Against Everyone with Conner Habib

Asad Haider, the political theorist and philosopher, whose book critiquing identity politics from a (non-class-reductive) leftist perspective, Mistaken Identity: Mass Movements and Racial Ideology remains a powerful contribution and who was on AEWCH 26, died suddenly in December of last year.
I’ve reproduced that episode as AEWCH 314*, with a new introduction.
To plant a tree in Asad's memory, go here.
To support the show, go to patreon.com/connerhabib

In conversation with Pilar Lesko about change, Christianity, the dead, and more.
Happy New Year!
support the show: patreon.com/connerhabib

Friends,
Happy New Year! And welcome to the New Year’s Resolution episode of Against Everyone with Conner Habib, featuring my conversation with esoteric scholar and writer,
MITCH HOROWITZ.
But this show is filled with special guests, including:
Philosopher and writer FEDERICO CAMPAGNA

Esoteric teacher ALAN CHAPMAN

Bestselling author and death expert CAITLIN DOUGHTY

Mystery and horror novelist SARA GRAN

Christian Community priest and esoteric christian PATRICK KENNEDY

Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc, and Kinsella & Pulse front person TIM KINSELLA

Spiritual teacher and abundance explorer PILAR LESKO

Rapper and cultural theorist VIC MENSA

Artist and journalist UNA MULLALLY

Writer and Team Human host DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

On this episode Mitch and I talk about the resolutions sent in by these past AEWCH guests, and I hope our discussion inspires you to come up with a meaningful resolution for yourself, whether you’re listening to this before the year turns over to 2026, or in the days, weeks, and months that follow.
A New Year’s resolution is an expression of vulnerability. They reveal how we see ourselves, our strengths, and our failings, in relationship to the world.
So I (and Mitch!) encourage you to make them, and offer thoughts on how and why.
May this episode be a small well to draw nourishment from whenever you need to access some resolve.
With love, always with love,
CH
Support the show: patreon.com/connerhabib
Sign up for a yearlong tarot reading, The Year of Light, with Conner by January 5 2026 and get a discount when you use the code: brandnewyear
At AEWCH.square.site

In this double-length and in-depth episode, I look at the social-political project of the late 19th early 20th century occultist, philosopher, and social reformer Rudolf Steiner with scholars and academics Aaron French and Henry Holland, who are writing Steiner's biography for SUNY Press, and have just offered the keynote at Harvard University's conference on Rudolf Steiner's life and work.
On this episode, we attend to a question Henry asks:
“Is a leftist reading of Steiner possible?"
Please support this show on patreon:
Patreon.com/connerhabib

Friends,
This is the fourth episode* in a series called The Spirit-Era and Its Aftermaths in which I look at the way spiritual, technological, and occult flourishings at the turn of the 19th into 20th century are still with us today, and in fact, being echoed by our own time.
This time, we’re moving closer and closer to our present age, away from the Spirit-Era and into its aftermaths, tracking the ways that paranormal investigations, and paranormal phenomena themselves, changed as they emerged from that era.
And I look into all of the with my guest, journalist ⁠BEN MACHELL⁠, author of the compulsively readable and also illuminating book ⁠Chasing the Dark: A 140-Year Investigation of Paranormal Activity⁠.
One thing I’ve noticed again and again in researching and recording this series of episodes is that the so-called esoteric, the miraculous, the paranormal are all common.
Whether it’s a haunting, someone who is able to accomplish a feat of endurance, or the ways in which the world is simply very strange if we just look at it without taking it for granted: these are not aberrant occurrences. We have all experienced them, or heard about someone who has, or have shared stories about them, or have found some evidence for them or theorized about them.
So when we tell stories about the paranormal, we are really just telling stories about the normal world.
In Ben’s book, he takes a long and thoughtful journey following the life and work of paranormal investigator Tony Cornell, a member of the Society for Psychical Research who appeared on TV, wrote books, and even was featured in a computer magazine for building a device to try to detect paranormal phenomenon. But unlike the performative ghost conjurers of the late 19th century or the fakirs in the early 20th, Tony (1924 - 2010) wasn’t trying to create spectacular performance, and wasn’t motivated purely by egotistical posturing as a debunker either. Rather he sought to understand what was really happening in people’s lives.
Through following Tony, Ben depicts a fascinating alternate history of the everyday: people simply living their lives, but then experiencing something they don’t understand and can't explain, something that feels out of place to reality itself. Sometimes the unexplainable isn’t the phenomena, but a feeling, a need to cry for help.
So a picture begins to emerge - the paranormal as the presence of motivators - whether in our own behavior or in furniture and dishes flying through the air that we can’t grasp, that we need help with.
What a change from where the Spirit-Era started, with the frightening glamour of the table rapping spirits and the ectoplasmic bonds of spiritualist gatherings. And what a difference, also, from the spiritual thinkers who sought to create coherent theories. Here, the theories fell away in the face of spontaneous phenomena for which there were no experts. But if there were an expert, Tony Cornell would be the best of them; and his approach was to live with the uncertain, the unknown.
Support the show: ⁠PATREON.COM/CONNERHABIB