Hotel Bar Sessions

The HBS hosts invite Michael Naas to make himself at home on the podcast. There are two popular ideas about hospitality that seem to be at odds with one another. The first is an understanding of a bygone era in which our ancestors were frequently forced–- through battles, famines, the search for water, etc.–- to move frequently and, for many of them, regularly. Under such conditions, the virtue of...

The HBS hosts focus their attention on... oh, look, a squirrel! It is said that we are living in an attention economy,  an age in which attention has become both a scarce resource and a source of wealth. Devices and apps do everything in their power to solicit our attention and keep us glued to our screens, turning minutes scrolling and clicks into revenue. Because of this demand on our attention,...

The HBS hosts argue for the merits of studying the history of philosophy. In a recent essay , Hanno Sauer argued against the importance, for philosophy, of the history of philosophy. In summary, he presented a positivistic, scientistic model of philosophy, namely, that like physics, biology, and chemistry, philosophy has actually “made progress” on many of the issues that philosophy struggled with...

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 ou...

The HBS hosts ask not what is human nature, but what is at stake in this constant recourse to human nature.    The history of philosophy can in part be understood as one long rumination on the question of human nature. Throughout its history philosophers have put forward multiple definitions of what it means to be human and what sets humans apart from other animals: political animal, rational anim...

The HBS hosts return to the movies and this week we are discussing Casablanca .   Shot in 1942, a year after the U.S. entered The Second “World War,” Casablanca makes it onto many lists of the best movies of all time. It is part caper movie, part romance, part war flick, and part resistance movie. These are woven together in a fairly complex plot that is beautifully shot, has gorgeous characters,...

While the HBS hosts are taking a break between Season 5 and Season 6, we're re-playing some of our favorite conversations you might have missed. Enjoy this episode from Season 3 "Whose History?" (with special guest, Dr. Charles McKinney ) and check out the full episode notes at this link : http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-31-whose-history/ If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, make su...

While the HBS hosts are taking a break between Season 5 and Season 6, we're re-playing some of our favorite conversations you might have missed. Enjoy this episode from Season 4 on "Style" and check out the full episode notes at this link : http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-47-style/ If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow u...

The HBS hosts-- now, all four of them!-- chat about what podcasting can do for Philosophy. There are roughly 2.4 million podcasts in existence right now, with over 66 million episodes between them, and recent studies show that 28% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly.  Podcast genres are as diverse as human interests themselves; there are comedy podcasts, social and cultural podcasts, health and...

The HBS hosts reflect on four fantastic seasons with the inimitable Charles Peterson. Co-host Charles F. Peterson has been the beating heart of Hotel Bar Sessions for the last four seasons. Throughout that time, he has pushed the podcast to be more and more expansive, in deeper and deeper ways, with his intellect, curiosity, and rapier-like wit. Charles was the mastermind behind many of our best e...

The HBS hosts consider the possibility of sentient artificial intelligence with Dr. Regina Rini. The debate about the possibility of emergent AI sentience has staunch defenders both for an against, many more people shrugging their shoulders in the middle, with many, diverse, and non-interchangeable lexicons being used to discuss this phenomenon. Today, we’re going to try to untangle those discursi...

The HBS hosts discuss legal personhood and rights for rivers, lakes, and mountains with Dr. Stewart Motha. In most discussions about extending rights or legal personhood to non-humans, the focus tends to be on robots/machines or non-human animals. However, given our current global climate crisis, we have good reason to ask: isn't it time to devote more attention to the rights-- and perhaps legal a...

The HBS hosts chat with A.O. Scott about the role and responsibilities of the critic. The critic is frequently seen as a parasite who lives of the creative life of others but not producing a work of art through their criticism. In this episode, we are honored to be joined by A.O. Scott to discuss the role of the critic, the creativity of criticism, and the mutual dependence of art and criticism. A...

The HBS hosts ask Dr. Linda Alcoff just how close to the edge of the bed is the United States sleeping? A year and a half ago, as an angry, armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in what was, thankfully, an unsuccessful insurrection attempt, many of us watching the event unfold on television asked ourselves: is democracy itself in peril? This is, of course, a question we should have been aski...

The HBS hosts wonder whether the call is coming from inside the house. Fear is a one of the most complex of human affects. It is both physical and psychological. It can be intensely private or shared by entire communities. It is sometimes paralyzing and other times exciting. Fear often seizes us without warning, but we can also "think ourselves into" being afraid.  What, if anything, distinguishes...

The HBS hosts chat with Caleb Cain about his experience being radicalized by the Alt-Right internet. 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 YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which has been proven many times over to promote what (in intern...

The HBS hosts talk with Dr. Joel Michael Reynolds about what bodies are afforded and denied.   As we come to recognize more and more the occlusions that occur in, and often constitute, philosophy and its history, attention to an ableist presupposition in philosophy has come to the fore. Much as with feminist theory or queer theory or race theory, disability theory not only works to expose the able...

The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Kate Devlin to talk about social relationships between humans and machines. When most people think about our future with robots, they tend to ask the following three questions: (1) Will robots take my job?. (2) Will they kill us?, and (3) Can I have sex with them? This week, the HBS hosts are joined by Dr. Kate Devlin , Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artific...

 The HBS hosts ask Dr. Charles Hughes for water, and he gives them gasoline.   According to co-host Charles Peterson, the blues is "as American as apple pie and as Black as the Funky Chicken." The blues is a genre of music, to be sure, but it's also an emotion, perhaps even an existential bearing. What makes blues music distinctive? What does it mean to have "the blues"? Can everyone have or play...

The HBS hosts try to go viral with Andrew Baron, creator of KnowYourMeme.  Memes: if you get them, you get them... and if you don't, you don't. But how is a meme created? How does it spread? And how does it die? In this episode, we dig into the complex dynamics of memes-- on Dawkins' account, the most rudimentary units of social information-- to see how they do (and don't) imitate so-called "natur...

The HBS hosts investigate the limits of Reason alone and, more importantly, in real human history. Many, rightly, understand the discipline of Philosophy as primarily defined by its commitment to Reason. But, what is “Reason”? Is it universal? Is it some kind of fundamental human capacity that transcends class, culture, politics, religion, or any other iteration of human difference? What do we mak...

The HBS hosts attempt to measure the real stakes of cheating. According to a recent study , almost 60% of college/university students in the United States admit to having cheated at least once during their studies. Around 15% of U.S. students admit to plagiarizing intentionally and, of those, less than 1 in 5 is caught or punished for academic dishonesty. Professors regularly report that cheating...

The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. to talk about what constitutes a "public intellectual." 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 Board of Trustees . He frequently appears i...

The HBS hosts try to get to the truth of untruths. Mark Twain famously claimed that there are three kinds of untruth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.  In an age of widespread misinformation, where it has become considerably more difficult to distinguish between truths and lies, the HBS hosts make an impassioned plea for us to think seriously about what a lie is, what it is not, and why it matte...

The HBS hosts chat with Dr. Ladelle McWhorter about the evolution of "queer" as an identity category and a verb. Once only used as a slur with unambiguously negative valences, the noun "queer" has been reappropriated by (many) members of the LGBTQIA+ community as referring to a positive, even celebrated, notion of self-identity.... but the history of the term "queer" is complicated. In this episod...