In this very special "Minibar" episode of Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, co-host Bob Vallier gives us both a sneak peak into and the historical context surrounding the recent English translation (by Michael Naas and Pascale-Anne Brault) of Jacques Derrida's very first lecture series from academic year 1960-1961-- before Derrida became "Derrida"-- entitled To Think is To Say No (Fordham UP, 2026). In this new book, over the course of four lectures, Derrida considers a short aphorism from French philosopher Émile-Auguste Chartier (commonly known as Alain) and, in the course of doing so, provides us our first glimpse into the philosophical techniques that would eventually come to be known as "deconstruction."

Grab a drink and join Bob as he situates the first publicly recorded insights of baby Derrida!

[NOTE TO LISTENERS: As is our custom on this podcast, we release "Minibar" episodes between seasons, to ensure that you're still getting fresh, new content every week. Be sure to stay tuned for Season 17, which begins October 30!)

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

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For the final "deep dive" of Season 16, the HBS co-hosts have selected an unusual text to ground our conversation, namely, a commencement speech by novelist David Foster Wallace entitled "This is Water" (delivered at Kenyon College in 2005). In it, Wallace provides a uncannily accurate (if disheartening) description of the mundaneness of everyday "adult" life, then uses it as a springboard to issue his call for each of us to resist the exact manner of thoughtlessness it inspires. We have a choice, Wallace argues. We could, rather, train our attention and imagination on the specific people with whom we share all of the events that constitute "life before death" and, in doing so, free ourselves from the kind of default solipsism that makes us miserable.

Wallace's essay is not only a reflection on vicissitudes of human life, but also on the liberatory power of education-- specifically, liberal arts education-- that is perhaps even more urgent to hear now, in our late-capitalist attention economy, than it was almost twenty years ago when he originally delivered it. The essay opens with a joke about how fish don't know what water is. Because it is the very milieu in which they exist, it remains ever at the level of "the given," that is, it never appears as something to reflect upon. If we are the fish, what is our "water"? Can we change the water, or only how we swim in it?

Grab a drink and join us in this episode as we practice paying attention and keep reminding ourselves that "this is water."

Content note: The final segment of this episode includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or other mental health issues, help is available. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Outside the US, findahelpline.com lists crisis services by country.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/fish
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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, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!

We've talked about the attention economy more than once on this podcast, and the diagnosis hasn't changed: nearly everything around us is built to capture our attention and then sell it. What we haven't asked is what all that scrambling is supposed to be rescuing us from. The answer, it turns out, is boredom. Nobody pays cash to be bored and no app is designed to deliver it, yet a small but noticeable number of young people are now trading smartphones for flip phones and forming "Luddite clubs," as if boredom were something you had to go out of your way to find. Boredom appears to be unbearable and endangered at the same time.

So what, if anything, is worth defending in it? Is the boredom of the DMV waiting room the same thing as the boredom of a committee meeting, or the boredom of a long walk with nothing to look at? If boredom really does free up the mind for reflection and imagination, doesn't that mean we've stopped being bored the moment the good stuff starts? And when people praise the restful, restorative kind of boredom, are they describing an experience available to everyone, or a luxury only some of us can afford?

No guest this week, just three co-hosts who turn out to disagree about nearly all of it. Bob comes to the defense of boredom by way of Heidegger's "profound boredom" and Kierkegaard's advice to rotate your pleasures like crops. Jen keeps returning to Aquinas and the medieval worry that boredom is a failure to train one's own mind, which makes it something closer to a vice. Leigh confesses that she is allergic to the whole thing and cannot find anything good in boredom that isn't secretly a description of its cure. Along the way you'll hear about racing raindrops on a school bus window, camp kids left to their own devices, Dorian Gray, and why immortality might be the most boring thing imaginable.

Grab a drink and join us as we spend an hour trying to say something interesting about the one thing nobody can sell you.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-239-boredom/
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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, Instagram, and TikTok. Like, follow, share, duet, whatever... just make sure your friends know about us!