Acid Horizon

Acid Horizon

Emerging from affinities with post-structuralism, abolitionism, biopolitics, communism, critical metaphysics, critical mysticism, and ontological anarchy, Acid Horizon is a philosophy and theory podcast committed to thought in motion and political struggle. While these are our grounding currents, each episode opens out onto a wider constellation: ethics, politics, phenomenology, decolonial thought, queer theory, post-psychoanalysis, disability/crip theory, anarchism, Marxism, feminism, and analyses of the emergence of the new right. Comprised of a decentralized collective of friends and comrades, Acid Horizon cultivates a terrain of militant inquiry. From readings that span 20th-century French communism to new perspectives on German idealism, the collective has also undertaken forays into aesthetic experimentation, philosophical heresy, and the history of revolt. We seek the concepts and intensities that gesture toward new forms of life. Acid Horizon pushes theory beyond the academy through live engagements, collaborative reading groups, and collective interventions.

  1. Should We All Live in Communes? AHRC Public Panel with Fern Thompsett and Henry Kramer

    7 hr ago

    Should We All Live in Communes? AHRC Public Panel with Fern Thompsett and Henry Kramer

    Emma's anti-civ class: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses/p/anti-civilization-recovering-from-industry-and-progress Watch this panel discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/epvd2MT04OM Should we all live in communes? AHRC Panel Host Emma Stamm is joined by sociocultural anthropologist Fern Thompsett and environmental humanities scholar Henry Kramer to dig into the commune form, anti-civilization thinking, the reclamation of imagination, and what radical world-building actually looks like on the ground.  The panel pushes back on the romanticized image of communes by arguing that the real work happens in the unglamorous everyday, weeding gardens, sorting recycling, arguing about seedlings, and that these experiments are far more common and historically ingrained than the '60s hippie stereotype suggests. The panelists also take seriously the critiques around race and privilege, reframing communal organization as something that marginalized communities have always practiced under different names and often out of genuine necessity. This panel was produced as part of Acid Horizon Research Commons' free series of public philosophy panels and lectures. Each season we endeavor to bring rigorous, accessible conversation on ideas from across the humanities and humanities-adjacent disciplines that speak to the current historical conjuncture. Links to Fern Thompsett's work:  https://humanities.tufts.edu/people/fern-thompsett https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6VX69F8Cxk&pp=ygUMZWNvdG9waWEgbm93 Link to Henry's work: https://henryrkramer.com/ Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    1hr 3min
  2. Magnifica Humanitas: Religion, Humanism, and the Critique of 'AI'

    15 Jun

    Magnifica Humanitas: Religion, Humanism, and the Critique of 'AI'

    AHRC Summer Mini-Bundle: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Who owns your dignity, and what does it cost to get it back? Craig, Adam, and Emma work through Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on artificial intelligence, finding beneath its alleged radicalism a familiar liberal kernel: private property, mediated class relations, and a conspicuous absence of anything resembling class struggle. The launch event, staged with cardinals, worldly scholars, and an Anthropic representative, is a mise en scène of the double pincer, simultaneously legitimating AI as an inevitable apparatus of capture while reinstalling a figure of human dignity just fragile enough to need the Church's oversight. The second half of this conversation is available exclusively to patrons at patreon.com/acidhorizon. Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    43 min
  3. Trauma is a Time Machine: A Cinematic Primer with Kwasu D. Tembo

    8 Jun

    Trauma is a Time Machine: A Cinematic Primer with Kwasu D. Tembo

    Latest courses at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses If you could go back in time, would you change the past, even if it meant changing who you are? Is existing in time itself traumatic? Is power over time a cinematic endeavour, and what makes a good director an even better time traveller? This week on Acid Horizon we're joined by Kwasu D. Tembo to talk about his latest book Trauma in 21st-Century Time Travel Cinema, discussing the philosophy of time travel in films such as Primer, Timecrimes, and Predestination; as well as how the experience of time transcendentally conditions the structure of the psyche. Buy Kwasu's book, Trauma in 21st-Century Time Travel Cinema Being (a)Part: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/trauma-in-21stcentury-time-travel-cinema-9781978768734/ Phasmid Press: https://phasmidpress.org/ Public arts and philosophy events in Lancashire: https://j-e-w-e-l-l-e-r-s.net Follow Kwasu on Substack: https://mapscrollanddagger.substack.com/ Kwasu's music: https://on.soundcloud.com/PjET6oqqQluhhGt3zw https://on.soundcloud.com/gsh6ZRpYOwUizDOV8q https://on.soundcloud.com/oNgo5GOz2xWetzYJrg Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    1hr 19min
  4. Boards of Canada's 'Inferno': Top Tracks, Hidden Themes & Life After the Inferno Sessions

    31 May

    Boards of Canada's 'Inferno': Top Tracks, Hidden Themes & Life After the Inferno Sessions

    Vintagia: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/vintagia-basecamp Acid Horizon Research Commons summer courses: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Jack and Tonx on Instagram: @jack.chuter, @tonx Craig's review in 'The Quietus': https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/boards-of-canada-inferno/ "Solidarity with Children" discussion on LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-can-we-build-159633309?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share Boards of Canada are (finally) back! Craig is joined by author and music writer Jack Chuter and Boards of Canada archivist Tonx (Tony Konecny) to review Inferno, the long-awaited new record from Scottish electronic legends Boards of Canada. Together we unpack the album's dense thematic terrain: the figure of the child, religious hierarchy, memory, trauma, and the dissolution of linear time, while sharing their firsthand experiences of the Inferno Sessions listening events held in London, Los Angeles, and New York. Whether you're a longtime devotee of the Hexagon Sun or a newcomer algorithmically deposited into our space, this conversation is an invitation to sit with one of the most ambitious and rewarding records of the past decade. Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    1hr 17min
  5. Revolutionary Forgiveness: Beyond Moralism, Toward Liberation (with David Renton and Dr Hazel Croft)

    24 May

    Revolutionary Forgiveness: Beyond Moralism, Toward Liberation (with David Renton and Dr Hazel Croft)

    How do we connect collective struggle with the search for justice? Adam is joined by historian Hazel Croft and theorist David Renton to discuss the concept of forgiveness and its strategic role in revolutionary struggles against structural and interpersonal harms. In doing so, we draw on our previous episode on the Comrade Delta scandal earlier this year, and the failure of Marxist organisations to develop new principles and procedures of justice and reparation. David's book "Revolutionary Forgiveness" out now via:  https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2755-revolutionary-forgiveness    For information on the secret trials of lawyers defending Palestine solidarity activists in the UK https://www.declassifieduk.org/contempt-case-against-palestine-action-barrister-creating-chilling-effect/ Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    52 min
  6. Bataille’s 'Guilty' Explained: Stuart Kendall on War, Time, and Instability (Full Episode Unlocked!)

    17 May

    Bataille’s 'Guilty' Explained: Stuart Kendall on War, Time, and Instability (Full Episode Unlocked!)

    AHRC Courses: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses What does Georges Bataille’s Guilty reveal about war, time, and the unstable ground of thought itself? In this episode, Craig and Adam speak with Stuart Kendall about Bataille’s confrontation with catastrophe, the “privileged instant,” and the strange oscillation between order and excess in his writing. The conversation explores how Guilty stages a meditation on war, nonknowledge, and the limits of philosophy at the edge of historical disaster. We also discuss Kendall’s essay “The Exacerbation of Instabilities,” featured in the Acéphalous Compendium, and preview his upcoming course on Bataille through the Acid Horizon Research Commons. Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    1hr 8min
  7. The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West with A.J.A. Woods

    10 May

    The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West with A.J.A. Woods

    Vintagia Second Run: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/vintagia-basecamp AHRC Summer School 2026: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Buy A.J.'s book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3239-the-cultural-marxism-conspiracy?srsltid=AfmBOopb7nUxKpzOmh6_QpxdBOvbaHwusliMo8ukxi8i1iCy29Ui1i5_ The definitive history of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory “Cultural Marxism” is one of the far right’s favorite buzzwords. But despite its currency, the meaning and origins of the term are rarely investigated. This book uncovers the bizarre story of the cult leaders, right-wing intellectuals, and White House officials who believe a coterie of left-wing scholars and students is plotting to undermine Western civilization. Drawing on years of archival research and using the tools of critical theory, A.J.A. Woods reveals how a group of German thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was recast as the sinister orchestra-tors of a global conspiracy. Instead of simply debunking this conspiracy theory, Woods offers a sharp analysis and critique of the political movements that have declared war on all that passes for Cultural Marxism in the US, the UK, and Brazil. Only when we understand the practices and weaknesses of those reactionaries committed to fighting this illusory threat—a conflict causing real-world damage—can we effectively resist. This is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand the ideological currents shaping politics in the twenty-first century. Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    52 min
  8. David Foster Wallace & Mark Fisher: Irony, Sincerity, and Late Capitalism

    29 Apr

    David Foster Wallace & Mark Fisher: Irony, Sincerity, and Late Capitalism

    Enroll now for AHRC Summer School — https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Is sincerity even possible when the medium is rigged against it? In this episode, Hannah Smart, fiction writer, critic, and author of the debut novel Meat Puppets, joins Craig, Adam, and Emma to think through the legacy of David Foster Wallace and Mark Fisher, tracing the connections between Wallace's call for a new sincerity and Fisher's hauntological vision of a culture that forgot how to imagine its own future. Together we wrestle with the performative male, the death of boredom, the trap of self-consciousness, and whether any of us—writers, theorists, or just extremely online humans—have actually found a way out of the irony that Wallace spent his career trying to dismantle. Hannah Smart Website — https://hannahsmart97.wixsite.com/home Preorder Meat Puppets — https://merchtable.bigcartel.com/product/meat-puppets-by-hannah-smart LARB Essay — https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nothing-ever-happens-mister-squishy-and-the-year-of-the-sentence-diagram/ Twitter — https://x.com/fowlinghantod?s=21&t=ZAJhi-EV7b2OIyMqqtFrtw Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/howlingfantod?igsh=MTVvdmY4YmJscXJrbw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr Substack — https://substack.com/@howlingfantod?r=64xrn&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile Support the show Support the podcast: AHRC Current classes at Acid Horizon Research Commons (AHRC): acidhorizonresearchcommons.com AHRC Course Archive: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-course-archives Submit your course proposal: acidhorizonresearchcommons@gmail.com More Links Website: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizon Acid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 Merch: http://www.crit-drip.com Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHAND Happy Hour at Hippel's (Adam’s blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com ​Split Infinities (Craig’s Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/ ​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/

    1hr 14min

About

Emerging from affinities with post-structuralism, abolitionism, biopolitics, communism, critical metaphysics, critical mysticism, and ontological anarchy, Acid Horizon is a philosophy and theory podcast committed to thought in motion and political struggle. While these are our grounding currents, each episode opens out onto a wider constellation: ethics, politics, phenomenology, decolonial thought, queer theory, post-psychoanalysis, disability/crip theory, anarchism, Marxism, feminism, and analyses of the emergence of the new right. Comprised of a decentralized collective of friends and comrades, Acid Horizon cultivates a terrain of militant inquiry. From readings that span 20th-century French communism to new perspectives on German idealism, the collective has also undertaken forays into aesthetic experimentation, philosophical heresy, and the history of revolt. We seek the concepts and intensities that gesture toward new forms of life. Acid Horizon pushes theory beyond the academy through live engagements, collaborative reading groups, and collective interventions.

You Might Also Like