Month: July 2021

Hotel Bar Sessions, Episode 20: Vulgarity

The HBS hosts lower themselves into the muck in this NSFW episode! Dr. Charles F. Peterson is in the hot seat for this discussion of vulgarity. What is the difference between obscenity, profanity, and vulgarity? Who determines what is “appropriate” or “inappropriate” in public (or in private)? Is the very concept of vulgarity elitist? When…

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Hotel Bar Sessions “Afterthoughts” (Episodes 16-18)

For Season 2 of Hotel Bar Sessions, we’re recording one “Afterthoughts” episode for every three podcast episodes, which we post to our HBS YouTube channel. The “Afterthoughts” series gives us a chance to say what we wish we would’ve said during one of the podcasts, or to add something new to the conversation that only occurred…

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Hotel Bar Sessions Ep 19: Laughter

  In advance of Rick Lee’s forthcoming book, co-hosts Charles and Leigh ask him why he thinks all “theories” of comedy are inadequate. What exactly is the “joke” part of a joke? Why are philosophers not only hostile to comedy, but also categorically unfunny? Is comedy formulaic or does it resist systematic analysis? What is…

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Hotel Bar Sessions Ep 18: Digital Afterlives

 Co-host Leigh M. Johnson is in the hot seat for this episode’s discussion of “digital afterlives.” If we consider the digital, i.e., information-based, self to be distinguishable from the living and breathing meatspace self, we should ask” how long can the Digital Me live on after the Meatspace Me dies? Technology already enables us to…

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Hotel Bar Sessions Ep17: Citizenship

  This episode explores the political and ethical dimensions of the category of the “citizen.” In anticipation of his soon-to-be-released book Beyond Civil Disobedience: Social Nullification and Black Citizenship (August 2021!), Charles Peterson takes the “captain’s seat” for this episode’s discussion of the limits of citizenship, the failure of the state, and the construction of new…

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Hotel Bar Sessions Ep16: Private Cities

  The HBS hosts discuss how cities, once considered hubs of public life and interaction, have become increasingly segregated, partitioned, disconnected, and privatized.  Drawing on his experience using the city of Chigoe as a classroom, Rick Lee asks: can we identify the material markers of “privatization” in contemporary cities? How do we know which parts…

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Hotel Bar Sessions podcast: A brief history

I can’t be sure who’s still regularly checking in on this blog, but those of you who are have surely noticed that I’ve shifted my energies from blogging to podcasting over the last year. Beginning in November 2020, I did a 22-episode run of my first podcast BLACK MIRROR REFLECTIONS, in which I interviewed philosophers,…

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