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Friends, I’m so excited to share this episode about punk rock with you. Not only does it weave in and out of where the source of many of my ethics come from, it also features a reunion between myself and an old friend, the musician Ted Leo, who I haven’t spoken with for almost twenty years.
Ted is best known for his band Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, but also for his project with Aimee Mann, The Both, his solo albums, and his hugely influential mod-punk band, Chisel.
On this episode, Ted and I talk at length about how punk changed our lives, but – perhaps more importantly – why that punk rock network and community matters now.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? One of my favorite AEWCH moments was when Fugazi/Minor Threat frontman and Dischord Records founder Ian MacKaye agreed to be on the show… and our conversation on AEWCH 119 was really incredible. A very different kind of conversation than this one with Ted, but still adjacent to everything.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? A great introduction to the ways art and politics and mutual aid interwove during our punk coming of age is We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews which features longform interviews with musicians, but also leftist political figures of the time.
MORE ON TED Ted’s website is here, and he also posts frequently on bandcamp, where you can support his music via donation. Here’s Ted’s Stereogum interview about his solo album The Hanged Man. And just for the fuck of it, here’s Ted singing a karaoke version of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” with comedian Paul F. Tomkins in tow.
Advertisements from sponsors don’t fit with the mission of AEWCH. So I ask listeners if they’d like to support the show by sharing what they can via patreon. The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib. You can also subscribe to the show and give it a 5-Star writing on Apple Podcasts, as well as buy my novel Hawk Mountain.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends,
There’s so much talk about “uncertainty” in the public sphere. “We live in uncertain times” and etc etc, yes we’ve heard it so many times. But what brings certainty? Not a job or stuff; not materiality in any form.
I wanted to talk about this, so I brought Joshua Fields Millburn on to the show to talk about it with me.
We start with talking about my storage unit in LA, then we spin off into a discussion of fiction vs nonfiction, how time is changing, the spontaneous combustion thought experiment, and more.
It’s a non-moralistic inventory of the morality of dissolving your inventory.
SHOWNOTES
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? My episode with philosopher Brian O’Connor – AEWCH 89 – is about the virtues of being idle and the arguments against it (as well as Adorno (author of Minima Moralia, which the title here is riffing off of). It’s one of those favorite lesser-known episodes of the show that has SO much in it.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? One of my favorite nonfiction books of the 2010s wasStuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. It;s a look at hoarders – back when hoarding loomed large in public consciousness – and how it overlaps with our own intense attachments to objects.
MORE ON JOSHUA The Minimalists website – which has soooo much on it offered as free resources – is here. And The Minimalists patreon is here. Joshua is the also the author of the novella, As A Decade Fades, which is also avaialble as an audiobook.
Thebestwaytosupportthisshow,my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends,
All good art has a spiritual component, but how? Sometimes it’s obvious, of course; for example, a book or film will have spiritual content. But what about art that isn’t apparently spiritual but has deep spiritual meaning and resonance? I wanted to talk about the spirit in an unlikely place: rock music. So I invited my friend, Dave Le’Aupepe, frontman of Gang of Youths, back onto the show. Dave was last on the show back waaay on AEWCH 31back when the show was primarily video.
Dave’s latest album with Gang of Youths is Angel in Realtime, which was one of the most celebrated albums of 2022, particularly in Australia. It’s a beautiful meditation on death and discovery, blending rock, minimalist composition structures, and excessive layering.
This is a wide-ranging episode covering angels, mythology, representation, politics in music, the dead, and more. I’m so happy to share it with you.
CH
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? Since the episode begins with a little back and forth about how people don’t know what to ask musicians, here’s AEWCH 109 with Stephen Malkmus about music and Giles Deleuze. One of my favorite eps, for sure.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? To compliment Angel in Realtime, I suggest the most profound expression of loss ever written as a novel, Jame’s Agee’s A Death in the Family.
The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends,
The intellect is important, but only serves as a two-dimensional reflective surface without the combined depth of experience. I try to make as much of what I say as possible stem from the ways my life has been shaped by spiritual experience meeting my philosophical and political outlook. I wanted to pull on this thread a bit, and to push the boundaries of what I discuss on AEWCH.
So I invited one of the most frequent (and liked!) guests on AEWCH to meet me in this: my friend the theologian and philosopher Peter Rollins.
This episode is a bit different: Peter and I each tell three short stories about moments of spiritual revelation and formation in our lives. Then we discuss them with each other and try to find the patterns there.
It’s a very personal episode for both Peter and I, but it’s also a picture of friends walking our separate paths, together.
I am so excited to share this with you.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO Though it’s not directly related to the content, I’m recommending AEWCH 81, with theologian and writer (not to mention Peter’s friend)s, Padraig O’Tuama, as a complement to this episode. Padraig and I talk at length about God, but rather than grounding that in experience per se, we ground it in poetry. It’s another way to address revelation.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? Since we’re on the topic of spiritual autobiography and revelation, you may want to read Rudolf Steiner’s Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life, 1861-1907, to look into the life events of a spiritual teacher and how they informed his path forward.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends,
Happy Valentine’s Day, let’s talk about love and death. They’re companions, themselves lovers. To have this discussion, I invited my favorite death worker, and also someone I love so much, mortician Caitlin Doughty.
We start with, you know, the small stuff: What IS love? What IS death? And of course, it opens up from there into many dimensions.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends, Welcome to the How To Live Beyond series of eps on AEWCH! To open 2023, each episode in this series will consider a set of tools or way of thinking that are useful but that we’re ready to go beyond in 2023. We’ll be looking at abundance and manifestation, magick and entheogens, the wellness industry, and more. The first episode (AEWCH 208) featured Mitch Horowitz on How To Live: Beyond the New Age. The second (AEWCH 209) featured Lisa Romero on How To Live: Beyond Psychedelics & Sorcery. The third (AEWCH 210) featured Pilar Lesko on How To Live: Beyond Money Magic. And on the fourth (AEWCH 211), we went beyond wellness with Fariha Róisín.
These are the techniques and traditions we use to cope with and confront the challenges of our time, but risk – if we can’t consider them deeply – getting us stuck in those challenges or worse, funneling their strengths back into those challenges. Theseepisodesaren‘tacalltoforgetaboutthesetechniquesandtraditions,butinsteadacalltobringforwardwhatthey‘veoffered without the barbs of the problems they’re tangled up with.
This time:
Everywhere we turn, there are conversations of ecology and disaster, the environment and its needs, the planet’s and humanity’s shared future. If they are not purely materialistic conversations (and the majority are), they often offer only a shallow sense of the spiritual. People talk about “nature” as having its spiritual work removed from relationship with us, as if no more exploration into its actual spiritual orientation is needed. Or we have (some, not all, of course!) neo-pagan views that don’t go much further than translocating the names of old gods and onto the natural world. Or we have neo-primitivism and object oriented ontology which in which humans are supposed to somehow be de-centered, even though humans are the ones coming up with these concepts and pretending to the magically decenter themselves.
So how can we approach nature from a spiritual perspective? And how can we work with the being and being-ness in nature in a real way? For example, should we engage with the trees? The formative forces of the trees? The postmodern assemblage of “tree” or “becoming-tree?” The “dryads” in the trees? The tree gods? The “nature spirits”? We don’t have the taxonomy or the navigational aptitude to even know what we’re encountering, so how can we hope to know how to help?
So I invited David Spangler onto the show. David’s huge and generous body of work includes being the person who coined the term “New Age;” being a prime developer of the Findhorn Community in Scotland; popularizing the concept of manifestation as long ago as the 1970s; founding the Lorian Association, which helps people encounter the lessons developed by David and others on the path of Incarnational Spirituality, authoring many books (including the one we touch on the most here, Techno-elementals); and more.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO I went into the exploration of fairies (particularly fairies in Ireland), and why we don’t take them seriously enough, with anthropologist Dennis Gaffin on AEWCH 187.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? Although David does some of the best work expressing the many different kinds of elemental beings, for a one of the greatest expressions of how the elemental beings intermingle, no one to my mind does it in plainer, easier-to-udnerstand language than Cypriot healer Daskalos. I recorded an episode of the show – AEWCH 67– with one of Daskalos’s students, Daniel Joseph. His book, Swimming with the Whale: The Miracles, Wonders & Healings of Daskalos & The Researchers of Truth is very helpful in this area.
MORE ON DAVID Many of David’s books (and related books) are available from Lorian Press, which David developed in conjunction with the Lorian movement. You can also find self-study modules on David’s site here. David’s lectures on manifestation, written decades ago, are so far advanced that they move us beyond most people’s current writings on the topic. You can find them in this book The Laws of Manifestation. And one of my very favorite books by David, which is not so easy to find these days, is Reimagination of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular Culture.
A photo I took earlier this month at the stone circle in Drombeg, Co. Cork
The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Two other ways to support the show and my other efforts:
Buy my debut novel, Hawk Mountain (and if you’ve bought it and loved it, give it a great review on Amazon and/or Goodreads!). All my creative projects end up supporting each other!
Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts (and subscribe if you haven’t already!).
Friends, Welcome to the How To Live Beyond series of eps on AEWCH! To open 2023, each episode in this series will consider a set of tools or way of thinking that are useful but that we’re ready to go beyond in 2023. We’ll be looking at abundance and manifestation, magick and entheogens, paganism, and more. The first episode (AEWCH 208) featured Mitch Horowitz on How To Live: Beyond the New Age. The second (AEWCH 209) featured Lisa Romero on How To Live: Beyond Psychedelics & Sorcery. And the third (AEWCH 210) featured Pilar Lesko on How To Live: Beyond Money Magic.
These are the techniques and traditions we use to cope with and confront the challenges of our time, but risk – if we can’t consider them deeply – getting us stuck in those challenges or worse, funneling their strengths back into those challenges. These episodes aren’t a call to forget about these techniques and traditions, but instead a call to bring forward what they’ve offered without the barbs of the problems they’re tangled up with.
This time:
We’re constantly tracking ourselves: with Fit Bits, exercise journals, food journals, mediation apps and more.
But what if wellness went deeper than tracking and instead into witnessing the wounds of materialism and the constant reopening of those wounds by colonialism, capitalism, racism, homophobia, and more?
Together we examine the hidden woundings that are so frightening to us that we seem to only be left with narrow paths for healing: wounds in the erotic, the spiritual, sacred anatomy, healing, speaking, and more.
In the same way we fear to touch a cut on our body or look into emotional to heal it, we encounter the deepest wounds as sites of pain. So we end up pushing the knowledge of these wounds to the far edges of our consciousness until they’re that their damage is only revealed a moment that is too late, as surprise diagnosis.
This is an adventure in wellness and how to heal wellness itself. I’m so excited to share it with you.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO I talked a lot about mental health with author and psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber on AEWCH 196. It’s worth a listen because, well, everyone needs some form of therapy! (And if you want to pair it with a therapeutic look at restorative justice, you can listen to AEWCH 162 on violent offenders with Dr. Gwen Adshead!)
MORE ON FARIHA Subscribe to Fariha’s excellent newsletter, How To Cure A Ghost (which shares its name with her debut poetry collection). And here’s Fariha’s website which is a good hub for her earlier work. Also, you can engage with a different layering of her consciousness by reading her novel Like A Bird(which is also available on audio). And here’s a short profile on her novel in the New York Times.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Twootherwaystosupporttheshowandmyotherefforts:
Buymydebutnovel,HawkMountain(andifyou‘veboughtitandlovedit,giveitagreatreviewonAmazonand/orGoodreads!).All my creative projects end up supporting each other!
Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts (and subscribe if you haven’t already!).
Friends, Welcome to the How To Live Beyond series of eps on AEWCH! To open 2023, each episode in this series will consider a set of tools or way of thinking that are useful but that we’re ready to go beyond in 2023. We’ll be looking at abundance and manifestation, wellness and self development, entheogens, paganism, and more. The first episode (AEWCH 208) featured Mitch Horowitz on How To Live: Beyond the New Age. The second (AEWCH 209) featured Lisa Romero on How To Live: Beyond Psychedelics & Sorcery
These are the techniques and traditions we use to cope with and confront the challenges of our time, but risk – if we can’t consider them deeply – getting us stuck in those challenges or worse, funneling their strengths back into those challenges. Theseepisodesaren‘tacalltoforgetaboutthesetechniquesandtraditions,butinsteadacalltobringforwardwhatthey‘veoffered without the barbs of the problems they’re tangled up with.
Thistime:
The problem with money magic – abundance training, vision boards, manifesting, not to mention all sorts of team-building corporate exercises and so on – is… that it works!
But what’s the cost of just focusing on and trying to make money? After all, if we’re all connected to the economy, is it good for others to be extracting what we need from that sphere by just magicking what we need from it? And is it good for the magick-er?
And why does it seem like some of these money making rituals have diminishing returns for some people? Is it just that they’re not manifesting hard enough? Is The Secret too public now to be effective?
And what about all the above in the times of so-called “recession”?
To talk about all of this, and to create new pathways forward, I invited my favorite journeyer into the realms of money and business, PILAR LESKO back on the show. Pilar’s first appearance was on AEWCH154, and it was one of the best times I’ve had talking with someone: Pilar is funny, lighthearted, and also completely devoted to real spiritual growth and relationship. Like last time, this is a fairly mind-blowing episode. Mind-blowing for me, and I hope it will also help blow out the restrictions of the money magic world.
SHOWNOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO I love the deep economy episode I did with occult economic historian John Bloom and Marxist economic historian Conor McCabe on AEWCH 110.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? The book that got me on my money magic journey, and which still has merit, even though it’s good to start moving in new directions, is the excellently titled You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Lifeby Jen Sincero. Instead of considering it as merely “how to get what I want,” consider it instead as training for who you are.
MORE ON PILAR Pilar’s hub is her website. Sign up for her excellent (at times hilarious and strange) newsletter. And to truly level up your life, you can consider working with her. She’s incredible.
The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge toPatreon.com/connerhabib.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Two other ways to support the show and my other efforts:
Buymydebutnovel,HawkMountain(andifyou‘veboughtitandlovedit,giveitagreatreviewonAmazonand/orGoodreads!).All my creative projects end up supporting each other!
Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts (and subscribe if you haven’t already!).
AND:
If you’d like to sign up for Lisa’s upcoming online course – On January 14 – on all the topics we discuss on this show – “Navigating Realms of Consciousness; Practices and Insights from Western Esotericism“ – go to her site and use the AEWCH option for a discount. You can sign up after the date for the recording (or if you can’t attend on the day itself).
Friends,
Welcome to the How To Live Beyond series of eps on AEWCH! To open 2023, each episode in this series will consider a set of tools or way of thinking that are useful but that we’re ready to go beyond in 2023. We’ll be looking at abundance and manifestation, wellness and self development, entheogens, paganism, and more. The first episode (AEWCH 208) featured Mitch Horowitz on How To Live: Beyond the New Age.
These are the techniques and traditions we use to cope with and confront the challenges of our time, but risk – if we can’t consider them deeply – getting us stuck in those challenges or worse, funneling their strengths back into those challenges. Theseepisodesaren‘tacalltoforgetaboutthesetechniquesandtraditions,butinsteadacalltobringforwardwhatthey‘veoffered without the barbs of the problems they’re tangled up with.
Thistime:
It seems like everywhere we turn, we’re bombarded by messages about why psychedelics are good for you, and how we can magic ourselves into a better planet or against capitalism etc etc.
It could be Graham Hancock advising ayahuasca use to see reality, or Michael Pollan detailing hallucigenic health benefits. And there’s #WItchesOfInstagram + leftist spiritual podcasts and books on using magic to survive and combat capitalism.Techies are microdosing to support their lives and by extension gentrification and class war, feminists are reclaiming witchcraft, Marxists are spellcasting, gay men are turning to Aleister Crowley for inspiration.
And to make matters worse, people who condemn using magic and mushrooms are even worse than all that. Religious fundamentalists, tankie materialist leftists, conservative fascists, edgelords saying magic is “woke,” new age “seekers” none of whom seem to have bearings in spiritual truth.
What is going on here, and does any of it lead to real and liberating spiritual inspiration, or are we just getting driven deeper and deeper into materialistic culture, politics, and economy?
To talk about all of this and how to get beyond it, I asked spiritual teacher and writer Lisa Romero onto the show. This is the deepest I’ve ever gone on the topic, and I think it throughly illustrates the dangers of sorcery and psychedelics, and how to think about them without becoming a foot-stomping fascist or a tech-hippie psychonaut enthusiast.
What’s useful? What’s outdated? What spiritual techniques need to be allowed to die (and be reborn)?
Lisa’s latest appearance on the show was on AEWCH 200 where she and I talked with Duncan Trussell where the three of us investigated this topic. This is a natural continuation, but we go much, much deeper, using the idea that accessing and commanding the beings in the realm of magic and psychedelics – the astral realm – is the adolescence of humanity.
And we also go into what we can do and how to approach the astral realm… and go beyond it.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO One of my favorite episodes on elemental beings, which we talk about at length on this episode, is AEWCH 188 with artist and spiritual teacher, Marko Pogačnik. Marko and Lisa have a lot in common, and I hope to get them in conversation with each other sometime. For now, listening to the two episodes can bring them into conversation within and with you.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? Conor McPherson’s play The Weir, is one of the finest expressions of encounters with the astral realm and the Otherworld (and how not to deal with them). Of course it’s best to see it, but unless you’re lucky enough to have a production going on nearby, reading it is the next best thing. It’s in this collection of his plays.
Tellpeopleabouttheshow and, if it feels okay, to support it on patreon (especially if you already know your pals are fans of the show but don’t support it).
Give the show a 5starratingandpositivereviewonApplePodcasts.
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And if you want to explore my other main creative output – writing fiction – you can buy my debut novel, Hawk Mountain (and if you’ve bought it and loved it, give it a great review on Amazon and/or Goodreads!). All my creative projects end up supporting each other!
Friends! Was it a difficult year for you? Even if lockdown regulations went away (and it seems almost inconceivable that they were in place just earlier this year, doesn’t it), even if the dread of the US President’s every move seems to have dissipated… was it a hard year? Did anxiety seem to alight on everything? Did you feel in touch with a sort of uncertainty that woke you or didn’t let you sleep?
Anxiety is a call to attentiveness that leads us to command. Another way to express that attentiveness is gratitude. The world is seeking to be seen for what it is, and the only way to do that is to look with love.
To talk about this, I invited therapist and teacher Michael Lipson back on the show. Michael last appeared on the show on AEWCH 139; a listener favorite. His new book of gratitude, Be: An Alphabet of Astonishmentis a profound meditation on being.
ON THIS EPISODE meeting strangers • on being afraid of spiritual reality • jouissance • keeping individuality while meeting the other • longing for connection • what happens when out desires conflict with our ethics • needs vs wants • the spiritual being with a TV for a head • magic and the Moon • why every life matters even though we reincarnate • the three loaves of bread as an occult secret • Simone Weil and affliction •
SHOWNOTES
WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? I mentioned Denis Johnson’s small masterpiece of a novel, Train Dreams. If you’d like to see what living without attachment was like before our culture enhanced and amplified attachments, this is the book. And I think everyone who loves beautiful writing should read it.
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD I LISTEN TO? Michael talks about the pursuit of the intensity of the real, a subject I talk abotu in depth with literary critic Stephen Kern on AEWCH 42. It’s a great episode and one of the lesser-known ones.
Conner Habib 