Tag Archives: Violence

Wellness isn’t good for you. Here’s how to move beyond it on AEWCH 211 with Fariha Róisín!

24 Jan

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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?

To discuss this, I invited Fariha Róisín, artist and author of the excellent critical memoir, Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behindonto the show.

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!)

WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ?
A good introduction to other models of anatomy and health is Cyndi Dale’s The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy which is richly illustrated and written in clear language.

(Also, if you’re interested in my essay on heath and wellness, here’s
“When You’re Sick You’ll Wait for the Answer, But None Will Come”)

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.

Until next time, friends,
Seek wholeness.
CH

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AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 195: OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE or CRIME/FICTION/FORGIVENESS

11 Aug

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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.

See you soon, friends.
CH

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Happy Halloween from legendary horror author Ramsey Campbell and me on AEWCH 168!

27 Oct

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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.

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Ramsey, go to his website. Some books not available on bookshop.org, but that are Ramsey Campbell essentials include The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Doll Who Ate Its Mother, The Searching Dead, his excellent story collection Strange Things and Stranger Places, and my favorite, The Face That Must Die. Also, here’s Ramsey’s essay collection (which includes the essay we mention on the episode, “Granted by Granta”), Certainly. Here’s another good (short) interview with Ramsey.

• Early on, Ramsey mentions the 1944 1953 sci fi/horror movie The Lady and the Monster and a later incarnation of a similar theme in Donovan’s Brain.

• Here’s that scene from War of the Worlds where the priest gets disintegrated.

• Other horror-themed episodes of AEWCH include:

  • AEWCH 166 with Phil Ford and JF Martel of Weird Studies.
  • AEWCH 158 with Paul Tremblay
  • AEWCH 93 with Sara Maria Griffin (and also, I was on Sara’s podcast, Juvenalia, talking about Clive Barker)
  • AEWCH 61 with mystery and horror author Sara Gran
  • AEWCH 58 on horror films with screenwriter (of The Invitation and Destroyer, among other things) Phil Hay
  • AEWCH 40 about horror and poetry with Zachary Schomburg
  • AEWCH 44 on the vampire as a theory with Kelly Link and Jordy Rosenberg
  • AEWCH 23 on postmodern horror with Brian Evenson

• Here’s HP Lovecraft’s “vampire” story, “The Shunned House” (I also think that “The Picture in the House” is a sort of vampire story!)

• T.E.D. Klein’s list of 25 most popular horror themes is in The Book of Lists: Horror

• “I’d rather have an enigma than an explanation…they last longer.” – Ramsey Campbell

• Have you seen Last Year in Marienbad yet?

• 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.

• Here’s a bit on when horror comics were banned in Britain by the communist party, or if you want to really go deeper into the story, read Martin Barker’s A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign.

• Watch the trailer for Dario Argento’s horror classic, Deep Red + Roy Ward Baker’s Quartemass and the Pit + And watch Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger.

Until next time, friends,
CH 

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On cruelty, violence, and compassion. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Adshead joins me on AEWCH 162.

7 Sep

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

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.

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Gwen, here’s a website with many of her lectures. Here’s her Desert Island Discs episode. And here’s a great little interview with her on topics of spirituality and religion in her work. And here’s a brief intro to her book and work in The Irish Times.

• AEWCH 128 with Dan Gretton on the “desk killers” is one of my favorite episodes of the show. Give it a listen if you haven’t yet.

• Here’s the short documentary from the New York Times on a “sex offender village.”

• Gwen mentions her admiration for Richard Rohr, so I’ve included a link to his daily meditations here. They’re beautiful and helpful.

• Here’s the trailer for the Orson Welles classic, The Third Man.

Until next time, be loving to each other and the other,
XO
CH

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Why do nuns become human traffickers? AEWCH 96: On the atrocities of the Catholic church with journalist Caelainn Hogan.

14 Jan

AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 96: CAELAINN HOGAN or

THE CHURCH AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING

AEWCH96TitleCard

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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.

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.
  • How fascism and neoliberalism prop each other up.
  • Why nobody owns a cause.

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Caelainn, visit her website, which has links to her writing, including her excellent essays on direct provision in Ireland, as well as love and everyday life in sickness and in health in war-torn Syria.

• I, like many people, confused the mother-and-baby homes for the Magdalene laundries, which you may have heard of first from Joni Mitchell.

• There are conservation efforts to preserve the Irish workhouses, and to not let them fall out of Irish history.

• My episode with Mona Eltahway, muslim feminist activist and writer, AEWCH 50, is now nearly-infamous, so check it out if you haven’t already.

Calvary• Here’s AEWCH 87 guest Una Mullaly linking the mother–and-baby homes to the abortion laws (now modified) in Ireland.

• 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.

• Here’s the Sally Rooney interview by Eleanor Wachtel on one of my favorite podcasts, Writers and Company.

• The Walter Bejamin line is “The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist.”

• Caelainn’s chilling warning, “the church thinks in centuries rather than in our current time,” will  stay with me.

• Here’s the Eliza Griswold essay, “The New Front Line of the Anti-Abortion Movement” that Caelainn mentioned.

• A great book that examines the conjunction of neoliberalism and fascism is Srećko Horvat‘s Poetry from the Future: Why a Global Liberation Movement Is Our Civilisation’s Last Chance. I urge you all to read it.

Until next time friends,
CH

MABH

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The Horror of Everyday Life. Conner talks with postmodern horror and weird tale author, Brian Evenson!

13 Mar
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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.
Enjoy!
gerricault

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Conner and Mish Barber-Way from White Lung talk about screaming, abuse, and danger.

10 Nov

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!

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JULY 8 EVENT with GORDON WHITE + SEMI-SECRET BONUS AUDIO EPISODE OF AGAINST EVERYONE with CONNER HABIB

3 Jul

D&DHey 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.

***

Screen Shot 2017-06-04 at 8.26.37 PMI 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.

Love,

CH

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