Hotel Bar Sessions

The HBS try to decipher what makes prestige TV "prestigious." The 21st Century hasn’t given us a lot of reason to recommend it so far—terror, war, fascism, plague, climate disaster, and an impending technopocalyps... but, hey, at least we’ve had good tv! Often referred to as “Peak TV,” the so-called second (or “new”) Golden Age of Television began in the very late 90’s and really cemented its influence in the first decade of the 2000’s. The plots were complex and protracted, not episodic. The protagonists were antiheroes, not heroes, morally ambiguous, hard to endorse, but impossible not to like.  There was foul language and graphic violence and full-frontal nudity. And since nobody could access this content with an antenna and tin-foil, we paid for it. It’s since been dubbed “prestige tv,” in part (I think) to assuage the consciences of all those snooty people who looooooved to say that they “didn’t watch tv.” Prestige tv included shows you couldn’t not watch—not because you wouldn’t be “cool” or you might be left out of the most recent water-cooler small-talk, but because prestige tv was quite literally re-shaping culture itself.The Sopranos. Lost. Mad Men. The Wire. Breaking Bad. House of Cards. True Detective. Game of Thrones. Atlanta.Today we’re going to talk about prestige tv, in my opinion one of the most significant, and uniquely American, artistic movements since rock n’ roll. What makes prestige tv prestigious? How do we know it when we see it? What are some of the best examples of it? And, perhaps most importantly, why are we seeing less of it?Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-102-prestige-tv-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts lobby for hobbies.The concept of hobbies is perhaps anachronistic and even ambivalent. Many hobbies are shadows of more respected pursuits such as the creation of art, music, or literature, and thus tinged with the idea of failure. Their primary function seems to be to pass the time. Every hobby risks being seen as not just an idiosyncratic activity, but a kind of failure as if that time and energy was better spent on something else, something more useful or productive. Hobbies are often seen as antisocial, as something undertaken by a person who does not have friends, or family members, but at the same time they are the basis of many people’s social existence. Is there something to redeem hobbies in an age in which ceaseless productivity is the norm and standard? Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-hobbies-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts celebrate our 100th episode by asking each other the question "what's YOUR philosophy?"Hotel Bar Sessions, as a podcast, is committed to the idea of "public philosophy," but is there such a thing as a “private philosophy"? Not private in the sense that it is kept out of the public, but private in that it is a philosophy that belongs to an individual.  As professional philosophers, we often find that when were out in public and tell people what we do, they will often ask: "what's your philosophy?. So, this week, we're asking each other that same question.What does it mean to have a philosophy of one’s own? Do each of the hosts have “a philosophy”? Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-100-whats-your-philosophy-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts try to determine who's in and who's out. In 1887, Ferdinand Tönnies published a groundbreaking book, Community and Society (an excerpt from his text that lays out the argument can be found here), in which he argues that community is a different form of social group from society. The main distinguishing characteristics are that community is a group in which members are personally connected, relying on each other, close in worldviews and values, while society is impersonal, disconnected, with members that are independent and may not share values. (Think about small town vs. big city!) A debate subsequently arose in Germany about whether one was better than the other and Tönnies seems to have expressed more positive views about community than about society. More recently, though, “community” has taken on a somewhat different resonance. We speak of the "queer" community/communities, the "Latin American" community, et al, and it seems we are referring to a group that has affinities in terms their members' interests and values, but may not be constituted by personal connections and direct relations. For Tönnies, community appears to name a group gathered under the principle “we don’t do that here,” and therefore can be oppressive or repressive. Yet, today, community often indicates an association that is affirming and enabling.... even if that latter community can also, at times, turn repressive as a community calls one of its members a turncoat, or worse.Today, we ask: is "community" the appropriate ground of politics? Or is it, rather, a menace to "society"?Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-99-community-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts spill the tea about tales whispered, secrets shared, and reputations shaped. Gossip seems like exactly the sort of topic that serious philosophers would wave their hands in disgust at, as not worthy of consideration. Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet, once declared, "Gossip is mischievous, light and easy to raise, but grievous to bear and hard to get rid of," and similarly, in Leviticus, we find Moses warning his people with the admonition, "Do not go up and down as a talebearer among your people." Both remind us of gossip’s ability to captivate our attention, and the real harms it can inflict.Yet, it’s not so easy to just dismiss gossip as mere frivolous chatter. Some evolutionary biologists link the emergence of language itself to gossip, and sociologists have long argued that the ability to engage in gossip played a vital role in our species' development, enabling us to form complex social networks, navigate alliances, and share information about others.Gossip is not without its dual nature. It serves as a source of transmission for both amity and enmity. It can strengthen social bonds, create a sense of belonging, and forge alliances… but it also has the power to breed division, stoke resentment, and destroy reputations. Is gossip a necessary, even essential, operation of human sociality? Is gossiping morally blameworthy in every instance, or are there instances in which gossiping is justified? What distinguishes “gossiping” from “reporting,” or “divulging,” or even just “communicating”? Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-98-gossip-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts chat with Nathan Duford about what men can (and can't) want.  Men, or rather masculinity, seems to be increasingly in crisis. This crisis takes many forms: incels (involuntary celibates who claim that they have been denied the sexual attention they feel that women owe them), volcels (so-called "voluntary celibates"), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW, who feel that relationships with women threaten their masculinity), and  Men’s Right Activists (who believe that everything from divorce laws to #metoo have made men a persecuted group). These crises and subcultures are often tied into the alt-right world, and at times have shown up in the screeds and manifestos of mass shooters. What is up with men? Why is this happening? Joining us to answer these questions is Nathan Duford, author of Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory (Stanford UP, 2022) and researcher of the sexual politics of the early Frankfurt School.Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-97-men-and-masculinity-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts discuss culture wars, Midwestern housewives, and Kafka. “Gate-keeping” is a term that actually originated in 1943, when Kurt Lewin coined it in his study Forces Behind Food Habits and Methods of Change to describe how Midwestern housewives effectively managed their families’ food consumption during World War 2. Housewives, who were the primary conduit for getting food from the marketplace to their families’ mouths, recognized that not all family members’ need for food had equal weight in making household food decisions, and thus those wives (who would typically shop for and prepare the food) “gated” what food resources came in and how they were distributed. That is to say, the original meaning of “gate-keeping” wasn’t just about setting up gates to keep people out of some sphere in which they didn’t merit admission; it was about how to distribute scarce resources within an already-gated community in which there wasn’t enough for everyone. It was about survival.Today, gatekeeping is not only not about keeping people alive, but one could argue that in many cases it’s about denying access to scarce resources– professional, interpersonal, political, economic– that people need to survive. Who are the gatekeepers and how did they come to be so? By what right? On what authority? Those of us sitting outside, trying to get in, want to know.Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-96-gatekeeping -------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

 The HBS hosts ask Devin Shaw whether and how to punch Nazis.Since at least the 2016 election the word fascism has emerged from the historical archive to contemporary political debates. This question has primarily been one about the identity of fascism, what are its minimal characteristics? To what extent can the Trump administration be considered fascist, and so on? We discussed some of this last season with Alberto Toscano. As much as this question of definition is important, a no less important question is what to do in the face of fascism. How to respond. It is on this point that the opposition to fascism divides rather sharply between those who argue that fascism must be countered with the norms of civil society, debated, discussed and defeated in the marketplace of ideas and those who argue that the violence of fascism must be met with counter-violence.In this episode, we are joined by Devin Shaw, who teaches at Douglas College and is the author of Philosophy of Antifascism: Punching Nazis and Fighting White Supremacy. Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-95-punching-nazis-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.   ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts ask: how do we know if we're getting where we're going? Recently, an article about four "hard problems" in philosophy and their possible solutions came into Rick's newsfeed. Upon reading it, his first question was whether or not philosophy is about "solving problems" at all, which immediately led him to think not only about progress in philosophy, but progress in general. Some philosophers have argued that humans, in general, have made great “moral progress.” Others argue that history is essentially progressive: toward greater freedom (Hegel), toward more comfortable lives (Smith), toward equality for all (Marx), or other identifiable ends. And clearly there has been progress in the so-called "hard sciences" like medicine, biology, physics, computer science, mathematics, etc. So, the question is: are we making progress? Toward what? For whom? And how do we know?Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/progress-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts consider the recent spate of assaults on academic freedom.As a public institution of sorts (and sometimes) the university claims to be neutral with respect to politics. This has imposed an ideal of seeing “both sides” of all issues. These two sides are supposed to roughly correspond to the two political parties. Such a model is arguably reductive and simplistic, forcing a particular political model in the ideal of being noncommittal in politics. However, lately even this model has come under assault as academic disciplines such as critical race theory, gender theory, and intersectionality have come under direct political assault. What drives this attack on the university? More importantly, what can be done to counter it?Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-university-and-its-discontents-------------------If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast, on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!You can also help keep this podcast going by supporting us financially at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★