Best Emma OBrien Podcasts (2025)

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Building Bridges, Breaking Cycles: Personal Stories of Healing, Social Justice & Activism 12:59

1d ago12:59

12:59

How do our personal relationships affect political movements and activism? What can we learn from Native American tradition to restore ecological balance? How can transforming capitalism help address global inequality and the environmental crisis? DEAN SPADE (Author of Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell T…

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Episode 15: 5 Principles to Shift your Perspective on Life 12:10

2d ago12:10

12:10

Send us a text I stumbled upon the 5 Principles I reference in this podcast episode whilst Googling Shamanic stuff and although they are touted as Shamanic laws, my talking points for this episode are actually the 5 Principles of Open Space Technology created by Owen Harrison. Listen to see why they have been mistaken for more magical, mystical pri…

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What would it be like to live 100 milion years? Life in the Deep Subsurface Biosphere - Highlights 9:23

6d ago9:23

9:23

“I want to draw the similarities with alien life, and we have these questions. They're the same questions that we would be asking if we could get a sample from Europa or if we could get a sample from Mars. I think the parallels are partly in how we study them. They're teaching us how to look for strange life, but then they're also teaching us about…

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INTRATERRESTRIALS: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth with KAREN G. LLOYD 41:55

9d ago41:55

41:55

“It's really changed my view of what life is. So many of the things that we attribute to the trappings of life look like requirements, like oxygen and sunlight. All the things that humans would absolutely die without — they’re not really necessary for life. Studying these things sort of breaks down what is necessary; what are the things that life h…

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God Awful Gaming – Noah Lugeons 1:16:01

16d ago1:16:01

1:16:01

In this talk, Noah Lugeons combines two of his passions; video game history and terrible Christian media. In so doing, he explores both the history of Christian video games and the larger role that Christianity has played in the development of secular games. In a who’s who of the worst video games of all time, Noah will guide the audience through a…

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Exploring Trauma, Healing & the Creative Process with Author LIZ MOORE - Highlights 12:13

16d ago12:13

12:13

“I think income inequality really greatly contributes to the rage that people might feel, even as some Americans won't. What don't recognize that a more communal society might benefit them. What they see instead is, why don't I have what that person has? Something's getting in my way. And it's not a lack of, of community, it's: somebody else is kee…

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Family, Addiction & Overcoming Trauma - LIZ MOORE on Long Bright River starring AMANDA SEYFRIED 49:08

17d ago49:08

49:08

“ I've lived in Philadelphia for about 16 years. The book itself was inspired by my time spent in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia interviewing a lot of the people that I met there, both longtime residents of the neighborhood and also people who were transient, a lot of people struggling with addiction and a lot of women doing sex work…

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PAUL LYNCH discusses Prophet Song, Beyond the Sea & his Creative Process - Highlights 18:19

23d ago18:19

18:19

"The country spoke Irish largely before it spoke English. Grammatically, the structure of Irish is different from English. As Ireland adopted the English language, this sort of hybridization started to occur, where the English language was placed on top of Irish grammatical constructions. You get this slipperiness, this ability to move sentences, t…

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Episode 14: How To Build Resilience 17:16

23d ago17:16

17:16

Send us a text I went for a walk on the wild side and ended up falling into a pile of sh*t. But I'll tell you what I got out of it, aside from sore feet and 6.5 hours of suffering; resilience. You build resilience by doing hard things and in this episode I share what happened when I overestimated my hiking skills along with my ability to dress appr…

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On Storytelling & The Human Condition with Booker Prize Winner PAUL LYNCH 48:39

24d ago48:39

48:39

“We narrate the story of our lives to ourselves. We narrate it in linear fashion. And I know many writers have played with time in all sorts of amazing ways, but we're storytellers. This is what we do. And if you give the brain a story, a prepackaged story, you're giving a cheesecake. That's what it wants. That's why it loves stories. That's why o…

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OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE - Environmentalists, Artists, Scientists & Earth Defenders Share their Stories 18:34

25d ago18:34

18:34

We are privileged to present the voices of individuals dedicated to effecting change and mitigating the harm inflicted upon our precious planet. These are individuals deeply committed to the core values that drive positive transformation. Thank you for tuning in to our episodes and for your ongoing dedication to stewarding our planet, not just on E…

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Performance, Politics, Art & Society w/ Sociologist RICHARD SENNETT - Highlights 12:43

29d ago12:43

12:43

“I'm really interested in the relation between performance and ritual. Where do those two separate?” Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, attended the Juilliard School in New York, and then studied social relations at Harvard. Over the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labo…

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The Performer: Art, Life, Politics with RICHARD SENNETT, Sociologist & Author 31:57

1M ago31:57

31:57

“We look at creative work as though the very creative process itself is something good. These are tools of expression, and like any tool, you can use them to damage something or to make something. They can be turned to very malign purposes, for instance, in the operas of Wagner. So I wanted to do this set of books, I want to show what is kind of th…

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Episode 13: How to Communicate More Effectively 22:42

1M ago22:42

22:42

Send us a text Inspired by a catastrophic miscommunication with ChatGPT that reminded me of the importance of CLEARLY asking for EXACTLY what I want, this is an episode where I share how to ask for what you want and get it. If you struggle to get your needs met despite (thinking) you've asked directly, this episode is for you. I share: What clear c…

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Exploring the Extremes of the Human Experience with Neurologist DR. GUY LESCHZINER - Highlights 14:14

1M ago14:14

14:14

“One of the things that hopefully my books illustrate is that everybody's mind is different. And one of the amazing things about the human experience–and indeed that manifests in terms of art and creativity–is that when we have such different minds, that is why all this creativity, all this art is possible.” Dr. Guy Leschziner is the author of The …

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Sleep, The Nocturnal Brain & The Biology of Being Human w/ DR. GUY LESCHZINER, Neurologist 50:39

1M ago50:39

50:39

“ I'm fascinated by the extremes of the human experience, partly because it is so far removed from our own experience of life. In another way, when you look at people who have neurological disorders or diseases, these are really nature's experiments. They are ways of trying to understand how the brain works for all of us. By extrapolation from look…

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ADAM MOSS - Fmr. Editor of New York Magazine, Author, Artist on Creativity as a Process - Highlights 14:23

1M ago14:23

14:23

“When I was working at the Times and the Times Magazine, on one Tuesday morning, the towers fell. September 11, 2001. The magazine had a 10-day lead time, so it was a weekly that was essentially 10 days old by the time it came out. We came to work and realized the world had changed, and the entire process, the magazine had been made for over a hund…

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On Postactivism, Justice & Decolonization with BAYO AKOMOLAFE - Highlights 10:13

1M ago10:13

10:13

“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism’ in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.” Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort …

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The Future of Activism: When Solutions Become Problems w/ BAYO AKOMOLAFE 41:30

1M ago41:30

41:30

“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and …

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KATIE KITAMURA on Language, Identity & the Search for Agency - Highlights 10:04

1M ago10:04

10:04

“This novel is the third in what I see as a little set of books that all feature unnamed female protagonists who have experienced varying degrees of passivity and agency in their lives. They're all women who speak the words of other people.” Katie Kitamura is the author five novels, most recently Audition and Intimacies, which was named one of the …

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Art, Performance & the Illusion of Agency - KATIE KITAMURA on her new novel AUDITION 32:31

1M ago32:31

32:31

“I'm really interested in the formal aspect of characters who are channeling language, who are speaking the words of other people, and in characters who are aware of how little agency they actually have, who have passivity forced upon them, who perhaps even embrace their passivity to a certain extent but eventually seek out where they can enact the…

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JARON LANIER on Tech, Music, Creativity & Who Owns the Future - Highlights 13:29

1M ago13:29

13:29

“What I meant when I said there is no AI is that I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we confuse ourselves too easily. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the …

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AI, Virtual Reality & Dawn of the New Everything w/ JARON LANIER, Father of VR, Musician, Author 49:13

1M ago49:13

49:13

“AI is obviously the dominant topic in tech lately, and I think occasionally there's AI that's nonsense, and occasionally there's AI that's great. I love finding new proteins for medicine and so on. I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we're really getting a little …

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Episode 12: Productivity Hacks for Procrastinators 14:05

2M ago14:05

14:05

Send us a text Are you an expert level procrastinator? Do you often get to the end of the day having been incredibly busy, yet you've achieved very little? Are you fed up of working really hard but not making progress? If "yes" was your answer to any of the above, this episode is for you. As someone who could win gold at the procrastination Olympic…

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Why is there so much conflict over people, land and resources? AUDREA LIM - Highlights 11:37

2M ago11:37

11:37

“When I first started writing this book, it really foregrounded the problems within our land ownership system, which treats land as a commodity. The way we talk about land and issues like racial and food justice reflects this. We tend to focus on the problems, attaching big concepts to them, such as racial justice or environmental justice. I realiz…

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Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy? JAMES FISHKIN - Highlights 14:02

2M ago14:02

14:02

“The three ills of democracy that I propose to address with this method, which we've perfected over the last several decades. Democracy is supposed to make some connection with the "will of the people." But how can we estimate the will of the people when everyone is trying to manipulate it?” James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in Interna…

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Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty & Climate Chaos with AUDREA LIM 50:10

2M ago50:10

50:10

Why is there so much conflict over people, land, and resources? How can we rethink capitalism and land ownership to create a fairer, more equitable society? Audrea Lim is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and journalist whose work focuses on land, energy, and the environment. Her writing has appeared in TheNew Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, the N…

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What is Deliberative Democracy & How Can it Serve Society? w/ JAMES S. FISHKIN 49:08

2M ago49:08

49:08

“Deliberative democracy is itself, when properly done, a kind of democracy that can speak to the interests of a community. And we need that all over the world.” James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Se…

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Emma OBrien Podcasts

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