Our Story
What happened in Vegas…
The idea for Wild Talk was hatched in one of the more unnatural places on the planet: a Las Vegas conference center. Emily and Jay were both attending a sprawling digital health conference where many great minds from across the industry had gathered in climate controlled rooms to share stories of innovation in distilled soundbites and slick powerpoint presentations. Everything about this setup felt like the antithesis of what the actual, messy, complicated world of healthcare transformation truly is.
As Emily and Jay shared a meal in one of those dark yet shiny Las Vegas restaurants, they both felt something was deeply wrong. How could we possibly have the honest conversations needed to reimagine care in this country while sequestered in this improbable city filled with fountains in the desert? How could we get these conversations about disruption and innovation closer to the source - somewhere the theory was forced to come face to face with reality? And how might that change of setting influence our thinking?
Jay had just returned from a hike through red rock canyons with a dozen leaders in healthcare technology where the natural setting seemed to help everyone connect on a new level and conversation took on a larger scope and more human shape. What would happen if we dropped the pretense of our climate controlled lives and talked about our work in settings where we’re most vulnerable?
As the matcha ice cream disappeared and the bourbons were replenished, the idea for Wild Talk was born. We would travel to these big conferences and deliberately un-conference the conversations. Taking attendees away for an afternoon or an evening to a park or nature preserve to share a meal and talk without boundaries.
The pandemic forced Jay, a cancer survivor with a compromised system, and Emily, a senior leader at a New York health system smack dab in the epicenter of the crisis, to reconsider their plans. Both Emily and Jay still felt a deep need to be out of doors, and having conversations with others grappling with uncertainty took on a whole new sense of urgency.
We decided to set up one-on-one conversations with the brightest minds we could get to join us - no limits on areas of expertise, just a mission to find others working at the outer edges of their field. We’d go for socially distanced hikes or meet ups, record the conversations and synthesize the material into a podcast we could share out to the wider community.
While we planned, the gods laughed.
There’s No Map for Where We’re Going
Yeah, we know. Everyone’s making a podcast these days. But it turns out that audio is actually a great way to get your mind connected to the natural world, as we learned from our first guest, psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist Dr. Julie Holland. So we strive to capture ambient sounds — birds, leaves crunching underfoot, running water — along with our own voices so that nature is there with the listener as part of the conversation. The sound bath has a calming effect that we hope allows the words to sink in deeper and inspire new connections.
Nature humbles us, reminds us of our place in the grand scheme of things. The natural world is out of our control, but not beyond our influence. This tension forces us to take our own ambitions and see them for what they are —especially for people who work in fields that explore the outer bounds of human knowledge, grappling with chaos with an open heart and a strong back is part of the job description.
We hope you join us for some Wild Talk. Let’s step outside.
Emily & Jay
The Creators
Hosts Emily and Jay, and producer Matt are all writers, musicians and occasional wedding officiants. But what drew them together to create Wild Talk was a shared love of wide-ranging conversations, unexpected connections and how built and natural environments inform our lives.
Jay Erickson
Jay Erickson is a Co-Founder & Chief Innovation Officer at Modus, a global digital agency. Jay is also a poet, musician, producer, entrepreneur, beekeeper, carpenter, cancer survivor and blogger, wanderer and gardener. He lives in Pawling, NY with his wife, daughters, chickens, bees and cat.
Emily Kagan-Trenchard
Emily Kagan-Trenchard is the VP of Digital & Innovation Strategy at Northwell Health, New York’s largest private health system. She is also a poet and writer exploring what it means to give and receive care in the digital age. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and 2 kids.
Matt Dellinger
Matt Dellinger has worked as a journalist, digital archivist, podcast producer and host and dabbles as a photographer, singer, civil war living historian, and wedding officiant. He lives in Brooklyn.