People First Radio

In September, people will start moving into 23 units of housing at 420 Albert street in Nanaimo, which had spent decades as an office building. Two of the developers behind the project, Adrian Vlasic and Fillah Karim, both in their twenties, spoke with People First Radio. Recorded August 21, 2024.

Charlotte Waddell, Director of the Children’s Health Policy Center at Simon Fraser University, says people of a certain generation will have experienced drug use prevention programs like “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. when they were in school. But Waddell says the efficacy of those programs wasn’t thoroughly studied before they were widely rolled out. “Nobody […]

Brandon Kirk is sharing his story of life after addiction, and creating a space for others to do the same. The Cowichan Valley resident is working on a new video podcast series, Beyond Your Wildest Imagination. “it’s a podcast about life beyond addiction,” Kirk said. “It’s about Cowichan Valley people telling their powerful stories about […]

Back in 2009 Craig Ellerman was staying at the downtown Victoria Salvation Army Men’s Shelter. “I wasn’t in too good a state of mind, and I saw a poster up on the bulletin board advertising information sessions for the Uni 101 program,” he said. “I looked at it, and at first I thought maybe this […]

Carissa Halton remembered her own graduation, so she didn’t expect her daughter’s to hit quite so hard. “I’m sitting there in the graduation, the principal is starting to talk,” she said. “She just said, I see you guys out there and  this is something that your kids are doing because you sat and read with […]

Recent research suggests people want to get back in touch with old friends, but are worried about being a bother. “Although people seem to be generally interested in the idea of reconnecting, they don’t want to be the one to do it,” said Lara Aknin, Director of the Helping and Happiness Lab at Simon Fraser […]

Georgina Franki and Dingeman van Bochove speak about homelessness in Yellowknife and actions they’ve been taking to address the situation. First broadcast July 25, 2024.

The documentary escape game She Could Fly aims to educate around obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Sara Kenney and Mairéad Ruane from the game’s creative team spoke with People First Radio. “It was such a cool experience like to see how creatively such difficult experiences could be shown and conveyed to people without the experience [of […]

Ruhr University Bochum PhD student Laurin Plank has been exploring the idea of using social media posts as a diagnostic aid for mental health conditions. He says people could benefit from early detection. “If people only ever get help once they’ve developed the disorder, then a lot of damage has already been done,” he said. […]

Researcher Kora DeBeck is calling for regulation as a response to the toxic drug crisis. “The high level, main problem I see right now is the catastrophic number of overdose deaths that we’re experiencing,” she said. “The numbers are really holding steady years and years later, and what we know from coroner’s data, from a […]