PODCAST

Hotel Bar Sessions

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier

A podcast where the real philosophy happens.

education philosophy

All Episodes

56:57

Gossip

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/06/23

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

57:43

Men and Masculinity (with Nathan Duford)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/06/16

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

49:50

Gatekeeping

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/06/09

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

55:15

Punching Nazis (with Devin Shaw)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/06/02

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

57:33

Progress

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/05/26

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

54:22

The University and its Discontents

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/05/19

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

58:41

Lazy Relativism

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/05/12

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

56:49

HBS Goes to the Movies: The Conversation (1974)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/05/05

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

63:54

REPLAY: The Public Intellectual (with Eddie Glaude, Jr.)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/04/28

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

55:27

REPLAY: Vulgarity

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/04/21

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

61:16

REPLAY: YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb...

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/04/15

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 has

72:04

REPLAY: Robots (with David Gunkel)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/04/07

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

56:08

The Allegory of the Cave

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/03/31

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

60:05

Late Capitalism

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/03/24

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

55:26

ChatGPT

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/03/17

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

58:28

Death

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/03/10

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

53:54

Fascism (with Alberto Toscano)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/03/03

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

50:56

Bullshit Jobs

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/02/24

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

61:31

Abolition of the Family (with Sophie Lewis)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/02/17

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

48:23

Influencers

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2023/02/10

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

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