PDIS: People Doing Interesting Stuff

Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts•www.pdinterestingstuff.com

People Doing Interesting Stuff (PDIS) is about just that. Host Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts talks and thinks out loud with special guests, including activists and organizers, writers, artists, social entrepreneurs, public figures, and others about what they do, and how, why, and where they do it. From the streets to the suites, they're everywhere. We're mostly serious, often humorous, and always interesting. (Adult themes, occasional explicit language)

Last refreshed: July 13th, 2025 at 10:08 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

Episode 10: The "Body(.com) and Soul" edition, with Kenyon Farrow, senior editor of TheBody.com and TheBodyPro.com

In the "Body(.com) and Soul" edition of PDIS: People Doing Interesting Stuff , Samuel Kelton Roberts sits down and talks with Kenyon Farrow , the senior editor at TheBody.com and TheBodyPro.com . A writer, editor, and strategist, Farrow has worked on campaigns of all sizes on the local, national, and global level and in issues related to criminalization/mass imprisonment, homelessness, LGBT rights, and HIV education and empowerment. With expertise in public health, social policy, and health care...

Nov 02, 2019•1 hr 9 min

Episode 09: The "Whole Neighborhood Stopped in its Tracks" edition, with Tracie Gardner of the Legal Action Center

In the superheroes' pantheon of African-American HIV and harm reduction activists and workers, you can think of Tracie Gardner was one of the Golden Age figures. In this episode of PDIS , we learn about Tracie's origin story, what it was like to watch the HIV/AIDS crisis unfold in Black America in the 1980s and 1990s, why she got involved in the work, and how she came to harm reduction.

Nov 12, 2018•1 hr 29 min

Episode 08: The Women With a Vision edition (with Deon Haywood)

In this episode of PDIS: People Doing Interesting Stuff, I talk to Deon Haywood, the Executive Director of Women With A Vision, Inc. (WWAV). Founded in 1989 by a grassroots collective of Black women in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS in New Orleans, Louisiana, Women With A Vision is a social justice non-profit which focuses on the most urgent issues faced by women, especially women of color vulnerable to criminal justice involvement. Originally focusing on health promotion and community outre...

Jan 30, 2018•1 hr 7 min

Episode 07: The "We have ARRIVEd" edition (with Howard Josepher and Joe Turner, of Exponents, Inc.)

In the late 1980s, Howard Josepher and Joe Turner met in New York City and began the program now known as Exponents. Their goal was deceptively simple, to establish an outreach and recovery program for people returning home from prison with a substance use problem. But it was actually more complicated than that. Although they had some federal funding to run a limited three-year program, when that money dried up they were left with a program which had promise but few resources. Furthermore, there...

Dec 21, 2017•1 hr 16 min

Episode 06: The "harm reduction as resistance" edition (with Joyce A. Rivera)

The "harm reduction as resistance" edition (with Joyce A. Rivera). Welcome to PDIS. A week after the Trump election of November 2016, Joyce Rivera, the founder and Executive Director of the St. Ann's Corner of Harm Reduction, joined me and my students at the PDIS studios. This was a few days after the federal election of 2016, which put Donald Trump in office, and Joyce explained to me why she's optimistic about the future. A lot of her optimism for the future stems from her work in the past. Ri...

Dec 13, 2017•1 hr 21 min

Episode 05: The "culturally competent harm reduction" edition (live from #reform17)

The "culturally competent harm reduction" edition. At the Drug Policy Alliance's October 2017 conference in Atlanta, I got the chance to speak with four harm reduction and public health activists and researchers, including Lyn Ayala (Condom Program Coordinator at Washington Heights Corner Project), Zina Age (Founder & CEO, Aniz, Inc., in Atlanta, GA), Carrie Ann Lawrence (Director of the Indiana School of Public Health's Project Cultivate), and Sasanka Jinadasa (of Reframe Health and Justice...

Nov 19, 2017•1 hr 23 min

Episode 04: The HRC North Star edition (with Monique Tula)

Formerly the Vice President of Programs at AIDS United in Washington DC, and a twenty-plus-year veteran of the AIDS and harm reduction movements, Monique Tula in the summer of 2016 became the Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, one of the nation's foremost organizations in the field. On August 1, 2017, Tula dropped by the PDIS studios for a cup of coffee and to talk about the Harm Reduction Coalition's new North Star statement (www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsWmvQ7JxL8) emphasizing the...

Oct 07, 2017•1 hr 23 min

Episode 03: The Invisible Men edition (with Flores Forbes)

Happy Fall, everyone! My guest in this episode of PDIS is Flores Forbes. Born and raised in San Diego, California, at age sixteen Forbes joined the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The Panthers had been formed in 1966, and Flores rose through the ranks to become a high-level operative in the Party's military wing, called the Buddha Samauri. As one of the Party's principal armorers, Flores was responsible for maintaining the Party's gun supply -- at any given time, he was one of a very few p...

Sep 13, 2017•1 hr 7 min

Episode 02: New York Harm Reduction Educators (with Terrell Jones)

In late October, 2016, we sat down at the PDIS studios with Terrell Jones of the New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE). Terrell is NYHRE's Outreach and Advocacy Manager. The organization now known as the New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE; www.nyhre.org/) began in the late 1980s as an underground syringe provision service called the Bronx/Harlem Needle Exchange.

Jul 05, 2017•48 min

Episode 01: The "collateral damages" edition (with Dinah Ortiz-Adames)

A week after being honored by Citizens Against Recidivism, Parent Advocate and harm reduction practitioner Dinah Ortiz-Adames stopped by to give me a hard time about the state of my office and my lack of technical expertise with the recording equipment. We also talked about her work and a little-known aspect of drug policy and criminal justice: their effects on families of color. In this interview, we discuss stigma and the word "addict," and what it means to be "functional" in the eyes of the c...

Apr 21, 2017•1 hr 1 min

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