The Emerald
The Emerald explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. Brought to life through the wise, wild, and humorous vision of Joshua Michael Schrei — a teacher and lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — the podcast 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.
- Update frequency
- every 22 days
- Average duration
- 69 minutes
- Episodes
- 94
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
Sei and Her Soul Are Separated: The Colonization of Consciousness and Reclaiming the Visionary State
In the modern western understanding of consciousness, certain states are afforded the status of more important, or real, than others. The visionary state of meditative trance, which has been critical…
Dispatches from the Cremation Ground: Comfort, Discomfort, and Surrender in Practice
Modern yoga has put forward a vision of the whole human being that revolves around comfort, ease, freedom from pain, and the healing of trauma. Yet in many cultures, what we call discomfort is active…
The Shamanic Vonnegut: Or, The Fine Art of Hearing the Purple Hum
In his classic novel Slaughterhouse Five, about four-dimensional alien beings and a protagonist that has come unstuck in time, Kurt Vonnegut describes death as 'violet light and a hum.' The state of …
Homer, Tolkien, and the Heart of the Visionary Experience: A Conversation with Robert Tindall
This week on The Emerald, a conversation with author Robert Tindall on Homer, Tolkien, Paleolithic cave art, Zen koans, Shakespeare, sacred song, and the visionary, animistic consciousness that conne…
Stone Soup: In Which I Argue Strongly in Favor of The Worship of Rocks
Sacred stones are ubiquitous across India. You find them in villages, in rural shrines, and in major urban temples that see tens of thousands of pilgrims a day. Shiva, the third most popular deity on…
The Fauna Mandala: Animals, Imagination, and Consciousness
Animals have not only ‘shared the planet’ with human beings as we often hear on nature shows, which of course is a noble description intended to cultivate empathy for animals and urgency around their…
Who Gets To Claim Objective Reality? An Imaginative Dive Into Cultural Fictions Along the Science-Spirit Divide
"I mean seriously, what's more out of touch with objective reality? The Lakota sense of Wakan-tanka, mother and father nature, mirrored in cultures and traditions around the globe. Or, say... Wal-Mar…
Dismembered Frost Giants and the Core-Power Paradox — Self-Care Meets Self-Obliteration in an Identity-Driven World.
Ancient visions of cosmic dismemberment and ego destruction meet modern yoga practice with its focus on self-care and self-worth in this episode of The Emerald.
In creation myths around the world, fro…
The Yoga of Gun Control, The Grail Myth, and the Healing of the American Wound
In this mytho-poetic look at one of the defining modern political issues, Josh explores ideas of freedom, empathy, and responsibility and how they are viewed in various cultures, cosmologies, and myt…
Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World: A Conversation With Wade Davis
What can we learn from those who can read the ocean like we can read words on a page? How can we transform how we view culture when modern western culture likes to position itself as the top of the c…
The Bright and Bristling Mind: Hair in Imagination and Myth
Have you ever looked at your dog and wondered what it feels like to have whiskers? Those bristling antennae, so bright and alive... Or have you put your hand on one of those globes at a science museu…
The Cow in the Elevator — An Anthropology of Wonder. An Interview with Professor Tulasi Srinavas
Today on the Emerald, we dive a little further into the topic of wonder. Not wonder as just a fleeting feeling, but rather wonder as a state of consciousness deliberately architected through creative…
The Case of the Man Who Grew Horns: Imagination as a Driving Force of the Human Experience
Today on The Emerald. How did paleolithic and neolithic peoples see the world? What if, as an increasing number of anthropologists now think, they had access to a trance state — a vision-space — that…
Notre Dame in Flames, The Goddess Isis, and the Architecture of Consciousness
In this inaugural episode of The Emerald we take a look at some of the more mythic implications of the 2019 Notre Dame fire, the place that buildings hold in human consciousness and myth, as well as …