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.
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This week on a very special episode Friendless , your pal and host of the show James Avramenko takes the mic for a very special solo episode, marking his 39th birthday with honesty, humour, and a healthy dose of self-reflection. In this Q&A retrospective, James dives into the wild ride of aging, the evolution of the show, lessons learned about loneliness, connection, and community, and the often…
In this very special episode of Friendless, your host James Avramenko sits down with Leandra Guillet. Together, they dive into the quirks of Vancouver life, from unpredictable weather and the city's mysterious moodiness to what it actually takes to find and foster community in a city full of "shelter cats." The conversation bounces (or "ADHD ping pongs") from the deep—human insecurity, the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
