If Gaining Myself Means Losing Everything Else I Think That's A Good Trade
Fig Willow discusses neurodivergence, navigating transness, and embracing personal timelines with Emme in an interview, highlighting the importance of self-acceptance.
9 Jul 2025
Holding Masculinity Accountable Means Holding Them
Emme Kay interviews Toby Fraser about masculinity, transfemininity, gender dysphoria, and vulnerability, exploring the parallels and divergences between masculinity and transfemininity.
30 Jun 2025
Why I Left the United States
Emme Kay answers questions about her move from the United States to Canada, addressing fears, hopes, and perspectives on U.S. actions in this interview episode.
17 Mar 2025
Swimming in Dick Pics And Then Everyone's Out of the Pool
Emme sits down with Adrienne Gomez, 4th generation Latina and bisexual comedian who runs Sizzling Singles, a queer dating show running monthly right now at the famous Stonewall Inn! She chats with Emme about swimming in dick pics when she didn't love herself, but now that she does, it's like "everyone -- out of the pool!!" (her joke, fantastic). We talk all about being single, being unemployed/looking for work, and being queer -- and of course Emme goes on a few trans-related rants too. Come for the jokes to entertain you, stay for the jokes we use to cope! For tickets to Sizzling Singles, head here: https://partiful.com/e/ZapxANIIQdORD6zSraYJ
You can see Emme's stand-up on:
-- Monday, March 17th at Alix's partner's co-produced event Going Acoustic at Quig's, the bar above Plays & Players at 17th & Delancey in Philadelphia.
-- Wednesday, March 19th for Sizzling Singles at Stonewall Inn (yes, that Stonewall) on Christopher St in NYC
-- Saturday, March 22nd for Night of the Living DEI at Studio 34 in West Philly, benefitting the Masculinity Action Project
and finally back at Quig's on Sunday, March 23rd for Your Sunday's Best
Times are all roughly 7pm, but look it up to be sure!
14 Mar 2025
Manic Pixie Fat Jew
Emme welcomes her artistic inspiration to start doing stand-up: the amazing dramaturgical, writerly, and loud annoying Jew Alix Rosenfeld (written incredibly tongue in cheek). She talks with Emme all about medical challenges, fat (GASP) and weight gain and food and culture, and losing friends over this moment in world history. Check out the Third Narrative podcast she mentions in the conversation at https://thirdnarrative.org/.
You can see Emme's stand-up on:
-- Monday, March 17th at Alix's partner's co-produced event Going Acoustic at Quig's, the bar above Plays & Players at 17th & Delancey in Philadelphia.
-- Wednesday, March 19th for Sizzling Singles at Stonewall Inn (yes, that Stonewall) on Christopher St in NYC
-- Saturday, March 22nd for Night of the Living DEI at Studio 34 in West Philly, benefitting the Masculinity Action Project
and finally back at Quig's on Sunday, March 23rd for Your Sunday's Best
Times are all roughly 7pm, but look it up to be sure!
24 Feb 2025
What Even Is Masculinity?
Emme sits down with her first CISGENDERED MALE guest, Eric Wunsch, a stand-up guy who's dabbled in stand-up, had a career in theatre, and left it for the physical world of farming. Eric brings sensitivity, depth, curiosity, and enthusiasm to the question of "what even is masculinity?" and we sort of solve it. You know, by accepting it's the endlessly complex and uncertain thing all of this gender stuff is. Listen in.
14 Feb 2025
Death Cramps: Cuz We've Never Really Studied the Female Body
On Inauguration Day 2025, Emme sat down with old Museum Hack/Caveat/NYC theatre compatriot, magnificent podcast producer, and dear friend Kate Helen Downey as Los Angeles continued to be on fire to talk about a DIFFERENT kind of pain and confusion, that of death cramps. Yes, an elephant in the room for MOST people with uteruses -- menstruation, and especially dysmenorrhea and what causes it and where it comes from. Kate's new podcast CRAMPED is a limited series deep dive into researching and communicating about not only her mystery condition, but women's health and the medical system and why we can't figure out what's going on with SO MANY PEOPLE's experiences of intense pain. Find CRAMPED wherever you get your podcasts, it is well worth the listen and quite an inspiration for me too.
7 Feb 2025
A Romanian and Canadian Walk Into an American Clown School
Right after the 2024 US Presidential Election, Emme chats with Raluca Urea, a dear clowning, acting, and directing friend of hers from their grad school days at the University of the Arts with Pig Iron School's MFA in Devised Performance. Emme and Raluca were perfect misfits and worked together a bunch, and felt isolated in various ways by their differences -- so they talk about working in the US under unique circumstances, the challenge of managing your emotions without grace or understanding, various comparisons between the US in 2002 and 2017 and Germany and Romania, what it's like to be an immigrant. We also discuss black forest cake which we really should've touched on more, tbh. Head to Stuttgart to see theatre and look Raluca up -- ralucaurea.com.
24 Jan 2025
Sex, Death, and Rock Climbing - A Belaytionship
This week's conversation partner is Chelsea from @explore.embody, an embodied intimacy coach and avid rock climber who helps people pleasers lean into selfishness as self love to free their mind and body. We also DO IT LIVE, for the first time, in the Embracing Elephants "studio," which is not a studio but it feels so right to fully embody speaking in the same space as we talk about vulnerable things, from sex and desire and hormones to celebrating our own birthdays with funerals to the potent metaphor rock climbing brings to living a truly embodied life. To follow and learn more about Chelsea's offerings, go to @explore.embody on Instagram, or check out her linktree: https://linktr.ee/nnettikk
17 Jan 2025
The Right People Can't Be Disappointed By You Being Yourself
This week Emme has a beautifully wide-ranging and emotional conversation with Dia Lupo, writer of Broke But Moisturized, about all kinds of transitions, involving her upbringing in a bar in a rural Appalachian town, hitting milestones of loss, drug use & sobriety, pregnancy, marriage, loneliness in grief, hormones, gender, and transition. She writes with a wry, deep voice on Substack about all things beauty, inner and out. Her writing about grief and loss struck up a follower to friendship, and Dia's story is fascinating as she also pulls out more of Emme's. Want to follow her and sign up for her Substack? Head to brokebutmoisturized dot substack dot com.
Want to be coached by Emme on storytelling, presenting, leadership skills, collaboration & communication? Website under construction but it's here! echolocatedconsulting dot com
10 Jan 2025
Tending Your Mind Like a Wild Garden
AuDHD coach and baker extraordinaire Jes Diverges chats with Emme about time, neurodivergence, coaching and work and study and capitalism, and then we get into a light convo about remembering we're going to die, and end with a discussion on the relationship with the self. So nbd. Just how we here at Embracing Elephants like it :-).
3 Jan 2025
A Living Room Full of Portraits of Dead Cats
Embracing Elephants co-producer Bryce Weinert chats with Emme about her top 10 horrible things that've happened in her life, tells a story of absurdity in loss about her cats, and we wax poetical on showing up for people in grief.
Want more Bryce? Head over to her pop culture podcast You're No Fun Anymore. https://yourenofun.com/
2 Jan 2025
Why Don't We Just Tell People What's Going On?
Emme welcomes her first guest, Danelle, a long time mentor, friend, and former client, to discuss many elephants in the room from gender transitioning, to change management, to communication at work, to radical shifts (gender, death, war, grief) of all kinds, to NOT managing peoples’ emotions, and the power of transparency in letting people know what’s actually going on.
If you'd like to support Emme & the podcast, please go to bit.ly/emmekay to donate!
Note: First episode produced for a course at Thomas Jefferson University on Organizational Innovation, Creativity, and Change taught by Dr. Kathy Milhauser.
2 Jan 2025
Hi, I'm Emme
Welcome to Embracing Elephants, a podcast all about stories of change and challenge and all the absurd inbetween! I'm your hostess with the mostess, Emme Kay, and I share about my life in this one so you know who the heck is interviewing all these people! I go over some of my top 5 Big Losses of my life, so you have some context, and then I read a conversation I had with my dad over email, where he wrote me a bunch of questions after I came out as trans and had him read the Gender Dysphoria Bible. I read the answers to his questions and comment on them a bit, too. Support me and this project at bit.ly/emmekay
My other D&Desque actual play podcast is called Humble Step and you can catch it on Spotify and Apple by searching for the title!
Who has been a guest on Embracing Elephants
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Fig Willow
Toby Fraser
Emme Kay
Reach and audience
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 26 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
40
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
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