Founded in May of 2019, The Emerald podcast explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, music, and imagination. Brought to life through the wise, wild, and humorous vision of Joshua Michael Schrei, The Emerald draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more.
At the heart of the podcast is the premise that the imaginative, poetic, animate heart of human experience — elucidated by so many cultures over so many thousands of years — is missing in modern discourse and is urgently needed at a time when humanity is facing unprecedented problems. The Emerald advocates for an imaginative vision of human life and human discourse as it questions deep underlying assumptions about societal progress.
As likely to source from the Wu Tang Clan as the ancient Indian Vedas, and featuring guests such as anthropologist and award-winning author Wade Davis, philosopher Bayo Akomolafe, award-winning author Ann Wroe, noted indigenous author Tyson Yunkaporta and more, The Emerald offers a green glint of wonder in a world that needs to be reacquainted with its own beating heart.
Eyes have always held sway over the human imagination — mesmerized us, scared us, inspired us. The windows to the soul, they’ve been called. They’ve been the subject of song and poetry, folklore and myth. Consciousness, in the Indian texts,…
We often assume that Paleolithic people lived in a world that was fundamentally less than ours because they didn’t yet have what we have. We assume that their existence was incomplete, because it hadn’t yet culminated in us. Yet new…
Bette Midler recently made headlines for tweeting a picture of three girls at a museum distracted by their phones instead of admiring the art. Yet the context in which we view art tends to be just as compartmentalized and distracting…
A few weeks back, wizard-yogi-talkshow host Russell Brand interviewed scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his podcast Under the Skin. It’s the November 1st, 2019 episode and it’s highly worth listening to. On the show, Neil puts forward some commonly held…
In this poetic ode to the animate vision of the cosmos that has been so central to humanity for so long, we explore the idea that the ritual heart of both culture and cosmos itself is poetry, and that poetry…
The power of myth exists beyond representation and symbolism. Myths grow out of a time when to utter the word ‘sky’ around a fire at night would transmit something directly to the listener, something very different than the experience of…
Bears have been right at the center of pan-global belief systems for a very long time, causing some anthropologists to speak of a circumpolar bear cult dating back possibly over 100,000 years. Given the role that animals have played in…
What’s the point? Well, far from being an image of smallness or insignificance, the single point, the dot communicates a lot. In fact, in India, there are songs devoted to the point, texts that extol its radiant qualities, practices designed…
Cauldrons — cooking vessels — have been part of the human experience and have captured the human imagination for a very long time, from the ancient Celtic cauldron myths to Shakespeare’s archetypal vision of three crones and their bubbling brew…
In this episode we take a deep dive into the abyss — the seemingly unbridgeable gap that exists between science and spirit. Are there places where science — which sees the universe as something that, to quote physicist Stephen Hawking,…
The active practice of imaginative visioning has been utterly central for many societies. Far from being fantasy, such practices reinforce a deep understanding of the cosmos in which the active cultivation of imagination relates directly to tangible actualization — the…
The word ‘enchanted’ is used a lot, from old fairy tales to modern pop culture. But enchantment is not something reserved for fairy stories or for vague tingling feelings when we encounter something mysteriously wonderful. What if I were to…
