Hi, this is Against Everyone with Connor Habib, a podcast featuring my conversations with countercultural figures and presenting complex, political, philosophical, and spiritual ideas in an engaging and accessible way.

I'm very excited to share this episode with my friend Abby Martin, journalist, documentarian, activist, creator of the Empire Files. But I have to sort of

preface it for a few reasons with some things that are on my mind, and they all relate to love.

And one reason is because that's what Abby and I talk about on this episode.

So I know some of you might have just heard Abby on Joe Rogan recently or Tim Dillon or wherever you heard her.

And you're getting that really intense, really cutting, journal, quality of Abby. But I've known Abby for a long time now,

and I know that there's so many more things to talk about. And one of the things that we

talk about in this episode, mostly actually, is love. You might have noticed that I've turned

towards talking about that on this show. The last episode, episode 159, I did with Duncan

Trussell. That's what I talked about, how love had sort of taken the center of my life and how I'd been transformed by seeing things differently through this lens and through feeling a sense of love.

And so I knew I needed to bring that to this conversation with Abby.

But there's something else going on to.

And it didn't happen until after I finished recording this episode with Abby.

I found out a few hours later that my stepfather had died. And I hadn't seen my stepfather for about 20 years.

My mom died when I was 23 and going on 24. And she was married to my stepfather at the time and after she died I lost contact with

him and then you know so last night I found out that he died.

And it really relates to a lot of things that Abby and I talk about,

but I probably would talk about it even if it didn't at the top of the show.

But it does really relate to this episode.

You know, my stepfather was a complicated person for me to be around growing up.

You know, I have a brother and a sister, but they didn't really grow up around him the same way I did.

I was in the house with him as a kid still in high school and I spent a lot of time with him.

...