Friends, This is the second episode in a series of episodes on science and how science intersects with our lives in surprising ways. Across these episodes, we’ll be considering the healing and connective powers of the void of space, terrifying encounters with predators, the development of the concept of nature, reflections on our own animalistic violence, the truth and complications of the scientific method itself, and the ways in which we connect at the tiniest layers of existence. These episodes are not “scientific” episodes per se, but they aren’t scientistic either. Each one is an exploration of what science can bring into our lives. The first episode in the series was AEWCH 260, on which I talked with Marjolijn van Heemstra about connecting with the expansiveness of space to understand the challenges we face today.
This is a very different episode… and it’s about animal attacks!
It’s an exciting and interesting for me on many levels – not the least of which is that it’s with WES LARSON, wildlife biologist and co-host of one of the only podcasts I listen to on a regular basis, THE TOOTH AND CLAW PODCAST, which he hosts with his brother Jeff Larson and their friend Mike Smith! Every week is just a different horror show, where the guys tell a true story about animals attacking people. As a longtime listener, I did have to ask myself, as any reasonable person would: Why am I so interested in animal attacks? Why is anyone, for that matter?
It stirred up, well, quite a bit actually! So Wes and I talk about all that and more at length.
I’ve got to say, I don’t often get a chance to talk with my favorite podcasters, so I’m so excited to share this episode with you.
Advertisementsfromsponsorsdon‘tfitwiththemissionofthispodcast.SoIasklistenersifthey‘dliketosupporttheshowbysharingwhattheycanviapatreon.Thebestwaytosupportthisshow,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 buymynovelHawkMountain.
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, Celebrating the release of my novel Hawk Mountain in paperback, I’ll be talking with creators of my favorite genre, HORROR. There are few genres that have inspired such a furor of regulation, stigma, and anger. Horror is regulated by governments, has been the topic of countless moralistic exams rations and moral panics, has been blamed for disintegrating societies, and more. Horror itself horrifies. And when horror does become accepted, at best it is said by critics to “transcend the genre.” Which means it’s really just transcending the stigma the critics have by re-asserting it. But who am I to talk about beleaguered horror? The fact is, it is also wildly popular. Even a terrible horror movie can be quite popular, and the most consistently bestselling author of all time is a horror writer. What does that mean? Across these episodes, I’ll be talking about horror in its many forms: cosmic horror, body horror, suburban horror, monster horror, possession horror, and more. The first episode in the series was AEWCH 232, with cosmic horror writer and scholar Matt Cardin.
Youdon‘thavetoknowmuchhorrororevenlikehorrortofollowalongwiththeseepisodes; each one will reveal a horror of life, of being human.
As a writer of the horrific myself, I wanted to talk with other writers about the inner navigation of wanting to explore and depict and share cruelty, fear, fantastic and upsetting violence. It’s not just that I wanted to talk about the moral navigation of these images – after all, those sorts of images and themes exist in the sacred scriptures that form much of our ideas of morality. I wanted to also talk about the impulse to move into those images, and the differing ways in which authors walk through that inner landscape and figure out what to share and what to leave behind.
Furthermore, how much of what we are depicting isreflective of reality – not just the darkly imagined versions of real-world violence and tragedy, but of the supernatural and the strange?
To talk about this, I asked two masters of the weird and of horror onto the show.
Nathan Ballingrud is the author of one of the greatest collections of short horror fiction ever, North American Lake Monsters. His most recent book is The Strange, an adventure on Mars that does the remarkable work of balancing science fiction, mystery, Western, and horror.
Both Sara and Nathan write across genres and for multiple mediums – film, TV, audible stories, and of course novels and stories.
We talk about the pleasure of creating horror and of reading it. We also talk about the fact that horror fiction rarely actually scaresus, as opposed to horror films – instead it upsets or disturbs us.But when it does frighten us, how does it work?
We talk about the dream logic of the supernatural, and how much of what we depict isreflective of reality – not just the darkly imagined versions of real-world violence and tragedy, but of the supernatural and the strange?
This is a deep and dark episode. I’m so excited to share it with you.
SHOW NOTES
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO? In some ways the first episode in this series is reallyAEWCH 201, on the Spiritual Life of Horror. Horror offers spiritual insight and can be a doorway to spiritual growth. I hope you’ll listen to and find some meaning there.
WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ? For an unrelenting horror novel that is not thought of, generally, as a horror novel, I suggest James Purdy’s masterpiece, Narrow Rooms. I read it in one sitting and cast it across the room when I finished, repulsed and so, so thrilled to have found it.
MORE ON NATHAN Many of the stories in North American Lake Monsters were adapted for the Hulu series, Monsterland. He’s also the author of Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hellwhich contains the story “The Visible Filth” that inspired the film, Wounds, starring Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson. Here’s Nathan’s website, which is a little out of date as of this post, but still has a lot of great stuff.
MORE ON SARA Sara is a frequent guest on the show, and her most recent appearance was on AEWCH 200m part in conversation with myself and Una Mullally. You can now preorder a new (beautiful + scary cover!) edition of Come Closer. She has her own publishing company, Dreamland Books. And she is the write of the audio ghost story, Marigold: An Investigation of an American Haunting, read by Zoe Kazan. And she is perhaps best known for her weird detective series featuring the psychoanalytic-meets-magick investigator, Claire Dewitt.
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.
Friends, This is the last fiction writing episode for a bit, so I needed someone to talk with me about mediating the creation of dark art. So I asked another writer who’s been there to talk about violence, murder, and forgiveness in fiction: My Sister the Serial Killerauthor, Oyinkan Braithwaite!
SHOW NOTES
WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? One of my very favorite novels is also a sort-of-sort-of-not crime novel: Narrow Rooms by James Purdy. It’s absolutely ruthless, and bizarre. Imagine if John Waters wrote a serious novel. This would be it. It’s a nice blend of the tonally challenging aspects of both my and Oyinkan’s novels.
WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? I talked about crime fiction in depth with another writer – and a master of the genre – Liz Nugent, back on AEWCH 104. Bonus: It was recorded just before the pandemic, and we talk about it with hope and trepidation.
MORE ON OYINKAN There’s plenty to explore, including illustrations and short works, on Oyinkan’s website. My favorite story there is “One Choice“, which has illustrations including the one below, made out of the words of the text.
FRIENDS:Do you find this podcast meaningful? Support it! 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.
Buy Ramsey’s books and all the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my booklist for AEWCH 168 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,
Happy Halloween. I don’t really need to introduce legendary horror author Ramsey Campbell, but I will just say it was an honor to have him on the show. Very few people have done as much as Ramsey to deepen horror narratives, and very few have shown – with dozens of books penned – such a commitment to the genre.
• The calm moments in David Lynch films are the half smile on the government agent’s face thing I mention brought to you by Jon Ronson, who I spoke with on AEWCH 163.
FRIENDS: Do you find this podcast meaningful? Support it! 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.
Buy the books mentioned on/related to this episode via my bookshop.org list for AEWCH 162. Bookshop.org 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,
I’m so honored to have had this conversation with Dr. Gwen Adshead, forensic psychiatrist and co-author of The Devil You Know: Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion. The Devil You Know is an absolutely stunning and heartbreaking book about violent offenders – serial killers, sex offenders, arsonists, and more – and why we should seek to understand and even feel compassion for them.
This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib onPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
Friends,
It was inevitable that, living in Ireland, I’d have to confront the power and atrocities of the Catholic church. Not because I don’t have a feeling of respect for the church (though I was raised without religion), and not because I’m an atheist (obviously!), but because the pain and suffering the church and its influence have caused Irish people is immeasurable. But I didn’t know where to start, until I came across the work of journalist Caelainn Hogan, who has written a stunning and profoundly moving book on the mother-and-baby homes in Ireland, which imprisoned women who were pregnant outside of marriage, and took their children away from them. Often, the children died of malnourishment or illness or mistreatment, and were subsequently thrown into mass graves, never to be identified. Many of those who survived are still searching for their families. Caelainn’s book, Republic Of Shame: Stories from Ireland’s Institutions for ‘Fallen Women’, is a book of both sorrow and accountability, as well as a piercing analysis of great power.
This is a haunting episode, as well as one that moves in and out of biopolitics, state control, patriarchy, and religious vision. I’m so happy to share it with you.
On this episode:
What are the mother-and-baby homes, how are they different from the Magdalene laundries, and how did they arise
When did nuns lose their way and how does that echo the tensions women have with each other generally?
What do we do about human trafficking if we don’t want to support a punitive and carceral system?
Do we amplify or exploit the suffering of the world by writing about it?
Why writing and telling stories isn’t always cathartic.
How abuse shatters and reshapes reality.
How legal transparency and overcoming shame are linked.
• Calavary is, I think, a great movie about some of the tangles we discuss in this episode. It doesn’t address any of them directly, but it shows one side of the religious tensions in Ireland.
• I wrote about shame and how to fight it — as well as Amber Hollibaugh and Edward Carpenter — here.
SHOW NOTES, including quotes from the show, what to listen to and read to go deeper, and more, are now for Patrons only, and you can find them here. For as little as $1/month, you can access the show notes! Please do support the show! Get show notes here!
So excited to welcome postmodern horror writer Brian Evenson to the show. A true honor. And the first fiction writer on the show! Brian is one of my favorite authors, and his stories are violent, unsettling, and profound.
We talk about horror fiction, the occult, David Lynch, metaphors, the horror of relationships extending into our lives, the concept of doubles, the meaninglessness or meaning of suffering, and revising everything we know. I also ask Brian how a character could get out of one of his stories unscathed.
Brian also reads the beginning of his story, “The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette” from his collection, The Wavering Knife.
Oh, and also, I ask about if Brian’s stories all stem from boner shame.
To get Brian’s book with Paul Tremblay, Another Way To Fall, go to Concord Free Press.
In AEWCH 13, I hang out with one of my favorite punks, Mish Barber-Way, singer/screamer of White Lung. White Lung is intense, loud, metal-meets-punk, and they’re truly awesome. (Rolling Stone named White Lung’s album, Deep Fantasy, one of the 40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time.) So I made sure to ask Mish to play a couple songs, too, even though she’s used to playing MUCH much louder. There are acoustic versions of “Paradise” at 57:55 and “Stand By Your Man” by Tammy Wynette: 1:17:40
IN THIS EPISODE
Mish’s sordid, awesome past and present in the adult industry: 2:45
Who gets screwed up by being in porn and who does well and why?: 5:10
Strategies for public performances. Of all kinds.: 7:15
Radiating sexuality: 10:20
Our apocalypse survival strategies and the Amish at the end of the world: 13:15
How screaming gets you ignored in music, especially if you’re a woman, and why to do it anyway, and what Wilhelm Reich has to do with it: 23:00
Arousal and desire are not the same thing: 36:05
The missing language of gray area sexual encounters, and why we’re drawn to simple language, even though it doesn’t help us: 46:35
The complicated relationships that can frame assault: 51:05
Mish talks about White Lung’s song, “Paradise”: 54:40
Mish plays an acoustic version of “Paradise”: 57:55
Once you get what you want you can’t want it: 1:00:50
Why danger matters: 1:03:15
Mish plays “Stand By Your Man” by Tammy Wynette: 1:16:45
If you like the show, please support it on Patreon, where you can also find the show notes!
Hey folks, two quick announcements. An event and an audio ep of Against Everyone with Conner Habib. Read on!
First, I have an event Saturday, July 8, with Gordon White (author of The Chaos Protocols and Star.Ships) in LA! It’s an evening of in-depth discussion and exploration of why we urgently need the occult to guide us through our world called CHAOTIC GOOD: WHY THE OCCULT MATTERS NOW (MORE THAN EVER). You can buy tickets HERE.
The discussion is moderate by special guest mortician, bestselling author Caitlin Doughty, and features tarot readings by everyone’s favorite witch from The Craft, the brilliant and intuitive Rachel True. The event is followed by a Q&A.
We’ll explore:
How the occult intersects with today’s politics, sexuality, science, and art.
The use of occult worldviews by and against the political milieu
Wealth, money, career and magic in an unpredictable economy.
Working with the spirits of place.
Which wheels Jesus takes, which ones you have to take, and why the fuck you’d want God as your co-pilot instead of just letting Him fly the plane himself.
Managing despair, anxiety and depression in uncertain times.
Today’s magical revival.
Books by Gordon, Conner, and Caitlin, as well as other esoterica, will be provided by the best bookshop in Los Angeles, the amazing Skylight Books. Tickets are almost sold out, so get yours ASAP.
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I have new equipment on the way for my web series, so: In the lull between episodes, I’ve decided to post this audio only bonus episode of Against Everyone with Conner Habib, in which I read and talk about my essay “If You Ever Did Write Anything About Me, Id Want It To Be About Love.”
The essay details a painful relationship I was in that is always re-evoked for me around July 4.
The episode is NOT available via YouTube like the rest of the show, but there’s an easy workaround – just go to my Patreon page by clicking here, and you can listen or download the audio as an MP3.
While you’re there, please do contribute to my Patreon and my livelihood. Your support makes my web series, writing, movies, and media possible. Thank you.
• Here’s 
Hey folks, two quick announcements. An event and an audio ep of Against Everyone with Conner Habib. Read on!
Conner Habib 