Hotel Bar Sessions

The HBS hosts present their best defense of humanities-based education and, in doing so, try to justify their existences.As higher education has become more corporatized and STEM-focused, areas of study are often "pitched" to students on the basis of their future income-earning potential. However, college students now are entering a workforce where more than 30% of available jobs will be automated before those students reach middle age. Today's college students need more than vocational training to prepare them for the future they are entering. Most academics can (and do) make the argument for the intrinsic value of the humanities-- that it helps shape us into good citizens and moral agents-- but are there other defenses available? Does a humanities-based education also have instrumental value? How do you get a job with a History or Philosophy or Anthropology degree? Is humanities-based education for everyone, or is it elitist? Full episode notes at this link.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts discuss whether or not generational tags– “Boomer,” “GenX,” “Millennial,” and “Gen Z”– are useful descriptions or just gerrymandered groups.Are you Gen Z, a Boomer, Gen X? We don’t know either but in this episode Dr. Rick Lee leads a discussion to try to figure out whether these generational designations have any stable meaning. Do they make sense as organizational categories. Are they Objective Types, Natural Kind, or Gerrymandered Sets? Do generational markers say more than gender, racial, class, ability in terms of identity? We ask about the dates of generations, the characteristics of generations and generational self-consciousness. Full episode notes at this link  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts discuss scams, cons, gig work, and what drives us to live and work at full speed.In the immortal words of Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr. (aka, T.I.) "If you don't respect nothing else, you will respect the hustle." In this episode, Dr. Leigh M. Johnson takes the lead in an analysis of how "the hustle," in all senses of that term, define our lives today. We look at the HBO docuseries Generation Hustle-- which tracks the stories of 10 young scammers, con-artists, and/or sociopaths-- before trying to pinpoint the economic and social conditions that make these kinds of hustles so appealing to GenY and GenZ. Then, we turn to the "side-hustle" (gig work), an increasingly necessary hustle in the lives of workers across generations. Finally, we ask: why are we working so hard and in such a hurry all the time?Full episode notes available at this link. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts talk about music, mathematics, groove, and "altar calls."Dr. Charles Peterson takes the lead in this week's discussion of the power of music in our lives. After a quick run-down of each co-host's own musical likes and dislikes, the HBS gang jumps right into a consideration of the effect that music has on us both as individuals and collectively. Does music give us some singular insight into what it means to be human? What does music evoke within us? How does it seem to have the power to inspire, to sadden, to terrify, and to comfort? How can it be used to manipulate? Is music a key to understanding the order of the Universe? Is it a universal language? And, if music is a common "human" denominator, how do we explain people who have no rhythm, who are "tone-deaf," or why our musical tastes vary so widely?Full episode notes available at this link.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts try to figure out why there are 150 guns for every 100 Americans.In the midst of a pandemic, as COVID-related deaths creep closer towards 1 million, it's easy to forget the other public health epidemic plaguing the United States, namely, gun violence. Nearly 10,000 people had already been killed by gun violence by June of 2021, with no sign of slowing numbers. Schoolchildren regularly practice "active shooter" drills and, in states like Tennessee, gun-control laws have been relaxed so much that they are practically non-existent. A study published earlier this year shows that gun suicides are rising steeply in 2021, including among teenagers and children. Between January 1 and August 31 of 2021, there were 242 days. A mass shooting occurred in the United States on all but 44 of those days.How did we get here and who have we become? Who is suffering the most from gun violence in our country, and who is most guilty for gun deaths? Is the Second Amendment's guarantee that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" been interpreted too loosely? Should the Second Amendment be repealed? In this episode, we take a close look at all of those questions, as well as Dr. Carol Anderson's new book The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Full episode notes available at this link:  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts discuss academic specializations and how to make the humanities more inclusive.Over the last several decades, there has been a long-overdue push for professors in the humanities to diversify their curricula to include more women, BIPOC, queer, disabled, and other under-represented thinkers and texts. Yet, the “add diversity and stir” model for syllabus design in many ways fails to address a lot of the problems that motivated this demand in the first place. It isn’t just syllabi in the humanities that have a diversity problem, it’s the humanities professoriate itself.First, academics from traditionally dominant demographic groups– white, male, straight, non-disabled, and middle-to-upper class– ought not presume that their academic training has necessarily equipped them with the knowledge, skills, or understanding to simply “take up” an unfamiliar field of specialization with the same level of knowledge, skill, and understanding as a specialist in that area possesses. Second, pressuring the current professoriate to “add diversity and stir” tends to de-emphasize the need for universities and individual departments to hire faculty from traditionally under-represented demographics with specialized training in the needed areas. BUT… third, we must be careful not to assume that every person’s scholarly specialization mirrors their personal identity.How can we think about strategies for diversifying both the curricula and the faculty in humanities fields without reproducing the same prejudices that have made the humanities so non-diverse?Full episode notes available at this link. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts discuss the role of superheroes in culture and popular media. In American graphic fiction and contemporary film, the superhero stands at the center of many popular narratives. Superhero stories published by DC Comics and Marvel are a multi-million dollar per year industry and, in 2019 alone, superhero movies grossed 3.19 billion dollars in revenue. Although it may seem to the novice as if these publishing houses and film studios just recycle the same stories (and sequels) over and over, connoisseurs of the genre know that the figure of the "superhero" has changed and evolved dramatically over the last half-century. What does the figure of the superhero represent? Who does it serve? How has it adapted to reflect broader cultural, political, and social changes?In this episode, Dr. Charles F. Peterson-- a bona fide connoisseur of comics and superhero films-- schools his novice co-hosts on the nuances of superheroes and their development, as well as the deep and often profound philosophical truths that they help to reveal about us ordinary (not super and not heroic) humans.Check out the full episode notes at this link.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts take a critical look at the white working class and their grievances.Leading up to the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, and even more so afterwards, the U.S. found itself inundated with analyses of the allegedly “overlooked” grievances of the white working class. Were those legitimate grievances that should have been affirmed and addressed? Who belongs to the WWC in America, anyway? Do they share a “class consciousness” in the traditional Marxian sense, or are they primarily identifiable by their shared Whiteness? Are there multiple iterations of the “white working class” ? And, if so, are the many WWC’s compatible?Dr. Rick Lee is in the hot seat for this episode’s deep dive into the definition, evaluation, and analysis of the white working class, who are clearly (in Rick’s estimation) “lashing out” these days.Full episode notes available at this link: http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-22-white-working-class/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

 The HBS hosts discuss conspiracy theories and what motivates people to believe in them. The word "conspiracy" derives from the Latin con- ("with" or "together") and spirare ("to breathe"), and it seems like more and more people are breathing in the thin air of dubious explanations and bonding together over them. From Q-Anon to flat earthers to anti-vaxxers to climate change deniers to people convinced that a pedophilic, blood-drinking, sex-trafficking, deep state cabal is orchestrating our lives, conspiracy theories have captured the hearts and minds of many in the 21st C. United States. Is this new? Should we worry? And what really happened to Jeffrey Epstein?Leigh M. Johnson take the lead in this episode's conversation and, together with co-hosts Rick Lee and Charles Peterson, tries get to the bottom of what motivates people to believe in conspiracy theories. We take a brief tour through the history of conspiracy theories before getting to their benefits (making the world seem to make sense) and harms (too many to list), and then confronting the 800lb internet gorilla: QAnon. We also try to tease out the difference between believing in a conspiracy theory and "conspiratorial thinking," and we consider what Thi Nguyen's thoughts on echo chambers and epistemic bubbles might tell us about conspiracy theorists. Full episode notes available at this llnk.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The HBS hosts lower themselves into the muck in this NSFW episode.Dr. Charles F. Peterson is in the hot seat for this episode’s discussion of vulgarity. What is the difference between obscenity, profanity, and vulgarity? Who determines what is “appropriate”? Is the very concept of vulgarity elitist?Full episode notes available at this link.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★