This week on Friendless, I'm joined by two guests I've been genuinely honored to sit down with: Elder Larry Grant, Elder in Residence at the Justice Institute of BC and UBC's First Nations House of Learning, and an elder of both the Musqueam Indian Band and Vancouver's Chinese community — and his co-author Scott Steedman, writer, editor, and publishing professor at SFU. 

Together they wrote Reconciling, a book that maps Elder Larry's life not chronologically but geographically — Chinatown, Strathcona, Musqueam, the Fraser Valley — letting each place pull its own stories loose.

We talk about growing up caught between two identities that were both, in different ways, denied to him. We talk about the specific, everyday mechanics of exclusion — the signs, the double standards, the small cruelties that build until they explode from somewhere inside you. We talk about his years of drinking and the two-beers-that-were-never-two-beers, and how getting sober became inseparable from learning to love and respect himself. And we talk about what reconciliation actually asks of a country that would rather it stayed on paper than stood as a monument you can't walk past.

Reconciling [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Reconciling/Larry-Grant/9781770417984] is out now — grab a copy at Book Warehouse. [https://blackbondbooks.com/]

Learn more about the Musqueam Indian Band [https://www.musqueam.bc.ca/]

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Reconciling with our pasts: a conversation with Elder Larry Grant & Scott Steedman

Content Note: This episode discusses disordered eating. If you’re in recovery or feeling vulnerable, please prioritise your well-being.

This week on a very special episode of Friendless, host James Avramenko sits down with poet Brandi Bird for a deep dive into creativity, recovery, and self-discovery. The conversation explores the messy realities of writing and publishing poetry, the impact of external validation, and the importance of allowing time and distance between lived experience and creative transformation.

Brandi discusses their own journey through eating disorder recovery and how it shapes their work, approaches to confessional writing, and the ways truth, persona, and vulnerability intersect in poetry. The two tackle topics such as perfectionism, the pressures of literary recognition, and the liberation found in writing for oneself rather than for approval.

They also reflect on the power of oral tradition, stage presence, and shared first drafts, as well as the nuances of exploring difficult family relationships—particularly with mothers—within art. The conversation turns to broader issues including medical bigotry, Indigenous identity, community, and what it means to move beyond victimhood to agency.

From pop culture to personal struggles, this episode is an honest, witty, and intimate look at the intersections of art, healing, and being unapologetically oneself.

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Writing from the Scar: Brandi Bird on Poetry, Recovery, and Identity (Live at the Book Warehouse)

Recorded live at Book Warehouse on Main Street, Vancouver, this episode features author and longtime Tyee columnist Steve Burgess, whose new book Cheapskate in Lotus Land: The Philosophy and Practice of Living Well on a Small Budget is part memoir, part cultural critique, and part philosophical provocation.

Steve is a former disc jockey, television host, and film worker who has spent decades writing personal essays — first for the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Magazine, then at The Tyee, where he's been a charter columnist since its founding. His previous books include Reservations: The Pleasures and Perils of Travel and the memoir Who Killed Mum? (named to year-end best-of lists at both the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star).

In this conversation, James and Steve explore what it really means to be frugal in one of the world's most expensive cities — and why "cheapskate" might actually be a philosophy worth owning.

Cheapskate in Lotus Land: The Philosophy and Practice of Living Well on a Small Budget — available at Book Warehouse (Main St and Broadway locations) and Black Bond Books

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Frugality is the best revenge: Steve Burgess on Living Well in Vancouver on Less (Live at the Book Warehouse)

This week on a very special episode of Friendless, your pal James Avramenko is joined by Charlie Demers. 

Charlie Demers is a comedian, broadcaster, author, and 20-year veteran of CBC's The Debaters — and somehow all of that is just the warm-up. Recorded live at Book Warehouse on Main Street, this conversation starts with his new Canadian lexicon book The A-Team (a celebration of the words and phrases that mark you as one of us), takes a hard left into French immersion class politics, and ends up somewhere genuinely surprising: what treaty actually means, why Canadian humor is tender instead of cruel, and what it looks like to love a country you have complicated feelings about.

Along the way: house hippos, English muffins vs. french fries, the roast of Kevin Hart as a culture clash, and why writing to a word count might be the most freeing thing a writer can do.

If you've ever said "toque" in the United States and watched a room go silent, this one's for you.

Charlie's new children's picture book I Sure Do is out this summer from Trade Wind Books. Season 2 of Superteam Canada drops on Crave. Find him at charliedemers.com and on Instagram.

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welcome to the eh team: on canadian humour, identity, and the complicated love of a country (with special guest Charlie Demers)

What happens when you've spent your whole life fitting a mold — and you finally decide you've had enough?

This week, James sits down with Eddy Boudel Tan, Vancouver-born author of The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, recorded live at Book Warehouse on Main Street.

In this episode:

 * The experience of being second-generation Chinese Canadian — caught between cultures, between expectations, between versions of yourself
 * What Eddy calls "Asian rage" — the anger that builds when you're expected to minimize yourself to move through the world
 * The loneliness of being surrounded by people who love you but don't really know you
 * Why Casper, the novel's protagonist, keeps people out even as he falls apart
 * The Buddhist concept of impermanence, and what it actually does to your relationship with fear
 * Going home when home doesn't feel like home anymore
 * Identity as oversimplification — and the liberation of letting go of the label
 * The fleeting, morbid, weirdly hopeful thought: What if this is the happiest I'll ever be?

The Tiger and the Cosmonaut is available now wherever books are sold. 

Find Eddy on Instagram at @eddyautomatic. [https://www.instagram.com/eddyautomatic/]

REMINDER: May 19th at the Book Warehouse on Main (4118 Main street) An Asian Heritage Month Celebration of Authors with guests Eddy Boudel Tan, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho, and Donna Seto. Doors at 6:30pm

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on belonging, grief, and identity (with special guest Eddy Boudel Tan) Live at the Book Warehouse

In this final episode of the DBT micro-season, James walks back through the terrain — mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness — not to reteach, but to reflect. What landed. What didn't. What surprised him. And, more importantly, how to actually use any of this in real life without turning it into another productivity project or, worse, becoming a DBT zealot who diagnoses everyone at brunch.

Expect a tour back through the season, reflection questions to sit with, strategies for practising without burning out, and a slightly insistent reminder that you cannot do this alone — even (especially) coming from a podcast called Friendless.

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so you're no longer mentally ill...(DBT mini-season finale!)

It's Independent Bookstore Day, and to celebrate, Friendless is doing a double feature — two short conversations recorded at the Bookshelf, both circling the same question: what do bookstores actually do for us that nothing else can?

First up is MLA Christine Boyle, BC's Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs — and a lifelong library and bookstore nerd. We talk about the physical, relational experience you can't get from an online cart, why her 11-year-old plays her like a fiddle every time they walk past a bookshop, and the climate novel her book club still hasn't forgiven her for.

Then I sit down with Cathy Jesson, the owner of Black Bond Books. Cathy started in her mother's store in Brandon, Manitoba in the sixties, moved to the coast, built the business into a three-generation family operation, and in 2012 stepped in on a five-day turnaround to save Book Warehouse from closing. She talks about running a bookstore as a business (not a pipe dream), why the magic only happens on the floor and not in the office, and what she wants customers to feel walking out on Independent Bookstore Day.

Both conversations are short, warm, and — if you're anything like me — going to send you straight to your nearest independent.

Mentioned in this episode:

 * Black Bond Books, Book Warehouse, Hager Books - https://www.blackbondbooks.com/
 * Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
 * Fire Weather by John Vaillant
 * A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews
 * The Women by Kristin Hannah
 * Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
 * Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Find Friendless on Instagram and TikTok @friendlesspod. Reach out: friendlesspod@gmail.com

Check out the Linktree: https://linktr.ee/friendlesspod

Fun and safety, Sweet Peas.

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Celebrating Independent Bookstore Day (with special guests Cathy Jesson & MLA Christine Boyle)

There's a version of kindness that isn't actually kindness. It's saying yes when you mean no, showing up depleted and resentful, and building relationships on a quiet lie — the lie that you're fine, that it's all okay, that you have no limits. And the thing about that version of kindness is it always ends the same way: in a blowup, a ghost, or an overcorrection so sharp it takes the whole relationship with it.

Episode 8 of the DBT mini-season covers Give and Fast — the two interpersonal skills for when getting a yes isn't the point. Give is for when the relationship matters most: how to stay connected, be honest, and get through a hard conversation without torching what you've built. Fast is for when self-respect matters most: how to say no, hold your values, and not apologise for existing.

The real skill, as James puts it, is knowing which one you need — and then actually following through.

You'll come away with:

 * A clear breakdown of Give (Gentle, Interested, Validate, Easy Manner) with real examples of what it looks and sounds like
 * A full walkthrough of Fast (Fair, no Apologies, Stick to values, Truthful) — including why "I don't want to" is a complete sentence
 * Two layered conversation scenarios showing how Give and Fast work alongside Dear Man in practice
 * A reflection prompt to identify where in your life you're sacrificing self-respect just to keep the peace

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balancing boundaries: the GIVE and FAST approach (DBT mini-season part 8)

Most of us were never taught how to ask for what we need — we were taught how to be nice, how to be agreeable, and how to silently hope the other person would just figure it out. And when they didn't, we either resented them or came in way too hot trying to make up for lost time.

In this very special episode, James unpacks interpersonal effectiveness — the DBT module that's less about managing yourself and more about navigating other people, which, let's be honest, is the hard part. He covers how to get clear on what you actually want from a conversation before you open your mouth (spoiler: most of us skip this step), and walks through Dear Man, a structured skill for asking for things clearly, directly, and kindly without being apologetic or aggressive.

This is episode seven of the DBT mini-season.

You'll come away with:

 * A framework for identifying your real goal in any difficult conversation (objective, relationship, or self-respect — and why you can only pick one)
 * A full walkthrough of the Dear Man skill with real examples
 * A short practice exercise to apply it to one thing you've been avoiding

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Stop Hinting, Start Asking: The Dear Man Skill for Assertive Communication (DBT mini-season part 7)

What does it take to truly belong somewhere — and what happens when you didn't know that's what you needed?

This week on Friendless, James sits down with Iona Whishaw — bestselling author of the Lane Winslow Mystery series — for a live conversation at the Book Warehouse on Main Street in Vancouver, BC. Her newest novel, A False and Fatal Claim, is the backdrop for a wide-ranging discussion about identity, deception, community, and the surprising things we discover about ourselves when we stop running.

They get into: the lies we tell ourselves versus the lies we perform for others; why Iona doesn't plot her novels (and what that means for how story finds her); how Kings Cove functions as both utopia and honest mirror; the way technology has quietly eroded our capacity for friction — and why friction might be exactly what we need; Lane Winslow's journey from deliberate isolation to unexpected belonging; and how writing at 64 gave Iona a whole new life.

Iona also shares how her mother — a larger-than-life woman who hitchhiked to Alaska with an evening gown and sneakers — became the unlikely skeleton of Lane Winslow, and what it means to inherit someone's courage second-hand.

Recorded live at Book Warehouse Vancouver

Pick up Iona's book at the Book Warehouse on Main Street.

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A False Sense of Safety: Iona Whishaw on Trust, Community, and the Lies We Tell Ourselves (Live at the Book Warehouse)

Friendless is a podcast about the strange, tender, often painful work of staying connected. Host James Avramenko talks to writers, thinkers, activists, and everyday people about loneliness, platonic love, community, mental health, and what it actually takes to build a life with people in it. No easy answers, no toxic positivity, no pretending the hard parts aren't hard. Just honest, sometimes uncomfortable, often moving conversations from somewhere in the void. But always fun and safety. 

James Avramenko

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