Welcome to the desert of the real.

Hotel Bar Sessions podcast is predicated on the idea that the three of us meet up at bar, order-up some drinks, and then settle in to talk philosophy. But—spoiler alert—none of that is true. There is no bar, sadly there are not drinks, and the conversation takes place through the instrumentality of digital technology without us ever meeting up and being together in the same space. It’s all an artifice, or what Jean Baudrillard called “simulation.”

We point this out not to ruin your enjoyment but because it is this very issue—simulation—that we are examining in this week’s simulated conversation. In keeping with our tradition of ending each season with a “deep dive” episode, we’re focusing this week on the short book that made this a subject of conversation: Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, originally published in French in 1981.

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers/ideas/texts/etc.:

• Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
• The Matrix. Directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski
• On Baudrillard and recorded sound, see David J. Gunkel. Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix (2022)
• The book of Ecclesiastes
• Jorge Luis Borges. Collected Fictions
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (and our episode from Season 6 discussing it) 
• John Sallis. Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues (2019)
• David J. Chalmers. Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy (2023)
• On deconstruction as disrupting conceptual binaries and not just “taking shit apart” see David J. Gunkel. Deconstruction (2021)
• Jean Baudrillard. “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.” 
• Deepfakes, explained
• Correspondence theory of truth, explained
• Coherence theory of truth, explained
• Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways our Intuitions Deceive Us (2011)