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?
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:
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
Your support for Against Everyone With Conner Habib, as well as all my writing, lectures, activism, and the rest, are what keep me going. If you support my work via patreon, thank you! And if you don’t, please contribute on Patreon today! Thank you so, so much.
Buy Terje’s excellent book and all the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my booklist for AEWCH 152 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!
• My friend who had brain damage is Mira Bartok, author of the bestselling memoir The Memory Palacein which she details the damage a bit.
• If you’d like to learn more about G.I. Gurdjieff, this is a good place to start. And here’s a site on Padre Pio.
• I talk a lot about Daskalos on AEWCH 67 with one of his students, Daniel Joseph. And AEWCH 116 with occultist acupuncturist/veterinarian Are Thoresen remains one of the best episodes of the show.
• I didn’t know much about the healer Matthew Manning before, but I’ll be definitely be investigating!
• Want to learn more about the Servants of the Light and one of their central teachers, Dolores Ashcoft-Nowicki?
• The psychologist who posited the “trance of the everyday” was Erik Erikson.
• Here’s a little on Ulla von Bernus, but you’ll have to translate the page if you don’t speak German. And here’s an article on Milarepa, who, like von Bernus, had a change of heart about practicing black magic.
• The image below is taken from (AEWCH 128 guest) Dan Gretton’s excellent book, I You We Them, Volume 1: Walking Into the World of the Desk Killer, in the show notes of that episode, I refer to these points as “a list of factors is an inverse of spiritual development, a sort of path of black magic.”
• Norwegian psychic and healer, Marcello Haugen has a site (which you’ll have to translate if you don’t read Norwegian) and I’m now looking into his work. I love Terje’s lovely story about him and the hare.
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 Edward’s books, and other books mentioned on or related to this episode, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 138 on bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, Why are we drawn to ghosts but frightened of them? Why do we feel compelled to take them seriously on some level, but on the other hand dismiss them? And why do some places just feel haunted?
In a time of the dead, in a time when dying is so present for so many, what new attitudes towards death and its spectres will arise?
To give you a little indication of his style, I asked Edward to start the episode with a very brief reading from Ghostland, then we’re into the conversation.And I start with two ghost stories of my own to indicate different ways that ghosts can lead us down strange and mysterious paths both as individuals and culturally.
ON THIS EPISODE
What is the aesthetic of the ghost story?
The way the Satanic panic severed the connection to ghost stories in the US vs in the UK.
How the transparency of history creates the resonance of ghosts.
New horror stories reflecting the way spirituality permeates culture.
The many ways which we dismiss the existence of ghosts.
The presence of fairies in Ireland vs the ghost of ghosts in the UK.
The middle class resistance to ghosts.
Imperialism vs ghosts.
Why do we turn away from grief?
The creeping fear of UK short ghost/weird fiction.
• The PSA announcement “Lonely Water” is…no joke…pretty scary! You can watch it here. And here’s the main figure in it. Watch out kids, if you don’t drown, you’ll live in fear of drowning your entire life.
• We mention Roger Clarke’s thesis about class and ghosts, which you can find in longer form in his book, Ghosts: A Natural History.
• Would you like to learn more about the bone crypt at Holy Trinity Church? Why of course you would.• For another AEWCH episode about changing attitudes towards the spiritual, check out AEWCH 98 with Thomas Waters on which we talk all about witchcraft (it’s one of my favorites).
• Finally, check out Ed’s photo of the rocking horse in author Lucy Boston‘s house. Why are rocking horses this scary?
LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast •Soundcloud 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 the books mentioned and some related to what we discuss, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 133 on bookshop.org. It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends,
How to start this episode with paranormal researcher and author John E.L. Tenney? He’s been working in the field of unexplained phenomenon for decades now, he’s the author of multiple books, has appeared on just about every paranormal/ghosthunting show, and gives lectures around the world on high and low strangeness. Well, I detail our crazy first meeting at the top of the episode, so you’ll hear it there.But also, I just want to say here, that something we learn from John, and why he is the perfect guest for this show is: When you see an “abnormal” thing that betrays the paranormal reality we live in, instead of trying to compartmentalize, think about what that aberration might mean for reality. And at the same time, work to make your personality ready for interpreting it. The thing about John is that through him, you experience a different quality of life, a different way of living. His example reminds you how strange the normal world is. How if we just take life on its own terms, we find ourselves surrounded by a whirl of intensity – bizarre, alive, exciting, and frightening in the best way possible.So excited to share this with you, friends.
ON THIS EPISODE
The usefulness of a failed paranormal investigation
Why documentaries about me and John would be boring
Why are people afraid of ghosts, and should they be?
Are ghosts erotic? Do we see them with the Svadhishthana or Muladhara chakras?
The way people talk about paranormal stuff at conventions now vs how they used to decades ago.
Does tech capture images/sounds of ghosts? If so, are they more powerful than our sense? Than physics?
Why making yourself ready to see ghosts matters.
Trump as an atheist President.
Why Flat-Earthers are right, and why Richard Dawkins is wrong about…well, most stuff.
Breaking away from myths and cycles + why I hate Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (no I am not sorry).
Why Moses had to turn his head from God.
The tension between being a trusted shaman at the end of the lane and witch who gets burned by villagers.
• The paranormal investigators who introduced me to Tenney were the brilliant Dana & Greg Newkirk, who I talked with about haunted objects on AEWCH 46.
• I mentioned the occult technology radionics – and I did a whole episode about it back on AEWCH 113, featuring an old conversation I had with radionics pioneer Duncan Laurie. I’ve included the image below so you see some radionics devices.
• Would you like to mess yourself up considering space and time (and how it may or may not relate to ghosts, for that matter)? Well, read quasi-fascist (dang) occultist Massimo Scaligero’s The Secrets of Space and Time.
“If you want to have any idea about the connection between astronomy, that is, the heavenly body themselves, and astrology, that is the influences on the human being, then you must understand that, in reality, the earth is still and flat, and the sun and the heavens circle the earth…”
• I’m trying to find some good collections of Isaac Asimov essays, but can’t! If you know a widely-available one, please post in comments below!
• I talk a bit more about the connection between The Great God Panand our moment of “pan demons/pandemic” on the latest Duncan Trussell Family Hour. And I had a great time talking about the guy who coined fractalnoia, Doug Rushkoff, on AEWCH 125. And there’s so much about the value of dewitchers in our culture on AEWCH 98 with Thomas Waters.
Until next time, friends, keep your world happily haunted. XO CH
Your Patreon contribution goes a long way to supporting not just to the podcast, but to my writing and other work as well. If you find something of value on my show, give back and support the many hours of free podcast content and other public output that I offer every month for the price of a latte or cocktail or lunch.
Very excited to delve into questions of the body – political, spiritual, philosophical, paranormal, and more – with literary icon Sinéad Gleeson. Sinéad is an author, editor, broadcaster, and Irish literary stalwart; her book of interconnected essays, Constellations is a bestseller here in Ireland, and about to make its way to America. It’s a captivating book about blood, feminism, injury, ghosts, and health; all orbiting around the question: What does it mean to be a human who is, at least in part, a human body?
Sinéad and I talk
• creating our own anatomy books
• standing up to the Catholic church
• the law of correspondences
• the importance of constellations in the sky and in our bodies
• how medicine is patriarchal
• my ghost experiences and Sinéad’s ghost experiences (and how we self-stigmatize them!)
• how ghosts are like good health
• health for athletes and porn performers
• the exploitation of pain and trauma as currency in the attention economy
• how being in touch with our bodies helps us be compassionate towards others
AGAINST EVERYONE… Is fully funded by patreon. Please contribute to my patreon if you listen the show. Your donation keeps me going, plus you get cool stuff and be part of my mission to bring deep, but easy to listen to, conversations about important ideas to the world. Pledges start at as low as a dollar per month. Contribute today!
We hung out at Michigan Paracon and had a great, in-depth conversation about how to approach the paranormal without fear as the baseline response, the conservatism of paranormal investigators and convention goers, giving haunted boxes CAT scans, how all medicine is haunted, difference and repetition, why curiosity matters,
When I edited the episodes, I realized that I talk a whooole lot in this episode because the Newkirks’ research and work is so inspiring and exciting to me. But if you want lots more Newkirk, it’s easy to find: Go to their patreon and support it and you get tons of content!
* NOTE: The Newkirks warned me that Billy can cause some audio/visual issues. My ep was no exception! There was a sort of tumbling hiss and crackle throughout the ep that I had to have removed (but there’s still some left), and then I had to have another sound issue dealt with, and the video quality wasn’t as good as my other eps even though I used the exact same equipment and procedures.
Conner Habib 