Podcasts about British Columbia, Canada

The province is broke, Trevor Hargreaves tells the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast, and the taxes stacked on new homes are not a fix but a way of making a bad situation worse. On Harbouring Hope, Tony Harris describes local advocates in "hand-to-hand combat" to win hospital funding for people "north of the Malahat" before it ends up in Surrey. On The Jas Johal Show, Keith Baldrey works out that a failed confidence vote lands on a 46-46 or 47-45 split. That is the register of British Columbia on this page: money, who controls it, and the arithmetic of prying it loose. The largest share of the shows is filed under Business & Finance, and most of that is housing.

It is also a province heard through its cities. Most of what plays here comes from Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, from Victoria, Nanaimo and the rest of Vancouver Island, and from Kelowna, each of which has its own page on PlayNext. The shows about the whole province are the smaller part, and they are about land rather than streets.

What British Columbia is

British Columbia is Canada's westernmost province, on the Pacific. Vancouver, in the Lower Mainland, is by far the largest city; Victoria, the capital, sits at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, with Nanaimo up the island's east side. The dry interior, Kelowna and the Okanagan included, is barely heard from on this page.

Housing, priced and argued

Nobody on this page argues housing harder than the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast, where Adam and Matt run things loose and fast, anchored by numbers. Its clips are the housing story in miniature: Hargreaves on a government leveraging taxes to cover a shortfall it cannot close, a Squamish Nation councillor explaining how an 11-tower, 6,000-unit project near Burrard Bridge avoids city zoning entirely, and an episode with Robert Hogue in which new condo starts are put at almost zero because investors have left the market. The titles keep circling, as in "VREP #518 | Escaping the Vancouver Housing Trap with Chuck Marohn".

The Greater Victoria Real Estate Show is the island's counterpart and more measured, a panel that states a figure and then translates it. Its Habitat for Humanity clip is typical: housing costs capped at 30 per cent of gross household income, a second mortgage at zero interest, and still a minimum of $550,000 to build because of land.

Politics by the seat

Seat math is The Jas Johal Show's home ground: live public-affairs radio that works from a pressure point to its consequence. Here the pressure point is a one-seat NDP majority: whether Joan Philip's vote decides if David Eby's government survives, and whether a confidence vote on DRIPA could bring it down, under the title "Could DRIPA trigger a provincial election?". Mornings with Simi covers the same government at a steadier morning pace, and its titles keep returning to Eby's standing, as in "View on Politics: Eby's brutal poll numbers & Provincial Conservative's divisive course". The island's news brings the province in from the other direction: a Nanaimo Daily clip carries a leaked letter alleging irreplaceable old-growth is being logged inside areas set aside for protection, and Local News Update from CHLY 101.7FM has Comox Valley Pride criticising MLA Brennan Day over a OneBC bill on gender transition for minors.

Nanaimo and the island

Nanaimo Daily's episode titles are simply dates, and its clips are the working news of a city: a catheterization lab approved for Nanaimo Regional General Hospital after years of advocacy, RCMP seeking a man wanted for assault by choking, airsoft shootings downtown. Harbouring Hope, from the Nanaimo Hospital Foundation, makes the case for that hospital from inside it.

Island Crime is the most patient thing on the page. Laura Palmer narrates in plain, short sentences and builds each season from interviews with families, investigators and lawyers. Its most striking clip is a black lab named Willow padding to the door at the hour Ian Indredson used to come home, four years after he vanished from his Victoria house; another season turns on a woman named Brie whose home was found packed up and whose body was found near an encampment.

The province beyond its cities

Out past the cities, The Organic BC Podcast is a patient field conversation that defines its terms and then checks them against a real farm, the show that most belongs to the whole province and the most technical one here. Rob Larson reports that bale grazing left "really really nice dark soil" where the bales sat, but that it works over years rather than instantly as plowing does; Lisa Zaback says silvopasture is "not a cookbook" because every site and animal changes the management.

Come Out Heavy Hunting Podcast, from Curtis and Devin Gassoff, is the backcountry seen from a sheep hunt: routes and glassing spots pinned in MyFatMaps, Rob Gearing calling the Javelin bipod an "ethical killing tool" for mountain shots, proposed rules that would halve the moose harvest in region 7B and close caribou hunting in northeastern BC. Mise en Place - the Podcast, hosted by Robert Belcham with the Chefs' Table Society of BC, gives each episode a single name and lets a career unfold; for Michel Jacob that means the belief that tasting and correcting the soup separates a caring chef from one who serves "bland food", and about 4,000 reservations the day after he announced Le Crocodile would close.

The Canucks, at two speeds

Hockey here means the Canucks, and the Canucks shows catch a team at the bottom. Locked On Canucks is a fan argument at full speed: Canuck Clay wants a plan he can see even if it means using all ten draft picks and waiting years, and Trevor says the team looked "more disconnected" than any he has watched in his lifetime. Canucks Conversation is informed friends talking fast, with technical hockey language beside everyday phrasing; its clips lock the team into 32nd place with a 16-point gap to 31st and relay Quinn Hughes saying the JT Miller trade removed a top-five player and fractured the core.

Music, Kelowna, and two old novels

Vancouver's music gets heard through Pacific Sound Radio, where James Olson interviews bands: Meltt built much of an album in one month at a remote cabin during COVID, and Caveman & The Banshee call themselves "psychedelic electronic punk" led by a drum machine named Amber Sand. I Love Kelowna is where the interior gets heard, and it is less about Kelowna than about guests like Madonna Hannah on classroom bullying. There are also chapter-by-chapter readings of two old novels set here: Protector, The by Harold Bindloss (1866 - 1945) and Hidden Places, The by Bertrand W. Sinclair (1881 - 1972).

Where to start

• For the province's politics: The Jas Johal Show.
• For housing: the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast on the mainland, the Greater Victoria Real Estate Show on the island.
• For the province outside its cities: The Organic BC Podcast on bale grazing, or Come Out Heavy Hunting Podcast for the mountains.
• For a long, careful listen: Island Crime.

The British Columbia feed on this page plays clips from these shows.