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

Plus, Special Guests Michael Garfield, Andrew Dunn, Elena Lake Polozova, Turquoise Sound, Mara Zapeda, Sara Jolena Wolcott, and Evan Sharp

🗓️ 4/18, 4/25, 5/2, 5/9, 5/16

🗺️ 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 24/7 ambient 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

ℹ️ Logistics

Course offerings are all optional. Recordings will be shared after each session for attendees to reflect and for anyone who can’t attend live. Asynchronous chat and office hours form a substantial part of this co-learning group’s process and your opportunities to build meaningful new relationships with others in the course.

• 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 Michael
• A Private Discord 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

The value you get from this course depends on the contributions of everyone involved — which is why we have adopted a flexible co-learning model and multiple tiers of financial support. Given how hard it is to cultivate both financial capital and free time for learning, we hope that this structure helps each participant pool their distinct wealth into a program that enriches everyone:

• Student Rate: $300 for students and low-income practitioners.
• Professional Rate: $600 for middle-income salaried tech workers and academics.
• Executive Rate: $900 for those of greater means (including access to corporate budget) who want to support this team’s contributions to crucial discourse and community-building.
• Scholarships Available for the technologically unemployed. Tell us your story!

📚 Outline

Toggle each heading for more details:

🧑‍💻 Team

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 series of discussions at the edges of the known and knowable. Trained in evolutionary biology before touring the world as an artist and musician, Michael joined The Santa Fe Institute in 2018 to run their #scicomm social media and flagship complexity science podcast. He left in 2023 to research innovation and computing for Mozilla, help launch an open source AI non-profit, and write essays on the future of human-technology co-evolution. In his spare time he has produced 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 six years of experience in math, computer science, and physics academia, as well as deep inquiries into nature connection, emotional space-holding, 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 the Wise Innovation Project. He works as a transdisciplinary 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 ten years in early stage startup operations — most notably with the pioneering Public Benefit Corporation Siempo while they developed an award-winning open source humane smartphone interface.

🎙️ Guest Speakers

Mara Zapeda Co-founder, Zebras Unite

Turquoise Sound Leadership, Culture & Strategic Advisory

Sara Jolena Wolcott Ecotheologist, Sequoia Samanvaya

Evan Sharp Co-founder, Pinterest

🙋🏼‍♀️ FAQ

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