Hotel Bar Sessions

The HBS hosts chat with Alberto Toscano about the long shadow of racial fascism. Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the word "fascism" has moved from the historian’s archives to the editorial pages of newspapers. The point of comparison has generally been drawn from European history, but drawing our analogies and checklists from the trajectory of fascism in Europe obscures both the connection between what is happening now in American politics with the history of racism and racial capitalism in this country, and the manner in which we might be seeing an entirely new form of fascism emerge. Alberto Toscano argues that to understand the contemporary form of fascism in the US, we are better served by looking at the history of black radicalism, from Black Panthers to the contemporary prison abolitionist movement.How does studying that history change our understanding of fascism?Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-86-fascism-with-alberto-toscano-------------------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 the work of flunkies, goons, duct-tapers, box-tickers, and taskmasters. In the middle of the last century it was expected that the number of working hours-- at least in the so-called "developed" world-- would continue to decrease: just as they had gone from the twelve or ten hours a day down to eight at the beginning of the century,  they would continue to decrease to six or even less by the end of the century. Furthermore, it was thought that the mechanization and automation of labor processes would free millions from labor, reducing the need for workers.The opposite seems to have taken place, however, as people are working more and more. So much so that the forty hour work week sounds utopian again. Why are people working so much and what are they doing? The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that the answer is bullshit jobs. What is a bullshit job? Why do they exist? What can we do to get free of them?Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/eepisode-85-bullshit-jobs-------------------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 Sophie Lewis why the "family" is a troublesome institution.In a society that is increasingly structured around isolated self-interested individuals, the family appears to be the one place of refuge, the heart in a heartless world, a space of care in a world of indifference. What then is the case for abolishing it? How does discussing that reveal the role that the family plays in capitalism? And what it might take to create a world in which care and nurturing are available to everyone rather than the lucky few happy families? To work through these questions, we are joined in this episode by Sophie Lewis author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation.Full episode notes available at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-84-abolition-of-the-family-with-sophie-lewis-------------------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 themselves why and how they are under the influence of influencers.Although humans have been influencing other humans for as long as we’ve been around each other, the category of “influencer” is a relatively recent phenomenon, really only emerging in the last decade. In fact, the term “influencer” as we currently understand it—a thoroughly platformized figure who documents, optimizes, and monetizes their self as “brand”—wasn’t officially included in English dictionaries until 2019. Today, influencers are everywhere: primarily on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, but also in less glamorous professional and even academic fields, where they sometimes moonlight as trendsetters, thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, or just garden-variety “celebrities.”Today, we’re going to chat not only about influencers—what they are, what they do, and to what ends—but also influence. What does it mean to influence or be influenced by someone? What difference does it make if an influencer is “authentic”? What dangers may underlie the monetization of influence or, in what may amount to the same thing, the political manipulation of influence? Are we all being subtly influenced to mimic influencers—not just in terms of what they eat or buy or how they work out or moisturize their skin, but their self-conscious practices of self-documenting and self-branding? And, finally, can influence really be “measured,” or are the follower counts that climb every time someone is influenced to smash that like and subscribe button just a whole lot of smoke and mirrors?Full episode notes at this link:https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-83-influencers-------------------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 rewind the tapes to reconsider episodes 79-81.They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so we designed “Afterthoughts” to give us a first chance to make a second impression. Whether it’s diving into a particularly thought-provoking comment, exploring new angles, or uncovering a new idea that we missed the first time around, “Afterthoughts” is all about plumbing the depths of our previous conversations.  We look back over our last three Season 6 episodes—episode 79 on “The History of Philosophy,” episode 80 on “Attention and Distraction,” and episode 81 in which we were joined by Michael Naas to discuss “Hospitality”– and try to articulate what we woulda, coulda, and shoulda said the first time around.So sit back, relax, and join us as we delve into what kept us thinking long after the recording stopped!——————-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 talk about "stuff."Materialism seems to be both one of the oldest and most contended philosophical positions. From Thales saying “all is from water,” to Hobbes saying “whatever is, is a body” to the New Materialism of both feminist philosophers and those influenced by cognitive science, something called “materialism” that has some kind of preference for or gives  priority to matter seems to always tempt philosophers. Yet, philosophy is a way of thinking about things, and thought has demands that take us outside of matter and the material world, even if thinking is "an activity of the brain." So, it’s time to take a look at the philosophical implications of materialism. What is it? Are there different kinds? Is it a metaphysical position, an epistemological  position, a political position? Or maybe all of these?Full episode notes available at this link:http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-82-materialism-------------------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 reconsider what they might've missed in the first three conversations of Season 6.They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so we designed “Afterthoughts” to give us a first chance to make a second impression. Whether it's diving into a particularly thought-provoking comment, exploring new angles, or uncovering a new idea that we missed the first time around, "Afterthoughts" is all about plumbing the depths of our previous conversations.  We look back over our first three Season 6 episodes—episode 76 on “Casablanca,” episode 77 on “Human Nature,” and episode 78 in which we were joined by Justin Joque to discuss his book “Revolutionary Mathematics”-- and try to articulate what we woulda, coulda, and shoulda said the first time around. So sit back, relax, and join us as we delve into what kept us thinking long after the recording stopped!-------------------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 ★

Join the hosts and guest Michael Naas as they delve into the complexities of hospitality. They discuss the historical importance of welcoming guests, the conflicting ideas of territorial integrity and hospitality, and the personal and corporate dimensions of hospitality. The conversation challenges traditional notions, explores philosophical perspectives from Plato to Derrida, and reflects on extending hospitality to non-human beings and emerging technologies.

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, distraction has become an ongoing problem; from the road to the classroom we are worried that we are not truly paying attention. Is it time to pay attention to attention, to reflect on how we perceive what we perceive and why? What might it mean to reclaim our attention?Full episode notes at this link:http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-80-attention-and-distraction-------------------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 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 from Thales until relatively recently. Because of this progress, Sauer's argument goes, we do not need to study the history of philosophy. The model of the sciences shows why this is the case: in biology courses, no one is struggling with Aristotle, Linnaeus, or Mendel. In chemistry, no one pays attention to the history of alchemy, the theory of phlogiston, or the ether. In physics, no student learns Aristotle’s theory of why bodies “fall,” or the medieval notion of “impetus.” Is Sauer right that philosophy has similarly progressed? Should philosophy leave its history to the historians? Then, beyond Sauer, we can add that the history of philosophy is a history of both dead white guys and the history of the victors. If the history of philosophy is ethno-centric, and therefore racist, if it is phallo-centric and therefore patriarchal, why should philosophy continue to engage it? Or is there something philosophically relevant about the history of philosophy? Full episode notes available at this link:http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-79-the-history-of-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 ★