Hotel Bar Sessions

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 …

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 es…

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 "su…

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 Ma…

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 commi…

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, bu…

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 w…

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,…

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…

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…

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 fi…

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 targete…

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 …

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 …

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 i…

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 do…

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, …

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…

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 …

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 a…