Million Dollar Meds
Million Dollar Meds Trailer from UBC’s Global Reporting Centre
One in 12 Canadians suffers from a rare disease; the majority of these diseases are life threatening and the few treatments available often come with a steep price tag that the average Canadian cannot afford.
The Million Dollar Meds project explores the impact of rare diseases on Canadian families and the astronomical costs levied by pharmaceutical companies, what steps could be taken to control the costs, and how Canada can increase access to treatments that can save or lengthen lives.
This feature-length, interactive documentary won a Jack Webster award for Science, Technology, Health & Environment reporting and an Edward R. Murrow award, International region
CUT: Global Costs of Illegal Logging
The Baka indigenous people traditionally roamed the immense rain forests of the Congo Basin, living entirely off the land. Today, their isolated communities are largely surrounded by vast logging and mining concessions. In the midst of resource development throughout Cameroon, the Baka community of Nomedjoh fought for the right to control a small part of the forest around their village. It’s all they have left.
Part of my work for Part of my work for CUT – Global Costs of Illegal Logging an international reporting project with UBC’ Global Reporting Program and the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver, Canada–exposing the $30 billion trade in illegal wood.
This story from Cameroon was picked up by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, and our story from the Russian far-east was picked up by CTV’s Kevin Newman Live, and the New York Times. Our work won a 2013 Canadian Online Publishing Award for video and multimedia reporting, in competition with the Toronto Star, Canadian Press, and La Presse and won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award, the highest honor from the Radio, Television and Digital News Association
Baka Beats: Instruments for Change
Vicky Brown can forge even the wonky issue of community forestry into a potent rallying cry that packs dance floors. His songs support the Baka peoples— indigenous to the Congo basin forests—who lack equal access to education, land ownership, and the justice system within Cameroon. Because the Baka use music to pass messages between communities, Brown worked with village leaders and musicians to craft songs voicing these common concerns. The political demands— translated into beats and rhymes in French and English that also connect with Cameroon’s urban population—are uniting the Baka and putting pressure on the country’s elites to respond.
Eleven music videos that Brown filmed in Baka villages can be viewed at this Youtube playlist, also embedded below.
Part of my work for CUT – Global Costs of Illegal Logging an international reporting project with UBC’s Global Reporting Program and the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver, Canada–exposing the $30 billion trade in illegal wood.
Riceroot grows again, CBC Vancouver
“Riceroot” bulbs once fed First Nations communities who cultivated the lily all along the northern Pacific Rim. They are known as Lhásem in the language of Joseph’s father, a hereditary chief for Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw/Squamish Nation. Joseph, a University of Victoria grad student in botany hopes the plant — nearly lost from the Squamish collective memory — will catch on as a healthy alternative to starches imported by Europeans. She believes riceroot could help reduce the obesity and diabetes that burden First Nations communities.
Leigh Joseph has made it the ambition of her master’s thesis in ethnobotany — the study of the inter-relationships between people and plants — to re-establish the threatened riceroot lily at the base of the Squamish Nation food pyramid. She sees it as the first building block of many in revitalizing the complex system of traditional foods that once provided both good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle for her people.
This story was adapted for radio and television audiences at CBC, Vancouver.
Belle Puri produced this piece for television.
Indigenous communities in Canada commonly ate a varied diet that was rich in nutrients and required an active lifestyle to harvest and collect. This video with embedded captions–and no audio–was produced to accompany the riceroot story and share some of our reporting on indigenous foodways, hunting, and agriculture. Produced with Meg Mittelstedt
A conversation with Nancy Turner—who has documented traditional food and medical systems in British Columbia for more than forty years. Turner says interest in indigenous culture among young people with First Nations heritage has never been higher, or more necessary. Video produced with Meg Mittelstedt.
Meet Mother Ayahuasca
An evocative journey into the Amazonian jungle, where shamans treat visitors with a potent vision-inducing potion, the plant-based hallucinogen called ayahuasca.
A feature article published in 2011, with an accompanying podcast and video, embedded below.
Diana’s family provided many middle-class comforts: private schooling, a university education, travel, healthy food, and spacious housing. Nearing 40-years-old, she gave up some of this security to take a journey to a hut in Peru’s upper Amazon, her launching pad away from ordinary reality altogether.
Illustration by Emily Nisbet
Tribal songs, called icaros, are central to the long ceremonies and seem to strike resonant chords with the internal riot of energy sparked by ayahuasca.
“The medicine responds to the songs,” says Diana. “Your whole being is permeated by the sound, and the songs make the ayahuasca inside you respond.”
The characteristic quene or kené designs that Shipibo-Konibo artists and healthcare culture bearers put on just about everything are said to be inspired by nature and the hidden realities revealed during ayahuasca ceremonies. A deep dive on the indigenous design-song-medicine technology and practice along the Ucayali River.
Shipibo-Konibo embroidery, sold in the tourist market. 📸 by Keith Rozendal
Dubstep for Geeks
Tracing the roots of dubstep music back to the invention of electronic sound synthesis in music-making. And back further to the mathematics of functions and trigonometry. And back even more to the Pythagorean monochord. And back all the way to the still-unanswered question — did humans speak first, or sing?
The human vocal apparatus — and a brain that can create both speech and song — could be likened to a meat-based computer capable of audio signal processing and encoding, all in the service of broadcasting data to others who share this gear and also the meat-based signal decoder connected to each of your ear holes.
Tom Lodge, Radio Caroline Disc Jockey
The British government called them pirates and treated them like terrorists, but all they did was play rock ‘n’ roll music.
A profile of a colorful character I met while reporting for the Santa Cruz Sentinel.