Hotel Bar Sessions

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…

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…

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 hop…

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 listeni…

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 ul…

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 …

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…

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 rule…

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 instit…

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 …

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 literat…

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 su…

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 fo…

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, …

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…

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 M…

 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…

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 readin…

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…

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 i…