaged from democracy when the demos itself is fractured? What role can listening, ridicule, and justice-oriented solidarity play in resisting fascist creep?

Birmingham emphasizes the need for collective action rooted in material justice and care for the most vulnerable, while co-hosts Leigh, Rick, and Devonya wrestle with how to reignite meaningful political opposition and build new coalitions of resistance. This powerful conversation challenges listeners to reckon with our political present and what might still be possible within it.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-177-totalitarianism-with-peg-birmingham

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El roto, Lo huachafo, Lo jodido (with Carlos Amador)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Carlos Amador on Latin American aesthetics, precarity, and what it means to be completely f*cked.

In this episode, the HBS crew welcomes Carlos Amador—Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the University at Buffalo SUNY—for a raw and wide-ranging conversation about lo jodido: the aesthetic, political, and material condition of being well and truly fucked. Drawing on Latin American literature and film, Amador introduces lo jodido not just as a descriptor for individual suffering, but as a cross-cultural, translatable, and recognizable structure of feeling rooted in precarity, immobility, and disillusionment with liberal democratic promises. Alongside lo jodido, he introduces two other categories—el roto and lo huachafo—to map a terrain of contemporary exhaustion and survival.

Drawing on Frantz Fanon's articulation of "the wretched of the earth," we dig into how "the fucked" functions not merely as a subject position, but also a way of seeing, feeling, and naming what seems unlivable. Topics include cruel optimism, abjection, the cultural logic of fascism, and whether political possibility requires hope at all. In the end, we ask: what does it mean to live with no outside to capital? And can the category of the fucked help us understand not only where we are, but what might still be possible?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-178-el-roto-lo-huachafo-lo-jodido-with-carlos-amador

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The Establishment Clause

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:00:00 -0400

This week, we're pulling up a seat at the intersection of faith, governance, and democracy as we take on the Establishment Clause—that little First Amendment provision that’s supposed to keep church and state in their own lanes. But is that how it’s really playing out?

Leigh, Rick, and Devonya dig into the history and contemporary implications of the separation of church and state, from school prayer to Supreme Court decisions, faith-based government offices, and religious encroachments on reproductive rights. We tackle the tension between private belief and public reason, the way religious institutions have both challenged and reinforced state power, and whether the U.S. is creeping toward a civic religion of its own.

Along the way, we take detours through Southern Bible Belt culture, the moral status of fetuses, and even a surprise debate over whether capybaras are too cute to eat. (Spoiler: they are.)

As always, we’re serving up straight shots of wisdom, no divine intervention required.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-175-the-establishment-clause

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DEI Then and Now (with Paul Breines)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Who's afraid of DEI? And why?

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) initiatives have become institutional mainstays in corporate and academic settings—but they are currently under attack. In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Leigh and Devonya sit down with Freedom Rider and retired Associate Professor of History at Boston College, Paul Breines, to reflect on the evolution of social justice movements from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to today’s embattled DEIA programs. How did a radical movement for racial justice morph into bureaucratic diversity training? And how should we understand the backlash against DEIA as part of a longer history of reactionary politics?

Is what we're seeing in today’s political climate a Second Reconstruction or a Second Redemption? The hosts discuss the ideological shifts that have transformed how both the left and right frame issues of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and inclusion—asking whether the language of justice has been co-opted by those seeking to dismantle it. From the Freedom Rides to contemporary campus activism, we dig into what has changed, what remains the same, and whether today’s movements need a more radical edge.

What kind of activism does this moment demand?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-175-dei-then-and-now-with-paul-breines

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Decorum

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 06:00:00 -0500

When does decorum keep us civil-- and when does it keep us silent?

From courtroom etiquette to the Oval Office, from department meetings to NFL sidelines, decorum shapes our public interactions—but who gets to decide what counts as “proper” behavior? In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Rick, Leigh, and Devonya take on the contested role of decorum in social and political life. Is it a necessary lubricant for peaceful coexistence, or a tool for policing and silencing dissent?

The hosts explore decorum’s history, its role in institutions like Congress and the courts, and its power to both reinforce and resist social hierarchies. From Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest to Zelensky’s wartime wardrobe, the conversation turns to moments when violating expectations becomes an act of defiance. Does focusing on breaches of decorum distract from deeper moral and political failures? And if we abandon the language of decorum, what do we lose—or gain?

With their signature mix of philosophical insight and barroom banter, the hosts wrestle with the real stakes of politeness, propriety, and protest.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-174-decorum

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Unruly Identity (with Falguni Sheth)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500

Who gets to decide who we are?

In this episode, Rick Lee and Devonya Havis pull up a chair with philosopher and political theorist Falguni Sheth to talk about the ways identity is shaped, claimed, and—more often than not—forced upon us. From census categories and legal definitions to personal choices and political struggles, they dig into the tensions between how we see ourselves and how we’re seen by others. What does it mean to be recognized—or misrecognized—by the state? How do institutions decide which identities “fit” and which ones have to be managed, disciplined, or erased? And when does refusing to conform become its own form of power?

With insights from Sheth’s work on race, law, and political power, this conversation moves between philosophy, history, and the headlines of today. The hosts talk about the state’s obsession with controlling identity, from laws targeting Muslim women to the racial bias baked into facial recognition software. But they also ask whether there’s room for resistance—whether refusing to be easily categorized might be a way to push back. By the time last call rolls around, they’re raising a glass to the troublemakers, the misfits, and the ones who just won’t play by the rules.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-173-unruly-identity-with-falguni-sheth

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Ambiguity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500

When nothing is clear, how do we decide?

Many people prefer their morality to be straightforward—right or wrong, good or bad, clear as day. But more often than not, human life is a mess of contradictions, competing values, and gray areas. In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Rick, Leigh, and Devonya wade into the murky waters of ambiguity—what it means, how we experience it, and why we’re often so uncomfortable with it. From moral dilemmas and political rhetoric to aesthetics and queer theory, the hosts explore how ambiguity can be both a site of oppression and a tool of resistance.

Is ambiguity a lack of knowledge, or does it open the door for deeper understanding? How does power exploit uncertainty to maintain control? And why do we crave clarity in some parts of life but celebrate ambiguity in art, music, and literature? With philosophical insight, a dash of humor, and a deep appreciation for the chaotic bartender that is moral life, the hosts wrestle with the question: Can we ever truly escape ambiguity—or do we just have to learn to live with it?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-172-ambiguity

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Trust

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500

Can anyone be trusted anymore?

Trust is the glue that holds our social world together, yet it’s one of the most fragile bonds we have. In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Rick, Leigh, and Devonya dive into the complexities of trust—what it means, how it functions, and why it’s so easy to break but so difficult to restore. From everyday acts of trust, like believing the grocery store clerk’s name tag, to the deep-seated political crisis of trust in institutions and democracy, the hosts explore trust as an epistemic, moral, and affective structure that shapes our relationships. Along the way, they discuss Derrida’s take on truth-telling, the role of consistency and shared values, and why mistrust often seems more apparent than trust itself.

But what happens when trust is shattered—whether between friends, citizens and their government, or even entire political factions? The conversation takes a sobering turn toward our current crisis of trust, examining how unmoored we feel when institutions, democratic processes, and even long-standing social contracts seem to be unraveling. Is trust something we can rebuild, or are we slipping toward a Hobbesian world of raw power? With humor, philosophical insight, and a healthy dose of frustration, the hosts wrestle with the question: how do we live together well when trust is in such short supply?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-171-trust

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Judgment

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500

Who gets to judge right and wrong? And on what grounds?

In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, Leigh, Rick, and Devonya talk about judgment—what it is, when we need it, and whether it’s a skill or just a faculty of reason. They start with Aristotle’s distinction between knowledge and judgment, move through Kant’s ideas about moral and aesthetic judgment, and consider how judgment functions in ethical reasoning, political life, and even artificial intelligence. The conversation raises questions about whether judgment is simply applying rules or if it requires something more—something closer to discernment, habit, or lived experience.

Can a decision be right or wrong if we can’t fully predict its consequences? Do moral rules always apply, or do some situations require exceptions? What happens when judgment operates within systems of power? These questions lead to reflections on everything from friendship to legal pardons to the ethics of AI. Whether you think of yourself as someone with good judgment or someone just trying to make better choices, this episode gives plenty to think about.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/judgment

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Responsibility

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500

How, and for what, are we responsible?

What does it even mean to be responsible? Is it about blame? Credit? Or something else entirely?

Leigh, Devonya, and Rick hash it out over drinks, tackling everything from personal accountability to collective responsibility, and digging into big questions about freedom, moral agency, and how our social and political systems shape what we’re capable of doing—and not doing.

This week’s conversation covers some heavy ground: systemic racism, climate change, and whether collective responsibility can actually lead to change (or if it’s just another way of avoiding blame) —and, because it wouldn’t be a Hotel Bar Sessions episode without it, there’s a Star Trek tangent in there, too!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/responsibility/

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Authority

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500

Is ChatGPT usurping the authority of the "Author"? Or is it just a pretender to the throne?

We're opening up the question of "authority" to extend well beyond the usual suspects of kings, generals, or politicians. To borrow a line from Tennyson's poetry: “authority forgets the dying King.” That is, power begins to slip from the grasp of political authorities as they weaken, as respect for and obedience to them wanes.

Now almost 60 years after Foucault announced the “death of the author,” we might actually be living through what he imagined.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-168-authority

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Revenge

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS co-hosts savor the complexities of a dish best served cold.

Is revenge ever ethical? Can it be a form of justice, or is it always about personal satisfaction? In this episode, Rick Lee, Leigh Johnson, and Devonya Havis take a deep dive into the philosophy of revenge. From the timeless allure of stories like Kill Bill and The Count of Monte Cristo to the rise of cancel culture and online harassment, the hosts explore how revenge plays out in both individual and collective contexts. They tackle big questions about power, helplessness, and the difference between avenging a wrong and simply lashing out.

They also consider the role of technology in making vengeful acts easier—and more public—than ever before. Leigh reflects on the satisfaction we feel from justice-oriented narratives, while Devonya highlights the deeper systemic issues that revenge often overlooks. Rick weighs in on the distinction between personal vendettas and social movements like #MeToo, asking whether collective action can transform personal grievance into meaningful justice.

Whether you're a fan of revenge thrillers or just curious about the ethical limits of payback, this episode will leave you questioning the line between retribution and justice. Don’t miss this thought-provoking conversation that’s equal parts philosophy and pop culture!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-167-revenge/

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Virtue

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500

Is "virtue" an outdated concept? And why is there a bear in this classroom?!

This week at the hotel bar, Rick, Devonya, and Leigh are digging deep into the idea of virtue. What does it mean to be virtuous? How do we cultivate virtues? Are they timeless ideals or shaped by culture and history? We talk about Aristotle, sure, but we’re also unpacking modern critiques of virtue and asking how power and privilege shape what counts as “virtuous” in the first place.

In a world that seems more focused on personal success and convenience than moral character, is virtue still worth striving for—or do we need to rethink what it even means?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-166-virtue/

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REPLAY: Forgiveness

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500

This week's episode is a REPLAY of a previously-aired episode from Season 9. HBS will return with all new episodes on January 10, 2024. Stay tuned!

The HBS hosts wonder how a hard heart is melted and mended.

In a world often colored by misunderstandings, hurtful actions, and lingering grudges, the concept of forgiveness emerges as a beacon of hope and healing. For some, its transformative power to mend relationships, free us from the shackles of resentment, and grant us the gift of emotional liberation make forgiveness a moral imperative. Forgiveness is not merely an internal journey; it's also a dynamic force that shapes societies and mends the fabric of communities torn apart by conflict and strife.

But what does it mean to forgive? What does forgiveness do, and for whom? Does forgiveness require the forgetting of wrongs done? Is real forgiveness even possible?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-107-forgiveness

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REPLAY: Deconstruction

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 06:00:00 -0500

This week's episode is a REPLAY of a previously-aired episode from Season 9. HBS will return with all new episodes on January 10, 2024. Stay tuned!

The HBS hosts dig into Jacque Derrida's philosophy to see if it really is responsible for everything that's wrong with the world.

There are very few philosophies that are blamed for so much as deconstruction. Introduced by Jacques Derrida in the late 60s, deconstruction rose to popularity in the late 70s and 80s, fought a real battle to be accepted as something other than a “fad” in the early 90s, and really built up steam in the late 90s, after having been adopted by other humanities disciplines as a method of analysis and exposition. However, by the end of the 21st century aughts, deconstruction was already being edged out of favor by many of its critics and some of its heirs.

Today, in 2024, deconstruction has been refigured and disfigured so dramatically that it has become a chimera. One of its faces is reductive and banal, but mostly harmless, as seen in so-called “deconstructed” dishes or clothing on reality TV. The other face, though, is hyperbolically menacing: distorting reality, poisoning discourse, undermining traditional values, and sneakily turning all of us into nonsense-babbling relativists.

So what is deconstruction all about?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-122-deconstruction

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Kant's Categorical Imperative

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 06:00:00 -0500

What if morality was law-governed in the same way as logic and physics?

The Hotel Bar Sessions hosts close out Season 11 with a deep dive into one of philosophy’s most important moral principles: Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative.” They carefully unpack Kant’s three formulations of the “moral law”—the Universality formulation, the Humanity formulation, and the Kingdom of Ends formulation—to demonstrate how Kant sought to ground morality in rationality, universality, and freedom.

Through accessible examples– punctuality, lying, slavery, and even prostitution– the hosts illustrate Kant’s vision of the moral law as an unconditional principle, independent of personal preferences or consequences. They also clarify common misconceptions, like conflating Kant’s universality formulation with the Golden Rule, and examine how his ideas prioritize duty over subjective inclinations.

This is a spirited debate about Kant’s relevance today, questioning the challenges of applying the rigid moral framework of the Categorical Imperative to complex modern realities. The co-hosts address critiques of Kant’s metaphysical assumptions, his treatment of non-human entities, and the potential for misusing his ideas to justify exclusion. Despite these critiques, the hosts argue for the enduring importance of Kantian ethics in safeguarding the dignity and autonomy of all rational beings.

Filled with humor, thoughtful analysis, and practical insights, this episode invites listeners to reflect on the philosophical foundations of morality and their own ethical commitments.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-165-kants-categorical-imperative

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The Significance Impulse (with Josh Glasgow)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 06:00:00 -0500

What if our cosmic unimportance is itself not all that important?

This week, the Hotel Bar Sessions hosts welcome Joshua Glasgow, author of The Significance Impulse: On the Unimportance of Our Cosmic Unimportance, to unpack humanity’s seemingly irrepressible drive to seek significance and the societal and psychological effects of this pervasive impulse. Glasgow argues that the quest for cosmic importance is not only unrealistic, but detrimental, and he urges us to embrace our smallness as a path to greater freedom and fulfillment. From cultural pressures to excel to the personal burdens of striving for greatness, Glasgow highlights how letting go of the need to be “the greatest” can both foster joy and realign our assessment of our own significance in more honest ways.

Drawing on examples like Muhammad Ali, Andre Agassi, and Frida Kahlo, the conversation explores the interplay between morality, aesthetics, and well-being in shaping human values. The hosts reflect on how society’s emphasis on individual greatness can distort priorities and undermine happiness, while Glasgow introduces the concept of "irreverent contentment" as a counterbalance.

Whether you're pondering your place in the cosmos or just trying to enjoy a good game of cribbage, this episode offers fresh insights into what it means to live a meaningful life.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-164-the-significance-impulse-with-josh-glasgow

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Justice

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts survey theories of justice from the ancients to the present.

What does it mean to think justice, to pursue justice, or to act justly? Are we servicing justice, or just serving our self-interests? How do different philosophical approaches help us imagine a “just” society? This week, we consider retributive, restorative, and distributive theories, among others, exploring how each shapes our understanding of equality, rights, and fairness, and try to determine which approach provides the most useful guide in a world that appears increasingly unjust.

So, grab a drink, pull up a chair, and let’s dig in: Is justice something we can pour out—or just a top-shelf ideal?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-161-justice

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Matter and Consciousness in Indian Philosophy (with Tuhin Bhattacharjee)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500

What can the Indian dualist philosophy of Sāṃkhya teach us about matter and consciousness?

In this captivating episode, we explore the fascinating interplay between matter and consciousness as articulated in Sāṃkhya, a key tradition of Indian philosophy. Joined by special guest Dr. Tuhin Bhattacharjee, whose expertise spans ancient Greek and Indian texts, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis, we consider the interconnectedness of gender and metaphysics, setting the stage for broader discussions of matter and consciousness in both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions.

The episode concludes with a lively exchange focusing on the implications of philosophy as a generative practice. The group reflects on how Indian traditions can inform modern philosophical debates, particularly around ethics, materiality, and the politics of recognition. This conversation invites listeners to reconsider dominant narratives in philosophy and encourages them to engage with underexplored intellectual terrains that illuminate shared human concerns. Grab a drink and settle in for a mind-expanding dialogue that bridges ancient wisdom and contemporary thought!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-163-matter-and-consciousness-in-indian-philosophy-with-tuhin-bhattacharjee

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Ethics, Democracy, and Phronesis (with Dimitris Vardoulakis)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500

This week, the HBS hosts are joined by Dimitris Vardoulakis (Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University) to discuss the phronetic tradition and its significance for ethics, politics, and democracy. Drawing on both Aristotle and Hannah Arendt’s understanding of agonism in The Human Condition, Vardoulakis connects what he calls the phronetic tradition to human interaction and instrumental thinking, emphasizing its foundation in uncertainty and disagreement.

Our conversation with Vardoulakis traces the historical development of the phronetic and so-called "ineffectual" traditions, examining their roots in ancient philosophy, their transformation through Judeo-Christian metaphysics, and their impact on contemporary political thought. Vardoulakis critiques current approaches to agonistic democracy and advocates for a renewed focus on phronesis as a way to approach ethical and political action without reliance on transcendence or the extremes of anarchism.

With references to Spinoza, Derrida, Jon Stewart, and others, this conversation invites listeners to reconsider how we structure collective life in the face of conflict and uncertainty.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-161-phronesis-and-instrumentality-with-dimitris-vardoulakis

Follow us on Twitter/X @hotelbarpodcast, on Blue Sky @hotelbarpodcast.bsky.social, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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Posthumanism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500

What are the limits of the "human"? And what comes after us?

This week, we’re taking on the big questions: What does it mean to be “human,” and is it possible we’re already moving beyond that? Starting with Foucault’s provocative claim that “the human is an invention… perhaps nearing its end,” we look at how history, culture, and technology have shaped—and continue to shape—our understanding of ourselves. Are we still the “rational, autonomous individuals” of the Enlightenment’s humanist legacy, or are we becoming something more complicated?

Our conversation tackles the key ideas of posthumanism and transhumanism: while transhumanists seek to enhance human abilities with technology, posthumanists want to question the very boundaries that define “the human” and its place at the center of everything. Drawing from feminist thinkers like Donna Haraway, we consider what it means to challenge traditional notions of the human, especially in a world where the line between humans, animals, and machines is increasingly blurred.

Finally, we get into the ethical and practical stakes. With gene-editing tools like CRISPR and advanced AI systems on the rise, how do we draw the line between human and machine—or should we? And if freedom is what makes the human worth preserving, does technology ultimately support that freedom or put it at risk?

Grab a drink and join us as we ask what “posthuman” could mean for our future—and whether we’re already there.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-160-posthumanism

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Nature

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500

What do we mean when we say "Nature"? And what, if anything, is "natural"?

In this week’s episode, we’re pulling up a chair at the bar to ask: What do we really mean when we talk about “nature”? From the world outside us—plants, animals, and landscapes—to the idea of human nature itself, we’re questioning our often contradictory and complex ideas of what counts as “natural.” Are we referring to the non-human world or to something essential and intrinsic within us? And is either way of thinking about it as simple as it seems?

We look at how the concept of nature has been shaped by culture, philosophy, politics, and technology. Why, for instance, does a bird’s nest seem “natural” while our own homes do not? Does labeling something “natural” ever settle an argument, or does it just spark new ones? We also talk about the climate crisis, asking if we should see ourselves as part of nature or as caretakers of something separate. And should we trust that technology will resolve environmental issues, or do we need to challenge some of our own longstanding assumptions about nature itself?

Pour a drink and join us as we rethink what it means to be “natural” in a world where the line between nature and culture is more blurred than ever.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-156-meat

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Does God Exist?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0400

Are you there, God? It's us, Hotel Bar Sessions.

This week, our co-hosts jump headfirst into one of philosophy’s biggest questions: "Does God exist?" Rick kicks things off by asking whether a final answer would even matter: would knowing God exists (or doesn’t) shift our lives and choices in any real way? Might belief in God itself just be a placeholder for the unknown? Why is the idea of an "Intellligent Designer" or an "Unmoved Mover" or a "First Cause" so compelling, even in the absence of evidence? Each host weighs in with their own take on faith, doubt, and the questions that keep us all up at night.

Our resident medievalist, Rick, also breaks down the classic proofs for God’s existence—from Aristotle, to Aquinas, to Descartes and Kant—motivating a lively debate on whether these arguments help us see more clearly or simply add to the mystery. Leigh introduces what might be evidence of AI creating its own gods, and asks: if an artificial agent can invent deities, what does that mean for our own understanding of God (and our belief in their existence)? David brings in the polytheistic perspective, and together they explore the human urge to find meaning, even if it eludes rational proof.

So, does God exist? Maybe there’s no simple answer, but that’s exactly where things get interesting. Listen in and decide for yourself: is belief the answer, or just the beginning?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-158-the-existence-of-god

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The Ethics of Refusal (with Devonya Havis)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400

When is it right, or even necessary, to say "no"?

Refusing can be a powerful act—whether it’s standing up to authority, rejecting harmful norms, or pushing back against injustice. But when is saying “no” the right thing to do? And what are the stakes when we decide to refuse? Often our refusals are quotidian and inconsequential, but sometimes, and sometimes without our knowledge, they’re huge.

We often underestimate how often we issue refusals, both large and small, and we don’t consider carefully enough the moral and political dimensions of those acts. It’s not always easy to decide when it is appropriate to refuse, and even when we know it’s necessary, it’s not always easy. Our guest today, Dr. Devonya Havis University of Buffalo), has been thinking about the ethics and politics of refusal for some time, and how how refusing to go along with something can be an act of courage, rebellion, or survival.

We’re going to ask what happens when-- in the immortal words of Nancy Reagan-- you “just say no.”

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-157-the-ethics-of-refusal-with-devonya-havis

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Meat

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 06:05:00 -0400

Should we eat meat?

Humans have been eating other animals for close to 2.5 million years--a fact that is evidenced by cut traces on fossil animal bones, surviving stone tools, and analyses of our ancestors' teeth. Does this evolutionary fact render meat-eating physiologically necessary and morally justifiable? Our ancestors did a lot of things to survive; is that sufficient reason to continue the practice? How they obtained this meaty source of protein was arguably very different from the industrial practices of animal agriculture that are justifiably criticized for their cruelty to non-human sentient creatures and their contribution to the global climate crisis.

Can we as a species continue to eat meat? Or in doing so are we literally eating ourselves out of house and home? What about lab-grown Franken-meat, which Governor Ron DeSantis recently made illegal in the state of Florida? Is lab-grown meat a solution, or does it just feed the problem?

How and why is the unassuming "Impossible Burger" now a subject of the culture wars?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-157-nature

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Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question (with Zahi Zalloua)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400

What can Frantz Fanon and Friedrich Nietzsche teach us about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-155-the-palestinian-question-with-zahi-zalloua

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Aristotle and Feminist Materialism, Troubled (with Emanuela Bianchi)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 06:05:00 -0400

Philosophy has traditionally associated the feminine with matter, implying passivity. Why? And to what ends?

In our previous episode on materialism (Season 6, Episode 83), we came to see that in more recent years, two, often related, forms of materialism have been developed: “new materialism” and feminist materialism. New materialism tends toward a philosophical reflection on advances in science, particularly neuro-science and biology, but feminist materialism is not so easy to define, as it takes many forms.

There is, however, one unique issue that feminist materialists must contend with: the way that the tradition of philosophy in the West has associated "the feminine" with "matter" and contrasted matter with form, reason, and structure, evidencing yet another way in which the masculine has been privileged throughout the history of philosophy in the global North and West.

This week, we are joined by Dr. Emanuela Bianchi (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, NYU), expert in ancient philosophy and feminist philosophy, to find out what’s the matter with "matter"?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-154-troubling-feminist-materialism-with-emmanuala-bianchi

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The Gutenberg Parenthesis (with Jeff Jarvis)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 06:00:00 -0400

Are we nearing the end of the "Age of Print"? And, if so, what comes next?

The concept of "the Gutenberg Parenthesis" suggests that the era of print – which began in the 15th century, when the printing press was developed by Johan Gutenberg, and extended to the 20th century, when radio and television muscled in – was a unique period for human communication. However, as this week's guest Jeff Jarvis argued in his book The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet(Bloomsbury, 2023), our emphasis on literacy is historically situated in ways we may find difficult to recognize. After, all, there were not always authors, publishers, editors, or newspapers-- all of which are recent inventions, in the grand scheme of things-- and we may in fact be coming to the end of this age.

Printing as a technology brought with it all manner of social, political, religious, and cultural effects that we now take for granted: for example, that we know who the "authorities" are, that grammar is fixed, that spelling must be consistent, or that our information must be curated for us. If the age of printing is coming to an end, and if the web is our "new" technology, then we might not be in the best position to understand its potentials and implications.

Some contours of the closing of this parenthesis are coming into view, to be sure, but the full extent is not entirely clear. What did print allow and what did it deny? What does the end of print mean for the ways in which we find and digest information about our world? What happens to our ability to communicate complex and subtle ideas? Are we headed toward the promised land... or the apocalypse?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-153-the-gutenberg-parenthesis-with-jeff-jarvis

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Evidence

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 06:00:00 -0400

What counts as evidence? What makes it good or bad? How do we know?

In court cases, the prosecution, plaintiff, and defendant present “evidence” that something happened or didn’t happen, that it happened in one way or another, that someone did something or did not do something. Evidence is meant to point to something as-yet undetermined. The same goes with scientific evidence, statistical evidence, and anecdotal evidence. Yet, because evidence points to something unknown, sorting it out is often messy business! How do we judge whether evidence is trustworthy or good? Can we determine shared "rules" of evidence? And what about so-called "self-evident" things or claims? This week, we're diving right into this messy business of evidence.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/evidence

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Whose Jesus? (with John D. Caputo)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 06:00:00 -0400

When did Jesus start hating immigrants and gays, and loving guns and capitalism?

Many Christians on the political left today no longer recognize the Jesus of the political right in the United States. Despite sharing a text and history, (at least) two dramatically different versions of "Jesus" have emerged in contemporary American Christian discourse, each reflecting a set of moral and political inferences presumably gleaned from the teachings of the historical Jesus, and each set of inferences containing its own problems with respect to verifiability, authenticity, and legitimacy.

This week, we are joined by internationally renowned Catholic scholar Dr. John D. Caputo, author of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (2007), to re-trace the emergence of these seemingly incompatible iterations of "Jesus," and try to figure out whose Jesus works for whom.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-151-whose-jesus-with-john-d-caputo/

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REPLAY: The Master/Slave Dialectic

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 08:20:28 -0400

The HBS hosts struggle for recognition.

[NOTE: This is a REPLAY episode, first aired on August 11, 2023. The HBS hosts will be back with new episodes for Season 11 starting on September 13, 2024!]

The dialectic of lordship and bondage, more commonly known as the “Master/Slave dialectic,” is a moment in a much longer and exceedingly difficult-to-read (much less understand!) text by G.W.F. Hegel entitled The Phenomenology of Spirit. It’s probably a passage that is referenced in a wide number of fields– psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, literary analysis, any number of “area studies,” and even economics-- though very few of the scholars who reference it have slogged all the way through Hegel’s Phenomenology. Nevertheless, like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from the Republic and Nietzsche’s story about the lambs and the birds of prey from Genealogy of Morals, both of which we’ve discussed before on this podcast, Hegel’s dialectic of Lordship and Bondage manages to capture, in a concise and powerful way, something both intuitively true and yet, at the same time, utterly mystifying.

This week we ask the question, why has this passage become the hit single off of the dense concept album that is the Phenomenology.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-105-the-master-slave-dialectic

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REPLAY: Punching Nazis (with Devin Shaw)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 06:06:00 -0400

The HBS hosts ask Devin Shaw whether and how to punch Nazis.

[NOTE: This is a REPLAY episode, first aired on Jun2, 2023. The HBS hosts will be back with new episodes for Season 11 starting on September 13, 2024!]

Since at least the 2016 election the word fascism has emerged from the historical archive to contemporary political debates. This question has primarily been one about the identity of fascism, what are its minimal characteristics? To what extent can the Trump administration be considered fascist, and so on? We discussed some of this last season with Alberto Toscano. As much as this question of definition is important, a no less important question is what to do in the face of fascism. How to respond. It is on this point that the opposition to fascism divides rather sharply between those who argue that fascism must be countered with the norms of civil society, debated, discussed and defeated in the marketplace of ideas and those who argue that the violence of fascism must be met with counter-violence.

In this episode, we are joined by Devin Shaw, who teaches at Douglas College and is the author of Philosophy of Antifascism: Punching Nazis and Fighting White Supremacy.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-95-punching-nazis

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You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0400

Welcome to the desert of the real.

Hotel Bar Sessions podcast is predicated on the idea that the three of us meet up at bar, order-up some drinks, and then settle in to talk philosophy. But—spoiler alert—none of that is true. There is no bar, sadly there are not drinks, and the conversation takes place through the instrumentality of digital technology without us ever meeting up and being together in the same space. It’s all an artifice, or what Jean Baudrillard called "simulation."

We point this out not to ruin your enjoyment but because it is this very issue—simulation—that we are examining in this week's simulated conversation. In keeping with our tradition of ending each season with a "deep dive" episode, we're focusing this week on the short book that made this a subject of conversation: Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, originally published in French in 1981.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/baudrillards-simulacra-and-simulation

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Voting

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0400

Does voting matter?

Voting is often heralded as the cornerstone of democracy, a fundamental right that empowers citizens to influence the direction of their government and society. Proponents argue that every vote counts, that it is through the collective decisions of the electorate that leaders are held accountable, policies are shaped, and societal change is enacted. They highlight the historical struggles and sacrifices made to secure voting rights, particularly for marginalized groups, as evidence of its profound importance. Voting is seen not merely as a civic duty, but also a moral duty, a vital expression of individual agency and a mechanism for ensuring that diverse voices contribute to the governance of a nation.

Conversely, critics of the current voting system note that voting often feels inconsequential. Systemic issues like gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the outsized influence of money in politics distort the democratic process, leading to a sense of disenfranchisement among otherwise enthusiastic citizens. The winner-takes-all format in the US leaves many feeling that their votes do not translate into meaningful representation.

These challenges-- where voters become convinced that their votes don't matter--diminish public trust in the electoral process and fuel apathy, prompting a critical examination of whether voting, in its current form, truly reflects the will of the people or merely perpetuates existing power structures. Does every vote truly matter, or is it just another drop in a vast, indifferent ocean?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-149-voting

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The Future of Journalism (with Andrea Guzman)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0400

What happens when AI overtakes the role of human journalists?

The HBS hosts are joined this week by Dr. Andrea Guzman, one of the leading experts in human-machine communication studies, to chat about the changing landscape of journalism in the age of artificial intelligence, where AI is not just a tool, but an active participant in content creation and distribution. We examine how journalism has historically adapted to new technologies, from print and radio to the digital age, and how those differ (or don't) from the new challenges it faces with AI's involvement in shaping the media.

Like many 21st C. news consumers, we're concerned with both the unique challenges and the opportunities AI presents, especially as it transitions from being a mere medium to an active "messenger." Dr. Guzman addresses pressing questions about whether journalism is in crisis due to AI, the ethical implications of using AI in news production, and the future landscape for journalists and news consumers. How will human journalists navigate these changes while upholding journalism's (alleged) commitment to truth and accountability? Will AI will mark the end of journalism as we know it or usher in the dawn of a bold new era in media?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-148-the-future-of-journalism-with-andrea-guzman

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Overcoming Sexuality (with Nir Kedem)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0400

Can queer theory overcome its ties to sexuality?

Toward the end of the 20th Century, French Philosopher Michel Foucault called into question the ways in which a variety of practices, relations, institutions, and discourses came to be organized under the concept of "sexuality." The construction of sexuality as a thing, as a category, as a concept that seemingly identifies something crucial about us, operates as a way to make certain individuals, practices, and relations visible: scientifically, institutionally, juridically, and politically. There is, of course, a danger with this visibility, as it brings into the open and identifies individuals so that they can become subject to regimes of power.

Queer theory, and queerness itself, seems inextricably tied to the notion of sexuality: how can some one or some thing be queer if we give up the concept of sexuality? On the other hand, the very notion of sexuality sexualizes everything it touches and thereby reduces the possibilities of queerness itself. Can we think queer without sexuality? Why should we think queer without sexuality? What possibilities are opened by queer thought once it is not longer bound by the image of sexuality?

This week, we are joined by Dr. Nir Kedem, author of A Deleuzian Critique of Queer Thought: Overcoming Sexuality (Edinburgh UP, 2024) to talk about how Deleuze might aide us in the project of liberating queer theory from sexuality.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-147-overcoming-sexuality-with-nir-kedem

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Peer Review

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts dig into the crisis of academic peer review.

Peer review, touted as the gold standard for ensuring research quality, has come under increasing scrutiny. Decades of studies have revealed surprising inconsistencies: from papers initially hailed as groundbreaking being rejected upon resubmission, to the current “retraction crisis,” to concerns about bias and subjectivity among reviewers. Because peer review is not only central to the production of knowledge, but also the security and advancement of knowledge-prodcers’ careers, mounting concerns about this practice raise a lot of important questions.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/peer-review

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Ideology and Self-Emancipation (with William Clare Roberts)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 06:00:00 -0400

Ideology is said in many ways. Which one is emancipatory?

This week, we are joined by Dr. William Clare Roberts, Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, to discuss his recent essay "Ideology and Self-Emancipation: Voluntary Servitude, False Consciousness, and the Career of Critical Theory." This is the second part in our "Ideology" series. You can listen to the first part (Episode 142) here.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-145-ideology-and-self-emancipation-with-william-clare-roberts

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The Sublime

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The ocean and space and "Ode to Joy" are sublime, of course... but what about an excellent lentil soup?

In a confusing twist of etymology, where one would expect "sub" to mean "below," in the word "sublime" it indicates something above or even beyond. We use it as a superlative, but a superlative of what?

Edmund Burke argues that the experience of sublimity is related to fear in the extreme, even terror-- and Immanuel Kant's not far from this understanding-- so when someone says the lentil soup they're eating is "sublime," are they just making a category mistake? This week, the HBS hosts dig into the concept of the sublime, and test the limits of not only our imagination and understanding, but also language itself.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-144-the-sublime

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Off-Grid Living (with Eric Mack)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 06:00:00 -0400

What motivates people to live off-grid in the 21st C? And how hard is it to survive out there?

This week, the HBS hosts are joined by journalist and co-host of the Our Uncertain Future podcast Eric Mack, who decided in 2020 to move his family "off-grid." Currently residing in a 100% water- and energy-independent compound in the New Mexico desert, Eric chats with us not only about the skills and resources necessary for making a home off the grid, but also his (and others') philosophical reasons for doing so.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-143-off-grid-living-with-eric-mack

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Ideology

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 06:00:00 -0400

What, if anything, is the difference between having ideological commitments and belonging to a "cult"?

This week's episode is a "deep dive" into the very deep waters of ideology and ideological commitments. A couple of important notes for listeners: first, this episode was recorded the day before William Clare-Roberts' excellent essay "Ideology and Emancipation: Voluntary Servitude, False Consciousness, and the Career of Critical Social Theory" was published. (We promise to do our level best to get him on the podcast for a Part 2 of this "Ideology" series!) Second, we are VERY excited to announce our new partnership with Edinburgh University Press, which is not only sponsoring this episode, but a number of other HBS episodes this season! EUP has generously offered our listeners a discount on their current catalog, so be sure to enter the discount code "HBS" when you buy books on their website!

Full episode notes (and they are HEFTY) available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-142-ideology

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Generative AI

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts wonder whether ChatGPT is the least of our worries.

Generative Ai is a still new and emergent technology capable of producing not only text that could be mistaken as human-generated, but also images, video, music, and "voice." For all of the amazing opportunities opened up by generative AI, however, it does not come without its own risks. Secondary and post-secondary education, for example, was thrown into crisis in late 2022 when ChatGPT was released, and is still weathering that storm. Meanwhile, other AI models, known as "diffusion models" (which generate audio, images and video) have also been getting more sophisticated at a lightning pace. Yet, the average internet user has very little knowledge of how generative AI works, and far less the skills to distinguish its outputs from human-generated content.

Especially in an election year, should we worry about the circulation of products that generative AI models generate? What are the implications of the rapid and wide-spread proliferation of fake news and deepfakes? How do we guard against the "feedback loop" problem in generative AI learning models?

This week, we try to explain and de-mystify generative AI in order to get to the root of what we should be concerned about and what we shouldn't.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-141-generative-ai

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Reality TV

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts are not here to make friends. They’re here to WIN.

We all have our low-brow guilty pleasures and, for millions of Americans, one of those is reality TV. Only a few months ago, amidst a war raging in the Ukraine, a new regent being crowned in the U.K., and reproductive rights being stripped from women here in the U.S., the whole of the internet was talking about only one thing: “Scandoval.”

“Scandoval” (a portmanteau cleverly combining the name of its chief ne’er-do-well perpetrator, Tom Sandoval, and the “scandal” his infidelity initiated) mostly involved a garden-variety boyfriend/girlfriend breakup between two of the main characters on the Bravo series Vanderpump Rules, a reality television show about garden-variety Los Angeles bartenders and waitstaff and their garden-variety attempts to be more than just garden-variety bartenders and waitstaff. … which leads one to wonder: how in the world did this become the single most trending topic on social media for more than 3 months?

Today, we’re going to get our noses out of the clouds and take seriously what is probably one of the most influential pop culture products of the 21st century. Is “reality television” really “real”? Are the lives we see on the screen distillations of authentic human experience, or carefully crafted narratives that invite us to indulge in voyeuristic schadenfreude? Might there be something deeper and more meaningful to be found in these simulations of “reality”?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-140-reality-tv/

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Friendship

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss how friendships are forged, maintained, and sometimes broken.

In The Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida invokes a statement originally attributed to Aristotle: “My Friends, there are no friends," capturing something that seems to be fundamental about friendship. Friendship is essential to human thriving, but also difficult, if not impossible, to attain and maintain.

We make all sorts of fine distinctions between friends, "best" friends, acquaintances, colleagues or "work" friends, etc. But what makes someone that you know a "friend" vs. an acquaintance or a colleague? Is that a permanent condition? What do we owe to a friend, and what do they ow us? Is there a political dimension to friendship?

This week, friends of the podcast, we're talking about friendship: how it's forged, how it is nurtured and sustained, and how it is broken.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-139-friendship

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Personhood

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 31 May 2024 06:05:00 -0400

What is a person? What is a thing? And what difference does that difference make?

Although we tend to use the terms "person" and "human being" interchangeably, it hasn't always been the case that all human beings were considered (moral or legal) persons, nor is the case today that all persons are human beings. Here in the United States, corporations are considered legal persons, and in several countries across the world, natural beings (like rivers, lakes, and ecosystems) have also been granted "personhood" status. Many people treat their pets as moral persons. Even when we don't call out cats and dogs "persons," we certainly distinguish them from other things (like a toaster!).

Social robots and generative AI have only amplified our confusion about "personhood" recently. Do we need more categories to adequately distinguish our moral and legal obligations to the beings with which we share our world?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-138-personhood
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Originality

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 May 2024 06:00:00 -0400

What's so special about originality?

Today, originality is being challenged in so many ways: comedians “stealing” jokes, cultural appropriation, remixes, not to mention the myriad ways that generative artificial intelligence has made plagiarism of all kinds possible. We value originality over imitation, creativity over copying, and novelty over the “same old, same old.” But, why is originality such a cherished value? Is it even possible, or is everything just a remix or a copy?

We bring new, never before heard, insights to the topic of originality this week!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-136-originality

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HBS Goes to the Movies: "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 May 2024 07:56:07 -0400

Michael Norton explains why “Joe Versus the Volcano” is the perfect existentialist film.

Continuing our tradition of going to the movies for the first episode of teach new season, we watch the 1990 film Joe vs. The Volcano with Michael Norton from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Michael has an argument that the movie is the perfect existentialist film. Is he right?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/hbs-goes-to-the-movies-joe-versus-the-volcano-1990/

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MINIBAR EPISODE: Will The Courts Save Democracy?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 May 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts cross-examine the courts.

Former President Trump is currently dividing his time between the campaign trail and the courtroom. Some Americans are outraged by what they view to be targeted prosecutions by biased and overzealous District Attorneys, while others view the same events as a lifelong con man getting his just deserts. Fascinatingly, both sides seem to be putting a lot of faith in the courts to "save democracy."

In this brief MINIBAR episode, we chat about the limits of the courts and what is gained (or lost) by relying on them so heavily to save us.

NOTE: This will be our last MINIBAR episode between seasons. Make sure to tune in next week, Friday, May 17, for the first episode of Season 10!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/minibar-episode-will-the-courts-save-democracy

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MINIBAR EPISODE: Meet Our New Co-host, David Gunkel!

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 May 2024 07:43:43 -0400

For this "mini-bar" episode, HBS introduces our newest addition to the co-host gang, Dr. David Gunkel!

David Gunkel is an award-winning author, educator and researcher, specializing in the philosophy of technology, with a focus on the moral and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and robots. He is the author of a number of important texts on emergent technology, media studies, and philosophy (see his list of books here). Dr. Gunkel is internationally recognized for his innovative work on the moral and legal status of artificial intelligence and robot rights, his efforts to diversify the theory and practice of AI ethics, and his agenda-setting contributions to the new field of human-machine communication (HMC). He currently holds the position of Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University (USA) and associate professor of applied ethics at Łazarski University in Warsaw, Poland.

David will be joining Leigh and Rick at the hotel bar as the new co-host for Season 10, which begins on May 17!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/mini-bar-episode-meet-our-new-co-host-dr-david-gunkel

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REPLAY: YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb Cain)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 07:55:34 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with Caleb Cain about his experience being radicalized by the Alt-Right internet.

[While the HBS hosts are on break between Seasons, we're releasing REPLAYs of some of our favorite episodes from the past. This episode is from Season 5 and originally aired on August 22, 2022.]

In June 2019, the New York Times featured a story about Caleb Cain, entitled “The Making of a YouTube Radical.” That piece was meant to highlight the subtle, severe, and devastating IRL effects of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which has been proven many times over to promote what (in internet slang) is called “red-pilling”—that is, the conversion of users to far-right beliefs. Today, we’re talking to Caleb Cain, a person who has been down the alt-right rabbit hole and somehow found his way back out of it, and we want to introduce our listeners to a first-person account of how right-wing radicalization actually happens on the internet, how it is sustained, and how it might be combatted.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-68-youtubes-alt-right-rabbit-hole/

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Jean-Paul Sartre's "Bad Faith"

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the many and varied ways we lie to ourselves.

For our final episode of each season, we take up a text or concept in philosophy that has crept out of the discipline and made it into the wider popular consciousness and culture. This week, we're talking about Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea of “bad faith” (mauvaise foi) from his text Being and Nothingness.

[Trigger Warning: at around the 24-minute mark in this episode, we have a brief discussion of people ending their lives. You can jump ahead to minute 28:15 if you prefer to skip that part of our conversation.]

As we end Season 9, we're sad to say goodbye to co-host Jason Read, who is stepping back from the microphone. Jason will still be writing books, like his most recent The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work (click that link and buy his book!), doing amazing work as a public philosopher, and devoting more of his time to local activism. Rick and Leigh want to express their most heartfelt gratitude for Jason's work on HBS for the last 45 episodes (Seasons 6-9), and also to let him know that we've always got a barstool saved for him!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-135-jean-paul-sartres-bad-faith

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Companion Animals

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts celebrate the paw-some impact of furry companions on our lives.

Companion species, like dogs and cats, have been a part of human history for thousands of years. The first domesticated dog was over thirty thousand years ago, and the first cat over ten thousand years ago. So, much of what we call human civilization has always been a multispecies endeavor. In recent years, however, cats and dogs have seemed to have taken on increased significance, both in terms of what they offer us and in our dedication to them. With respect to the former, the term “emotional support animal” has gone from being a specialized term for service animals to a general understanding of an animal’s role in our life. With respect to the latter, many millennials and later generations have responded to the foreclosed possibility of having human offspring by focusing on their “fur babies." We spend more money on our animals, with doggie daycares and excursions, and we also spend more time with animals, going to cat cafes.

What does the significance of dogs and cats tell us about ourselves, the world we live in, and about our connection to non-human animals?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-134-companion-animals

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Psychoanalysis (with Benedetta Todaro)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts take a break from the bar and lie down on the couch.

Almost from the beginning of its theoretical elaboration and clinical practice, Psychoanalysis has had a profound impact on culture, particularly in the west. We all laugh at the idea that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!” And we speak freely of “Freudian slips.” And many are at least passingly familiar with the main concepts: Ego, Id, repression, sublimation, etc. Philosophy, in particular, has been in a fairly constant dialogue with Freud and psychoanalysis–some philosophers embracing it and using it to understand aspects of our moral, political, social, and cultural lives, others critiquing or even rejecting it. It seems that European philosophy and its heirs cannot get away from Freud and psychoanalysis. But what is so compelling about the theory? Why have philosophers turned to psychoanalysis but not to, for example, behaviorism? Is the influence of psychoanalysis on philosophy a good thing? And are there not really terrible things about psychoanalysis–that it simply helps bourgeois people adjust to their own alienation; that it turns social and political issues into psychological ones; and that it is not necessarily liberating but might instead be reactionary?

This week, were are joined by philosopher and practicing psychoanalyst Benedetta Todaro to bring psychoanalysis on the couch, dig into its darkest recesses, understand its dreams, and see what is really going on.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-132-psychoanalysis-with-benedetta-todaro

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Whose Anthropocene?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts look for the cause of the Golden Spike.

The term “Anthropocene” was coined in the 1980’s, although it wasn't until 2000 that Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer suggested that we are living in a new geological epoch marked by the impact of humans on the Earth and its inhabitants. Geological epochs are determined by profound and measurable changes in the rock layers and changes in the fossil record. For example, the end of the last ice age marks the beginning of the Holocene, in which we find an explosion of a new and different fossils and profound changes in the composition of rock layers. There is no question that since that time, humans have expanded their presence and increased their populations. During that time, we have hunted various species of animals to extinction, turned millions of acres of forests, wetlands, and plains into farmland. The burning of fossil fuels has altered our climate in drastic and perhaps irreversible ways. Many scientists and scholars have argued this is why we are in a new geologic epoch.

There are, however, reasons to push against this label. Many scholars have pointed out that it is not all of humanity that has had this profound impact, but mostly the well off (mostly white) countries of the global north. Others have argued that the changes are due to capitalism and not human existence as such and have proposed we call it the “capitalocene.” This week, we're rolling up our sleeves to dig into the sediment of the Anthropocene.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-133-whose-anthropocene

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Academic Freedom

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts consider a case study testing the limits of academic freedom.

Nathan Cofnas, holder of an Early Career Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, is being threatened with losing his position because he is a “race realist” and, in particular, has stated that there is a difference in natural intelligence in people of different races. What is more, he has argued that race realism, if widely adopted, would be the end of what he has called “wokism.” He unsurprisingly argues that he has the right, because of Cambridge University’s free speech policy “to work on a project on the biological basis of moral norms. I am free to express my views on science, politics, and culture.”

This case raises several issues. Does a mathematics professor have the academic freedom and free speech right to teach that 2+2=7? Cofnas is not, himself, a biologist, physician, physiologist, or neuro-scientist. Does he have the right to teach something that is false or, at best, well outside the consensus of scientists researching the field? Is there an actual clash of values here?

Finally, should we not consider the fact that Cofnas is on the record as wanting to “poke the bear” of “wokeism,” and, therefore, is more interested in controversy than truth? And can we finally put away the notion that there are “two sides” to every issue?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-131-academic-freedom

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Immediacy (with Anna Kornbluh)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the style of "too late" capitalism with Anna Kornbluh.

Immediacy would seem to be the defining cultural style of our moment. From video to social media and from autofiction to autotheory, the tendency is towards direct intensity of experience and away from the mediations of form, genre, and representation. What drives this turn to the immediate in art, culture, and even politics? What do we lose in this turn to immediacy?

Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy: Or, the Style of Too Late Capitalism, joins us to discuss the effects of "disintermediation."

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-130-immediacy-with-anna-kornbluh

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Boredom

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss the many paradoxes of ennui.

Most of our podcast episodes are about “big” issues, “interesting” topics, “provocative” conversations, or “important” matters… but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of our day-to-day lives is dominated by ennui. Boredom. Tedium. Lethargy. Lassitude. Or, in more common parlance, “the blahs.”

Voltaire famously claimed (in The Prodigal Son) “all genres are allowed, except the boring genre." It’s easy to see why this is the case for artistic works of fiction, but it also seems to have been true for topics of philosophical reflection as well. Given that boredom is such a ubiquitous part of our human experience, why don’t we have a better theory of it?

The curious thing about reflecting on the topic of “boredom” is, of course, that the very act of reflecting upon it makes it “interesting.” To wit, is it even possible to reflect on the experience of boredom as such?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-129-boredom

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Breaking Things at Work (with Gavin Mueller)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss how the Luddites were right about why we hate our jobs.

The term “luddite” generally functions as an insult these days. It is something people are accused of, and a term that no one would claim for themselves. To adopt and adapt to new technologies is part of what it means to be progressive and modern, not to mention hip. However, the history of actually existing technologies paints a different picture, technologies from the laptop to the cellphone have been used to extend the working day and insert consumption into the pores of social life.

Is it time to reconsider what it means to be luddite? Joining us to discuss Luddism is Gavin Mueller, author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites were Right About Why You Hate Your Job.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-128-breaking-things-at-work-with-gavin-mueller

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Lying

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts parse the difference between mistakes, half-truths, embellishments, and outright lies.

George Costanza (from the TV series Seinfeld) once insisted: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” This seems both true and false. It's certainly wrong to claim that someone lied accidentally, so intention, and therefore knowing what you are saying is not true, appears to be a necessary part of what it is to lie. Yet, the “if you believe it” part often operates like a “get out of jail free" card, and none of us can really know the intentions of another.

Kant famously argued that I have a duty to tell the truth in all cases, no matter the consequences... which leads one to wonder: if I'm aiding a friend by sheltering them from an abusive partner, when that partner knocks on the door and asks if my friend is inside, must I tell the truth? And what about a friend who asks you if you like their new tattoo?

Finally, what happens to lying in an age, arguably like ours, when the truth counts for so little? Might we be in the awkward position of hoping for an age in which we can actually lie again?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-127-lying

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Growing Old(er)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts consider the sands through the hourglass.

It seems as if, when we’re young, the solution to all of our problems is just getting older—when will people take me seriously? when will I understand my own body? when will I gain the confidence to assert my own will? or, just be myself? Then, as we age, it paradoxically occurs to us that the only solution to our problems is to be young again: if I only knew then what I know now, if I only had a chance to do that thing over, if I only could move like when I was young, if I only had my whole future ahead of me ….

This week, we're talking about the phenomenology, the physicality, and the psychology of growing old(er).

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-125-growing-older

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The Phenomenology of Black Spirit (with Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan Johnson)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS discuss Hegel, the black radical tradition, and the history of Philosophy with Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan J. Johnson.

This week we are joined by Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan J. Johnson to talk about their book Phenomenology of Black Spirit, which reads Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit against the tradition of black thought from Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis. It is a stunning demonstration of a relationship to philosophy that is at once creative, breaking the boundaries between exegesis and history, and politically committed, reading for the struggle for liberation. It is a book that profoundly challenges what it means to do philosophy, and raises the question as to what philosophy offers the struggle for abolition and black liberation. In our conversation we talk about the book, Hegel, dialectics, and what it means to do philosophy.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-125-the-phenomenology-of-black-spirit-with-biko-mandela-gray-and-ryan-johnson

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Back to "Normal"

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss post-COVID demands to get "back to normal."

In 2020 the NCAA canceled its basketball tournaments for the year. Over the next several months, mitigation measures became more widespread and strict. In some places more quickly than others, we all eventually “returned to normal.” Did we though? In some ways, normalcy seems to be an irresistible pull. But is “normalcy” not the same as the status quo? And shouldn’t we be critical of both? We can look at other contexts in which we either have found a normalcy or feel the need to get back to normal: Climate change (who is doing anything about it?), anti-democratic presidents (well, that’s just the new normal!), xenophobia is now a baseline in the U.S., the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, the list can go on and on.

It is the "new" normal? And what do we do about the intransigence of normality?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-124-back-to-normal

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Real Life Heroes

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts chat about heroes without capes.

In a world saturated with fictional caped crusaders and masked vigilantes, we want to redirect our attention to the unsung champions who make a tangible impact in the lives of others, in other words, “real life” people who display acts of courage, compassion and commitment and who transcend the confines of comic book fantasies.

Not all heroes wear flashy costumes or flashy costumes, and they don’t all possess superhuman abilities. Often, they emerge from diverse but garden-variety backgrounds, with regular lives and more or less regular jobs, but find a way to navigate challenges that test the limits of human fortitude, and mange to exhibit the skills or qualities of character that we want to emulate.

What makes a “real life hero” heroic? And how can we keep ourselves from turning them into idols? Are heroes a "childish" fantasy that we should dispense with, or are they necessary to character formation?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-123-real-life-heroes

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Deconstruction

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts dig into Jacque Derrida's philosophy to see if it really is responsible for everything that's wrong with the world.

So what is deconstruction all about?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-122-deconstruction

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HBS Goes to the Movies: "The Magnificent Seven" (1960)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts return to the movies to learn why men are cheaper than guns.

The Magnificent Seven, produced in 1960 and directed by John Sturges, has a significant place in the history of the western in the U.S. Some have claimed that it is, in fact, the last true western. In fact, the movie practically says this itself. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film, The Seven Samurai, placing it in a different genre and a different cultural context. Kurosawa, apparently, told Sturges that he loved the film. The Magnificent Seven deals with questions of the use of force, the capitalist function of thieves and bandits, the meaning of courage, and the loss that war brings. And it has an amazing score, written by Elmer Bernstein. So why are we watching this film? “It seemed like a good idea at the time!”

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-121-hbs-goes-the-the-movies-the-magnificent-seven-1960

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Decartes' Second Meditation

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts don their nightgowns, cozy up to the fire, and contemplate wax.

There is, perhaps, no more famous statement in the history of philosophy than Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” This conclusion is reached in the Second of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and is seen as one of the crowning achievements of modern philosophy, at least that kind of philosophy usually called “rationalism.” In fact, this claim can be said to be the founding moment of a trajectory in philosophy that goes from Descartes, through Spinoza and Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, into Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. It has been the target of a great deal of criticism as well. Some insist it is the origin of a dualism of mind and body. Others insist that it is the founding moment of a kind of subjectivity that is set over and against the material world. And others point to the class antagonism that is contained in the statement. Enrique Dussel goes so far as to insist that before there is the “ego cogito” there is the “ego conquero.” What does Descartes actually argue in this founding text? How does he conclude that “I exist as long as I am thinking?” And what consequences does he draw. Let’s bring Descartes into the bar and ask him WTF?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/decartes-second-meditation/

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Trust

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss the meaning of trust, and how it is built, broken, and restored.

Trust acts as both a glue and a sieve, holding together our personal and professional worlds while filtering and determining the depth of our relationships. It’s the invisible thread weaving through the fabric of our lives, influencing everything from the simple exchanges of daily interactions to the intricate negotiations of politics and economics. How do we establish trust? What ruptures this fragile yet resilient element? And crucially, how do we repair it once it’s been fractured?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-119-trust

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Thought Leaders (with Christopher P. Long)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts ask Chris Long how philosophers contribute and how best to value their contributions.
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This week, we are joined in the bar by Christopher Long to talk about thought leaders, universities prioritizing public engagement, and the ways in which activities like podcasting are and are not valued by university administrators.

Christopher P. Long is MSU Research Foundation Professor, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters, Dean of the MSU Honors College, and Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. He has written extensively on Ancient Greek Philosophy, Reiner Schürmann, and public philosophy. Most relevant, perhaps, to our listeners, is that he has written collaboratively with Rick for almost 20 years. He has been an early and strong proponent of the use of technology in research, writing, and publication of philosophical work. While we have thrown deans under the bus quite a bit in this podcast, if there have to be deans, they should all be like Chris!

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-118-thought-leaders-with-christopher-p-long

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Trans Philosophy (with Talia Mae Bettcher)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS co-hosts learn why it's not just about pronouns.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-117-trans-philosophy-with-talia-mae-bettcher

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The Stories We Tell

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts explore what is lost when we choose documentation over narration.

We live in an era that can be said to be documented more than it is narrated. First, on the most immediate level every event, from mundane to world shattering, is photographed, live streamed, or tweeted, producing a real time account of events all over the world. Second, there is no shortage of documentaries or docudramas, every crime, scandal, and disaster seems to get its own series or podcast recounting the events that have happened.

However, the same period has also been marked by a decline in stories about itself, of works of fiction or film. It is not too much of an exaggeration that we do not really have a story that could be said to be about the Gulf War, the 2008 crash, the Trump presidency, or Covid. There have been a few films about the first few entries on that list, but Covid generally only shows up in film and movies in the behind the scenes photographs which often show a crew wearing N95 masks filming unmasked actors.

It appears that the closer we get to the present the harder it is to come up with convincing stories about the present. One could also argue these events seem to be already written, the shutdowns of Covid seemed to imitate every movie about plagues and social breakdown. Maybe we already made a covid movie years before it happened. In a similar manner you often hear that we are past the age of satire, Trump seems to make all satires of the stupidity and brutality of our politics from Being There to Idiocracy toothless and redundant.

Are we past the point of fiction?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-116-the-stories-we-tell

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Collegiality

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts wonder if "collegiality" is a virtue... or just a cover for prejudice.

Everyone who works with others has colleagues. In the academic world, the term "colleague" usually refers to the members of one’s own department, whether friend or foe. To describe someone as "collegial," however, is an entirely different matter.

"Collegiality" refers to those qualities that make someone a "good" colleague... though, especially in academia, the adjective "collegial" often takes on a more nuanced force, sometimes including whatever those qualities are that make one "likable" within a department. Often the characteristics of what makes someone collegial (or not) are vague, implied, or intentionally obscured... which frequently makes discussions of "collegiality" a sticking point in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions.

Most definitions of collegiality stipulate that the good colleague contributes positively to the work of their team, department, or company. However, there are negative aspects to this term and concept, as well: for example, women who speak frequently and powerfully at meetings are often deemed “uncollegial." Collegiality can come to mean something like “is one of us,” thus making those who are critical of "us" uncollegial. And when collegiality comes up in discussions of promotion or tenure, it often turns out to be an amorphous, vaguely defined term.

With all these problems, it brings one to wonder: should the use of "collegiality" as a meaningful criterion for judgment be abandoned?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-115-collegiality

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Debt

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts wonder why it is so hard for us to think of ourselves as "we, debtors"?

Debt has an odd function within modern capitalist societies. On the one hand, the economy cannot function without debt; it provides the oil that eases the friction of production, circulation, and consumption. On the other hand, there is a lot of moral language surrounding debt. In many languages, the word for debt is related to or even the same as the word for guilt or sin. During the financial crisis of 2007-2008, it was not uncommon to hear reprobation for those who took out mortgages that they couldn’t afford. And there was a lot of beating up of people who “walked away” from their “obligations.”

This same mixture of morality and economics is exposed by Marx in relation to both debt and to the moral value of saving money. Marx points out that the Friday payday, or even bi-weekly payday, is the first advance of credit in a capitalist economy. Labor works before they are paid, thereby lending their labor power, and the value it produces, to the capitalist. This form of debt is never seen as morally suspect, nor are the bankruptcies that capitalists like Donald Trump have gone through. A lower class, blue collar worker finds that they are no longer able to afford to pay back their debt, and that is somehow a “sin.” A billionaire walks away from their obligations and that is seen as “good business.”

Why do we have this weird, dual relationship to debt? Is debt a moral obligation? Should we all walk away from our debts? Why does that seem more catastrophic than global climate change?!

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-112-debt

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Political Philosophy of Mind (with John Protevi)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts are joined by John Protevi to talk about case studies, COVID, and the political philosophy of mind.

At first glance, a "political philosophy of mind" would seem to be an oxymoron of sorts. Minds, after all, are often considered to be the individual basis for decision and action, while political philosophy would demand that we think at least on some level in terms of collectivity if not relations. A political philosophy of mind demands, then, overcoming the binary of individual and collective, individual and society. The individual and collective is only one such challenge proposed by a political philosophy of mind. If we consider the mind to include not only cognitive dimensions and aspects, but also the affective basis of actions-- the feelings, moods, and emotions, that structure our responses-- then a political philosophy of mind also crosses the divide between mind and body.

Such crossings are necessary to move beyond an economy and society that increasingly frames everything in terms of purely individual and rational decisions, as neoliberal calculations subsume our economic life, and even “you do you” guidelines replace public health. In this episode, we talk to John Protevi (Phyllis M. Taylor Professor of French Studies, Louisiana State University) about a political philosophy of mind, and why it might be necessary to think of the mind across the division of individual and society, mind and body.

Full episode notes can be found at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-113-political-philosophy-of-mind-with-john-protevi

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Fan Culture

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat about the symbiotic relationship between cultural products and their fandoms.

For a long time, the image of the fan and fan culture was summed up by an infamous skit by William Shatner on SNL, in which he implores the trekkies to “get a life.” To be a fan was to be a passive stooge of the culture industry, one who mindlessly buys its products, and memorizes its trivia at the expense of their own creativity and life. Gradually this image began to change. The field of “Cultural Studies” demanded that we see fans as not just passive recipients of the culture industry, but active producers, who create their own interpretations, their own meaning, and their own activities with fan fiction, cosplay, and creativity, by poaching the commodities of the culture industry. Lately, however, the division between official product and consumption have broken down in a different way, as fan activity has become integral to marketing and maintenance of the value of intellectual property. Fans rabidly defend their favorite franchises online, harassing critics and anyone seen to deviate from canon. Suzanne Scott had dubbed this practice the convergence culture industry, it is fan activity not passivity that drives the industry.

At the same time that fan culture and practices have changed in popular culture, the fan has moved beyond the confines of popular culture to become a general figure of political and cultural participation. The platform formerly known as twitter is dominated by Elon Musk fanboys who rush to defend his increasingly erratic actions. Therapists have had to adjust to the way in which Taylor Swift has become the dominant cultural force in the lives of young women. Last, but not least, the Trump rallies seem to be both fan service and rallies around the particular cult of personality of Trump. The fan has become a cultural, political, and economic force in our society.

What has caused this transformation? What does it mean for us? What can be done about it?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-111-fan-culture

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The Problem Spaces of Philosophy (with William Paris)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts are joined by Will Paris to talk about Du Bois, public philosophy, podcasting, and carving out "problem spaces."

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois famously asked the question “What is it like to be a problem?,” highlighting the stigmatizing and dehumanizing treatment of Blacks in the post-Reconstruction but Pre-Brown v. Board of Education United States. The purpose of his question was two-fold: on the one hand, Du Bois was urging his readers to consider the emotional and psychological toll on Black Americans living in a society where their very identity was reduced to a “problem” that others must grapple with; and on the other hand, by clearly articulating “what is it like to be a problem?” as a question, Du Bois was carving out a “problem space” of discourse, where the ugliness and urgency of anti-black racism was brought to the fore and itself demanded to be grappled with.

We suspect that most people intuitively understand what a “problem” is— How do I find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle? Should I pay off my debts or invest in my retirement? When is the exact right time to quit Twitter?—and also that most people understand what a person qua “problem” is, whether they are made problematic by social conditions and systemic prejudices or whether they just don’t know how to act right.

But what is a “problem space”? According to today’s guest, Will Paris (University of Toronto), it is NOT simply a location where problems occur or a problematic people show up, but rather a discursive space where ready-made answers are insufficient, critical thinking is necessary, complex societal issues can be made even more complicated, and actual problems are, although rarely “solved,” at least made intelligible.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-111-the-problem-spaces-of-philosophy-with-william-paris

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The Uncanny Valley

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss why humanlike robots are sooooo creepy.

In 1970, a Japanese roboticist by the name of Masahiro Mori published a short essay in the journal Energy entitled “The Uncanny Valley," in which he attempted to explain humans' reactions to robots that looked and acted almost human. Mori hypothesized that when we encounter humanlike technological objects, our feelings of affinity toward them tend to increase as their verisimilitude increase. (To use a Star Wars example, think of the way we’re more positively drawn to C3PO than to R2D2.) However, the moment robots appear or behave in a too humanlike way, our attitude towards them immediately shifts to revulsion. (Think about the difference in your attitude toward C3PO and your attitude toward the King from the Burger King commercials.) Crossing that line between “humanlike” and “too humanlike,” Mori hypothesized, is like stepping off a precipice. Things just get creepier and creepier.

In the 50 years since Mori first hypothesized the uncanny valley, as we all know, technology has advanced at light-speed. Improvements in robotics, computer generated imagery, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence technologies have made it increasingly difficult for us to readily perceive the difference between the human and the humanlike. All of this sparked renewed interest in Mori’s hypothesis: cognitive scientists and neuroscientists engaged in experimental “testing” of the uncanny valley. Psychoanalysts reopened their Freud, Jentsch, and Lacan books for reconsideration. (Philosophers did, too, but they added Schelling, Nietzsche, and Guy de Bord.) Philosophers of technology were born, as film and literary critics congratulated each other on hitting the lottery.

Also important to note: Mori’s original essay states that his was an “incomplete” theory, and he very explicitly calls for readers to “build an accurate map of the uncanny valley.”

So, today, we’re going to talk about the uncanny, the uncanny valley, whether or not our ability to distinguish between the human and the humanlike is fading, and if that matters.

Prepare to be creeped out.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-110-the-uncanny-valley

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Jordan Peele's Horror (with Johanna Isaacson)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss Jordan Peele's special brand of horror with the author of Stepford Daughters, Johanna Isaacson.

For a long time, or at least it seemed, horror films were considered to be beneath serious scrutiny. The problematic politics of such films were all too apparent in the violence brought to bear on women’s bodies in countless slasher films. The racial politics were not much better; the cliche of the black character dying first exists for a reason. Gradually this changed, though, first with such groundbreaking critical studies such as Carol Glover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film and Robin Wood’s “An Introduction to the American Horror film.”

In the past few years, horror films themselves have changed as well. Most notably Jordan Peele has made three films dealing with our “social demons”: Get Out (2017), Us (2019), and Nope (2022). To talk with us about horror, the films of Jordan Peele, and how horror can be used to develop our critical understanding of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, we have invited Johanna Isaacson author of Stepford Daughters: Weapons for Feminists in Contemporary Horror.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-109-jordan-peeles-horror-with-johanna-isaacson

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The Subversive Seventies (with Michael Hardt)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts ask Michael Hardt why we so quickly jump from the 60's to the 80's in our political imagination?

Most histories of the present either overlook the seventies, jumping from the sixties of radical struggle to the eighties of Reagan/Thatcher and repression, or dismiss it as just the end point of the previous era struggles, the point where the sixties fell apart, collapsing into infighting, or went too far, devolving into violence.

What do we overlook in not thinking about the seventies as a decade of struggle? Moreover, what does an examination of the history of that period offer for thinking about politics today? Joining us this week to talk about what we can learn from the seventies and his recently published book, The Subversive Seventies, is Michael Hardt.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-107-the-subversive-seventies-with-michael-hardt

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Forgiveness

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts wonder how a hard heart is melted and mended.

But what does it mean to forgive? What does forgiveness do, and for whom? Does forgiveness require the forgetting of wrongs done? Is real forgiveness even possible?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-107-forgiveness

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HBS Goes to the Movies: "Hands on a Hardbody" (1997)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss a real human drama.

Note to listeners: if you haven't already, you may want to watch “Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary” (link to complete film on YouTube here) before listening!

"Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary" tells the story of an annual competition held from 1992 to 2005 in Longview, Texas, in which a local Nissan dealership selected 24 contestants by lottery for a chance to win a tantalizing symbol of freedom and mobility in many rural areas: a brand-new hardbody truck. All the contestants had to do to win it was to show up at 5am in the sweltering Texas summer heat, place a hand on the truck, and wait until theirs was the last hand left. They got a 5-minute break every hour and a 15-minute break every six hours, but the rest of the time they couldn’t lean, they couldn’t sleep, they couldn’t use the bathroom, and most importantly they couldn’t take their hand off the hardbody.

They could only wrestle with the relentless passage of time… and all of the boredom, exhaustion, physical pain, and quite often delirium it brought with it.

So they waited. And waited. And waited…sometimes more than 80 straight hours before there was only one hand left. That’s more three entire days and nights.

As the clock ticks relentlessly on and we learn more about each contestant’s hunger for a chance at prosperity, what seemed like an absurd spectacle of willpower and perseverance becomes a deeper exploration of the human condition—the limits of mind and body, amity and enmity, suffering and compassion, ambition and ability— all as these 24 contestants confront the bittersweet realities of the American dream in the hopes of escaping the suffocating shackles of their circumstances.

In the words of Benny Perkins, former winner of a hardbody, return contestant in the documentary “Hands on a Hardbody,” and arguably one of the most underrated philosophers of the 20th Century: “It’s a real human drama.”

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-106-hbs-goes-to-the-movies-hands-on-a-hardbody-the-documentary-1997

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REPLAY: Death

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts confront the inevitable.

It is most obviously true that we are all going to die. The very fact that anything is alive seems to entail that it is going to die. Death confronts us as an ultimate cancellation and nullification in the face of which one might ask, “what does it matter if I am going to die?”

The chorus in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus says that the best thing is never to have been born at all. This is especially true if one’s life is filled with suffering and then death. Kant, not able to provide a reason why living is so great, simply says that it is the parents’ job to reconcile their children to existence! On the other hand, we have the 20th century philosopher, Martin Heidegger, arguing that we will only be authentically what we are when we take on our own death as the possibility that is the condition of our existence.

Co-host Rick Lee is fairly confident that death is "stupid." As he notes, when a loved one dies, our thoughts do not go to authenticity but to the fact that it sucks and is painful that there is now a hole, a gap, in my world that cannot possibly be made good again. It’s no wonder that people turn to the hope or wish that all will be made right again in the end. So, he asks: “what is death?” and what is the “meaning" of death?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-87-death

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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REPLAY: Revolutionary Mathematics (with Justin Joque)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with Justin Joque about how we might get Thomas Bayes' robot boot off our necks.

Why does Netflix ask you to pick what movies you like when you first sign on in order to recommend other movies and shows to you? How does Google know what search results are most relevant? Why does it seem as if every tech company wants to collect as much data as they can get from you? It turns out that all of this is because of a shift in the theoretical and mathematical approach to probability.

Bayesian statistics, the primary model used by machine learning systems, currently dominates almost everything about our lives: investing, sales at stores, political predictions, and, increasingly, what we think we know about the world. How did the "Bayesian revolution" come about? And how did come to dominate? And, perhaps more importantly, is this the best mathematical/statistical model available to us? Or is there another, more "revolutionary," mathematics out there?

This week we are joined by Justin Joque, visualization librarian at University of Michigan who writes at the intersection of philosophy and technology. He is the author Deconstruction Machines: Writing in the Age of Cyberwar and, most recently, Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-78-revolutionary-mathematics-with-justin-joque

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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The Master/Slave Dialectic

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts struggle for recognition.

This week we ask the question, why has this passage become the hit single off of the dense concept album that is the Phenomenology.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-105-the-master-slave-dialectic

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Too Soon?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss timing, prudence, discretion, and propriety.

When we talk about propriety, there are a lot of “gray” areas, largely because propriety demands that we conform to conventional rules of speech or behavior… and “conventional rules” are often more the product of “convention” than they are actual “rules.” Propriety requires that we develop prudence and discretion, our capacities of judgment, sagacity, and interpersonal awareness, which are arguably quite different from our capacity to apply a rule or logically reason from premise to conclusion.

Comics (perhaps the least interested in “propriety” among us) call this “timing,” and they spend years perfecting optimal joke delivery. When their timing fails, or when they can’t “read the room,” they bomb. Sometimes that’s the consequence of a deficit in their delivery– their rhythm, cadence, tempo, or pausing– but sometimes the joke itself fails. For example, in the months immediately following 9/11, most comics who joked about the attacks of that day were met with gasps and groans from their audience. "Too soon," the audience would heckle with the bad taste of “bad taste” in their mouths, too soon.

Today we’re going to try to unpack what “too soon” means, how we determine how soon is “too soon,” and whether or not there are, in fact, some “rules” of propriety.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-104-too-soon

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Tenure

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the pros and cons of tenure.

There are many good ideological reasons to defend tenure in higher education, not least of which among them is that tenure is perhaps the only institutional guard that society has established to protect its researchers, scientists, and intellectuals against the pressures of the market. That’s no small thing. But we also understand that, to the non-academic public, tenure may seem like nothing more than a guarantee that haughty academics with cushy jobs can’t be fired unless, as the old adage goes, “they’re caught with a dead woman or a live boy”?

Who doesn’t want job security?

As with all things that we discuss on this podcast, though, the question of tenure is much more complicated that it appears at first glance. Once established as a institutional protection of academic freedom, the dynamics, significance, and real-world effects of the granting and/or denial of tenure have dramatically changed as the University, the culture, and the political intervention of state legislative bodies have changed.

In this episode, we’re talking about tenure: “get out of jail free card” or the necessary codification of a social good?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-103-tenure

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Prestige TV

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS try to decipher what makes prestige TV "prestigious."

The 21st Century hasn’t given us a lot of reason to recommend it so far—terror, war, fascism, plague, climate disaster, and an impending technopocalyps... but, hey, at least we’ve had good tv!

Often referred to as “Peak TV,” the so-called second (or “new”) Golden Age of Television began in the very late 90’s and really cemented its influence in the first decade of the 2000’s. The plots were complex and protracted, not episodic. The protagonists were antiheroes, not heroes, morally ambiguous, hard to endorse, but impossible not to like. There was foul language and graphic violence and full-frontal nudity. And since nobody could access this content with an antenna and tin-foil, we paid for it.

It’s since been dubbed “prestige tv,” in part (I think) to assuage the consciences of all those snooty people who looooooved to say that they “didn’t watch tv.” Prestige tv included shows you couldn’t not watch—not because you wouldn’t be “cool” or you might be left out of the most recent water-cooler small-talk, but because prestige tv was quite literally re-shaping culture itself.

The Sopranos. Lost. Mad Men. The Wire. Breaking Bad. House of Cards. True Detective. Game of Thrones. Atlanta.

Today we’re going to talk about prestige tv, in my opinion one of the most significant, and uniquely American, artistic movements since rock n’ roll. What makes prestige tv prestigious? How do we know it when we see it? What are some of the best examples of it? And, perhaps most importantly, why are we seeing less of it?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-102-prestige-tv

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Hobbies

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts lobby for hobbies.

The concept of hobbies is perhaps anachronistic and even ambivalent. Many hobbies are shadows of more respected pursuits such as the creation of art, music, or literature, and thus tinged with the idea of failure. Their primary function seems to be to pass the time. Every hobby risks being seen as not just an idiosyncratic activity, but a kind of failure as if that time and energy was better spent on something else, something more useful or productive. Hobbies are often seen as antisocial, as something undertaken by a person who does not have friends, or family members, but at the same time they are the basis of many people’s social existence. Is there something to redeem hobbies in an age in which ceaseless productivity is the norm and standard?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-hobbies

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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What's YOUR Philosophy?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts celebrate our 100th episode by asking each other the question "what's YOUR philosophy?"

Hotel Bar Sessions, as a podcast, is committed to the idea of "public philosophy," but is there such a thing as a “private philosophy"? Not private in the sense that it is kept out of the public, but private in that it is a philosophy that belongs to an individual. As professional philosophers, we often find that when were out in public and tell people what we do, they will often ask: "what's your philosophy?. So, this week, we're asking each other that same question.

What does it mean to have a philosophy of one’s own? Do each of the hosts have “a philosophy”?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-100-whats-your-philosophy

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Community

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts try to determine who's in and who's out.

In 1887, Ferdinand Tönnies published a groundbreaking book, Community and Society (an excerpt from his text that lays out the argument can be found here), in which he argues that community is a different form of social group from society. The main distinguishing characteristics are that community is a group in which members are personally connected, relying on each other, close in worldviews and values, while society is impersonal, disconnected, with members that are independent and may not share values. (Think about small town vs. big city!) A debate subsequently arose in Germany about whether one was better than the other and Tönnies seems to have expressed more positive views about community than about society.

More recently, though, “community” has taken on a somewhat different resonance. We speak of the "queer" community/communities, the "Latin American" community, et al, and it seems we are referring to a group that has affinities in terms their members' interests and values, but may not be constituted by personal connections and direct relations.

For Tönnies, community appears to name a group gathered under the principle “we don’t do that here,” and therefore can be oppressive or repressive. Yet, today, community often indicates an association that is affirming and enabling.... even if that latter community can also, at times, turn repressive as a community calls one of its members a turncoat, or worse.

Today, we ask: is "community" the appropriate ground of politics? Or is it, rather, a menace to "society"?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-99-community

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Gossip

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts spill the tea about tales whispered, secrets shared, and reputations shaped.

Gossip seems like exactly the sort of topic that serious philosophers would wave their hands in disgust at, as not worthy of consideration. Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet, once declared, "Gossip is mischievous, light and easy to raise, but grievous to bear and hard to get rid of," and similarly, in Leviticus, we find Moses warning his people with the admonition, "Do not go up and down as a talebearer among your people." Both remind us of gossip’s ability to captivate our attention, and the real harms it can inflict.

Yet, it’s not so easy to just dismiss gossip as mere frivolous chatter. Some evolutionary biologists link the emergence of language itself to gossip, and sociologists have long argued that the ability to engage in gossip played a vital role in our species' development, enabling us to form complex social networks, navigate alliances, and share information about others.

Gossip is not without its dual nature. It serves as a source of transmission for both amity and enmity. It can strengthen social bonds, create a sense of belonging, and forge alliances… but it also has the power to breed division, stoke resentment, and destroy reputations.

Is gossip a necessary, even essential, operation of human sociality? Is gossiping morally blameworthy in every instance, or are there instances in which gossiping is justified? What distinguishes “gossiping” from “reporting,” or “divulging,” or even just “communicating”?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-98-gossip

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Men and Masculinity (with Nathan Duford)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with Nathan Duford about what men can (and can't) want.

Men, or rather masculinity, seems to be increasingly in crisis. This crisis takes many forms: incels (involuntary celibates who claim that they have been denied the sexual attention they feel that women owe them), volcels (so-called "voluntary celibates"), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW, who feel that relationships with women threaten their masculinity), and Men’s Right Activists (who believe that everything from divorce laws to #metoo have made men a persecuted group). These crises and subcultures are often tied into the alt-right world, and at times have shown up in the screeds and manifestos of mass shooters.

What is up with men? Why is this happening? Joining us to answer these questions is Nathan Duford, author of Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory (Stanford UP, 2022) and researcher of the sexual politics of the early Frankfurt School.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-97-men-and-masculinity

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Gatekeeping

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss culture wars, Midwestern housewives, and Kafka.

“Gate-keeping” is a term that actually originated in 1943, when Kurt Lewin coined it in his study Forces Behind Food Habits and Methods of Change to describe how Midwestern housewives effectively managed their families’ food consumption during World War 2. Housewives, who were the primary conduit for getting food from the marketplace to their families’ mouths, recognized that not all family members’ need for food had equal weight in making household food decisions, and thus those wives (who would typically shop for and prepare the food) “gated” what food resources came in and how they were distributed. That is to say, the original meaning of “gate-keeping” wasn’t just about setting up gates to keep people out of some sphere in which they didn’t merit admission; it was about how to distribute scarce resources within an already-gated community in which there wasn’t enough for everyone. It was about survival.

Today, gatekeeping is not only not about keeping people alive, but one could argue that in many cases it’s about denying access to scarce resources– professional, interpersonal, political, economic– that people need to survive. Who are the gatekeepers and how did they come to be so? By what right? On what authority? Those of us sitting outside, trying to get in, want to know.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-96-gatekeeping

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Punching Nazis (with Devin Shaw)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts ask Devin Shaw whether and how to punch Nazis.

In this episode, we are joined by Devin Shaw, who teaches at Douglas College and is the author of Philosophy of Antifascism: Punching Nazis and Fighting White Supremacy.

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-95-punching-nazis

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Progress

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 May 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts ask: how do we know if we're getting where we're going?

Recently, an article about four "hard problems" in philosophy and their possible solutions came into Rick's newsfeed. Upon reading it, his first question was whether or not philosophy is about "solving problems" at all, which immediately led him to think not only about progress in philosophy, but progress in general.

Some philosophers have argued that humans, in general, have made great “moral progress.” Others argue that history is essentially progressive: toward greater freedom (Hegel), toward more comfortable lives (Smith), toward equality for all (Marx), or other identifiable ends. And clearly there has been progress in the so-called "hard sciences" like medicine, biology, physics, computer science, mathematics, etc.

So, the question is: are we making progress? Toward what? For whom? And how do we know?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/progress

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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The University and its Discontents

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 May 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts consider the recent spate of assaults on academic freedom.

As a public institution of sorts (and sometimes) the university claims to be neutral with respect to politics. This has imposed an ideal of seeing “both sides” of all issues. These two sides are supposed to roughly correspond to the two political parties. Such a model is arguably reductive and simplistic, forcing a particular political model in the ideal of being noncommittal in politics. However, lately even this model has come under assault as academic disciplines such as critical race theory, gender theory, and intersectionality have come under direct political assault.

What drives this attack on the university? More importantly, what can be done to counter it?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-university-and-its-discontents

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Lazy Relativism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 May 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts do NOT agree to disagree!

On the first day of co-host's Leigh's classes, she warns her students against (what she calls) “lazy relativism.” The example she gives is of a conversation in which two people have been at odds for a while, they suspect that they are not going to come to an agreement on the matter at hand, and so one of them says: “yeah, agree to disagree” or “everybody has different opinions on this” or, worst of all, “what’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me.”

That last iteration, in particular, is an expression of the kind of “lazy relativism” we're discussing in this episode.

When people repeat this dictum of “what’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me,” might it be that what they’re really meaning to communicate is “this is a hard conversation that has come to an impasse, I don’t want to argue with you about it anymore, but I also don’t want to offend you by appearing disrespectful”?

Today, we're talking about why lazy relativism seems to be the go-to disposition for so many when encountering a disagreement, what exactly is “lazy” about it, and whether or not there are non-lazy forms of relativism.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/lazy-relativism

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HBS Goes to the Movies: The Conversation (1974)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 May 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss Coppola's classic treatment of Nixon-era surveillance and paranoia.

Released in 1974, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is often hailed as one of the defining films of the post-Watergate era, a film dealing with surveillance, conspiracy, and paranoia. While it is definitely about that in many ways, it is also an interesting study of a particular kind of subject, and a particular ideal of subjectivity. Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul is a man who endeavors to be an island, to have no connections with anyone, and to focus just on the pure technical details of his work, without thinking about its larger implications. “It has nothing to do with me” is his general attitude, even as he wrestles with the implications of his work. Lastly, through its use of sound and surveillance, it is a film which asks the question of both its characters and its viewers, what does it mean to know something?

What is the connection between fear and knowledge, desire and knowledge?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-91-hbs-goes-to-the-movies-the-conversation-1974

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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REPLAY: The Public Intellectual (with Eddie Glaude, Jr.)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 06:00:00 -0400

While the HBS hosts are taking a break between Seasons 6 and 7, we're re-playing some of our favorite conversations you might have missed. Enjoy this REPLAY episode from Season 5 on "The Public Intellectual" with special guest, Eddie Glaude, Jr.

Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. is the James S. McDonnel Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University, and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He is also on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. He frequently appears in the media, as a columnist for TIME Magazine and as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace. He also regularly appears on Meet the Press on Sundays. Combining a scholar’s knowledge of history, a political commentator’s take on the latest events, and an activist’s passion for social justice, Glaude challenges all of us to examine our collective American conscience.

This week, the HBS hosts chat with Dr. Glaude about the role and the history of the public intellectual in America, the difference between the public intellectual and the “thought-leader” or “influencer,” and what it takes to be a public intellectual in the 21st Century.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-61-the-public-intellectual/

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REPLAY: Vulgarity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 06:00:00 -0400

While the HBS hosts are taking a break between Season 6 and Season 7, we're re-playing some of our favorite conversations you might have missed. Enjoy this NSFW episode from Season 2, in which our co-hosts parse the difference between obscenity, profanity, and vulgarity!

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-20-vulgarity/

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REPLAY: YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb Cain)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 12:31:41 -0400

The HBS hosts are on break between Seasons 6 and 7, so we're REPLAYing our Season 5 episode on "YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole."

In this episode, we interview Caleb Cain (@FaradaySpeaks) about his experience of being radicalized by the al-right internet.

n June 2019, the New York Times featured a story about Caleb Cain, entitled “The Making of a YouTube Radical.” That piece was meant to highlight the subtle, severe, and devastating IRL effects of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which has been proven many times over to promote what (in internet slang) is called “red-pilling”—that is, the conversion of users to far-right beliefs. Today, we’re talking to Caleb Cain, a person who has been down the alt-right rabbit hole and somehow found his way back out of it, and we want to introduce our listeners to a first-person account of how right-wing radicalization actually happens on the internet, how it is sustained, and how it might be combatted.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-68-youtubes-alt-right-rabbit-hole/

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REPLAY: Robots (with David Gunkel)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts are on break between Seasons 6 and 7, so we're REPLAYing our Season 2 conversation with David Gunkel about robots and robot rights.

The HBS hosts interview Dr. David Gunkel (author of Robot Rights and How To Survive A Robot Invasion) about his work on emergent technologies, intelligent machines, and robots. Following the recent announcement by Elson Musk that Tesla is developing a humanoid robot for home use, we ask: what is the real difference between a robot and a toaster?

Do robots and intelligent machines rise to the level of “persons”? Should we accord them moral consideration or legal rights? Or are those questions just the consequence of our over-anthropomorphizing robots and intelligent machines?

Full episode notes available at this link.

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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The Allegory of the Cave

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts consider the merits and demerits of the red pill/blue pill option.

The Allegory of the Cave (a section from Plato's longer dialogue entitled Republic) is one of the most famous and widely referenced passages in the history of Western philosophy. Many, even those who are not "professional" philosophers, are at least noddingly familiar with Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Yet, those who have never had the opportunity to read it may wonder: what does Plato actually say in the Allegory of the Cave? What are the details of this strange story? Which ones of them matter? Is there a right or wrong way to understand this allegory?

This week, the HBS hosts are taking a long stroll through the text of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, parsing what is actually said within it, and taking time to entertain diversions into its contemporary reformulations (e.g., in films like The Matrix and They Live).

Should we all be motivated to exit the "cave," despite the pain involved in doing so? Or, alternatively, is there a way to justify choosing to remain in the cave?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-90-the-allegory-of-the-cave
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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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Late Capitalism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:00:00 -0400

In a passage that could be considered the motto of our historical moment, Fredric Jameson writes "It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imagination." Why does capitalism seem so inescapable? Why do we see it not just as an economic system that came into existence at a particular time, and will end at some point as well, but as a reflection of some fundamental truth about the world and ourselves–what Mark Fisher calls Capitalist Realism? At the same time, given Jameson’s allusion to the weakness of our imagination, might we be missing the way that capitalism is already mutating, changing into something else, not a revolutionary transformation into communism, but into a kind of digital feudalism in which we pay rent in information to a new class of tech overlords just to survive? How can we both imagine alternatives to capitalism and recognize the transformations it is already undergoing?In other words, can we evict the capitalist that lives rent free in our head, or at the very least start charging it rent.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-89-late-capitalism-2
-------------------
If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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ChatGPT

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts try to figure out how much of the ChatGPT panic is warranted.

There seems to be a real panic among not only the professoriate, but also employers, about what ChatGPT is doing to "kids these days." The concern in higher education is that ChatGPT makes cheating easier and, by extension, the worry among employers is that all of the college-educated candidates they might interview in the coming years are really not as "college-educated" as they may appear on paper. Is this panic justified?

ChatGPT, no doubt, represents a major advance in publicly-accessible artificial intelligence software. ChatGPT, also without doubt, makes "cheating" easier for college students and makes the "misrepresentation of one's skill-sets" easier for employment candidates. However, ChatGPT is also a genuinely novel learning/working tool that is practically unprecedented in its sophistication.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-88-chatgpt

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Death

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts confront the inevitable.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-87-death

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Fascism (with Alberto Toscano)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts chat with Alberto Toscano about the long shadow of racial fascism.

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the word "fascism" has moved from the historian’s archives to the editorial pages of newspapers. The point of comparison has generally been drawn from European history, but drawing our analogies and checklists from the trajectory of fascism in Europe obscures both the connection between what is happening now in American politics with the history of racism and racial capitalism in this country, and the manner in which we might be seeing an entirely new form of fascism emerge. Alberto Toscano argues that to understand the contemporary form of fascism in the US, we are better served by looking at the history of black radicalism, from Black Panthers to the contemporary prison abolitionist movement.

How does studying that history change our understanding of fascism?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-86-fascism-with-alberto-toscano

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Bullshit Jobs

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss the work of flunkies, goons, duct-tapers, box-tickers, and taskmasters.

In the middle of the last century it was expected that the number of working hours-- at least in the so-called "developed" world-- would continue to decrease: just as they had gone from the twelve or ten hours a day down to eight at the beginning of the century, they would continue to decrease to six or even less by the end of the century. Furthermore, it was thought that the mechanization and automation of labor processes would free millions from labor, reducing the need for workers.

The opposite seems to have taken place, however, as people are working more and more. So much so that the forty hour work week sounds utopian again. Why are people working so much and what are they doing? The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that the answer is bullshit jobs. What is a bullshit job? Why do they exist? What can we do to get free of them?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/eepisode-85-bullshit-jobs

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Abolition of the Family (with Sophie Lewis)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts ask Sophie Lewis why the "family" is a troublesome institution.

In a society that is increasingly structured around isolated self-interested individuals, the family appears to be the one place of refuge, the heart in a heartless world, a space of care in a world of indifference. What then is the case for abolishing it? How does discussing that reveal the role that the family plays in capitalism? And what it might take to create a world in which care and nurturing are available to everyone rather than the lucky few happy families?

To work through these questions, we are joined in this episode by Sophie Lewis author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-84-abolition-of-the-family-with-sophie-lewis

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Influencers

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 10:41:09 -0500

The HBS hosts ask themselves why and how they are under the influence of influencers.

Although humans have been influencing other humans for as long as we’ve been around each other, the category of “influencer” is a relatively recent phenomenon, really only emerging in the last decade. In fact, the term “influencer” as we currently understand it—a thoroughly platformized figure who documents, optimizes, and monetizes their self as “brand”—wasn’t officially included in English dictionaries until 2019. Today, influencers are everywhere: primarily on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, but also in less glamorous professional and even academic fields, where they sometimes moonlight as trendsetters, thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, or just garden-variety “celebrities.”

Today, we’re going to chat not only about influencers—what they are, what they do, and to what ends—but also influence. What does it mean to influence or be influenced by someone? What difference does it make if an influencer is “authentic”? What dangers may underlie the monetization of influence or, in what may amount to the same thing, the political manipulation of influence? Are we all being subtly influenced to mimic influencers—not just in terms of what they eat or buy or how they work out or moisturize their skin, but their self-conscious practices of self-documenting and self-branding? And, finally, can influence really be “measured,” or are the follower counts that climb every time someone is influenced to smash that like and subscribe button just a whole lot of smoke and mirrors?

Full episode notes at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-83-influencers

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Afterthoughts: Season 6, Eps 79-81

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 10:22:15 -0500

The HBS hosts rewind the tapes to reconsider episodes 79-81.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so we designed “Afterthoughts” to give us a first chance to make a second impression. Whether it’s diving into a particularly thought-provoking comment, exploring new angles, or uncovering a new idea that we missed the first time around, “Afterthoughts” is all about plumbing the depths of our previous conversations. We look back over our last three Season 6 episodes—episode 79 on “The History of Philosophy,” episode 80 on “Attention and Distraction,” and episode 81 in which we were joined by Michael Naas to discuss “Hospitality”– and try to articulate what we woulda, coulda, and shoulda said the first time around.

So sit back, relax, and join us as we delve into what kept us thinking long after the recording stopped!

——————-
If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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Materialism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts talk about "stuff."

Materialism seems to be both one of the oldest and most contended philosophical positions. From Thales saying “all is from water,” to Hobbes saying “whatever is, is a body” to the New Materialism of both feminist philosophers and those influenced by cognitive science, something called “materialism” that has some kind of preference for or gives priority to matter seems to always tempt philosophers. Yet, philosophy is a way of thinking about things, and thought has demands that take us outside of matter and the material world, even if thinking is "an activity of the brain." So, it’s time to take a look at the philosophical implications of materialism.

What is it? Are there different kinds? Is it a metaphysical position, an epistemological position, a political position? Or maybe all of these?

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-82-materialism

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Afterthoughts: Season 6, Eps 76-78

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 14:29:35 -0500

The HBS hosts reconsider what they might've missed in the first three conversations of Season 6.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so we designed “Afterthoughts” to give us a first chance to make a second impression. Whether it's diving into a particularly thought-provoking comment, exploring new angles, or uncovering a new idea that we missed the first time around, "Afterthoughts" is all about plumbing the depths of our previous conversations. We look back over our first three Season 6 episodes—episode 76 on “Casablanca,” episode 77 on “Human Nature,” and episode 78 in which we were joined by Justin Joque to discuss his book “Revolutionary Mathematics”-- and try to articulate what we woulda, coulda, and shoulda said the first time around.

So sit back, relax, and join us as we delve into what kept us thinking long after the recording stopped!

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Hospitality (with Michael Naas)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts invite Michael Naas to make himself at home on the podcast.

There are two popular ideas about hospitality that seem to be at odds with one another. The first is an understanding of a bygone era in which our ancestors were frequently forced–- through battles, famines, the search for water, etc.–- to move frequently and, for many of them, regularly. Under such conditions, the virtue of welcoming a guest was prized among many other virtues. “Tomorrow I might need this hospitality,” leads one to provide it to the one from elsewhere, to the stranger or the traveler.

The second emerges with the rise of the nation-state. Each country has a right to its “territorial integrity” and therefore to decide who is let in and who is not. At the rise of the nation-state, many thinkers of the “law of nations” saw that hospitality was necessary because otherwise nation-states could not co-exist, or not peacefully.

There also seems to be a personal or individual and even corporate relation to hospitality. Hotels are in the “hospitality industry,” and people are praised for being “great hosts.” We say things like, “make yourself at home,” or “welcome,” meaning “no matter how hard your journey, you have come to a place where you will be well.”

And yet, we want to “build that wall!” or prevent those who are fleeing violence or climate disasters from coming into “our" country. Hospitality is a dicey business. So, in this episode, we are talking with Michael Naas (Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University) about the complicated question of hospitality.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-81-hospitality-with-michael-naas

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Attention and Distraction

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts focus their attention on... oh, look, a squirrel!

It is said that we are living in an attention economy, an age in which attention has become both a scarce resource and a source of wealth. Devices and apps do everything in their power to solicit our attention and keep us glued to our screens, turning minutes scrolling and clicks into revenue. Because of this demand on our attention, distraction has become an ongoing problem; from the road to the classroom we are worried that we are not truly paying attention. Is it time to pay attention to attention, to reflect on how we perceive what we perceive and why? What might it mean to reclaim our attention?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-80-attention-and-distraction

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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The History of Philosophy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts argue for the merits of studying the history of philosophy.

In a recent essay, Hanno Sauer argued against the importance, for philosophy, of the history of philosophy. In summary, he presented a positivistic, scientistic model of philosophy, namely, that like physics, biology, and chemistry, philosophy has actually “made progress” on many of the issues that philosophy struggled with from Thales until relatively recently. Because of this progress, Sauer's argument goes, we do not need to study the history of philosophy. The model of the sciences shows why this is the case: in biology courses, no one is struggling with Aristotle, Linnaeus, or Mendel. In chemistry, no one pays attention to the history of alchemy, the theory of phlogiston, or the ether. In physics, no student learns Aristotle’s theory of why bodies “fall,” or the medieval notion of “impetus.” Is Sauer right that philosophy has similarly progressed? Should philosophy leave its history to the historians? Then, beyond Sauer, we can add that the history of philosophy is a history of both dead white guys and the history of the victors. If the history of philosophy is ethno-centric, and therefore racist, if it is phallo-centric and therefore patriarchal, why should philosophy continue to engage it?

Or is there something philosophically relevant about the history of philosophy?

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-79-the-history-of-philosophy
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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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Revolutionary Mathematics (with Justin Joque)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts chat with Justin Joque about how we might get Thomas Bayes' robot boot off our necks.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-78-revolutionary-mathematics-with-justin-joque

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Human Nature

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts ask not what is human nature, but what is at stake in this constant recourse to human nature.

The history of philosophy can in part be understood as one long rumination on the question of human nature. Throughout its history philosophers have put forward multiple definitions of what it means to be human and what sets humans apart from other animals: political animal, rational animal, tool making animal, etc., but these definitions have come under scrutiny for both the way they maintain both hierarchies separating humanity from non-human animals as well as hierarchies within human societies, as rationality, tools, and politics become instruments of exclusion. Is it possible to dispense with the idea of human nature, or is it an unavoidable question, framing how we understand ourselves in relation to not just animals but also our increasingly intelligent machines? In other words, human nature, can’t live with it, can live without it.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-77-human-nature

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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HBS Goes to the Movies: Casablanca

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts return to the movies and this week we are discussing Casablanca.

Shot in 1942, a year after the U.S. entered The Second “World War,” Casablanca makes it onto many lists of the best movies of all time. It is part caper movie, part romance, part war flick, and part resistance movie. These are woven together in a fairly complex plot that is beautifully shot, has gorgeous characters, and has given us some memorable lines. On top of all of that, the entire movie takes place almost exclusively in a bar! The writers of the screen play, Julius and Phillip Epstein (Penn State Alums!) were swept up in the Red Scare, though they were never called to testify in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. When asked on a questionnaire whether they belonged to any subversive organizations, they answered “Yes. Warner Brothers”). The film is obviously anti-fascist, pro-resistance, has a complex depiction of its one protagonist who is a woman, Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman, and even portrays a fraught, from today’s perspective, relationship between Rick (Humphrey Bogart), who is white and Sam (Dooley Wilson), who is black. Complex history, complex politics, complex social relations taking place in bar? It’s just like Hotel Bar Sessions!

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-76-hbs-goes-to-the-movies-casablanca

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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REPLAY: Whose History? (with Dr. Charles McKinney)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 06:00:00 -0400

While the HBS hosts are taking a break between Season 5 and Season 6, we're re-playing some of our favorite conversations you might have missed. Enjoy this episode from Season 3 "Whose History?" (with special guest, Dr. Charles McKinney) and check out the full episode notes at this link: http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-31-whose-history/

If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, make sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

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REPLAY: Style

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:34:38 -0400

While the HBS hosts are taking a break between Season 5 and Season 6, we're re-playing some of our favorite conversations you might have missed. Enjoy this episode from Season 4 on "Style" and check out the full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-47-style/

If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast. You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Podcasting and Philosophy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts-- now, all four of them!-- chat about what podcasting can do for Philosophy.

There are roughly 2.4 million podcasts in existence right now, with over 66 million episodes between them, and recent studies show that 28% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly. Podcast genres are as diverse as human interests themselves; there are comedy podcasts, social and cultural podcasts, health and fitness podcasts, political podcasts, true crime podcasts (some of which have truly helped to solve crime!), and even a podcast entirely devoted to the pressing question: Whatever Happened to Pizza and MacDonald's?

A select few podcasts are wildly popular, with millions of weekly listeners, but the overwhelming majority of podcasts barely reach beyond their creators' close friends and family. (In fact, less than 25% of podcasts have 100 dedicated listeners/subscribers.) So why, oh why, does anyone need another podcast? Much less a philosophy podcast?

This week, HBS co-hosts Rick, Charles, and Leigh are joined by incoming (Season 6) co-host Jason Read to answer just that question. Podcasting seems to be the new frontier of what is sometimes called "public philosophy," and like all practices of public philosophy before it, philosophy podcasting comes with its own unique challenges and possibilities. We try to identify what podcasting is doing for and to the discipline of Philosophy, which philosophy podcasts we think are doing both Philosophy and podcasting well, what this new medium offers, and how we hope it might change not only how philosophy gets produced, but what philosophy gets produced.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-75-podcasting-and-philosophy

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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The Last Dance

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts reflect on four fantastic seasons with the inimitable Charles Peterson.

Co-host Charles F. Peterson has been the beating heart of Hotel Bar Sessions for the last four seasons. Throughout that time, he has pushed the podcast to be more and more expansive, in deeper and deeper ways, with his intellect, curiosity, and rapier-like wit. Charles was the mastermind behind many of our best episodes, the connection to some of our best guests, and the source of our most hilarious on-air moments. Unfortunately, though, Charles is being called away from the mic by his other commitments, and so Season 5 will be his last season as a regular Hotel Bar Sessions co-host.

Do not despair! Charles is staying on the HBS team, only now in a primarily off-air mode. He has graciously agreed to join us every few episodes for our "Afterthoughts" series, which will be available exclusively to Patreon subscribers starting in Season 6. (So make sure to sign up to Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here!)

We've dedicated this week's entire episode to celebrating Charles and his contributions to the podcast. We chat about some of our favorite moments together, and Rick and Leigh prod Charles to talk about his future plans. Although this is not, technically speaking, our "last dance" together, it's the last dance we'll have together in our regular hotel bar seats, so we're sending Charles off with all of the love and respect he deserves.

Beginning in Season 6, Rick and Leigh will be joined by our new HBS co-host Dr. Jason Read (@unemplyedneg), and Charles offers a few parting words of advice for his replacement as well!

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-74-the-last-dance

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Artificial Personhood (with Regina Rini)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts consider the possibility of sentient artificial intelligence with Dr. Regina Rini.

The debate about the possibility of emergent AI sentience has staunch defenders both for an against, many more people shrugging their shoulders in the middle, with many, diverse, and non-interchangeable lexicons being used to discuss this phenomenon. Today, we’re going to try to untangle those discursive webs a little bit with Dr. Rini, not so much to settle the question “Is AI sentience possible?” but rather “should we be concerned about sentient AI?” and, perhaps more importantly, what should our concern look like?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-73-artificial-personhood

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

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The Rights of Nature (with Stewart Motha)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss legal personhood and rights for rivers, lakes, and mountains with Dr. Stewart Motha.

In most discussions about extending rights or legal personhood to non-humans, the focus tends to be on robots/machines or non-human animals. However, given our current global climate crisis, we have good reason to ask: isn't it time to devote more attention to the rights-- and perhaps legal and moral "personhood"-- of natural entities? What sorts of protections might be extended by the law if our notion of personhood were expanded?

This is not an easily answered question, of course, because natural entities still face the challenge of being accorded "legal standing" in order to bring suit in their own names. (Names that we humans have given them!) Some progress has been made on this front by organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, who have been granted the right of "representational standing" by various courts, but we're still a long way from practically negotiating our understanding of the difference between physis (nature) and nomos (law) in a way that actually protects Nature.

This week, we are joined by Dr. Stewart Motha, Executive Dean of Birkbeck Law School, University of London to discuss the challenge and potential promise of extending legal personhood to natural entities. Dr. Motha is the author of Archiving Sovereignty: Law, History, Violence (2018) and the editor of Democracy's Empire: Sovereignty, Law, and Violence (2007). His research explores the multiple forms and sources of legal norms (heteronomy) as a counter-narrative to liberal accounts of the autonomy of law, including challenges to the opposition between life/non-life. He is the host of the podcast COUNTERSIGN and can be found on Twitter at @MothaStewart.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-72-the-rights-of-nature-with-stewart-motha

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

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Critics and Criticism (with A.O. Scott)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with A.O. Scott about the role and responsibilities of the critic.

The critic is frequently seen as a parasite who lives of the creative life of others but not producing a work of art through their criticism. In this episode, we are honored to be joined by A.O. Scott to discuss the role of the critic, the creativity of criticism, and the mutual dependence of art and criticism.

A.O. Scott is chief film critic (along with Manohla Dargis) for The New York Times. He also write for The Book Review as well as The Times Magazine. He is the author of Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth (Penguin Books, 2016). In addition, he is currently a distinguished professor of film criticism at Wesleyan University.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-71-critics-and-criticism-with-a-o-scott

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Democracy in Peril (with Linda Alcoff)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts ask Dr. Linda Alcoff just how close to the edge of the bed is the United States sleeping?

A year and a half ago, as an angry, armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in what was, thankfully, an unsuccessful insurrection attempt, many of us watching the event unfold on television asked ourselves: is democracy itself in peril? This is, of course, a question we should have been asking for many years prior to Jan 6, 2021. And it is a question we should still be asking. At the federal level, an activist and regressive Supreme Court is aggressively chipping away at the rights of citizens, and an almost perpetually-stalemated Congress refuses to act on real existential threats (like climate change, COVID, and income inequality). At the state level, more than half of the legislatures have restricted voting rights, gun regulation, and protections for BIPOC, women, LGBTQ people, and the poor. States’ legislatures are busy gerrymandering districts, under-funding public education, over-funding police, and extending corporate welfare tax benefits carte blanche, while at the same time refusing to raise the minimum wage for workers, mitigate the affordable housing crisis, repair crumbling infrastructure, or exhibit even the most minimally-decent concern for the good of their citizens. Meanwhile, the average U.S. citizen is sick, indebted, demoralized, underinformed (or misinformed), and disillusioned. Why vote? Why care? What has democracy done for me lately? Today, we’re going to be talking about the peril(s) that democracy is facing, how we should think about them, and what, if anything, we can do about them.

We are honored to be joined by Linda Martin Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center. Prof. Alcoff is the author, most recently of Rape and Resistence: Understanding the Compoexities of Sexual Violation and The Future of Whiteness.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-70-democracy-in-peril-with-linda-alcoff

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Fear

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts wonder whether the call is coming from inside the house.

Fear is a one of the most complex of human affects. It is both physical and psychological. It can be intensely private or shared by entire communities. It is sometimes paralyzing and other times exciting. Fear often seizes us without warning, but we can also "think ourselves into" being afraid.

What, if anything, distinguishes fear from dread or anxiety? How are fears managed or overcome? Why do so many people share similar phobias? Is there a logic to fear?

This week, we dig into the deepest, darkest corners of our own fears, and try to make some sense of why we never want to be there when something goes bump in the night.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-69-fear

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

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YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb Cain)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with Caleb Cain about his experience being radicalized by the Alt-Right internet.

In June 2019, the New York Times featured a story about Caleb Cain, entitled "The Making of a YouTube Radical.” That piece was meant to highlight the subtle, severe, and devastating IRL effects of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which has been proven many times over to promote what (in internet slang) is called “red-pilling”—that is, the conversion of users to far-right beliefs. Today, we’re talking to Caleb Cain, a person who has been down the alt-right rabbit hole and somehow found his way back out of it, and we want to introduce our listeners to a first-person account of how right-wing radicalization actually happens on the internet, how it is sustained, and how it might be combatted.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-68-youtubes-alt-right-rabbit-hole

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Rethinking Disability (with Joel Michael Reynolds)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts talk with Dr. Joel Michael Reynolds about what bodies are afforded and denied.

As we come to recognize more and more the occlusions that occur in, and often constitute, philosophy and its history, attention to an ableist presupposition in philosophy has come to the fore. Much as with feminist theory or queer theory or race theory, disability theory not only works to expose the ableist presuppositions of philosophy but also to alter philosophy for the better by the inclusion of the formerly excluded. Why are affordances-- social, political, moral, and physical-- made for some types of bodies, but denied to others? Have we yet grasped what different types of bodies can really do? What is the difference between a "disability" and an "impairment"? To what degree is our category "disability" more philosophical than it is corporeal?

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Joel Reynolds, is the perfect person with whom to talk about these questions and issues! Dr. Reynolds is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center, Faculty Scholar of The Greenwall Foundation, and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program. He is the founder of The Journal of Philosophy of Disability and co-founder of Oxford Studies in Disability, Ethics, and Society from Oxford University Press. In 2022, he published The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality.

You can read/download a transcript of this episode at this link.

Full episode notes are available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-67-rethinking-disability-with-joel-michael-reynolds

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast.

You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Sex Robots (with Kate Devlin)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Kate Devlin to talk about social relationships between humans and machines.

When most people think about our future with robots, they tend to ask the following three questions: (1) Will robots take my job?. (2) Will they kill us?, and (3) Can I have sex with them?

This week, the HBS hosts are joined by Dr. Kate Devlin, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London and the author of Turned On: Science, Sex, and Robots (Bloomsbury, 2018). We talk to Dr. Devlin about the many variations of ethical, social, and sometimes sexual relationships we have with machines. What is the nature of our love, hate, desire, and envy of our robot companions? Why are we so often "creeped out" by them? And what might our para-social relationships with robots tell us about our own moral dispositions?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-66-sex-robots

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The Blues (with Charles L. Hughes)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts ask Dr. Charles Hughes for water, and he gives them gasoline.

According to co-host Charles Peterson, the blues is "as American as apple pie and as Black as the Funky Chicken." The blues is a genre of music, to be sure, but it's also an emotion, perhaps even an existential bearing. What makes blues music distinctive? What does it mean to have "the blues"? Can everyone have or play the blues? Should everyone?

In this episode, the HBS co-hosts discuss these questions (and more!) with Dr. Charles L. Hughes, Director of the The Lynne and Henry Turley Memphis Center | Rhodes College, where he designs courses, programs, and partnerships. His acclaimed first book, Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South was named one of the Best Music Books of 2015 by Rolling Stone and No Depression, one of Paste Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Year, and one of Slate’s “Overlooked Books” of 2015. He has published essays and given numerous talks in front of a range of audiences, including featured engagements at the Center for Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library & Archives. He is currently working on a book about the history of African-Americans and professional wrestling in the United States, as well as several articles. He is a voter for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a participant in the Nashville Scene’s Year-End Country Music Poll. His most recent book is Why Bushwick Bill Matters.

BONUS: this episode comes with its own Spotify playlist!

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-65-the-blues/

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast. You can also help keep this podcast ad-free by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.

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Memes (with Andrew Baron)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts try to go viral with Andrew Baron, creator of KnowYourMeme.

Memes: if you get them, you get them... and if you don't, you don't. But how is a meme created? How does it spread? And how does it die? In this episode, we dig into the complex dynamics of memes-- on Dawkins' account, the most rudimentary units of social information-- to see how they do (and don't) imitate so-called "natural" processes in their generation, mutation, adaptation, and replication.

With our special guest, Andrew Baron (creator of Rocketboom and KnowYourMeme), we also investigate what, if anything, distinguishes an "internet meme" from other kinds of memes, and how internet memes may provide a unique insight into social operations and cultural formations.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-64-memes

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Reason

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts investigate the limits of Reason alone and, more importantly, in real human history.

Many, rightly, understand the discipline of Philosophy as primarily defined by its commitment to Reason. But, what is “Reason”? Is it universal? Is it some kind of fundamental human capacity that transcends class, culture, politics, religion, or any other iteration of human difference? What do we make of the fact that, since the 17th C., inheritors of “European Enlightenment” thinkers unilaterally dictated the scope and limits of Reason for a broad swath of the world’s inhabitants?

Because, let’s be honest, the legacy of “European Enlightenment thinkers” is a complex and often ugly one.

In this episode, the HBS hosts try, at once, to both defend the privileged place that Reason has been afforded in Western Philosophy and to critique the capitalist / imperialist / colonialist logics to which that legacy has been put to use.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-63-reason

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Plagiarism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts attempt to measure the real stakes of cheating.

According to a recent study, almost 60% of college/university students in the United States admit to having cheated at least once during their studies. Around 15% of U.S. students admit to plagiarizing intentionally and, of those, less than 1 in 5 is caught or punished for academic dishonesty. Professors regularly report that cheating and plagiarism is on the rise; many blame remote learning for what feels like a "plagiarism pandemic."

Meanwhile, plagiarism detection software has become BIG business, coercing academics to spend almost as much time surveilling and policing as they do researching and teaching. Who does this new, more martial and antagonistic focus on plagiarism help? And who does it hurt?

In this episode, we get to the root of higher education's commitment to academic integrity and its increasingly pathological obsession with cheating.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-62-the-plagiarism-pandemic

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The Public Intellectual (with Eddie Glaude, Jr.)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. to talk about what constitutes a "public intellectual."

Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. is the James S. McDonnel Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University, and one of America's leading public intellectuals. He is also on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. He frequently appears in the media, as a columnist for TIME Magazine and as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace. He also regularly appears on Meet the Press on Sundays. Combining a scholar's knowledge of history, a political commentator's take on the latest events, and an activist's passion for social justice, Glaude challenges all of us to examine our collective American conscience.

This week, the HBS hosts chat with Dr. Glaude about the role and the history of the public intellectual in America, the difference between the public intellectual and the "thought-leader" or "influencer," and what it takes to be a public intellectual in the 21st Century.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-61-the-public-intellectual

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts try to get to the truth of untruths.

Mark Twain famously claimed that there are three kinds of untruth: lies, damned lies, and statistics. In an age of widespread misinformation, where it has become considerably more difficult to distinguish between truths and lies, the HBS hosts make an impassioned plea for us to think seriously about what a lie is, what it is not, and why it matters. We consider the whole menagerie of falsehoods: from trifling fibs ("you look great in those pants!") to catastrophic lies ("the only the thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun") to seemingly antiseptic, but no less dissimulating, statistical misrepresentations.

This is our last episode of Season 4 and we want to send out a huge THANK YOU to all of our listeners! We'll be taking a couple of weeks off to detox, but Charles, Rick, and Leigh will be back with an exciting new slate of topics and guests for Season 5 starting on July 8!

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-60-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics

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Queers (with Ladelle McWhorter)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with Dr. Ladelle McWhorter about the evolution of "queer" as an identity category and a verb.

Once only used as a slur with unambiguously negative valences, the noun "queer" has been reappropriated by (many) members of the LGBTQIA+ community as referring to a positive, even celebrated, notion of self-identity.... but the history of the term "queer" is complicated. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Ladelle McWhorter (University of Richmond) about that complicated history, including how "queer" as a social/political identity category may (or may not?) be in tension with its philosophical/theoretical use, including and especially the notion of "queer-ing" (verb) to indicate the very disruption of stable categories of identity themselves.

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Ladelle McWhorter, is the author of Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization (1999), Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (2009), and Heidegger and the Earth Essays in Environmental Philosophy (2009). You can follow Dr. McWhorter on Twitter at @lmcwhort!

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-59-queers

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Utopia

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the where, when, and how of utopic imagination.

On the one hand, utopia as an ideal place, space, political arrangement, or future has been criticized because it delays action to some, perhaps impossible, future. On the other hand, something like utopia just might be necessary for political struggles. We begin with Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz and move on to discuss the importance, problems, and possibilities of utopia.

Full episode notes at this link:

http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-58-utopia

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Philosophers on the Internet

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 May 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts sit down with Justin Weinberg of the Daily Nous to talk about philosophers on the internet.

While everyone is on the internet, many philosophers (some of whom may be on this podcast!) seem resistant to blogging, social media, and other forms of web presence. In this episode, we look at philosophers on the internet. What benefits does the internet bring to philosophy and/or philosophers? Is the internet our new “town square?” If so, should philosophy be brought to the town square? Another way to ask that is “should there be public philosophy?” and/or “should all philosophy be public?”. What are some better practices for being a philosopher online? Who are our favorite philosophers online and what are our favorite sites, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, etc.? This week we are joined by Justin Weinberg, philosopher and creator/editor of The Daily Nous.

Full episode notes at this link:

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Musical Theater

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 May 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat with actor, dancer, and choreographer Blake Zolfo about what makes musical theater so unique.

What could possibly make musical theater important or relevant to three philosophers? We all love musicals! The affective appeal of musical theater is clear, even though there are those (philistines?) who do not find it enjoyable. Although Hegel, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art claims that opera puts text in the service of music, he also recognizes that the libretto of opera is the sole contributor of ideas, and therefore of properly human freedom. In musical theater, it might be that the situation is reversed: music is put in the service of the text. The HBS hosts are joined by Blake Zolfo (@blakezolfo on the socials) to talk about musical theater.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-56-musical-theater

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National Identity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 May 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts wrestle with Fukuyama's "Why National Identity Is Matters."

In this episode, we will focus on questions of national identity. In the U.S., the contemporary political moment is riven with competing ideas of what the United States is or are. These ideas are based in various ways of knowing including ideological, political, racial, and generational. Using Francis Fukuyama’s essay “Why National Identity Matters” we will explore fundamental questions regarding the origins of national identity, its definition, its mechanisms, and how these elements track through a contemporary lens.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-54-national-identity

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Algorithms

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 06 May 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the pervasiveness and perversity of algorithms in our lives.

Algorithms measure, and increasingly influence/determine, our behaviors. Yet, most people don’t know or understand what an algorithm is! Algorithms are essential to the logic of late capitalism and people need to understand them in order to work toward more ethical AI.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-54-algorithms/

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Metaphysics

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts get to the bottom of what is real, what exists, and what is virtual.

In this episode, we take head on the question of whether an analysis, understanding, and assumption of reality, in other words, metaphysics, is a crucial task for philosophy. We argue about whether metaphysics should come before social and political theory, political engagement, and ethics. We come clean about our own positions on what is real. In short, we get real with reality.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-53-metaphysics

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Immortality

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts talk about the striving to live forever in physical, psychical, and social dimensions.

Immortality seems to be a spoken and unspoken obsession within contemporary culture, whether through the obsession with maintaining youthful looks through diet, exercise or, medical procedure or the hope for a future where people can live on as memories or even as digital intelligences. We talk about the underlying motivations for this hope, what it may say about the underlying dynamics of our culture in regard to existential/metaphysical concerns or the ways we struggle with certainty/uncertainty. How are these ideas examined in both popular and philosophical contexts?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-52-immortality

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Moral Subjectivity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts unpack Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, Section 13, to uncover how we arrived at morality and moral subjectivity.

There are conditions that seem to be necessary in order for our whole moral outlook and values, conditions that are not found in nature. What must be the case in order for one to be said to be morally responsible? In this episode, we take Section 13 of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals as our guide to uncover the conditions of moral subjectivity.

Full episode notes available here:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-51-moral-subjectivity

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Desire

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts look under the hood, inspect the engine, and try to figure out what drives us.

Perhaps more than any other affect, desire is put to work in so many areas of philosophy. For Plato, it is the beginning of knowledge (or the soul’s search for truth), for Augustine, it is what marks post-lapsarian humanity–“Our hears are restless until they rest in you.” For Hobbes, it is one of the root affects and, perhaps, the root of the war of all against all. More recently, desire has become a focus in feminist philosophy, Foucauldian “geneaology,” philosophies of race, and queer theory, just to name a few central directions. In this episode, the HBS hosts talk about desire.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-50-desire

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Memory

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the role of memory in the constitution of human intelligence, subjectivity and culture/civilization.

As we age, we often lose the ability to retain our past experiences. In doing so, we seem to lose a part (or even all) of our selves. What is the role of memory in the constitution of human intelligence, subjectivity and culture/civilization? In this episode, the HBS hosts discuss memory and its relation to personal identity and social identity. This means that we also confront forgetting.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-49-memory

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The Simulation Hypothesis

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts take the red pill.

Are we "living" in a computer simulation? What difference would that make? Why would it ever occur to anyone that we are in a simulation? In this episode, the HBS hosts discuss the hypothesis that we are just playing out another being's computer simulation.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-48-the-simulation-hypothesis

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Style

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts talk about style.

Style can simply mean a way of doing something, like dressing, decorating, writing, singing, painting. Often, it seems as if style is an “add on,” something not essential, and often seems closely akin to fakery (we can say someone is “all style, no substance”). But is there something more significant about style?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-47-style

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Bars

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts go where people know troubles are all the same.

In this episode, the HBS hosts discuss Bars—as a social, cultural and communal space, bars as a space removed from the regular function of society, yet at the center of essential social discussions. Why are we “Hotel bar sessions?” Let’s talk about the role the bar plays at conferences and why we say “this is where the real philosophy happens?” What does that say about the bar.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-46-bars

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Turning Up the Heat

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts take turns in the "hot seat" as they fire questions at one another.

Can we be honest? Each week the HBS hosts say that one of us is in the "hot seat." But they never get "grilled." This last episode of Season 3, we grill one another through a series of questions. Some are rapid fire with the clock ticking down, some are "would you rather?" questions. And others we take some time to talk. Maybe it is a bit self-indulgent, but it surely will provide more insight into the lives and perspectives of the hosts!

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-45-turnt-up

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The Godfather Trilogy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss The Godfather Trilogy.

The Godfather and The God Father: Part II often make it to lists of the best films. It can be argued The Godfather is America’s response to Shakespearean drama. The complexity of character, deft use of language, and the themes of the film interrogate fundamental historical, social and human concerns of American life.

Full episode notes at this link: http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-44-the-godfather-trilogy/

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Superstition

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss the nature, origin, and deployment of superstitions.

It seems as if superstitions just evidence a misunderstanding of the relation between some cause and some effect. So, training in critical thinking *should* help to allay superstitions… and, yet, it doesn’t. How important are behaviors to superstitions? Do superstitions require a belief in the supernatural? Are there harmless superstitions?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-43-superstition/

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Optimism and Pessimism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts talk about optimism and pessimism in its personal, political, and philosophical senses.

We tend to think of optimism and pessimism as personal, psychological characteristics. Betty White said that her secret to living to just so shy of 100 was that she never ate anything green and that she was a “cockeyed optimist.” But it seems as if there are non-personal, non-philosophical senses of optimism/ pessimism. There is clearly a political sense–can we work together to amass power to make the world, society, or a particular country better? Or is it all futile? There might also be a philosophical sense–can philosophy make individual or collective lives better or is it impotent?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-42-optimism-and-pessimism/

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Tourism

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss the ugly underside of tourism.

Tourism is a superficial activity that has deep historical and political underpinnings. In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid argues highlights the power relation within tourism, where the tourist lives a life that allows them to visit the land of the (Fanonian) native. Tourism suggests privilege and power and a shaping of the world that makes a person a tourist. What other types of tourism are there? What are the other implications of being a tourist? What are the economic, political and even ethical ramifications of walking through the history and culture of others.

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-41-tourism/

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Resolve

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts talk about resolutions and the resolve behind them.

It is close to the start of a new year and at this time resolutions are in the air. But what is it to make a resolution? And if you make a resolution, do you have to also have the resolve to carry it through? And what is resolve? In this episode, let’s talk about resolutions and resolve.

Full episode notes at this link:

WEBSITE: www.hotelbarpodcast.com
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Work

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Jason Read to talk about how to understand work in the 21st C.

In this episode, Jason Read (Philosophy, University of Southern Maine) joins us to examine the Boots Riley‘s film Sorry To Bother You (2018) and what it might be able to tell us about the dystopic situation of the 21st C. worker. Why has it become so important that the worker demonstrate that they “love” their work? How much of our work demands “emotional labor”? Why is it necessary for (some) workers to abdicate their real or “authentic” voice in order to survive? How have we become so accustomed to accepting less and less, even as more and more is demanded of us?

Are workers in the 21st C. just a pot of boiling frogs?

Full episode notes at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-39-work/

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Social Media

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of social media.

Social media dominate much of our current lives. Sometimes this is for the better, sometimes this is for the worse. Social media platforms allow much that is beneficial to individuals, communities, and society. Yet they also allow much that is detrimental or even damaging. What is good about social media? What is bad? And what is downright ugly? We talk about who is helped by social media and who is hurt by it. We talk about its effects on our society. And we talk about why we use or don't use social media.

Full episode notes available at this link:
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-38-social-media

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Transcendence

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts talk about transcendence, the good kind and the bad kind.

Philosophers traditionally have thought of entities like God or Ideas as outside of or other than this world. At the same time, that transcendent reality is thought to be the cause or meaning of our reality. Is this the only kind of transcendence? Do we need transcendence? Perhaps politics and/or justice requires some notion of transcendence. Can we have a good transcendence without the bad?

Full episode notes available at this link.
http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-37-transcendence

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The Global South

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss philosophy and theory in relation to the global south with Prof. Surti Singh.

We does it mean to theorize from the Global South? What tools can theory bring to the global south? And is there such a thing as The Global South? We talk with Prof. Surti Singh, the co-principal investigator of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s project “Extimacies: Critical Theory from the Global South” about these issues and what theorists in the global south challenge the “north” to encounter in its theorizing.

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Legally Right, Morally Wrong

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS host discuss the criminal justice system’s failure to produce morally right outcomes.

The "not guilty" verdicts in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial made plain the often dramatic difference between what is legally permissible and what is morally permissible. In this episode, we talk about where that difference should be maintained and where it should be diminished or abolished.

Full episode notes at this link.

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Cancel Panic

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 10:30:06 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss so-called “cancel culture” and the panic surrounding it.

For some, “canceling” is an essential tool of social justice. For others, it is a threat to free speech. In this episode, we try to identify what cancelation involves (de-platforming, boycotting, public criticism, shaming), what it doesn’t involve (actual silencing), and just how common it is (not common enough to constitute a “culture,” we think). Is cancel culture itself evidence of a moral panic, or is there a cancel panic being manufactured by the canceled?

In 2014, the #MeToo movement gave a name to the (long-practiced) practice of “calling-out” on social media. By 2015, “calling-out” had already evolved to “canceling.” Who are the cancelers? Who are the canceled? And how many different kinds of “mobs” are there on Twitter, anyway?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Thought Experiments

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts discuss the pedagogical pros and cons of thoughts experiments.

Philosophy has its own laboratory! While it doesn’t have graduated cylinders or Bunsen burners, it is a “clean room” in which philosophers can distill the essential elements of a theory. We talk about the pros and cons of thought experiments, their uses, and their abuses. We give some examples of famous thought experiments and, yes, we talk about the trolley problem.

Full episode notes at this link.

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American Christianity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 06:00:00 -0500

The HBS hosts wonder whether there is a uniquely "American" form of Christianity.

There are more than 2.3 billion Christians in the world, and 205 million of them live in the United States of America. Is there an identifiable strain of Christianity that is unique to the U.S.? If so, what are its dominant characteristics? How closely does it adhere to-- or how far does it stray from-- the basic tenets of Christianity?

In this episode, the HBS hosts take a hard look at some of the more curious features that seem to characterize Christianity in America-- the church-as-corporation model, the prominence of "prosperity gospel," the conflation of God and Country, and the widespread antagonism toward immigrants, LGBTQ persons, the poor, and others.

Full episode notes at this link.

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Whose History?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. to talk about whose history is (and isn't) being taught.

Following on the heels of a recent and very contentious political debate over the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, we invited Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. (Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of History at Rhodes College) to sit for a few rounds at the hotel bar as we explore the dynamics of power, liberation, and Truth as they play out in the teaching of history.

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Robots

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss how robots and intelligent machines are upending our social, moral, legal, and philosophical categories.

For this last episode of Season 2, the HBS hosts interview Dr. David Gunkel (author of Robot Rights and How To Survive A Robot Invasion) about his work on emergent technologies, intelligent machines, and robots. Following the recent announcement by Elson Musk that Tesla is developing a humanoid robot for home use, we ask: what is the real difference between a robot and a toaster?

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Defending the Humanities

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts present their best defense of humanities-based education and, in doing so, try to justify their existences.

As higher education has become more corporatized and STEM-focused, areas of study are often "pitched" to students on the basis of their future income-earning potential. However, college students now are entering a workforce where more than 30% of available jobs will be automated before those students reach middle age. Today's college students need more than vocational training to prepare them for the future they are entering.

Most academics can (and do) make the argument for the intrinsic value of the humanities-- that it helps shape us into good citizens and moral agents-- but are there other defenses available? Does a humanities-based education also have instrumental value? How do you get a job with a History or Philosophy or Anthropology degree? Is humanities-based education for everyone, or is it elitist?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Generations

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss whether or not generational tags– “Boomer,” “GenX,” “Millennial,” and “Gen Z”– are useful descriptions or just gerrymandered groups.

Are you Gen Z, a Boomer, Gen X? We don’t know either but in this episode Dr. Rick Lee leads a discussion to try to figure out whether these generational designations have any stable meaning. Do they make sense as organizational categories. Are they Objective Types, Natural Kind, or Gerrymandered Sets? Do generational markers say more than gender, racial, class, ability in terms of identity? We ask about the dates of generations, the characteristics of generations and generational self-consciousness.

Full episode notes at this link

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The Hustle

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss scams, cons, gig work, and what drives us to live and work at full speed.

In the immortal words of Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr. (aka, T.I.) "If you don't respect nothing else, you will respect the hustle." In this episode, Dr. Leigh M. Johnson takes the lead in an analysis of how "the hustle," in all senses of that term, define our lives today. We look at the HBO docuseries Generation Hustle-- which tracks the stories of 10 young scammers, con-artists, and/or sociopaths-- before trying to pinpoint the economic and social conditions that make these kinds of hustles so appealing to GenY and GenZ. Then, we turn to the "side-hustle" (gig work), an increasingly necessary hustle in the lives of workers across generations. Finally, we ask: why are we working so hard and in such a hurry all the time?

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Music

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts talk about music, mathematics, groove, and "altar calls."

Dr. Charles Peterson takes the lead in this week's discussion of the power of music in our lives. After a quick run-down of each co-host's own musical likes and dislikes, the HBS gang jumps right into a consideration of the effect that music has on us both as individuals and collectively. Does music give us some singular insight into what it means to be human? What does music evoke within us? How does it seem to have the power to inspire, to sadden, to terrify, and to comfort? How can it be used to manipulate? Is music a key to understanding the order of the Universe? Is it a universal language? And, if music is a common "human" denominator, how do we explain people who have no rhythm, who are "tone-deaf," or why our musical tastes vary so widely?

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Guns

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts try to figure out why there are 150 guns for every 100 Americans.

In the midst of a pandemic, as COVID-related deaths creep closer towards 1 million, it's easy to forget the other public health epidemic plaguing the United States, namely, gun violence. Nearly 10,000 people had already been killed by gun violence by June of 2021, with no sign of slowing numbers. Schoolchildren regularly practice "active shooter" drills and, in states like Tennessee, gun-control laws have been relaxed so much that they are practically non-existent. A study published earlier this year shows that gun suicides are rising steeply in 2021, including among teenagers and children.

Between January 1 and August 31 of 2021, there were 242 days. A mass shooting occurred in the United States on all but 44 of those days.

How did we get here and who have we become? Who is suffering the most from gun violence in our country, and who is most guilty for gun deaths? Is the Second Amendment's guarantee that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" been interpreted too loosely? Should the Second Amendment be repealed? In this episode, we take a close look at all of those questions, as well as Dr. Carol Anderson's new book The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

Full episode notes available at this link:

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Specialization

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss academic specializations and how to make the humanities more inclusive.

Over the last several decades, there has been a long-overdue push for professors in the humanities to diversify their curricula to include more women, BIPOC, queer, disabled, and other under-represented thinkers and texts. Yet, the “add diversity and stir” model for syllabus design in many ways fails to address a lot of the problems that motivated this demand in the first place. It isn’t just syllabi in the humanities that have a diversity problem, it’s the humanities professoriate itself.

First, academics from traditionally dominant demographic groups– white, male, straight, non-disabled, and middle-to-upper class– ought not presume that their academic training has necessarily equipped them with the knowledge, skills, or understanding to simply “take up” an unfamiliar field of specialization with the same level of knowledge, skill, and understanding as a specialist in that area possesses. Second, pressuring the current professoriate to “add diversity and stir” tends to de-emphasize the need for universities and individual departments to hire faculty from traditionally under-represented demographics with specialized training in the needed areas. BUT… third, we must be careful not to assume that every person’s scholarly specialization mirrors their personal identity.

How can we think about strategies for diversifying both the curricula and the faculty in humanities fields without reproducing the same prejudices that have made the humanities so non-diverse?

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Superheroes

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss the role of superheroes in culture and popular media.

In American graphic fiction and contemporary film, the superhero stands at the center of many popular narratives. Superhero stories published by DC Comics and Marvel are a multi-million dollar per year industry and, in 2019 alone, superhero movies grossed 3.19 billion dollars in revenue. Although it may seem to the novice as if these publishing houses and film studios just recycle the same stories (and sequels) over and over, connoisseurs of the genre know that the figure of the "superhero" has changed and evolved dramatically over the last half-century. What does the figure of the superhero represent? Who does it serve? How has it adapted to reflect broader cultural, political, and social changes?

In this episode, Dr. Charles F. Peterson-- a bona fide connoisseur of comics and superhero films-- schools his novice co-hosts on the nuances of superheroes and their development, as well as the deep and often profound philosophical truths that they help to reveal about us ordinary (not super and not heroic) humans.

Check out the full episode notes at this link.

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White Working Class

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts take a critical look at the white working class and their grievances.

Leading up to the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, and even more so afterwards, the U.S. found itself inundated with analyses of the allegedly “overlooked” grievances of the white working class. Were those legitimate grievances that should have been affirmed and addressed? Who belongs to the WWC in America, anyway? Do they share a “class consciousness” in the traditional Marxian sense, or are they primarily identifiable by their shared Whiteness? Are there multiple iterations of the “white working class” ? And, if so, are the many WWC’s compatible?

Dr. Rick Lee is in the hot seat for this episode’s deep dive into the definition, evaluation, and analysis of the white working class, who are clearly (in Rick’s estimation) “lashing out” these days.

Full episode notes available at this link: http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-22-white-working-class/

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Conspiracy Theories

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss conspiracy theories and what motivates people to believe in them.

The word "conspiracy" derives from the Latin con- ("with" or "together") and spirare ("to breathe"), and it seems like more and more people are breathing in the thin air of dubious explanations and bonding together over them. From Q-Anon to flat earthers to anti-vaxxers to climate change deniers to people convinced that a pedophilic, blood-drinking, sex-trafficking, deep state cabal is orchestrating our lives, conspiracy theories have captured the hearts and minds of many in the 21st C. United States. Is this new? Should we worry? And what really happened to Jeffrey Epstein?

Leigh M. Johnson take the lead in this episode's conversation and, together with co-hosts Rick Lee and Charles Peterson, tries get to the bottom of what motivates people to believe in conspiracy theories. We take a brief tour through the history of conspiracy theories before getting to their benefits (making the world seem to make sense) and harms (too many to list), and then confronting the 800lb internet gorilla: QAnon. We also try to tease out the difference between believing in a conspiracy theory and "conspiratorial thinking," and we consider what Thi Nguyen's thoughts on echo chambers and epistemic bubbles might tell us about conspiracy theorists.

Full episode notes available at this llnk.

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Vulgarity

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts lower themselves into the muck in this NSFW episode.

Dr. Charles F. Peterson is in the hot seat for this episode’s discussion of vulgarity. What is the difference between obscenity, profanity, and vulgarity? Who determines what is “appropriate”? Is the very concept of vulgarity elitist?

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Laughter

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 06:00:00 -0400

In advance of Rick Lee’s forthcoming book on laughter, co-hosts Charles and Leigh ask him why he thinks all “theories” of comedy are inadequate. What exactly is the “joke” part of a joke? Is comedy fundamentally formulaic or does it escape systematic analysis? What is happening when we laugh together– as the HBS co-hosts do a lot in this episode!– and how does laughter connect us to other people?

John Chrysostom once warned that “laughter often gives birth to foul discourse” and the HBS hosts are determined to prove him right in this episode. Definitely pour yourself a drink before sitting down to listen to this conversation, because it’s a helluva lot of fun!

Check out the full episode notes at this link.

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Digital Afterlives

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 06:00:00 -0400

Co-host Leigh M. Johnson is in the hot seat for this episode's discussion of digital afterlives. If we consider the "digital," information-based self to be distinguishable from the meatspace self, we should ask: how long can the Digital Me live on after my meatspace body dies? Technology already enables us to "re-animate" archives of personal information in many ways, and some futurists believe that we may, someday, be able to upload our consciousnesses to the cloud. Who owns that information? What are they currently allowed (or not allowed) to do with it? What would happen if we insisted that all of our information being "deleted" after we physically die?

Whether or not you believe in a Heaven or Hell, all of us need to think more seriously about our digital afterlives. Rick, Charles, and Leigh work through some of that thinking-- and much more-- at the hotel bar!

Check out the links below to learn more about thinkers and ideas referenced in this episode:

Maggi Saven-Baden and Victoria Mason-Robbie, Eds., Digital Afterlife: Death Matters in a Digital Age (2020)
Rebecca Skloot, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks (2011)
origin of the term "meatspace"
A visualization of the length of Terms of Service for 14 popular apps
Tupac hologram performs with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre at Coachella 2012
"Facebook told to grant grieving mother access to daughter's account" (The Guardian, 2011)
Black Mirror episode "Smithereens" (on IMDB, or watch the episode on Netflix)
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message (2001)
"Everything You Need to Know About Twitter Direct Messages" (Livewire, 2020)
What is data anonymization?
"What Really Happens To Your (Big) Data When You Die?" (Forbes, 2017)
"What Happens to Your Email and Social Media After You Die?" (MoneyTalks, 2020)
"What Happens To Your Medical Data After You Die?" (The Medical Futurist, 2021)
What is commodity fetishism?
U.S. House of Representatives' antitrust report on Big Tech
Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" (1988)
What is content curation?
"Computerized job interviews: Artificial intelligence algorithm may judge you, determine whether you get hired" (Chicago Tribune, 2021)
"Google's Grand Plan to Eradicate Cookies is Crumbling" (Wired, 2021)
How to recognize a phone scam
"Black women, AI, and overcoming historical patterns of abuse" (VentureBeat, 2021)
"Black and Queer AI Groups Say They'll Spurn Google Funding" (Wired, 2021)
Nick Bostrom, "Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up" (2006)
HBO series Years and Years
"The race to stop ageing: 10 breakthroughs that will help us grow old healthily" (Science Focus, 2021)
Anne Rice, The Vampire Chronicles

Check out this episode on the HBS website here.

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Citizenship

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 06:00:00 -0400

This episode explores the political and ethical dimensions of the category of “citizen”. In anticipation of his soon-to-be-released book Beyond Civil Disobedience: Social Nullification and Black Citizenship (August, 2021), Charles sits down in the captain's "hot" seat for this episode's discussion of the limits of citizenship, the failure of the state, and the construction of new categories of political, social and civic identity. Millions of people have taken to the streets in protest over the last decade. What are the questions those citizens are asking about the failures of their government? What do these protests say about how we think about the relationship between individuals and their communities, and the relationship of those communities to the State? How can we develop a more robust conception of engaged, healthy, responsible, and critical citizenship?

"The people who are protesting have an amazing, although critical, view of the reality of citizenship, but they also have a very optimistic, idealistic sense of what citizenship should be. I think moving into the streets shows an amazing investment in what the society can be, an investment in trying to get the apparatuses of power to live up to the rhetoric of democracy and freedom and what it means to be a citizen in this type of state."
= Charles F. Peterson

Full episode notes available at this link.

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Private Cities

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts discuss how cities, once considered hubs of public life and interaction, have become increasingly segregated, partitioned, disconnected, and privatized.

Drawing on his experience using the city of a Chicago as a classroom, Rick Lee asks: can we identify the material markers of "privatization" in contemporary cities? How do we know which parts of the city are for "us," which parts of the city are for everyone, and which parts aren't? Is there anything like a "public commons" anymore and, if so, where is it? What can we learn from the fact that even park benches and bus stops are physically-engineered to prevent the unhoused from being able to find rest or shelter? How might we build a more just city?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Hey, Biden!

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 06:00:00 -0400

Full episode notes at this link.

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Shame

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 28 May 2021 06:00:00 -0400

Full episode notes at this link.

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Teaching

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 21 May 2021 08:18:23 -0400

Full episode notes at this link.

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WhoDunnIt?

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 14 May 2021 05:00:23 -0400

Is the world in itself a mystery that science and philosophy take different routes to try to solve? How do luck, logic, empirical investigation, and intuition all work together to make sense of the world? What would a solution even look like? Are philosophers basically just detectives? Is a crime requisite to initiate investigations in mysteries? Is the unknown connected to Aristotle’s idea that philosophy begins in wonder? Is the mystery genre mostly a battle of reason over unreason?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Privacy

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 07 May 2021 06:00:00 -0400

Full episode notes at this link.

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Love

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts talk about love. What is love? Is it a feeling? Is it a cosmic or metaphysical force? Is it a primary motivating drive to propagate the species or to create ideas? What happens when love goes wrong?

Full episode notes at this link.

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The Philosophical Canon

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 06:00:00 -0400

Full episode notes at this link.

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Apocalypse(s)

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts chat about our impending doom. Is the apocalypse nigh? Will it be environmental, political, technological, or biological? Can we imaging human beings existing in 50 years? 100 years? 5000 years?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Nostalgia

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 06:00:00 -0400

The HBS hosts take a look at the political, philosophical, cultural, and personal dimensions of nostalgia.

Full episode notes at this link.

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Metrics

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 06:00:00 -0400

For Episode 6, the HBS hosts take a look at several of the metrics by which we are rated and ranked. We talk about grading, student evaluations, the Philosophical Gourmet Report (in professional Philosophy), social media algorithms, China's social credit systems, and we delve into some of Cathy O'Neal's arguments in *Weapons of Math Destruction.*

Full episode notes at this link.

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One Year with COVID

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:00:00 -0400

For Episode 5, the HBS hosts consider the last year living with COVID: what can we not believe that we did before COVID? what can't we wait to get back to doing? and what do we hope we never go back to doing?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Origins

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 08:22:49 -0400

For Episode 4, the HBS hosts look into the stories we tell, whether or not they are true, and what happens when those stories fall apart. Specifically, they discuss the various ways that origins are grounded in myths, documents, and self-narratives. By way of access into these problems, they take on the new Netflix series, Murder Among the Mormons, which centers around the story of Mark Hoffman, a master forger and murderer. What does it mean to have a physical document versus an oral tradition? How much of any given origin is truth or fiction and how do we know? How does authority function in the anchoring of any given origin story and its propagation?

Full episode notes at this link.

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Leigh M. Johnson on Technology

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 07:42:44 -0500

For Episode 3, Leigh M. Johnson is in the hot seat to explain why philosophers should be thinking more about emergent technologies. Co-hosts Shannon and Ammon make her seat hotter with questions about what counts as "intelligence," how close we are to the Singularity, whether robots will have feelings or should have rights, and which emergent technologies we should be excited (and worried) about in the near future.

Full episode notes at this link.

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Ammon Allred on Art

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 07:41:55 -0500

For Episode 2, Ammon Allred is in the hot seat to explain how thinking about aesthetic experience more seriously can free us from the hold of normativity. Co-hosts Leigh and Shannon make his seat hotter by forcing him to listen and respond to an atonal polka rendition of The National Anthem and then asking questions about what counts as art, what aesthetic experience does for us, whether or not none-human animals and machines can produce art (or have aesthetic experiences), and karaoke.

Full episode notes at this link.

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Shannon M. Mussett on Freedom

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 07:41:22 -0500

For our first episode of HBS, Shannon Mussett is in the hot seat to explain how the existentialist conception of freedom remains useful and important for Philosophy. Co-hosts Ammon and Leigh make her seat hotter with questions about how "radical" human freedom is, whether or not it is an illusion, why Shannon feels the urge to spontaneously drop babies, and the possibility of freedom for non-human animals, Nature, or machines.

Check out the full episode notes at this link.

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