Tag Archives: Caitlin Doughty

What is LOVE? What is DEATH? How do they entangle? It’s a special Valentine’s Day episode of AEWCH with CAITLIN DOUGHTY!

14 Feb

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SUPPORT AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB

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,

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.

I’m so excited to share this with you.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO
My experience of death, and its implications for us, is expressed at length on AEWCH 150: The Spiritual Politics of the Dead.

WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ?
For a good overview of the occult concept of love, maybe Rudolf Steiner’s Vision of Love: Spiritual Science and the Logic of the Heart by Bernard Nesfield-Cookson is where to go first.

MORE ON CAITLIN
Caitlin’s been on the show many times, most recently on AEWCH 200 in conversation with me and paranormal research John E.L. Tenney. Here’s Caitlin’s website. And my favorite book of Caitlin’s is From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death.

Until next time!
Love yourself.

X O

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AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 200 is here! Three episodes, six guests, three weeks! Part One: Caitlin Doughty, John EL Tenney, Chris Donaghue, and Caelainn Hogan on Stigma & Repression!

27 Sep

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

Friends,
The massive, mighty AEWCH 200 is upon us! What makes AEWCH 200 different? It’s three episodes over three weeks, featuring six conversations, each conversation has two previous guests of AEWCH in conversation with me on a theme.

These are people I’ve loved talking to (most of them have been on the show more than once) in conversation with someone they might never talk to without AEWCH bringing them together. The idea is a sort of conversational alchemy: What happens when people in different disciplines speak? What sort of new substances arise?

This time it’s Part 1: STIGMA & REPRESSION Mortician Caitlin Doughty talks with paranormal investigator John E.L. Tenney + Sex therapist Chris Donaghue talks with investigative journalist Caelainn Hogan.

Each episode also features an opening monologue by me. So happy to offer this all to you over the coming weeks!

SHOW NOTES: GUEST WEBSITES & SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Chris’s website • Rebel Love: Break the Rules, Destroy Toxic Habits, and Have the Best Sex of Your Life

Caitlin’s website • From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Caelainn’s website • Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘fallen Women’ and Their Children

John‘s website • Theoretical Weirdo: A Mish Mash of Ramblings about Weirdness

A PLEA FOR THE PODCAST FROM ME

Being up to 200 episodes means AEWCH is in a tiny tiny percentage of podcasts that have lasted this long – something like 2%. I can ONLY keep doing this show if people support it on patreon.

I know post-pandemic times and economic roller coasters are affecting everyone in different ways. That said, the art and culture you love are great places to center support and love.

If you don’t already, please do the following to keep AEWCH going:

  • Give via patreon – Patreon.com/connerhabib
  • Tell people about the show 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 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts.
  • Tweet and Insta quotes from and thoughts inspired by episodes!

Thank you so much for everything, and enjoy all this big talk.
Love,
CH

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Why (horror) fiction matters with Caitlin Doughty and Mark O’Connell on the latest Against Everyone With Conner Habib!

2 Aug

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The only way Against Everyone With Conner Habib exists is through its relationship with its listeners.
Do you enjoy the show? Does it inspire new thoughts and conversations in your life?
If so, SUPPORT THIS PODCAST via Patreon

Friends,
So happy to share an extended contemplation about fiction and this podcast, and then one of my very favorite book tour events with you: a live conversation about horror, transhumanism, and Hawk Mountain in Dublin with your fav death expert Caitlin Doughty and nonfiction writer/cultural critic Mark O’Connell.

It was a sold out event and one of my favorite on the tour, which will continue in the UK in September. (I’ll also post one of the other tour dates as exclusive content for patreon patrons only.)

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
One of the greatest horror novels – which, like Hawk Mountain is also not really a horror novel – is Disgrace by JM Coetzee. Don’t read anything about it, just get it and read it. It’s incredible.4

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
I talked about the horrors of technologies – as well as its occult promise and beauty – with anthroposophist writer Andrew Linnell on AEWCH 183.

MORE ON CAITLIN AND MARK
If you follow the links to their respective AEWCH episodes you’ll find lots there -here’s Caitlin Doughty on AEWCH 174 and Mark O’Connell on AEWCH 105.

More soon, friends,
CH

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EVENTS: Three (very different!) Dublin HAWK MOUNTAIN happenings! With special guests Caitlin Doughty, Sarah Maria Griffin, Una Mullally, and Mark O’Connell

25 Jul

Hey there friends,
Wanted to let you know that there are three Hawk Mountain events coming up in Dublin, and each one is very different.

1. A book launch at the legendary Hodges Figgis with my friend Una Mullally on WEDNESDAY, JULY 27 This is a reading in the standard sense. I read the book, I answer a few questions, we hang out, we drink wine! To go to this FREE event, email ldermody@penguinrenadomhouse.ie and say you’re coming by! (you can cut and paste/ use this text – just include your name: Hi I’m excited to attend the Conner Habib event on the 27th. Thanks!)

2. I’ll be talking horror and darkness in fiction with author, podcaster, and tarot reader Sarah Maria Griffin, on FRIDAY, AUGUST 5 at  Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). Here’s the link! The event is FREE and will be awesome.

3. My event on THURSDAY, JULY 28 with Caitlin Doughty and Mark O’Connell is SOLD OUT! But go to one of the other two with the also awesome AEWCH guests here!

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What happened to us in 2021? I talk with Ask A Mortician host Caitlin Doughty about the year that’s about to die.

22 Dec

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST
Against Everyone With Conner Habib is free for everyone, but it only exists via of support of listeners. If you like this show, if it has meaning for you, support it by using Patreon! Thank you so, so much.

Buy Caitlin’s books and all the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my booklist for AEWCH 174 on bookshop.org! The site sources from independent bookstores in the US, not a big corporate shipping warehouse where the workers are treated like machines. Plus when you click through here to order, the show gets a small affiliate kickback!

Friends,

On the final episode of AEWCH in 2021, I turn to my friend, the queen of endings herself: death expert, Ask A Mortician Host, and Caitlin Doughty We look back on the year about to die, and see what died (and should die with it). We also take stock of where we stand now as we face the year ahead.Thank you so much for listening all year, and I’m looking forward to the adventure ahead.

SHOW NOTES

• Caitlin has been on the show multiple times, but the last time was AEWCH 134, and that was the last time we hung out in person too (aw). And here’s Caitlin’s patreon.

• The series of episodes on love were:

• Here’s the video Caitlin released when the death toll skyrocketed in Los Angeles, where her funeral home is.

• And here’s AEWCH 143 & 107 guest Srećko Horvat talking with Richard Sennett.

See you in 2022, friends!
CH

The card for 2021.

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2020: The Year In Death – with Caitlin Doughty and Conner Habib

8 Dec

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This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!  Thank you so, so much.

Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? For Caitlin’s books, and other books mentioned on or related to this episode, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 134 on bookshop.org. It will  help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.

Friends, what a year!

Primarily, I view 2020 as filled with thoughts about death, with considerations of uncertainty and contradictions.And to talk about all of this, I invited my friend, host of Ask A Mortician, author and death activist Caitlin Doughty on the show.Caitlin is one of my closest collaborators.

We’ve done live events together, she’s been on AEWCH two times before (AEWCH 77, and AEWCH 8), we talked before AEWCH existed, and I’ve been on her web series, Ask A Mortician. She’s also author of three amazing books about death around the world, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory , Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: And Other Questions about Dead Bodies, and (my favorite) From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death.

I wanted us to look into this year with as much equanimity as we could muster.

Have you noticed how hard things have been to navigate, not because of a virus per se, but because of a collapse of knowledge? Not only has information changes from day to day this year, but we’re subject to speculative news items presented as facts, questions about the virus are over-amplified scaring the shit out of everyone, case numbers and deaths are presented together creating a sense that every case number is a potential death or that every death is separate from the case numbers, we get lines like the flatten the curve lines that look like palmistry and that do and do not accurately predict futures. Add to that the many theories, the many politicizations, the many fears and anxieties, the many suppressions of information, the many debates.

It’s intense.

This episode goes a ways to help with all that, I think. I hope it grounds you and stirs up compassion for your neighbors, even the ones you wish weren’t your neighbors.

Let’s get through this together (for real!).

ON THIS EPISODE

  • How death positivity could change our view on handling a pandemic
  • The hero narrative in a time of crisis
  • Doing structural work instead of offering critique or sinking into your own anxiety
  • Why we need propositions, not critiques
  • When government officials are hypocritical with regulations, and how to think about that
  • How the crisis has amplified everyone’s worst attributes
  • Why knowledge can’t save us
  • Looking at all our values and striving for coherence
  • What we learned from the AIDS epidemic that applies now
  • Combatting the “if you got sick it’s your fault” mindset without losing sight of how to take care of yourself and others
  • The connectivity of suffering and how that’s going to amplify in the future
  • Why spiritualism and other spiritual beliefs and rituals grow during and after major world events
  • What will happen when we un-repress
  • Why it’s impossible to have the information, much less the answers about our current situation…and what to do about that

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Caitlin, watch her amazing web series, Ask A Mortician, including this great episode on spiritualism. Here’s her website. And support her work via her patreon! Also, make sure you watch her episode of The Midnight Gospel, my buddy Duncan Trussell‘s animated Netflix series!

• Most of the stories about Hart Island have been corrected at this point to reflect the island’s long history of burial – but you might remember images like this one.

• I talked about mutual aid on AEWCH 131 with Dean Spade, critiques vs propositions on AEWCH 123 with Kathi Weeks, and how truly being human is the best antidote to the problems of our world with Doug Rushkoff on AEWCH 125.

• RTÉ’s retirement party scandal and Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry party were…fun new stories (insert facepalm emoji or whatever).• I would love if you listened to my latest appearance on the Duncan Trussell Family Hour.

• A great book on spiritualism (and occultism) and how it relates to feminist and other progressive movements is Magia Sexualis by Hugh Urban. Though I’m not sure why it’s so fucking expensive.

• Want to read a great Irish novel about a bunch of corpses talking to each other in a graveyard? Why yes you do, pal.

• My thoughts on how the masturbation scare hoax affected culture are in an essay I wrote years ago for Vice. But you can learn way more about it by reading Thomas W. Laqueur’s excellent book, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation.

• Here’s the (horrible) video of family members being separated at a funeral.

• If you want a quick breakdown of mRNA vaccines, here’s an article from the European Commission’s research magazine, Horizon.

• I wrote about the time I had to walk away from a cancer diagnosis in my essay, “When You’re Sick You’ll Wait for the Answer, But None Will Come“.

Until next time friends – live and embrace death!
XO
CH

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You are going to die. Now what? Me + Caitlin Doughty discuss death, sex, activism, and death & sex activism on AEWCH 77!

16 Jul

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Friends,
It’s time to talk about death and activism and death activism, and oh yeah, Marianne Williamson and stuff. There is no one better to discuss all this with that my good friend Caitlin Doughty. Caitlin is the host of the wildly popular youtube series, Ask A Mortician and her work has served as a foundation of the death positive movement, which is seeking to change our relationship to death in our culture.
She’s also the author of the death memoir, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory; as well as her book about death rites, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death; and the forthcoming book about death for kids, Will The Cat Eat My Eyeballs: Big Questions fromTiny Mortals about Death.
When Caitlin and I spoke way back on AEWCH 8, we mostly discussed death in a theoretical way. This time, I bring to her the recent death of my friend, to work through some of the feelings and intensities I went through in mourning and gratitude.
We also spend a lot of time discussing being advocates and activists, and what challenges that brings. It’s a very personal episode and very different conversation than Caitlin’s used to having on a podcast!
On this ep:
  • what we’d like to do more of before we die
  • how to pre-mourn our own deaths by confronting our anxieties
  • HIV “bug chasing”
  • externalizing death drives vs turning them on yourself, and how that’s gendered
  • why we should destroy heterosexuality
  • the Dalia Lama and cultural conflict
  • the problems have a healthy relationship with death can bring
  • how a breakup gets a ton of conversations with friends, but a death tends to only get one
  • Pompei volcano sex deaths
  • why we need to acknowledge what sex positivity and feminism have brought to us
  • mediating social media exhaustion
  • the relief of others taking up the same causes you have
  • why I want to have more underground people on the show
  • the problem with only having one face for a given cause
  • what doing activism is for

SHOW NOTES are always free.

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NEW ONLINE EVENT: GOD SEX DEATH featuring CONNER HABIB with CAITLIN DOUGHTY & PETER ROLLINS on 1/20!

1 Jan

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God Sex Death is an online course that takes on three fundamental aspects of being human, featuring short lectures, conversation, and Q & A with three of today’s innovative figures in conversation: Theologian Peter Rollins, Sexpert Conner Habib, and Mortician Caitlin Doughty.

But there’s a catch! Rather than talking about the topics they know best, they’ll each be taking on each other’s area of expertise.

This is a course that examines the intersections of human experience like no other. What does someone who knows so much about death have to say about sex? What does someone schooled in the profane have to offer on the sacred? And what can an expert in the eternal illuminate about the end of everything?

After each short presentation, we’ll talk with each other and then turn the questions over to YOU. We’ll be answer all your nagging God Sex Death questions!

Can’t attend the day of? Not to worry, a standard ticket gets you exclusive access to a recording of the whole thing for 90 days!

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, the bestselling author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory and From Here To Eternity: Traveling The World To Find The Good Death. She’s also the host of the YouTube series Ask A Mortician, where she answers every question conceivable about death. From “What’s the most horrible way to die?” To “What happens to whale carcasses?”

Conner Habib is the host of the podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib, and an internationally recognized expert on pornography, sexuality, and culture. His essays appear in Salon, Vice, CR Fashion Book, and more. He gives lectures at universities and organizations around the world, and he’s probably the only person alive who’s won awards for teaching, writing, and performing in porn.

Peter Rollins is the author of multiple books, including The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction, Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine. Each year in Belfast, Peter hosts Wake, a five day festival that explores the nature of belief, God, doubt, and politics. Peter hosts the podcast The Fundamentalists, on which he is made fun of weekly by comedian Elliot Morgan.

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS

There are three different tickets types.

Standard: You’ll get access to the course, the Q&A, and the recording of the course for 90 days. 15.00

Plus: You’ll get everything above and you’ll also get: The exclusive God, Sex Death Reading List curated by Caitlin, Conner, and Peter. Each of us will recommend one book on each of the topics. 20.00

Gold: You’ll get everything from the Standard and Plus tickets and: Three Exclusive 2019 God Sex Death Tips Videos from Caitlin, Conner, and Peter! That’s right, you’ll get three separate videos (one from each speakers, each speaking about their area of expertise), giving you a tip on how to explore, think about, and think more deeply about God, sex, and death! These are short videos with a personal feel ONLY available to Gold ticket holders, telling you how to go deeper into each topic! 30.00

HOW DOES IT WORK?

A few days before the course starts, you’ll receive a link to the live webinar and instructions on what to do when you get to the site.

It’s simple, and all you need is your computer, the internet, and a few clicks to get started!

Plus and Gold ticket holders will get their benefits within 48 hours of the conclusion of the course!

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For groups of three or more, please contact me for group registration rates!

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Your Death Is Your Project: Conner Habib + Caitlin Doughty!

22 Sep

I couldn’t be more excited to bring you this episode with death expert, bestselling author, and mortician, Caitlin Doughty!

Caitlin is the author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory as well as her new book about death rites, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death.

She’s also the host of the wildly popular youtube series, Ask A Mortician which is one of the foundation stones of the death positive movement, which is seeking to change our relationship to death in our culture.

In this ep:

  • Taking death rites out of the “News of the Weird” category: 5:30
  • If we can’t think it’s okay for someone to interact with the mummy of their mother, how will we work on our politics? 11:20
  • Conner Sees His Dead Mother, or But can we really respect people’s experiences or is it just lip service? 13:25
  • Resisting creating a metaphysic around death…or forcing yours on someone else: 19:15
  • The potential of the strange psychological, spiritual event of death: 21:40
  • How death is our life’s project: 23.50.
  • What’s Your Death Fantasy? (And why?): 27:50
  • Lacan, Bataille, and how thinking about what the dead want tells us about the living: 34:55
  • Grieving is a physical process: 39:05
  • The boundary reveals itself as the connection: 40:25
  • How death makes us available to others in a new way: 42:20
  • Death is the engine that moves life forward: 48:00
  • The origins of sex: 49:00
  • And here’s where we get irritated about the singularity. And go on about it for quite a bit: 52:30

You can get full show notes with links to books we talk about, some info on previous Caitlin/Conner collaborations, and more by going to my patreon, where you can also support the show!

Love!
CH

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Good Chaos

14 Jul

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Caitlin Doughty, Yours Truly, Gordon White

My event in LA with Gordon White, Chaotic Good: Why We Need the Occult Now (More Than Ever), was a big success on many levels.
It sold out, so that was a pretty great marker of its success, financially. But also, it was a marker of the necessity of and longing for occult-related events.

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La société du spectacle

Beyond those basic levels, it was intense. The audience members were all just…vibing. There were powerful occultists there (Poke Runyon sat in the front row, jeez), and beginners, and skeptics (including our amazing moderator, Caitlin Doughty), and political folks and artists. Everyone was just listening, taking it all in, and during the Q&A expressing their own version or whatever resonated. It was a spell against loneliness if nothing else. Whatever happened content-wise, I knew that we’d done a good thing together in just being with each other, in gathering all these weirdos who have imaginations that are big enough to take on reality itself.

Byron Katie says “We talk to figure out what we want to say.” I agree. And sometimes, we even say what we want to say and want what we want. When I give public talks, sometimes ideas come from me that I didn’t know were there. What I want to say just appears.

And the work of refining a thought so that others can hear it and understand it is an act of agility, so I find myself (especially in Q&A) turning to my heart as I speak. What will I say that is understandable here? What will connect these people – who are giving me the honor of their silence and the negative space of their hearing – to this idea and to me?

It makes me a better person to speak publicly and answer questions, because I have to imagine what other people are like, what they feel, and what they think. Even though I’m speaking, we’re inhabiting each other.

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“I drink of my sisters and I ask for the ability to not hate those who hate me. Especially racist pieces of bleach-blonde shit like Laura Lizzie.”

Rachel True (from The Craft!) gave tarot readings, and tarot, beyond its more obvious powers, commands a listening-to. When you get a reading, you listen in a different way. The tarot has a conversation with your thoughts, and your embedded-ness in time.

Of course, the conversations after I got off the stage had their own lives too. One-on-one conversation is one of our most powerful tools. I always say conversation and sex are the same order of being: They are free; they can go in any direction; they may be happy or unhappy or exciting or boring; whatever the outcome, it doesn’t mean you won’t engage again with the same person; they’re different from person to person, and more. Chaotic good.

It reminds me of Rudolf Steiner’s stirring comment that “Conversation is the new Eucharist.” Body and blood and sacrament.

Sit with that, if you want. Let it ring out in you. Remember when you speak to another person, you’re encountering a completely unique nexus of universal forces.

Gordon talks about a bit of this on the new episode of Rune Soup, which you can/shouldlisten to here.

If you couldn’t attend the event not to worry, the entire thing is being transcribed into an ebook with new intros by Gordon and I.

Hopefully the book will be not only interesting, but make you feel like you’re at the event, in conversation.

A big part of my conversation now is happening through my Patreon page, which is linked to my new web series. Please do sign up on Patreon to support my work and livelihood, and to interact with me. Thank you, new pioneers.

Love,

CH

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