The HBS hosts discuss how robots and intelligent machines are upending our social, moral, legal, and philosophical categories. For this last episode of Season 2, the HBS hosts interview Dr. David Gunkel (author of Robot Rights and How To Survive A Robot Invasion) about his work on emergent technologies, intelligent machines, and robots. Following the…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreThe 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 close towards 1 million, it’s easy to forget to the other public health epidemic plaguing the United States, namely, gun violence. Nearly 10,000 people have already been killed…
Read MoreThe 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, theh “add diversity and stir” model…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreFor 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…
Read MoreCo-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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