PODCAST

Hotel Bar Sessions

Leigh M. Johnson, Jennifer Kling, Bob Vallier

A podcast where the real philosophy happens.

education philosophy

All Episodes

55:20

Ideology

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/06/28

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 commitments. A couple of important notes for listeners: first, this episode was recorded the day before William Clare-Roberts' excellent essay "Ideology and Emancipation: Voluntary Servitude, False Consciousness, and the Career of Critical Social Theory" was published. (We promise to do our level

56:06

Generative AI

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/06/21

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, but also images, video, music, and "voice." For all of the amazing opportunities opened up by generative AI, however, it does not come without its own risks. Secondary and post-secondary education, for example, was thrown into crisis in late 2022 when ChatGPT was released, and is still weathering

50:53

Reality TV

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/06/14

The HBS hosts are not here to make friends.

58:36

Friendship

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/06/07

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, there are no friends," capturing something that seems to be fundamental about friendship. Friendship is essential to human thriving, but also difficult, if not impossible, to attain and maintain. We make all sorts of fine distinctions between friends, "best" friends, acquaintances, colleagues

54:44

Personhood

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/05/31

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 human beings were considered (moral or legal) persons, nor is the case today that all persons are human beings. Here in the United States, corporations are considered legal persons, and in several countries across the world, natural beings (like rivers, lakes, and ecosystems) have also been

54:49

Originality

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/05/24

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 artificial intelligence has made plagiarism of all kinds possible. We value originality over imitation, creativity over copying, and novelty over the “same old, same old.” But, why is originality such a cherished value? Is it even possible, or is everything just a remix or a copy? We bring

53:00

HBS Goes to the Movies: "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/05/17

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 film Joe vs. The Volcano with Michael Norton from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Michael has an argument that the movie is the perfect existentialist film. Is he right? Full episode notes available at this

22:47

MINIBAR EPISODE: Will The Courts Save Democracy?

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/05/10

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 targeted prosecutions by biased and overzealous District Attorneys, while others view the same events as a lifelong con man getting his just deserts. Fascinatingly, both sides seem to be putting a lot of faith in the courts to "save democracy."In this brief MINIBAR episode, we chat about the limits of

24:13

MINI-BAR EPISODE: Meet Our New Co-host, David Gunkel!

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/05/03

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 of technology, with a focus on the moral and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and robots. He is the author of a number of important texts on emergent technology, media studies, and philosophy (see his list of books here). Dr. Gunkel is internationally recognized for his innovative

60:34

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

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/04/26

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 episodes from the past. This episode is from Season 5 and originally aired on August 22, 2022.]In 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

65:41

Jean-Paul Sartre's "Bad Faith"

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/04/19

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 into the wider popular consciousness and culture. This week, we're talking about Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea of “bad faith” (mauvaise foi) from his text Being and Nothingness.[Trigger Warning: at around the 24-minute mark in this episode, we have a brief discussion of people ending their lives. You

56:25

Companion Animals

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/04/12

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 dog was over thirty thousand years ago, and the first cat over ten thousand years ago. So, much of what we call human civilization has always been a multispecies endeavor. In recent years, however, cats and dogs have seemed to have taken on increased significance, both in terms of what they offer

60:55

Psychoanalysis (with Benedetta Todaro)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/04/05

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, particularly in the west. We all laugh at the idea that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!” And we speak freely of “Freudian slips.” And many are at least passingly familiar with the main concepts: Ego, Id, repression, sublimation, etc. Philosophy, in particular, has been in a fairly constant

53:25

Whose Anthropocene?

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/03/29

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 in a new geological epoch marked by the impact of humans on the Earth and its inhabitants. Geological epochs are determined by profound and measurable changes in the rock layers and changes in the fossil record. For example, the end of the last ice age marks the beginning of the Holocene, in

54:46

Academic Freedom

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/03/22

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 because he is a “race realist” and, in particular, has stated that there is a difference in natural intelligence in people of different races. What is more, he has argued that race realism, if widely adopted, would be the end of what he has called “wokism.” He unsurprisingly argues that he has

57:40

Immediacy (with Anna Kornbluh)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/03/15

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 autotheory, the tendency is towards direct intensity of experience and away from the mediations of form, genre, and representation. What drives this turn to the immediate in art, culture, and even politics? What do we lose in this turn to immediacy? Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy: Or, the

53:07

Boredom

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/03/08

The HBS hosts discuss the many paradoxes of ennui. Most of our podcast episodes are about “big” issues, “interesting” topics, “provocative” conversations, or “important” matters… but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of our day-to-day lives is dominated by ennui. Boredom. Tedium. Lethargy. Lassitude. Or, in more common parlance, “the blahs.”Voltaire famously claimed (in The Prodigal Son) “all genres are allowed, except the boring genre." It’s easy to see why this is the case for

70:10

Breaking Things at Work (with Gavin Mueller)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/03/01

The HBS hosts discuss how the Luddites were right about why we hate our jobs. The term “luddite” generally functions as an insult these days. It is something people are accused of, and a term that no one would claim for themselves. To adopt and adapt to new technologies is part of what it means to be progressive and modern, not to mention hip. However, the history of actually existing technologies paints a different picture, technologies from the laptop to the cellphone have been used to

53:35

Lying

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/02/23

The HBS hosts parse the difference between mistakes, half-truths, embellishments, and outright lies. George Costanza (from the TV series Seinfeld) once insisted: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” This seems both true and false. It's certainly wrong to claim that someone lied accidentally, so intention, and therefore knowing what you are saying is not true, appears to be a necessary part of what it is to lie. Yet, the “if you believe it” part often operates like a “get out of jail free"

56:28

Growing Old(er)

Hotel Bar Sessions ·

2024/02/16

The HBS hosts consider the sands through the hourglass. It seems as if, when we’re young, the solution to all of our problems is just getting older—when will people take me seriously? when will I understand my own body? when will I gain the confidence to assert my own will? or, just be myself? Then, as we age, it paradoxically occurs to us that the only solution to our problems is to be young again: if I only knew then what I know now, if I only had a chance to do that thing over, if I

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