Hi, this is Against Everyone with Connor Habib, a podcast featuring my conversations with countercultural

figures and presenting complex, philosophical, spiritual, and political ideas in an engaging and accessible

way. Well, friends, hello. I am very excited to share this episode with a cult scholar, a paranormal

scholar, Terrier G. Simonson, who is the author of the excellent

and huge book, a very extensive, a short history of nearly everything paranormal, our secret

powers, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. But before that, I just want to say something about the paranormal,

something about the occult. You know, I often bring up these topics on the show,

and a lot of times, even though I have a non-materialist experience of the world and I strive to have an even less materialist worldview than I do, I end up sometimes scolding magic and parapsychology and doing, you know, ayahuasca or whatever on the show, because I think there are all these

sort of little hooks in it that can bring us back to a materialistic worldview, which can

funnel us into a capitalist worldview, can funnel us into a consumerist worldview, or funnel us into a bad

version of a socialist worldview. And I don't want any of that. I want us to really strive for

what non-materiality might mean. So if you're new to the show, just bear with me. The rest of

what I say will make sense, even if that didn't.

Talking with Turier, I realized how important for some people the validation of having

a supernatural, paranormal, parapsychological, synchronous experience might be.

You know, I'm kind of in this episode, I mean, we get along great, but I give a little

scold or a little jab or whatever where I say, you know, clairvoyance, you know,

we talk about that as being somehow non-materialistic, but if people are viewing things

in physical images, material images,

like you see where someone misplaced their ring or where, you know, a body is or whatever,

you're still resorting to materialism.

Interior, he just pushes back on that very gently and really well, and he says, yes, but that gives me sometimes the kind of grounding that I need to go along with this.

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