Hotel Bar Sessions

Keshav Singh, an ethics and epistemology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, brings Sikh philosophy into the global conversation. They explore Sikhism’s vision of fundamental oneness, the untranslatable concepts hukam, haumai, and sachiara, and the Five Thieves of moral life. The discussion also examines truthful living, selfless service, and why spiritual growth requires engagement with the world rather than escape from it.

Con men: From the sophists of ancient greece to the current grifter in chief, philosophy has been at odds with them for millennia, and given their success, it seems like it’s been a losing battle.  Some of their success is because, as one famous grifter remarked, there’s a sucker born every minute.  We’ve seen then in many guises–snake oil salesmen, televangelists, self-help gurus–but there are three today–Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, and Andrew Tate–who’ve not only taken the grift to new levels, but also, in so doing, revealed the grift–or rather, disclosed the bad metaphysics and bad politics that make the con possible. This disclosure is precisely what is analyzed in a new book by philosophers Landon Frim and Harrison Fluss--Confidence Men: Peterson, Musk, Tate and the Duping of the American Mind (Penguin 2026).  We’re delighted to be joined today by Landon, who helps us understand better what con men are, why they are more than mere liars but rather “enemies of the truth,” why they are most frequently con men, what their philosophical worldview is, the role capitalism plays in the con, and what “good metaphysics” and “good politics” are needed to undermine their efforts and mitigate the conditions of possibility for their continued success.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/conmen---------------------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, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

You are wearing an outfit right now. Maybe you chose it deliberately this morning, or maybe you grabbed it off the floor, but either way it is currently saying things about your class, your gender, your politics, your relationship to the very idea of caring how you look. Roland Barthes argued that this is what separates fashion from “mere clothing.” Fashion is clothing that has become a language, and the fashion industry is the institution that keeps everyone manufacturing new meanings each season so that garments become obsolete long before they wear out. The genius of the system is that it sells this obligation as “taste,” as “freedom.” Your closet feels like self-expression, while functioning as a subscription service. If fashion is a language, can anyone refuse to speak it? The jeans-and-hoodie crowd, the Amish, and the uniform-wearers of the world would like a word, and one of your three co-hosts (Leigh) is firmly among them.This episode also asks why the same hoodie signifies differently on different bodies, what hair straightening reveals about assimilation and power, how gay men built an entire covert semiotics out of ties and handkerchiefs before Stonewall, and who is actually paying the price, in labor and in landfill, for clothes designed to die young.Grab a drink and join us as two fashion-literate philosophers try to convince their unfashionable friend that nobody, no matter how committed they may be to their hoodie, ever really opts out.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/fashion---------------------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, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

There are plenty of ready-to-hand moral sanctions for lies told and promises broken. We know how those wrongs work, we know what the apologies sound like, and we know, more or less, how to move on from them. Betrayal is different. Ask anyone who has been betrayed and they'll tell you: the apology did nothing, the explanation did nothing, and the well-meaning friend who said "you should have known better" only made it worse. Something more is wronged in a betrayal than any rule of the relationship, and that something reaches backward as well as forward. Every remembered kindness becomes suspect. So does your own judgment about where to put your trust next time.In this episode, the HBS co-hosts try to name that surplus wrong, and they don't agree on what they find. Is betrayal something that happens in the world, or is it a feeling that only the betrayed person can author? Can you be betrayed by someone who told you it was coming, or by someone forced to do it? What about the self-betrayals we're ordered into, or the ones our own bodies commit? Grab a drink and join us as we pick up where our conversation on trust left off and figure out why nobody wants their last words to be "Et tu, Brute?"Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/betrayal---------------------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, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

They debate recent op-eds arguing that reclaiming the term queer endangers gay rights. They trace the word's history from slur to reclaimed identity and explore its use as noun, verb, and political lens. They interrogate generational divides, coalition politics within the alphabet community, and what queering politics might mean for dismantling norms.

A candid conversation about how failure is defined and by whom. They probe internal versus external standards and whether one can 'fail at life.' The discussion ranges from philosophical and scientific value in error to how modern economics makes failure more ruinous. They close with practical reframing advice and a clear-eyed reimagining of Sisyphus.

Jon Ivan Gill, philosopher and author blending process philosophy with race and culture, argues that fixed racial categories inflict trauma. He discusses how hip hop and Whitehead shaped his thinking. The conversation explores rejecting static racial labels, the risks of depoliticizing race, and imagining identity as ongoing becoming.

A lively conversation about why public confidence has fallen yet everyday trust still keeps life functioning. They debate whether trust is a choice or something that happens to you and how context shapes who we rely on. Topics include expertise, transparency, AI’s effect on perception, betrayal’s sting, political distrust, and grassroots ways to rebuild mutual reliance.

When Leigh's cat Sugar was dying of congestive heart failure, the vet's office offered her something almost no human being will ever be offered: the chance to hold her, to tell her she was loved and thank her, and to be present while a doctor helped her die without pain, without fear, and not alone. Afterward, Leigh's first thought was, I hope my death is this good. Most of us won't get one. We will die in a hospital bed, wired to machines, running up a bill somebody we love will inherit — and almost nobody says that's what they want. Meanwhile, the last year of an American life is the most profitable one, and a dignified death has quietly become a luxury good. Is there — should there be — such a thing as a "right to die," the dark companion of the right to life we all assume we already have? We already honor a patient's refusal of life-sustaining treatment; we let people sign DNRs, decline resuscitation, have the respirator removed. Is there any principled reason to honor that autonomy everywhere except the one place a person tries to use it? What is the "sound mind" requirement actually screening for, given that wanting to die was long treated as disqualifying all by itself? And can we talk seriously about dying with dignity inside a system that barely guarantees anyone the right to live with dignity?Grab a drink — no hemlock cocktails, please — and join us as we ask what it would take to receive the deaths we already afford our pets.Content note: this episode discusses death, dying, end-of-life decision-making, euthanasia, and suicide throughout, at times in personal terms. In the U.S., the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text. Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/righttodie---------------------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, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

A lively dive into what 'rules' really mean, from linguistic roots to how they shape activities like games and recipes. They contrast rules that describe with those that govern behavior and consider moral duty, punishment, and proportionality. The conversation stretches to social contract tradeoffs, weaponized procedure, and how rules must adapt to technology and AI.