ABOUT THIS PODCAST 🔗
The Human Challenge is an award-winning podcast that shares gripping, untold stories of underrepresented voices in society overcoming and even escaping systemic barriers. Each episode showcases a new deeply intimate story, using documentary-like storytelling, featuring incarcerated people, refugees, immigration, Indigenous voices, women’s issues, disabilities inclusion, climate justice, gender diversity, and more. With an aim to increase media representation, The Human Challenge is hosted and produced by award-winning artist, Vanessa Ferlaino, who has Hispanic and Italian-immigrant roots. Over 70% of our guests are diverse, and 90% identify as women. Past guests have included returning citizens, displaced people, astronauts, GRAMMY and JUNO nominees, and more.
This is a space for underrepresented stories. This is a space for the stories that are not always told. This is The Human Challenge, challenging what it means to be human, one story at a time.
** New Episodes every 2 weeks! Now Airing on Rogers TV! **
** Subscribe to Vanessa's newsletter at vanessaferlaino.com/subscribe **
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosts:
Update frequency:
every 18 days
Average audio length:
30 minutes
Guest interviews
Has sponsors
English
United States
64 episodes
since Feb. 23, 2023
episodic
LATEST EPISODE 🔗
"It's this really complex feeling where you're feeling culture shock to what's supposed to be your own culture," says John-Paul Chalykoff, Indigenous performer and Assistant Professor of Anishinaabe Studies. Inspired by his mother and grandmother, the last relative in his bloodline fluent in Anishi…
SEARCH PAST EPISODES
Search past episodes of The Human Challenge.
PREVIOUS EPISODES 🔗
With Palestinian parents, Noora Sharrab had to fight long and hard to push past their traditional “Walk By The Walls” mentality to embrace her Palestinian identity. Questioning her experiences crossing into Palestine at a young age and challenging what she learned in her early education, she was ca…
Despite what his parents told him, at the age of four, Seth Compton knew he was not a girl. But it wasn’t until the age of 43 that Seth made the biggest decision of his life — to transition from female to male. In this episode, Seth shares the personal, social, professional, and medical factors tha…
As we mark National Indigenous Languages Day on Turtle Island, Shirley Horn shares her residential school story, growing up in not one, but two residential schools. She would return years later to Shingwauk Hall after it became a university to pursue her education, become first chancellor, and then…
“I just never felt safe,” says Jessica Compton, after running away from a young life of kidnapping, abuse, and sexual assault. Deciding it was best she take care of herself, she lived on her own at the age of 16, working and paying her bills. During this time, drugs and alcohol numbed the pain, but…
Since childhood, Sara developed maladaptive behaviours growing up in a tiny shack with no electricity and an abusive father who sold her to the sex trade at the age of three. In and out of foster care for much of her life, it was finding herself in prison where Sara finally decided it was time to s…
Cheri Chafin Norris was 16 years old when she became addicted to methamphetamine — and her father’s drug dealer. She wrote to God through her journals for 20 years, recently digging through them to put together her new book, The Purpose of Abundance, re-discovering her own connection to God,…
In this episode, I talk about headlining Transform The Night and how it all came to be with opening act, DJ Seith, and speaker, Karen Bird, Founder of Nakehndan.
Transform The Night was a benefit concert held on Sunday, September 28th, 2025. With a contribution from Northern Credit Union, we were a…
On Sunday, September 28th, award-winning artist, Vanessa Ferlaino, headlined Transform The Night. With a contribution from Northern Credit Union, we were able to contribute $3,000 CAD to our community spotlight partner, Nakehndan, supporting Indigenous survivors of abuse across Northern Ontario.
00…
Injustice comes in many forms in Hebron, the largest city in The West Bank, and the epicentre of The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Jehad has not forgotten the survival mechanisms, the suffocating permits, or the violence that fuel his social justice work in Canada, where he has led some of Ontario’s large…
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vanessa Ferlaino, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
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