PODCAST

Hotel Bar Sessions

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier

A podcast where the real philosophy happens.

education philosophy

All Episodes

58:44

Revenge

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2025/01/17

The HBS co-hosts savor the complexities of a dish best served cold.Is revenge ever ethical? Can it be a form of justice, or is it always about personal satisfaction? In this episode, Rick Lee, Leigh Johnson, and Devonya Havis take a deep dive into the philosophy of revenge. From the timeless allure of stories like Kill Bill and The Count of Monte Cristo to the rise of cancel culture and online harassment, the hosts explore how revenge plays out in both individual and collective contexts

58:04

Virtue

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2025/01/10

Is "virtue" an outdated concept? And why is there a bear in this classroom?!

56:34

REPLAY: Forgiveness

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2025/01/03

This week's episode is a REPLAY of a previously-aired episode from Season 9. HBS will return with all new episodes on January 10, 2024. Stay tuned!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

56:49

REPLAY: Deconstruction

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/12/27

This week's episode is a REPLAY of a previously-aired episode from Season 9. HBS will return with all new episodes on January 10, 2024. Stay tuned!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

66:55

Kant's Categorical Imperative

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/12/20

What if morality was law-governed in the same way as logic and physics?The Hotel Bar Sessions hosts close out Season 11 with a deep dive into one of philosophy’s most important moral principles: Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative.” They carefully unpack Kant’s three formulations of the “moral law”—the Universality formulation, the Humanity formulation, and the Kingdom of Ends formulation—to demonstrate how Kant sought to ground morality in rationality, universality, and freedom.Through

64:22

The Significance Impulse (with Josh Glasgow)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/12/13

What if our cosmic unimportance is itself not all that important?This week, the Hotel Bar Sessions hosts welcome Joshua Glasgow, author of The Significance Impulse: On the Unimportance of Our Cosmic Unimportance, to unpack humanity’s seemingly irrepressible drive to seek significance and the societal and psychological effects of this pervasive impulse. Glasgow argues that the quest for cosmic importance is not only unrealistic, but detrimental, and he urges us to embrace our smallness as a

66:09

Justice

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/12/06

The HBS hosts survey theories of justice from the ancients to the present.What does it mean to think justice, to pursue justice, or to act justly? Are we servicing justice, or just serving our self-interests? How do different philosophical approaches help us imagine a “just” society? This week, we consider retributive, restorative, and distributive theories, among others, exploring how each shapes our understanding of equality, rights, and fairness, and try to determine which approach

55:18

Matter and Consciousness in Indian Philosophy (with...

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/11/29

What can the Indian dualist philosophy of Sāṃkhya teach us about matter and consciousness?In this captivating episode, we explore the fascinating interplay between matter and consciousness as articulated in Sāṃkhya, a key tradition of Indian philosophy. Joined by special guest Dr. Tuhin Bhattacharjee, whose expertise spans ancient Greek and Indian texts, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis, we consider the interconnectedness of gender and metaphysics, setting the stage for broader

64:43

Ethics, Democracy, and Phronesis (with Dimitris...

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/11/22

This week, the HBS hosts are joined by Dimitris Vardoulakis (Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University) to discuss the phronetic tradition and its significance for ethics, politics, and democracy. Drawing on both Aristotle and Hannah Arendt’s understanding of agonism in The Human Condition, Vardoulakis connects what he calls the phronetic tradition to human interaction and instrumental thinking, emphasizing its foundation in uncertainty and disagreement.Our conversation

56:29

Posthumanism

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/11/15

What are the limits of the "human"? And what comes after us?This week, we’re taking on the big questions: What does it mean to be “human,” and is it possible we’re already moving beyond that? Starting with Foucault’s provocative claim that “the human is an invention… perhaps nearing its end,” we look at how history, culture, and technology have shaped—and continue to shape—our understanding of ourselves. Are we still the “rational, autonomous individuals” of the Enlightenment’s humanist

60:49

Nature

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/11/08

What do we mean when we say "Nature"? And what, if anything, is "natural"?In this week’s episode, we’re pulling up a chair at the bar to ask: What do we really mean when we talk about “nature”? From the world outside us—plants, animals, and landscapes—to the idea of human nature itself, we’re questioning our often contradictory and complex ideas of what counts as “natural.” Are we referring to the non-human world or to something essential and intrinsic within us? And is either way of

77:27

Does God Exist?

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/11/01

58:05

The Ethics of Refusal (with Devonya Havis)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/10/25

When is it right, or even necessary, to say "no"?Refusing can be a powerful act—whether it’s standing up to authority, rejecting harmful norms, or pushing back against injustice. But when is saying “no” the right thing to do? And what are the stakes when we decide to refuse? Often our refusals are quotidian and inconsequential, but sometimes, and sometimes without our knowledge, they’re huge.We often underestimate how often we issue refusals, both large and small, and we don’t consider

65:21

Meat

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/10/18

Should we eat meat?Humans have been eating other animals for close to 2.5 million years--a fact that is evidenced by cut traces on fossil animal bones, surviving stone tools, and analyses of our ancestors' teeth. Does this evolutionary fact render meat-eating physiologically necessary and morally justifiable? Our ancestors did a lot of things to survive; is that sufficient reason to continue the practice? How they obtained this meaty source of protein was arguably very different from the

62:54

Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian...

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/10/11

What can Frantz Fanon and Friedrich Nietzsche teach us about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?This week, we're joined by Zahi Zalloua (Whitman College) to discuss the final chapter of his most recent book The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury, 2024)-- entitled "Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question"-- which offers a fresh lens through which to understand the complex affects and power dynamics that continue to fuel this ongoing

59:12

Aristotle and Feminist Materialism, Troubled (with...

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/10/04

Philosophy has traditionally associated the feminine with matter, implying passivity. Why? And to what ends?In our previous episode on materialism (Season 6, Episode 83), we came to see that in more recent years, two, often related, forms of materialism have been developed: “new materialism” and feminist materialism. New materialism tends toward a philosophical reflection on advances in science, particularly neuro-science and biology, but feminist materialism is not so easy to define, as it

64:27

The Gutenberg Parenthesis (with Jeff Jarvis)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/09/27

Are we nearing the end of the "Age of Print"? And, if so, what comes next?The concept of "the Gutenberg Parenthesis" suggests that the era of print – which began in the 15th century, when the printing press was developed by Johan Gutenberg, and extended to the 20th century, when radio and television muscled in – was a unique period for human communication. However, as this week's guest Jeff Jarvis argued in his book The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of

58:16

Evidence

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/09/20

What counts as evidence? What makes it good or bad? How do we know?In court cases, the prosecution, plaintiff, and defendant present “evidence” that something happened or didn’t happen, that it happened in one way or another, that someone did something or did not do something. Evidence is meant to point to something as-yet undetermined. The same goes with scientific evidence, statistical evidence, and anecdotal evidence. Yet, because evidence points to something unknown, sorting it out is

52:10

Whose Jesus? (with John D. Caputo)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/09/13

When did Jesus start hating immigrants and gays, and loving guns and capitalism?Many Christians on the political left today no longer recognize the Jesus of the political right in the United States. Despite sharing a text and history, (at least) two dramatically different versions of "Jesus" have emerged in contemporary American Christian discourse, each reflecting a set of moral and political inferences presumably gleaned from the teachings of the historical Jesus, and each set of

55:03

REPLAY: The Master/Slave Dialectic

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/09/07

The HBS hosts struggle for recognition.[NOTE: This is a REPLAY episode, first aired on August 11, 2023. The HBS hosts will be back with new episodes for Season 11 starting on September 13, 2024!]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

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