PODCAST

Hotel Bar Sessions

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier

A podcast where the real philosophy happens.

education philosophy

All Episodes

59:29

The Stories We Tell

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/11/10

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

63:28

Collegiality

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/11/03

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

55:19

Debt

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/10/27

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

54:35

Political Philosophy of Mind (with John Protevi)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/10/20

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

57:34

Fan Culture

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/10/13

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

59:43

The Problem Spaces of Philosophy (with William Paris)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/10/06

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

63:35

The Uncanny Valley

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/09/29

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

59:09

Jordan Peele's Horror (with Johanna Isaacson)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/09/22

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,

51:37

The Subversive Seventies (with Michael Hardt)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/09/15

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

56:34

Forgiveness

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/09/08

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

59:35

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

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/09/01

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

59:12

REPLAY: Death

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/08/25

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

54:29

REPLAY: Revolutionary Mathematics (with Justin Joque)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/08/18

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

55:01

The Master/Slave Dialectic

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/08/11

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

52:26

Too Soon?

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/08/04

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

48:56

Tenure

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/07/28

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

68:40

Prestige TV

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/07/21

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

58:55

Hobbies

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/07/14

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

56:30

What's YOUR Philosophy?

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/07/07

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:

57:51

Community

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/06/30

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,

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