TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Hotel Bar Sessions

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258 episodes
2021 to 2026
Median: 58 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast is a philosophy show built around informal, wide-ranging conversations that treat ordinary topics and current events as entry points into deeper conceptual questions. Across the episodes, the hosts use classic texts and contemporary thinkers to examine how concepts like fairness, responsibility, freedom, violence, oppression, and legitimacy actually work—and how they get distorted in public life.

A recurring theme is power: how institutions discipline people through surveillance, metrics, bureaucracy, and expertise claims, and how authority is justified (or not) in contexts ranging from state sovereignty to policing, war, and higher education. Related discussions focus on political language and persuasion—how “ideology,” “fascism,” “violence,” and “mob” are defined and weaponized, and what happens when debate becomes performance rather than truth-seeking.

Another throughline is technology’s impact on agency and moral life. The episodes repeatedly return to AI and datafication: ethical “branding” versus genuine responsibility, algorithmic memory and archives, de-skilling and the erosion of judgment, and the pressures created by platform economics. Questions about anonymity, accountability, and unequal exposure connect digital life to democratic norms and state power.

The show also explores lived experience and embodiment, including pain, therapy, art as bodily encounter, food and the ethics of eating, altered states and sobriety, nostalgia and memory, and the meaning of major life changes. Methodological reflection appears as well, with attention to thought experiments, possible worlds, and what philosophy can be in public-facing forms. Overall, the content combines political theory, ethics, and social philosophy with cultural analysis of contemporary life.

Episodes:

Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Sense (with Nathan Widder) 2026-Jul-10 61 minutes

Disorienting Cisgender (with Perry Zurn) 2026-Jul-03 56 minutes

Sports 2026-Jun-26 58 minutes

MINIBAR: Mythos, Fable, Farce (with Leigh M. Johnson) 2026-Jun-19 30 minutes

MINIBAR: Art and Phenomenology (with Bob Vallier) 2026-Jun-14 35 minutes

MINIBAR: Hanlon's Razor (with Jennifer Kling) 2026-Jun-06 16 minutes

REPLAY: Food (with Bob Valgenti) 2026-May-29 62 minutes

Foucault's "Panopticism" 2026-May-22 58 minutes

Goodhart's Law 2026-May-15 56 minutes

A**holes 2026-May-08 59 minutes

De-Skilling 2026-May-01 60 minutes

War Crimes 2026-Apr-24 55 minutes

Violence 2026-Apr-17 66 minutes

Possible Worlds 2026-Apr-10 52 minutes

Strange Bedfellows: Adorno and Strauss (with Jeffrey Bernstein) 2026-Apr-05 56 minutes

Philosophy on Drugs (with Justin Smith-Ruiu) 2026-Mar-15 59 minutes

Against the Future (with Simon Critchley) 2026-Mar-07 61 minutes

Family "No Contact" (with Kiran Bhardwaj) 2026-Feb-27 56 minutes

Food (with Bob Valgenti) 2026-Feb-20 62 minutes

Anonymity 2026-Feb-13 63 minutes

Catastrophic Philosophy 2026-Jan-30 57 minutes

Intelligence(s) 2026-Jan-23 60 minutes

MINIBAR: Algorithmic Nostalgia (with Leigh M. Johnson) 2026-Jan-16 34 minutes

MINIBAR: Uncivil Obedience (with Jen Kling) 2026-Jan-09 11 minutes

MINIBAR: Pain (with Bob Vallier) 2026-Jan-02 13 minutes

Marilyn Frye's "Oppression" 2025-Dec-26 54 minutes

Nostalgia 2025-Dec-19 52 minutes

Sophistry 2025-Dec-12 55 minutes

The Enshittification of... everything? 2025-Dec-05 63 minutes

Quiet Resistance (with Tamara Fakhoury) 2025-Nov-28 56 minutes

Therapy 2025-Nov-21 58 minutes

Furious Minds (with Laura K. Field) 2025-Nov-14 62 minutes

Imagination (with Stephen T. Asma) 2025-Nov-07 58 minutes

Comedy 2025-Oct-31 60 minutes

The Hills We Die on 2025-Oct-24 69 minutes

Meet the NEW Co-Hosts! 2025-Oct-17 39 minutes

Eternity 2025-Oct-10 64 minutes

Crowds and Mobs 2025-Oct-03 50 minutes

Free Will (with Mark Balaguer) 2025-Sep-26 60 minutes

How The Manosphere Killed Cool (with Robin James) 2025-Sep-19 63 minutes

The "Expertise" Crisis 2025-Sep-12 57 minutes

MINIBAR: Cancer 2025-Sep-05 20 minutes

MINIBAR: In Defense of Metaphysics 2025-Aug-29 16 minutes

MINIBAR: Living in Occupied D.C. 2025-Aug-22 14 minutes

Arendt's "Banality of Evil" 2025-Aug-15 65 minutes

Major Life Changes 2025-Aug-08 60 minutes

Doomscrolling 2025-Aug-01 60 minutes

NPC Energy 2025-Jul-25 70 minutes

Public Philosophy (with Kate Manne) 2025-Jul-18 61 minutes

Silence 2025-Jul-11 63 minutes

The War on "Radical Ideology" 2025-Jul-04 55 minutes

Sovereignty 2025-Jun-27 56 minutes

Interpretation 2025-Jun-20 72 minutes

Panic Now? (with Ira Allen) 2025-Jun-13 64 minutes

Private Parts 2025-Jun-06 57 minutes

The Future of the University 2025-May-30 76 minutes

Cringe 2025-May-23 65 minutes

Tragic Temporality (with Sean Kirkland) 2025-May-16 66 minutes

What is Philosophy? 2025-May-09 59 minutes

REPLAY: Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question (with Zahi Zalloua) 2025-May-02 62 minutes

REPLAY: Trans Philosophy (with Talia Mae Bettcher) 2025-Apr-25 58 minutes

Fearless Speech (Foucault on Parrhesia) 2025-Apr-18 67 minutes

Are Universals "Real"? 2025-Apr-11 50 minutes

Totalitarianism (with Peg Birmingham) 2025-Apr-04 49 minutes

El roto, Lo huachafo, Lo jodido (with Carlos Amador) 2025-Mar-28 57 minutes

The Establishment Clause 2025-Mar-21 54 minutes

DEI Then and Now (with Paul Breines) 2025-Mar-14 55 minutes

Decorum 2025-Mar-07 56 minutes

Unruly Identity (with Falguni Sheth) 2025-Feb-28 65 minutes

Ambiguity 2025-Feb-21 58 minutes

Trust 2025-Feb-14 59 minutes

Judgment 2025-Feb-07 62 minutes

Responsibility 2025-Jan-31 62 minutes

Authority 2025-Jan-24 65 minutes

Revenge 2025-Jan-17 58 minutes

Virtue 2025-Jan-10 58 minutes

REPLAY: Forgiveness 2025-Jan-03 56 minutes

REPLAY: Deconstruction 2024-Dec-27 56 minutes

Kant's Categorical Imperative 2024-Dec-20 66 minutes

The Significance Impulse (with Josh Glasgow) 2024-Dec-13 64 minutes

Justice 2024-Dec-06 66 minutes

Matter and Consciousness in Indian Philosophy (with Tuhin Bhattacharjee) 2024-Nov-29 55 minutes

Ethics, Democracy, and Phronesis (with Dimitris Vardoulakis) 2024-Nov-22 64 minutes

Posthumanism 2024-Nov-15 56 minutes

Nature 2024-Nov-08 60 minutes

Does God Exist? 2024-Nov-01 77 minutes

The Ethics of Refusal (with Devonya Havis) 2024-Oct-25 58 minutes

Meat 2024-Oct-18 65 minutes

Zionist ressentiment, the Left, and the Palestinian Question (with Zahi Zalloua) 2024-Oct-11 62 minutes

Aristotle and Feminist Materialism, Troubled (with Emanuela Bianchi) 2024-Oct-04 59 minutes

The Gutenberg Parenthesis (with Jeff Jarvis) 2024-Sep-27 64 minutes

Evidence 2024-Sep-20 58 minutes

Whose Jesus? (with John D. Caputo) 2024-Sep-13 52 minutes

REPLAY: The Master/Slave Dialectic 2024-Sep-07 55 minutes

REPLAY: Punching Nazis (with Devin Shaw) 2024-Aug-30 55 minutes

Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation 2024-Aug-23 55 minutes

Voting 2024-Aug-16 52 minutes

The Future of Journalism (with Andrea Guzman) 2024-Aug-09 58 minutes

Overcoming Sexuality (with Nir Kedem) 2024-Aug-02 54 minutes

Peer Review 2024-Jul-26 54 minutes

Ideology and Self-Emancipation (with William Clare Roberts) 2024-Jul-19 59 minutes

The Sublime 2024-Jul-12 55 minutes

Off-Grid Living (with Eric Mack) 2024-Jul-05 59 minutes

Ideology 2024-Jun-28 55 minutes

Generative AI 2024-Jun-21 56 minutes

Reality TV 2024-Jun-14 50 minutes

Friendship 2024-Jun-07 58 minutes

Personhood 2024-May-31 54 minutes

Originality 2024-May-24 54 minutes

HBS Goes to the Movies: "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990) 2024-May-17 53 minutes

MINIBAR EPISODE: Will The Courts Save Democracy? 2024-May-10 22 minutes

MINIBAR EPISODE: Meet Our New Co-host, David Gunkel! 2024-May-03 24 minutes

REPLAY: YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb Cain) 2024-Apr-26 60 minutes

Jean-Paul Sartre's "Bad Faith" 2024-Apr-19 65 minutes

Companion Animals 2024-Apr-12 56 minutes

Psychoanalysis (with Benedetta Todaro) 2024-Apr-05 60 minutes

Whose Anthropocene? 2024-Mar-29 53 minutes

Academic Freedom 2024-Mar-22 54 minutes

Immediacy (with Anna Kornbluh) 2024-Mar-15 57 minutes

Boredom 2024-Mar-08 53 minutes

Breaking Things at Work (with Gavin Mueller) 2024-Mar-01 70 minutes

Lying 2024-Feb-23 53 minutes

Growing Old(er) 2024-Feb-16 56 minutes

The Phenomenology of Black Spirit (with Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan Johnson) 2024-Feb-09 51 minutes

Back to "Normal" 2024-Feb-02 54 minutes

Real Life Heroes 2024-Jan-26 59 minutes

Deconstruction 2024-Jan-19 56 minutes

HBS Goes to the Movies: "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) 2024-Jan-12 57 minutes

Decartes' Second Meditation 2023-Dec-08 50 minutes

Trust 2023-Dec-01 59 minutes

Thought Leaders (with Christopher P. Long) 2023-Nov-24 70 minutes

Trans Philosophy (with Talia Mae Bettcher) 2023-Nov-17 58 minutes

The Stories We Tell 2023-Nov-10 59 minutes

Collegiality 2023-Nov-03 63 minutes

Debt 2023-Oct-27 55 minutes

Political Philosophy of Mind (with John Protevi) 2023-Oct-20 54 minutes

Fan Culture 2023-Oct-13 57 minutes

The Problem Spaces of Philosophy (with William Paris) 2023-Oct-06 59 minutes

The Uncanny Valley 2023-Sep-29 63 minutes

Jordan Peele's Horror (with Johanna Isaacson) 2023-Sep-22 59 minutes

The Subversive Seventies (with Michael Hardt) 2023-Sep-15 51 minutes

Forgiveness 2023-Sep-08 56 minutes

HBS Goes to the Movies: "Hands on a Hardbody" (1997) 2023-Sep-01 59 minutes

REPLAY: Death 2023-Aug-25 59 minutes

REPLAY: Revolutionary Mathematics (with Justin Joque) 2023-Aug-18 54 minutes

The Master/Slave Dialectic 2023-Aug-11 55 minutes

Too Soon? 2023-Aug-04 52 minutes

Tenure 2023-Jul-28 48 minutes

Prestige TV 2023-Jul-21 68 minutes

Hobbies 2023-Jul-14 58 minutes

What's YOUR Philosophy? 2023-Jul-07 56 minutes

Community 2023-Jun-30 57 minutes

Gossip 2023-Jun-23 56 minutes

Men and Masculinity (with Nathan Duford) 2023-Jun-16 57 minutes

Gatekeeping 2023-Jun-09 49 minutes

Punching Nazis (with Devin Shaw) 2023-Jun-02 55 minutes

Progress 2023-May-26 57 minutes

The University and its Discontents 2023-May-19 54 minutes

Lazy Relativism 2023-May-12 58 minutes

HBS Goes to the Movies: The Conversation (1974) 2023-May-05 56 minutes

REPLAY: The Public Intellectual (with Eddie Glaude, Jr.) 2023-Apr-28 63 minutes

REPLAY: Vulgarity 2023-Apr-21 55 minutes

REPLAY: YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb Cain) 2023-Apr-15 61 minutes

REPLAY: Robots (with David Gunkel) 2023-Apr-07 72 minutes

The Allegory of the Cave 2023-Mar-31 56 minutes

Late Capitalism 2023-Mar-24 60 minutes

ChatGPT 2023-Mar-17 55 minutes

Death 2023-Mar-10 58 minutes

Fascism (with Alberto Toscano) 2023-Mar-03 53 minutes

Bullshit Jobs 2023-Feb-24 50 minutes

Abolition of the Family (with Sophie Lewis) 2023-Feb-17 61 minutes

Influencers 2023-Feb-10 48 minutes

Afterthoughts: Season 6, Eps 79-81 2023-Feb-09 32 minutes

Materialism 2023-Feb-03 48 minutes

Afterthoughts: Season 6, Eps 76-78 2023-Feb-01 47 minutes

Hospitality (with Michael Naas) 2023-Jan-27 56 minutes

Attention and Distraction 2023-Jan-20 55 minutes

The History of Philosophy 2023-Jan-13 57 minutes

Revolutionary Mathematics (with Justin Joque) 2023-Jan-06 53 minutes

Human Nature 2022-Dec-30 57 minutes

HBS Goes to the Movies: Casablanca 2022-Dec-23 52 minutes

REPLAY: Whose History? (with Dr. Charles McKinney) 2022-Oct-28 66 minutes

REPLAY: Style 2022-Oct-25 62 minutes

Podcasting and Philosophy 2022-Oct-14 55 minutes

The Last Dance 2022-Oct-07 53 minutes

Artificial Personhood (with Regina Rini) 2022-Sep-30 57 minutes

The Rights of Nature (with Stewart Motha) 2022-Sep-23 59 minutes

Critics and Criticism (with A.O. Scott) 2022-Sep-16 55 minutes

Democracy in Peril (with Linda Alcoff) 2022-Sep-09 57 minutes

Fear 2022-Sep-02 55 minutes

YouTube's Alt-Right Rabbit Hole (with Caleb Cain) 2022-Aug-26 60 minutes

Rethinking Disability (with Joel Michael Reynolds) 2022-Aug-19 53 minutes

Sex Robots (with Kate Devlin) 2022-Aug-12 65 minutes

The Blues (with Charles L. Hughes) 2022-Aug-05 62 minutes

Memes (with Andrew Baron) 2022-Jul-29 62 minutes

Reason 2022-Jul-22 55 minutes

Plagiarism 2022-Jul-15 64 minutes

The Public Intellectual (with Eddie Glaude, Jr.) 2022-Jul-08 63 minutes

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics 2022-Jun-17 57 minutes

Queers (with Ladelle McWhorter) 2022-Jun-10 56 minutes

Utopia 2022-Jun-03 57 minutes

Philosophers on the Internet 2022-May-27 56 minutes

Musical Theater 2022-May-20 62 minutes

National Identity 2022-May-13 61 minutes

Algorithms 2022-May-06 62 minutes

Metaphysics 2022-Apr-29 55 minutes

Immortality 2022-Apr-22 53 minutes

Moral Subjectivity 2022-Apr-15 65 minutes

Desire 2022-Apr-08 64 minutes

Memory 2022-Apr-01 63 minutes

The Simulation Hypothesis 2022-Mar-25 62 minutes

Style 2022-Mar-18 62 minutes

Bars 2022-Mar-10 66 minutes

Turning Up the Heat 2022-Feb-11 65 minutes

The Godfather Trilogy 2022-Feb-04 70 minutes

Superstition 2022-Jan-28 64 minutes

Optimism and Pessimism 2022-Jan-21 56 minutes

Tourism 2022-Jan-14 58 minutes

Resolve 2022-Jan-07 55 minutes

Work 2021-Dec-31 62 minutes

Social Media 2021-Dec-24 61 minutes

Transcendence 2021-Dec-17 57 minutes

The Global South 2021-Dec-10 48 minutes

Legally Right, Morally Wrong 2021-Dec-03 60 minutes

Cancel Panic 2021-Nov-26 62 minutes

Thought Experiments 2021-Nov-19 64 minutes

American Christianity 2021-Nov-12 58 minutes

Whose History? 2021-Nov-05 66 minutes

Robots 2021-Oct-08 71 minutes

Defending the Humanities 2021-Oct-01 69 minutes

Generations 2021-Sep-24 64 minutes

The Hustle 2021-Sep-17 54 minutes

Music 2021-Sep-10 61 minutes

Guns 2021-Sep-03 62 minutes

Specialization 2021-Aug-27 59 minutes

Superheroes 2021-Aug-20 63 minutes

White Working Class 2021-Aug-13 58 minutes

Conspiracy Theories 2021-Aug-06 59 minutes

Vulgarity 2021-Jul-30 55 minutes

Laughter 2021-Jul-23 58 minutes

Digital Afterlives 2021-Jul-16 63 minutes

Citizenship 2021-Jul-09 57 minutes

Private Cities 2021-Jul-02 55 minutes

Hey, Biden! 2021-Jun-04 57 minutes

Shame 2021-May-28 56 minutes

Teaching 2021-May-21 62 minutes

WhoDunnIt? 2021-May-14 63 minutes

Privacy 2021-May-07 60 minutes

Love 2021-Apr-30 55 minutes

The Philosophical Canon 2021-Apr-23 57 minutes

Apocalypse(s) 2021-Apr-16 58 minutes

Nostalgia 2021-Apr-09 64 minutes

Metrics 2021-Apr-02 60 minutes

One Year with COVID 2021-Mar-26 48 minutes

Origins 2021-Mar-19 49 minutes

Leigh M. Johnson on Technology 2021-Mar-12 51 minutes

Ammon Allred on Art 2021-Mar-12 57 minutes

Shannon M. Mussett on Freedom 2021-Mar-12 56 minutes