Capital Daily

David Beck hunches over a frozen balloon in the parking lot of his Brentwood Bay apartment building, cracking the balloon with a knife and injecting it with coloured dye. From a distance, he looks like a maniac. To his 7.8 million followers online, however, he looks like a creative genius making the kind of satisfying, relaxing content they come back for again and again.

Brentwood Bay TikToker’s balloon popping attracts millions on TikTok and on today's podcast episode, we bring on co-host and co-producer of the Decomplicated podcast Carol Eugene Park to break down what TikTok is and how it works. Then, Brentwood Bay's David Beck joins to share how he gained nearly 8-million followers for his unique balloon-popping ASMR videos. Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/39QhABx

The University of Victoria is home to the largest collection of works by and about transgender, non-binary, two-spirit, and other gender-diverse individuals on the entire planet. Archivists measure the size of their archives by measuring how long they’d be if every item was laid out on one shelf, says UVic sociology professor Aaron Devor. If you lay out our books, our bankers boxes, the music, the letters, the photographs, the trophies, everythingwe estimate it’d be a football-field-and-a-half long."

As grey whales embark on their yearly migration north to Alaska, we take a moment to learn a bit more about the species, as well as the history of whaling, and the importance to Indigenous culture on the Island. Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/3fuHQoD

What do experts think about the new restrictions? Spread of variants on Vancouver Island? What will the pandemic look like on the Island this spring?

Victoria entrepreneur Adam Gilmer on why maintaining a manufacturing industry in Victoria is important Listen here https://the-capital-daily-podcast.simplecast.com//victoria

Island architecture, as captured by our readers.

Detail from a recent study comparing the relative size of all of the world's SARS-CoV-2. the virus that causes COVID-19. More than 1.3 million have been killed worldwide and trillions in economic damage have been done by pathogens that collectively weigh less than a business card.

"Weather bomb" storm causes hurricane-force winds, power outages, and at least one critical injury on Vancouver Island. The violent storm was the result of a meteorological phenomenon that occurs only around every 5 years. We rounded up the highlights below of the impact on Islanders https://bit.ly/2UBB7gX

As BC experiences its most dramatic spike in cases since the onset of the pandemic, health officials are now starting to consider a renewed suite of lockdown measures, including a 14-day quarantine period for new arrivals to Vancouver Island.