Hotel Bar Sessions

This week’s episode takes Cory Doctorow’s term “enshittification” and uses it as a diagnostic for late-capitalist life, not just for tech platforms but for democracy, higher education, and work more broadly. Our co-hosts unpack Doctorow’s three-stage model—platforms start out good to users, then pivot to serving business customers, and finally squeeze both users and customers to extract maximum value for shareholders—and argue about whether this is really a new “platform logic” or just old-school Marxist exploitation and alienation under a punchier name.We connect this logic to the attention economy and datafication (“we are the product”), then extend it to U.S. democracy, where voters are treated as performers in a hollowed-out system, and to universities, where administrative bloat, metrics, and “students as customers” have produced an enshittified version of higher education, while students are locked-in by massive student debt. What is left for us in terms of  resistance?We look at some real options: exiting platforms, Labor organizing and union drives, “quiet quitting” and malicious compliance (“Bartleby”-esque moves), creative sabotage, and maybe even  “enshittification from below.”Our co-hosts ultimately advocate for insisting on higher standards, rather than accepting the slow boil of lowered expectations. Join us for the shit-show! Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-everything/---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Many of us think of resistance as "protest," communicative acts aimed at fighting injustice, and done with others in public. But what happens when that kind of resistance isn’t possible or safe? When showing up, or waving a sign, or making a public speech might get you jailed, or silenced, or disappeared? Is it possible to resist oppression without following Western scripts surrounding protest? This week, we are joined by guest Dr. Tamara Fakhoury (University of Minnesota) to talk about her concept of "quiet resistance."Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/quiet-resistance---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The hosts dive into the rise of therapy-speak and question its impact on personal responsibility. They debate whether therapy addresses individual issues or obscures deeper societal problems. There's a critique of pop-therapy trends and how they can commodify healing. The discussion highlights the importance of community care and collective action alongside individual therapy. They also explore the role of philosophy as a tool for deeper understanding and challenge the notion that therapy is a one-size-fits-all solution.

This week’s episode of Hotel Bar Sessions brings political theorist Laura K. Field (author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right) into the bar to talk about the intellectuals cranking the rhetoric up to eleven while insisting they’re just “doing Great Books.” We follow the trail from Straussian seminar rooms and conservative think tanks to Trump rallies and “no kings” protests, asking what happens when a self-styled aristocracy of the mind decides liberal democracy is played out.Field guides us through the angry energy behind this movement, the “furious minds” driving it, and why she turns to Aeschylus’ treatment of the ancient Furies (in his Oresteia trilogy) and Abraham Lincoln’s Dred Scott speech to think about justice, vengeance, and the dangers of sacralizing politics. Along the way we talk MAGA as quasi-religion, liberalism as a way of life, why so many young men are adopting Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, and what it means to refuse the invitation to become furious.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/furrious-minds---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The imagination has regularly been subordinated to  so-called "rational" or "scientific" models of thought. This week, we're joined by Stephen T. Asma (Columbia College, Chicago), who argues that imagination has deep, perhaps pre-linguistic, roots that ought to be recovered. What if we re-centered the powers of imagination, rooted in imagistic thinking and bodily gestures (like dance), instead of dismissing them as mere "fancy"?Drawing on the esoteric tradition, Asma leads us through an interesting alt-history of human thought and, in doing so, gives us reason to pause and re-think our prejudice against imaginative thinking.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/imagination-with-stephen-asma---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This week’s episode of Hotel Bar Sessions on the topic of comedy is a gut buster,  not least because one of your co-hosts pretends to be a stand-up comedian at night-- the only job for a philosopher that pays less than being an adjunct professor! Comedy is a historically and philosophically rich topic, starting with primitive hominids drawing penises on cave walls. Our cohosts' begin with Plato, then try to anticipate what Aristotle might have said about comedy (it would not have been funny!), before turning to the formalist aesthetic of 20th C. stand-up and the banality of crowd-work. We ask: what makes something funny? Is there anything that can never be funny? What does comedy  do for us, socially and politically?Join us for drinks and a few laughs as we discuss an art form that deserves much more philosophical attention.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/episode-202-comedy---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

How do we choose the "hills" that we're willing to die on? Are we actually willing to DIE on them? If not, what would it take to convince us to climb back down the hill and compromise?This week , our co-hosts are digging deep into the question of our "deepest commitments," trying to find where there is room for compromise, and where the lines we draw are ultimately un-crossable.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/episode-201-the-hills-we-die-on---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

How do we choose the "hills" that we're willing to die on? Are we actually willing to DIE on them? If not, what would it take to convince us to climb back down the hill and compromise?This week , our co-hosts are digging deep into the question of our "deepest commitments," trying to find where there is room for compromise, and where the lines we draw are ultimately un-crossable.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/episode-201-the-hills-we-die-on---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations on our website here!)BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What does it mean to speak of eternity? Is eternity best understood as infinite time, stretching endlessly forward and backward, or as something wholly outside of time—a changeless, timeless "eternal now"? In this episode, the hosts wrestle with these competing conceptions, drawing on philosophy, theology, and personal experience to ask whether eternity is a thinkable concept or a regulative ideal forever beyond our grasp.The discussion ranges from Aristotle’s view of time as the measure of motion to medieval analogies of rivers and "standing nows," from Aquinas’s theology of resurrected bodies to Nietzsche’s dark thought of the eternal return. The hosts consider whether eternity should be tied to perfection, necessity, or redemption, and explore whether such ideas have anything to offer our day-to-day human lives.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/eternity---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What makes the difference between a crowd singing in unison at a concert and a mob storming the gates of power? In this episode, the hosts take listeners into the messy, unpredictable space where solidarity teeters on the edge of chaos. They unpack how naming a gathering as a “mob” is never neutral—it does political work, shaping both public perception and police response. From the joyful swell of protest chants to the frightening intensity of January 6th, this conversation asks: when does belonging tip into violence, and who gets to decide? Whether you’ve ever felt swept up in the electricity of a rally or uneasy in the crush of a crowd, this episode challenges you to think about what is gained and lost when “we” become something more than the sum of our parts. Tune in, and you may never see gatherings—online or off—the same way again.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/crowds-and-mobs---------------------SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)JOIN our (new) Discord server here and participate in our monthly (LIVE) chats, beginning in Season 14!BOOKMARK the Hotel Bar Sessions website here for detailed show notes and reading lists, and contact any of our co-hosts here.Hotel Bar Sessions is also on Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★