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
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar 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!

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
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SUPPORT Hotel Bar 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!

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
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SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar 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!

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 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!

Welcome to the newest chapter of Hotel Bar Sessions! We're excited to introduce our new co-hosts, Bob Vallier and Jennifer Kling in this "Meet the Co-Hosts" conversation!

Hotel Bar Sessions podcast extends our sincere thanks to outgoing co-host, Talia Mae Bettcher, for her contributions to the HBS archive.

Even deeper gratitude is owed to former co-host Rick Lee, who worked tirelessly and reliably for 13.5 seasons to craft the "voice" of Hotel Bar Sessions. We know you will all miss Rick's voice. Everyone here at the bar will, too.

Alas and alack, changes come, but we're excited about this new lineup of co-hosts at the hotel bar and looking forward to the topics and guests we've lined up for this season! 

Stay tuned! Same bar, same whip-smart conversations, just a couple of new voices to mix things up a bit!

 
You can find this episode on our website at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/meet-the-new-co-hosts

---------------------
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!

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!

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!

When we make choices, are these choices free? That is, are we able to choose one thing over another, to do one thing rather than another, independent of the laws of physics, including the biology and chemistry of our bodies and brains? Or are all of our choices determined by processes that could, in theory, be traced back to deterministic causes, if only we had enough information?

Whether we are free in our willing or not, does it matter? And if so, why?

This week, we are joined by Prof. Mark Balaguer of California State University, Los Angeles to talk about not only whether we are our free, but how free we are, and why it matters that we think more seriously about what we understand "free will" to entail.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/free-will
---------------------
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!

This week, we're joined by scholar, editor, and philosopher, Robin James, to talk about her provocative recent essay entitled “We’re through being Cool: Tech Bros, Manosphere Influencers, Ancient Greek Masculinity, and AI,” posted at James' blog, It’s Her Factory. 

When we think about "cool," we think about effortless, confident, style... but being cool has always been about more than style. It’s about resistance to authority, overcoming patriarchy, refusal to fit in. Yet, a cohort of manosphere influencers have recently been rejecting "cool" as a way of affirming their masculinity.  What happens when "bro culture" asserts old forms of masculinity as new forms of mastery, which then get linked with AI hype, making "cool," well, no longer cool.

 If cool is dead, maybe what comes next is something much colder.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/death-of-cool
---------------------
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!

Today, there seems to be an intense distrust of experts in all sorts of fields. From medical experts in the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services, to “elite intellectuals” at Universities and Colleges, no one who has expertise is beyond suspicion. We hear that we should “do our own research” and not trust what those with training and knowledge tell us.

What makes an expert legitimate? What’s the difference between the skepticism that drives science and the suspicion that denies that the experts know? How do we design institutions that are both scientifically rigorous and also democratically responsive and responsible? Let’s talk about how knowledge should be organized, disseminated, and structured so that it benefits the most in a democratic society.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-expertise-crisis
---------------------
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!

Hotel Bar Sessions is on it's regular "break" between seasons, but we're offering up these "minibar" sessions from our co-hosts (individually) in in the interim

This week, listen to HBS co-host Talia Mae Bettcher talk about her recent run-in with cancer, and the long, dark night of the soul it inspired.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/cancer
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast by subscribing 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!

Hotel Bar Sessions is on it's regular "break" between seasons, but we're offering up these "minibar: sessions from our co-hosts (individually) in in the interim

This week, listen to HBS co-host Rick Lee talk about what metaphysics really is, how it's often misunderstood, and why it's so important.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/in-defense-of-metaphysics
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast by subscribing 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!

Hotel Bar Sessions is on it's regular "break" between seasons, but we're offering up these "minibar: sessions from our co-hosts (individually) in in the interim

This week, listen to HBS co-host Leigh M. Johnson talk about what it's like to live in "occupied" D.C. as a new resident.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/living-in-occupied-dc
---------------------
SUBSCRIBE to the podcast now to automatically download new episodes when Season 14 begins in September!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast by subscribing 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!

This week, the HBS hosts discuss Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil.

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann was put on trial in Israel for crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish People. The philosopher Hannah Arendt covered the trial for The New Yorker. Her articles were collected in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, which had the subtitle, A Report on the Banality of Evil. What did she mean by the phrase “banality of evil?” She remarks that there is nothing monstrous, hideous, or outrageous about Eichmann that one could point to as the root of his evil actions. Rather, she argued, he was “thoughtless,” that is, he lacked the imagination to understand the position of others. In this way, the evil he brought about has its source in a kind of unremarkable everydayness. Is her notion useful to us today to think about the multiple evils we confront?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/arendts-banality-of-evil

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!

In this week’s episode, the HBS hosts talk about positive and negative major life changes.

While change is a part of life, major changes can cause major upheavals in one’s sense of oneself in relation to the world. Indeed, they may teach us to perceive life anew. What might such changes show us, if anything, about traditional philosophical concepts such as the self, the good life, autonomy, and relatedness with others?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/major-life-changes

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!

We all doomscroll. Often late at night, we scroll through social media or news feeds for a “minute,” which turns into hours. We seem to be chasing bad news. What are we looking for, if anything? What do we hope to get out of it? Is this a bad habit, or are there good aspects to it? Doomscrolling just might be changing our sense of time, of responsibility, and of witnessing. So put down your phones, stop scrolling, and join us for an investigation into the practice of doomscrolling.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/doomscrolling

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!

Are you even playing the game?

In this episode of Hotel Bar Sessions, co-hosts Rick Lee, Talia Mae Bettcher, and Leigh M. Johnson dive deep into the meme-turned-metaphor of “NPC Energy,” unpacking its cultural roots and existential weight. Originally a gaming term describing non-player characters who move on rails and repeat scripted lines, “NPC Energy” has become a way to call out people who seem disengaged, overly programmed, or existentially asleep. But is it just a meme—or a diagnosis of modern life under systems that drain our agency and originality?

The HBS hosts explore the difference between NPCs and so-called “main characters,” debating whether the capacity for resistance, awareness, or choice really sets us apart from algorithmic behaviors. With references ranging from Dungeons & Dragons to the DMV, they question if we’ve all become NPCs in a system too vast to escape—and whether flashes of resistance, even subtle or psychological, are enough to reclaim player status. Talia proposes that multiple overlapping “games” may offer exits from oppressive scripts, while Rick and Leigh examine whether our insistence on agency is more therapeutic than real.

As AI develops more dynamic NPCs and human lives become increasingly scripted, the line between the player and the played grows fuzzier. Are we walking into walls of our own making? Or are we being marched along paths we didn’t choose? This thoughtful and provocative conversation calls on listeners to pause, self-interrogate, and maybe, just maybe, write their own dialogue before the simulation resets.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/npc-energy

-------------------
If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!

Follow us on Blue Sky @hotelbarpodcast.bsky.social, on Facebook, on TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel! 

Is public philosophy just academic outreach in a new outfit, or is it something else entirely? In this episode, we're joined by Kate Manne (Cornell University) to  ask what happens when philosophers leave their usual habitats and try to meet people where they actually live. We talk about the push to be legible outside the profession, the risk of being dismissed inside it, and the slippery politics of trying to do both at once. What’s the value of work that doesn’t look like philosophy but still feels like it? And who gets to decide when philosophy has gone too far—or not far enough? 

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/public-philosophy-with-kate-manne

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If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!

What do we mean when we talk about silence? Is it the absence of sound—or something more complicated? In this episode, we dig into the many meanings of silence: as a weapon and as a refuge, as an imposed condition and a chosen strategy. We consider the roles silence plays in protest, punishment, pedagogy, intimacy, and oppression, and ask whether some kinds of silence can speak louder than words. We dig into political gag orders, awkward classroom silences, and the long pauses that say more than words ever could, asking what’s at stake when speech is withheld, delayed, or denied. Can silence be a form of resistance? Or is it always complicit?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/silence

-------------------
If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!

 This week, we're unpacking the Trump administration’s war on so-called “radical ideology”—a campaign targeting what it calls “gender ideology” and “equity ideology.” We explore what these terms are meant to signal, what work they do rhetorically and politically, and how they function to delegitimize trans and BIPOC lives. Drawing from Marxist accounts of ideology, we examine how ideology obscures injustice by presenting hierarchies as natural and dissent as dangerous. We also discuss the increasingly viral framing of ideology as something one can “catch,” especially in classrooms, and what’s really at stake when education, protest, and critical thought are labeled as threats. This episode asks: What counts as ideology? Who gets to decide? And what can philosophy offer when reality itself is under assault?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/the-war-on-radical-ideology

-------------------
If you enjoy Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe and submit a rating/review! Better yet, you can support this podcast by signing up to be one of our Patrons at patreon.com/hotelbarsessions!