Insight with Emma

Emma Sargsyan

INSIGHT is the first Armenian-English language power and culture podcast in the United States. Hosted by Emma Sargsyan - media founder, PR strategist, and owner of Tribune.am, one of the world's most widely read Armenian-language platforms with 30 million monthly readers , INSIGHT brings you long-form conversations with extraordinary guests at the intersection of business, identity, leadership and culture. Each episode goes beyond the résumé. Beyond the highlight reel. Into the real story - what it actually cost, what it actually took, and what the person sitting across from Emma learned that they could not have learned any other way. Guests include Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Marine veterans, fashion designers who kept their dreams secret through military deployments, Freemasons, political activists, financial economists who survived war and revolution, and the builders — seen and unseen — who are shaping the Armenian diaspora and the broader world. INSIGHT is distributed globally and amplified through Tribune.am's editorial reach across Los Angeles, Yerevan, Moscow, Beirut, Paris and the Armenian diaspora on four continents. New episodes every week. If you have ever built something from nothing — or wanted to — this show is for you.

Episodes

  1. Without Armenia There Is No Diaspora. A Man Who Has Spent 30 Years Proving It With His Own Money

    18H AGO

    Without Armenia There Is No Diaspora. A Man Who Has Spent 30 Years Proving It With His Own Money

    Adam Kablanian has spent his career building things nobody can see. Microchips. Molecular layers that make screens produce light. Embedded memory inside the devices billions of people hold every day. The infrastructure nobody notices until it stops working. He grew up in Aleppo as an Armenian — which means he grew up as the grandchild of people who survived something unsurvivable, in a city that no longer exists as he knew it. He watched Artsakh fall too. He visited in 1998 and saw that there were not enough people to defend the land. He told people. Nobody listened. He left Aleppo at eighteen to study astrophysics at Berkeley. He wanted to understand how the universe works — where it started, what the forces are, what the fate of everything is. He recognised at Berkeley that his classmates were smarter than him. So he found what he was actually good at. Circuit design. Fifteen patents. A company he started as a consultant that he took public on NASDAQ in four years. He hired his first Armenian engineering team in 1998 over five days of cognac and lunch at a colleague's house in Yerevan. At the time Armenia had no cellular network. The government had no idea what IT was. The tax authority tried to get bribes. He set boundaries and they never tried again. Those engineers designed three chips that ended up inside the first Apple iPod. Billions of people held that device. None of them knew. He then built and sold companies to Cisco, Samsung and Aixtron. He invested in quantum computers in Finland when the field was a decade from viability. He is the founding chairman of Paradromics — a neural interface startup competing directly with Neuralink on a fraction of the funding. He brought broadband internet to Armenia. And then he planted vines. Not in Napa Valley — in Proshyan, Armenia, on a parcel of land he already owned. His first Chardonnay was not good enough. He sold it as bulk wine and started again. His 2024 White Cuvée — a blend of Chardonnay and Armenia's indigenous Voskehat grape, east meets west — won double gold and champion in class at the Houston Rodeo wine competition. He also founded Friends of the Armenian Soldier and Family three months after the 44-day war ended. He personally pays every overhead cost — every dollar of administration, marketing and operations — so that one hundred percent of every donation reaches the families of fallen and disabled soldiers. He has raised over $300,000 and run six programs. He stepped down from the Zinapah board after five years deliberately, to let others lead. He said in this conversation: without Armenia there is no diaspora. In another hundred years there will hardly be any. Subscribe to the Youtube Channel  Follow me on Instagram

    1h 9m
  2. A Real Freemason Was Asked Every Question You Were Never Supposed to Ask. He Answered All of Them.

    1D AGO

    A Real Freemason Was Asked Every Question You Were Never Supposed to Ask. He Answered All of Them.

    Armenian Freemasons and the men who orchestrated the Armenian Genocide sat in the same Masonic lodges. Both believed in brotherhood. Both professed a belief in God. Both paid their dues. And one side used that same network to try to destroy the other. My guest today is Vram Martirosyan — Freemason, diaspora activist, and one of the most honest people I have interviewed about what this brotherhood actually is and is not. We talked about everything. Whether Freemasons control governments and elections. Why you cannot become a Freemason if you are an atheist. Why the Illuminati and Freemasonry are not the same organisation. Why Iran banned Freemasonry and the Grand Lodge of Iran operates in exile in California. What actually happens in a lodge. How you get expelled. The full and almost unknown history of Armenian Freemasonry going back centuries before the First Republic. Why Armenian and Turkish Freemasons were in the same lodges and working toward completely opposite ends. Why he said Armenians who didn't join the Sacred Struggle lack national dignity — and whether he still stands by it. Why Pashinyan went after the Armenian church — and what the real calculation was. Why the diaspora is losing its ability to influence Armenia. And what every Armenian watching this needs to understand right now. This is the conversation about Freemasonry that nobody else is having. Subscribe. Share this with someone who thinks they already know what Freemasonry is. Leave a comment with the question you would have asked. Subscribe to the Youtube Channel  Follow me on Instagram

    1 hr

About

INSIGHT is the first Armenian-English language power and culture podcast in the United States. Hosted by Emma Sargsyan - media founder, PR strategist, and owner of Tribune.am, one of the world's most widely read Armenian-language platforms with 30 million monthly readers , INSIGHT brings you long-form conversations with extraordinary guests at the intersection of business, identity, leadership and culture. Each episode goes beyond the résumé. Beyond the highlight reel. Into the real story - what it actually cost, what it actually took, and what the person sitting across from Emma learned that they could not have learned any other way. Guests include Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Marine veterans, fashion designers who kept their dreams secret through military deployments, Freemasons, political activists, financial economists who survived war and revolution, and the builders — seen and unseen — who are shaping the Armenian diaspora and the broader world. INSIGHT is distributed globally and amplified through Tribune.am's editorial reach across Los Angeles, Yerevan, Moscow, Beirut, Paris and the Armenian diaspora on four continents. New episodes every week. If you have ever built something from nothing — or wanted to — this show is for you.