Philosophy has always been drawn to the question of what's possible, what could be, what might have been, and what we might yet become. In a political moment when the distance between the world as it is and the world as we want it to be feels especially stark, the tools philosophers use to navigate that gap — thought experiments, counterfactuals, ideal theory, and fiction — have never felt more urgent or more contested. Whether we're arguing about moral responsibility, political justice, or the meaning of a science fiction novel, we're constantly invoking worlds that don't (yet, or never did) exist. But how well do those imaginary worlds actually serve us?

When is a simplified, stripped-down scenario a useful device for isolating what we really believe, and when does it smuggle in the assumptions we already had? If we ask what the world would look like had one historical event gone differently, are we doing philosophy or just indulging in fantasy causality? When we imagine an ideal world from scratch, does it illuminate what justice requires, or does the very act of abstraction guarantee that we'll leave out what matters most?

In this episode, Leigh, Jen, and Bob take up possible worlds as a question about philosophical methodology itself. What are philosophers actually doing when they reach for thought experiments, counterfactuals, ideal theory, and fictional worlds? And are those tools fit for the work we ask of them?

Grab a drink and join us as we test the limits of philosophical imagination — and ask whether the worlds we invent help us see this one more clearly, or let us off the hook too easily.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/possible-worlds

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SUPPORT Hotel Bar Sessions podcast on Patreon here! (Or by contributing one-time donations here!)
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The word "fascism" gets thrown around a lot these days, sometimes so freely that it starts to lose its edge. But what would it actually mean to develop a philosophy of anti-fascism, a sustained, rigorous intellectual framework for understanding how fascism takes hold and what might inoculate us against it? That question feels newly urgent in a political moment when the ideological infrastructure of authoritarianism is being actively rebuilt, and when the thinkers who laid the groundwork for that infrastructure — including, notoriously, Leo Strauss — are being drafted into its service.

Can a philosopher be anti-fascist in method and intention and still have their ideas weaponized by fascists? Is writing that resists easy comprehension — writing that forces its readers to slow down, struggle, and think — a form of resistance or a form of elitism? And is there a meaningful difference between "thinking for yourself" and "doing your own research," or has that distinction collapsed entirely in the age of the meme and the algorithm?

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Jeffrey A. Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair at the College of the Holy Cross, whose forthcoming book Adorno and Strauss: An Anti-Fascist Philosophy (SUNY Press) makes the provocative case that these two thinkers — usually filed under opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum — are surprisingly complementary resources for building a philosophical resistance to fascism. Jeff identifies four key areas of convergence: their shared use of Jewish thought as a resource for critiquing political authority; their resistance to what he calls "universal communicability" and the fascist reduction of thought to soundbites and slogans; their critique of the primacy of the practical; and their rejection of teleological conceptions of history. What emerges is a picture of anti-fascism that is less about boots on the ground than about rebuilding the capacity to think in a culture that is doing everything it can to prevent that.

Grab a drink and join us as we sit down with two of philosophy's strangest bedfellows — and discover that the most unexpected intellectual partnerships sometimes make for the most urgent conversations.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/strange-bedfellows

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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!

We are living through a peculiar moment in the long, complicated history of humans and mind-altering substances. After decades of prohibition and stigma, psychedelics have staged a remarkable comeback — not just in underground culture, but in university laboratories, clinical trials, and mainstream news. Researchers are exploring psilocybin and MDMA as treatments for depression and PTSD, and a growing number of philosophers are asking whether the altered states these substances produce might tell us something important about the nature of consciousness, reality, and the self. It turns out that drugs have always been philosophically interesting — but we haven’t always been willing to admit it.

What does it mean to be “sober,” and why has Western philosophy treated sobriety as a prerequisite for truth? If a drug dissolves your sense of self, is there still a philosopher in there doing philosophy — or has philosophy left the building? Is the category of “drug” even coherent, or is it an artifact of colonial trade routes, the war on drugs, and cultural anxieties that have very little to do with what’s actually happening in your brain?

In this episode, we sit down with Justin Smith-Ruiu, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Université Paris Cité, whose new book On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality takes exactly these questions seriously. Drawing on the history of philosophy, his own experiences, and a genuinely eclectic range of intellectual sources, Smith-Ruiu makes the case that the mainstream philosophical tradition has been too quick to sweep altered states of consciousness under the rug — and that taking them seriously might force us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mind, knowledge, and reality.

Grab a drink and join us as we tune in, turn on, and ask what it means to do philosophy with your whole person.

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

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