A co-learning journey with The Emerald Podcast’s Josh Schrei

+ Special Guests Michael Garfield, Andrew Dunn, Elena Lake Polozova, Turquoise Sound, Mara Zepeda, Sara Jolena Wolcott, Evan Sharp

🗓️ April 18 - May 16

🗺️ Online

🎟️ Enroll here

✨ TL;DR

Inspired by The Emerald Podcast’s episode on AI, magic, and responsibility, this course is for anyone interested in the relationship between myth, ritual, ethics, business and technology.

People from all walks of life — engineers, innovators, educators, business leaders, artists, coaches, counselors, and ritualists — will learn valuable new perspectives and practices.

Over five weeks of talks, co-learning sessions, and online discourse, you will:

Study what diverse societies through history can teach us in the modern era about power, technology, responsibility, and living in right relation with non/human intelligences
Make connections and engage in stimulating discourse with dozens of kindred spirits
Work both alone and together to apply new insights to your life, organization, and projects
Develop a more grounded, curious, and proactive stance toward technological innovation
Exercise better solo and group sense-making for our era of exponential change

🪄 Context & Intention

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The rapid evolution of AI has prompted widespread discourse about the benefits and risks of transformative technologies, the fundamental nature of intelligence, and how to better wield and regulate accelerating innovation. But when policymakers can’t keep track of all the change and tech companies are slaved to relentless market pressures, ethics cannot simply be imposed from above.This moment asks us to look deeper into how human beings throughout history have constructed individual, ecological, and societal frameworks for using power wisely. This course is for anyone who feels a call to embody tech ethics in individual and collective behavior — to navigate the complexity of this century with head and heart, and wield our magic tools with wisdom.

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Last year storyteller Josh Schrei’s podcast episode ‘So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers’ challenged listeners to explore the AI through the lenses of myth, magic, and ritual. Schrei’s immensely popular recording made waves in the tech space and joined a rich body of earlier scholarship — including works by Erik Davis, Michael Garfield, and Sam Arbesman — exploring how occult and religious thought shapes the stories people tell about technology and the ways we use it. But it’s one thing to read and listen to these explorations, and another to engage in them together. The time has come for us to engage in more deliberate and holistic sense-making about the roles of initiation, accountability, long-term thinking, and ethical design in an age where thoughts almost instantly become things.

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Core human drives animate our urge to tinker with the world and its intelligences: the longing for mystery, the desire to return to a world of uncontrollable great powers, and ultimately, a yearning for guidance and initiation. When we understand the deeper forces at play, we can begin to establish personal practices and communal frameworks that temper such drives and give them structures for healthy expression. There are enormous consequences for how we live, how we practice, how we launch and run companies, and even how we code.

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In this five-part course, Josh and special guests — including former members of Meta, The Center for Humane Technology, and The Santa Fe Institute — will explore what it means to adapt at every level, individual and collective, to an era of exponential technology “indistinguishable from magic.”

ℹ️ Logistics

Course offerings are all optional. Recordings will be shared after each session. Asynchronous chat and office hours form a substantial part of this co-learning group’s process and opportunities to build meaningful new relationships with each other.

5 Live Virtual Sessions

Thursdays 12:00 - 2:00 pm PT (April 18, April 25, May 2, May 9, May 16)
90-minute presentations followed by Q&A and small-group discussions

Pre-recorded guest lectures with experts and role models (more info below)
Weekly Office Hours (Mondays 12:00 - 1:00 pm PT) with Andrew and Elena
A Private Forum for 24/7 engagement with other participants
Additional inquiries and practices for you to explore on your own time
Ongoing access to all course materials in perpetuity

✅ Enrollment

We offer a sliding scale payment model in accordance with various levels of financial ability as follows:

Executive Rate: $900 for those of greater financial means (including access to corporate budget) who understand the amount of work that goes into creating a course like this and want to support the long-term vision
Professional Rate: $600 for professionals and those able to contribute a little more to the vision
Student Rate: $300 for students and practitioners with little expendable income
Scholarships Available for the technologically unemployed. Tell us your story!

🎟️ Enroll Here

📚 Embodied Ethics Curriculum

Toggle each heading for more details:

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Part 1: The Mythic Implications of AI

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Part 2: Individual Initiation in the Age of AI

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Part 3: Ecologies of Accountability

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Part 4: Re-prioritizing Slow Growth

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Part 5: Towards Embodied Intelligence

🧑‍💻 Meet Your Course Leaders

Joshua Michael Schrei (Teacher) is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast, which 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. A writer, teacher, and a lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — in particular, the Indian subcontinent — Josh has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision. Josh has taught intensive courses in cosmology, mythology, and somatic disciplines for nearly 20 years.

Michael Gregory Garfield (Host) is the host of Future Fossils Podcast, a transdisciplinary discussion series exploring the edges of the known and knowable. Trained in paleontology before touring the world as an artist and musician, Michael joined The Santa Fe Institute in 2018 to host their flagship systems science podcast Complexity. He left academia for the second time in 2023 to work for a non-profit AI startup and write two books about the past and future of human-technology co-evolution. In his spare time he has released over 100 hours of original music for film, yoga, deep listening, and journeywork.

Elena Lake Polozova (TA) is a former machine learning engineer at Meta, turned private-practice bodyworker and student of the mythosomatic. She also has 6 years of experience in math, computer science, and physics academia, as well as deep inquiries into nature connection, emotional spaceholding, and dance. She’ll bring her interdisciplinary backgrounds across embodiment and technology to help answer your questions at the office hours.

Andrew Murray Dunn (Producer) is a student at the intersection of human development and innovation, currently focused on co-activating Wise Innovation Project. He works as a trans-disciplinary visionary and pollinator, helping people bring ideas to life in ways that are more awesome for all involved. Before serving as Innovation Lead at Center for Humane Technology, Andrew spent over 10 years in early stage startup operations experience, most notably with the pioneering Public Benefit Corporation Siempo while they developed an award-winning open source humane smartphone interface.

🎙️Special Guest Speakers

Mara Zepeda Co-founder, Zebras Unite

Turquoise Sound Leadership, Culture & Strategic Advisory

Sara Jolena Wolcott Ecotheologist, Sequoia Samanvaya

Evan Sharp Co-founder, Pinterest

🙋🏼‍♀️ FAQ

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Who is this for?

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I can’t make these dates / times. Will you offer the course again?

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Are there any volunteer opportunities?

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Is there a refund policy?

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How can I get in touch?

This course is the first major offering from Wise Innovation Project, an emerging non-profit initiative with a mission to re-imagine innovation education.

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