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 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, 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 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, 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!
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, 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!
SUPPORT Hotel Bar Podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations on our website 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!

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
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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!