The HBS hosts ask Devin Shaw whether and how to punch Nazis. 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 importa...
Jun 02, 2023•55 min•Season 7Ep. 95
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 hist...
May 26, 2023•58 min•Season 7Ep. 94
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...
May 19, 2023•54 min•Season 7Ep. 93
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...
May 12, 2023•59 min•Season 7Ep. 92
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, t...
May 05, 2023•57 min•Season 7Ep. 91
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 Boa...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 4 min
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/ ---------------- If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, make sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotel...
Apr 21, 2023•55 min
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 ha...
Apr 15, 2023•1 hr 1 min
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 ro...
Apr 07, 2023•1 hr 12 min
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 ...
Mar 31, 2023•56 min•Season 6Ep. 90
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 ...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 89
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 justif...
Mar 17, 2023•55 min•Season 6Ep. 88
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....
Mar 10, 2023•58 min•Season 6Ep. 87
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 capita...
Mar 03, 2023•54 min•Season 6Ep. 86
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 automatio...
Feb 24, 2023•51 min•Season 6Ep. 85
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 e...
Feb 17, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 84
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 ...
Feb 10, 2023•48 min•Season 6Ep. 83
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—epi...
Feb 09, 2023•33 min
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 ha...
Feb 03, 2023•48 min•Season 6Ep. 82
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 ...
Feb 01, 2023•48 min•Season 6Ep. 1
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,” le...
Jan 27, 2023•57 min•Season 6Ep. 81
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...
Jan 20, 2023•56 min•Season 6Ep. 80
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 n...
Jan 13, 2023•57 min•Season 6Ep. 79
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....
Jan 06, 2023•54 min•Season 6Ep. 78
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 main...
Dec 30, 2022•57 min•Season 6Ep. 77
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 excl...
Dec 23, 2022•53 min•Season 6Ep. 76
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 . You can also he...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 31
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 financial...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 47
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 ...
Oct 14, 2022•55 min•Season 5Ep. 75
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 mome...
Oct 07, 2022•53 min•Season 5Ep. 74
