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...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr•Season 9Ep. 123
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 discipline...
Jan 19, 2024•57 min•Season 9Ep. 122
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 lo...
Jan 12, 2024•58 min•Season 9Ep. 121
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 phil...
Dec 08, 2023•51 min•Season 8Ep. 120
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 res...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr•Season 8Ep. 119
The HBS hosts ask Chris Long how philosophers contribute and how best to value their contributions. T 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 ...
Nov 24, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 8Ep. 118
The HBS co-hosts learn why it's not just about pronouns. 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 und...
Nov 17, 2023•58 min•Season 8Ep. 117
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...
Nov 10, 2023•59 min•Season 8Ep. 116
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...
Nov 03, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 8Ep. 115
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 2007-2...
Oct 27, 2023•55 min•Season 8Ep. 114
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 ...
Oct 20, 2023•55 min•Season 8Ep. 113
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...
Oct 13, 2023•58 min•Season 8Ep. 112
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...
Oct 06, 2023•1 hr•Season 8Ep. 111
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 ...
Sep 29, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 8Ep. 110
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, ...
Sep 22, 2023•59 min•Season 8Ep. 109
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...
Sep 15, 2023•52 min•Season 8Ep. 108
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 mend...
Sep 08, 2023•57 min•Season 8Ep. 107
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 hard...
Sep 01, 2023•1 hr•Season 8Ep. 106
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....
Aug 25, 2023•59 min
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....
Aug 18, 2023•54 min
The HBS hosts struggle for recognition. 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 wh...
Aug 11, 2023•55 min•Season 7Ep. 105
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 capaci...
Aug 04, 2023•52 min•Season 7Ep. 104
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 cus...
Jul 28, 2023•49 min•Season 7Ep. 103
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 pr...
Jul 21, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 7Ep. 102
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 ar...
Jul 14, 2023•59 min•Season 7Ep. 101
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 yo...
Jul 07, 2023•57 min•Season 7Ep. 100
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, disconne...
Jun 30, 2023•58 min•Season 7Ep. 99
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...
Jun 23, 2023•57 min•Season 7Ep. 98
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 ...
Jun 16, 2023•58 min•Season 7Ep. 97
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 wei...
Jun 09, 2023•50 min•Season 7Ep. 96
