LEPHT HAND

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Acid Horizon Research Commons Ongoing Courses: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

Can something as ordinary as a selfie crack open a window onto the deepest questions of mind, faith, and mortality? In this episode, Emma and Sereptie sit down with writer Jonathan Malesic to unpack his essay "Unfaithful Reproductions," which begins with a photo taken on his dying father's deathbed, a photo he long assumed was a selfie, until he learned otherwise. From there the conversation ranges from Feuerbach's theory of religious projection to reality shifting, Christian mysticism, and the strange intimacy of Substack, all circling the same impossible question: can we ever really know another mind, or do we only ever encounter our own reflection cast back at us? What unfolds is a wide-ranging, unexpectedly moving meditation on grief, technology, and the leap of faith required just to believe we understand each other at all.

Jon's essay: https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/unfaithful-reproductions/

The End of Burnout: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-end-of-burnout/paper

Jon's Substack: https://substack.com/@jonmalesic

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

The fall season of AHRC courses begins next week. Enroll in two classes and get a third free with code 3FOR2FALL2026.

Bob Langan's Jung and Spinoza: God, Affect, Destiny, beginning October 4th: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/jung-and-spinoza-god-affect-destiny

Is psychology, as we've inherited it, equal to the challenges we now face? A polished, audio-only version of the opening remarks and initial responses from our recent AHRC public panel, hosted by Bob Langan and joined by Gabriela Sova Spulirova, JF Martel, and Christian McMillan. The panel asks whether Jung can be "radical," or whether his notion of interiority forecloses that from the start, and whether our conception of the psyche remains too divorced from the material.

Full panel: https://youtu.be/N1dbLVTA-l8

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Is astrology a harmless distraction or a pseudo-science opening a path to fascism? Or can it help us reclaim an imagination lost to the hyper-rationalism of modernity? In this episode, Sereptie and Emma trace the gendered and racialized dynamics behind astrology’s reputation as frivolous, unpacking why interest in the occult so often gets coded as feminine, queer, or "unserious". Drawing on Adorno’s essay “The Stars Down to Earth,” we examine astrology’s function as pseudo-rationality under capitalism, then push back against Adorno’s faith in pure reason as itself a political liability for the left. The conversation ranges from yoga and secular meditation to the historical purge of mythologist Karl Kerényi, ultimately arguing that the irrational and imaginal are not distractions from politics but resources the left urgently needs to reclaim.

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Listen to the full episode here:

Enroll in Bob's class at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/jung-and-spinoza-god-affect-destiny

In this Patreon exclusive episode, recurring guest and friend of the podcast Dr. Bob Langan returns to help unpack a scandal unfolding within the community of analytical psychology and Jungian media. It is one that sheds light on an already-perforated boundary between the symbolic and political registers, and more pointedly reveals the limits of the Jungian framework as it is often employed today to fend off the intrusion of far-right ideology into its inner circles.

Taking the public collapse of the popular podcast This Jungian Life (a lawsuit between its co-hosts, allegations of pseudonymous anti-trans activism, and the installation of a producer with ties to The Epoch Times) as a case study, Craig and Bob trace how the reification of archetypes, the politics of projection, and the discipline's own economic and institutional pressures leave it vulnerable to exactly the reactionary capture it claims to diagnose.

Bob's website: https://www.roberthlangan.com/
ig: roberthlangan
Substack: https://univocitydrift.substack.com/

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Enroll at AHRC:  https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

Is AI really the threat to democracy we've been told it is, or is it just democracy's own rot wearing a new face? Daniel Stanley of the Future Narratives Lab joins us to unpack his essay "AI as Anti-Politics," arguing the technology isn't an external assault on democratic life but the product of decades of shifts that already hollowed out collective political power. We explore technopopulism and ask what it would take to rebuild institutions capable of pushing back against extraction. Also in the discussion: data as a collective resource, the revival of interest in social clubs and in-person organizing, and why funding these new institutions might be the most difficult problem of all.

Future Narratives Lab: https://www.futurenarrativeslab.org/

Dan's paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jkxy_QPKk_W_yg4uanXx17Qnyka6ry-x/view?usp=sharing

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Emma's class on anti-civilization thought begins in August 2026: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/anti-civilization-recovering-from-industry-and-progress

Are we free to think, or has our attention already been excavated before we can conceive of thinking? In this episode, Serpetie welcomes Henry Kramer of the School of Radical Attention for a wide-ranging conversation on attention fracking, the colonization of the imagination, and what it might mean to re-enchant our relationship to the more-than-human world. Drawing on depth psychology, phenomenology, and radical politics, we explore whether mysticism and activism can ever really be reconciled--or might it rather be the case that keeping this tension is one of the purposes of imaginal practice. The public podcast feeds feature a preview of the full conversation. The extended discussion involves more on imaginal practices and a shared raw meditation on the experience of grief in our world today. Contributing subscribers can access the full episode.

Henry Kramer: https://henryrkramer.com/

SoRA Website: schoolofattention.org

SoRA IG: @schoolofattention

Henry's IG: @henry.r.kramer

https://substack.com/@henryofmoss

Strother School of Radical Attention: https://www.schoolofattention.org/our-people

https://substack.com/@henryofmoss

Strother School of Radical Attention: https://www.schoolofattention.org/our-people

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Find Emma's course here: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

What if modernity's greatest crime isn't economic or political, but spiritual, a severing of humanity from the sacred language written into nature itself? In this episode, Serpetie and Emma dig into Seyyed Hossein Nasr's 1993 collection The Need for a Sacred Science, taking a critical look at his perennialist argument that the harmony, symbols, and laws of the natural world carry an ontological reality that modern scientific reductionism has all but destroyed. The conversation moves through Nasr's critique of technological progress, the idol of innovation, and some surprising common ground with Deleuze, James Hillman, and anti-civilization thought, including what any of this means in the age of AI. Part two goes deeper into Nasr's sacred order and its tensions with strife and Nietzschean cosmology, and that one is for Patreon subscribers only. Link below.

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

AHRC EVENTS: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/previous-courses-1

Buy Madeline's book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2610-solidarity-with-children

We live in a world that is profoundly against children—evident in the genocide in Palestine, the fascist targeting of trans children, and the blatant disregard for the lives of migrant children crossing borders and oceans. It is a world in which climate catastrophe has become the new normal, in which children’s futures are by no means assured.

What we need, feminist writer and scholar Madeline Lane-McKinely argues, is a politics of solidarity with children, one that sees children as comrades in our struggle for a better future. Blending personal and political reflection with cultural analysis, Lane-McKinley examines the history of childhood as a system of private property in capitalism, showing how the idea of the child has been weaponized in the service of white supremacy and empire. They disentangle motherhood from the act of caregiving, tracing the possibilities of revolutionary mothering. And they critique the parents’ rights movement and imagines what education might look like outside schools, considering how we might center children as we challenge the strictures of the nuclear family. 

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

Enroll at AHRC Summer School 2026: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

What if you don't owe anyone anything? Not your attention, not your care, not even a reply to their message? That might sound like the philosophy of a sociopath, but sociologist and philosopher Jana Bacevic argues it's actually the foundation of a more honest and more just ethics. In this episode of LEPHT HAND, Emma sits down with Jana to discuss non-reciprocity, a concept that challenges the Kantian backbone of liberal morality and asks what it would mean to stop paying back a system that was never fair to begin with.

Related writing by Jana: https://janabacevic.net/research/understanding-nonreciprocity/

Jana's essay on the Free Nose Guy Problem: "Epistemic Autonomy and the Free Nose Guy Problem"

Jana's scholarly residency: Forest University

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/

AHRC Summer School: www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses

Vintagia is back! www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/vintagia-basecamp

What does it mean that the music most associated with wizards, capes, and sixteen keyboards also harbored some of the most radical left politics in rock history? In this episode, Emma and Sereptie are joined by writer, bassist, and WFMU radio DJ Dave Mandl for a deep dive into the origins, aesthetics, and political contradictions of progressive rock. From the egalitarian aristocracy of prog's classical pretensions to the outright communism of Henry Cow and the Art Bears, we trace the fault lines between individualism, elitism, and genuine aesthetic liberation. Along the way we ask whether the charge of bourgeois excess ever really stuck — and what prog's capacious, boundary-pushing spirit might still have to offer a left politics in search of new forms.

Dave Mandl

• davidmandl.com
• WFMU — It's Complicated: wfmu.org/playlists/GX
• LA Review of Books: lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/dave-mandl
• Elevated Landscapes (photo book): roman-nvmerals.myshopify.com/products/vol-cdxl-elevated-landscapes-by-dave-mandl

His Bands

• Emergency Group: emergencygroup.bandcamp.com
• Time Trout: otoroku.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-like-jane-austen

Sereptie's Prog Metal Band — eENIK

• Bandcamp: eenik.bandcamp.com/track/hints-of-mercury
• Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/2nQkBlBJuzhxo0fNDRtbRP

Support LEPHT HAND:

Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND

Emma's Substack: https://elftheory.substack.com/

Sereptie's Substack: https://splitinfinities.substack.com/

Merch and Design Shop: crit-drip.com

Acid Horizon Links: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon

Sereptie (ambient project): https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/

Acid Horizon Research Commons is now live: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-main

The Lenox Institute for Advanced Study: https://lenoxinstitute.org/