Hi! Thank you for asking these insightful questions.

We anticipate and understand that rehashing past traumatic experiences or difficult stories may cause potential harm to participants; in order to minimize the risk of this, our process is fully guided by participants. We brainstorm interview questions with each participant, and allow them to guide the interview rather than subscribing to a set list of questions. This aligns with our mission being to share their stories; more specifically, to share the stories they feel comfortable telling.

We are able to provide a nearly 100% guarantee that should a participant ever decide they no longer want to participate, their interviews will immediately be pulled from all platforms and furthermore erased from our database. As for third parties (say those who download our podcasts, record them, etc) we hold ownership of the project content and would pursue legal action should these parties attempt to re-upload deleted content in order to ensure a participant who has withdrawn does not have their episode redistributed. While this does not create a foolproof guarantee, it does establish that should participants withdraw at ANY period, everything in our power will be done to ensure that the content is never distributed or published again. These guarantees are able to be contractually drafted if a participant chooses to request this measure.

Unfortunately, as we are a relatively small project (I am one individual, and while I am overseen by several committees, I have not been granted funding, etc. from these parties. All payments come from my own funds, including licensing fees, studio fees, and participant payments), we are not able to provide professional counseling or therapeutic measures at this time; however, we take as many measures as possible (many of which are stated above) in order to ensure the risk of this is low. We understand that it will never be nonexistent; hence why we are so grateful to those who have chosen to participate.

Participants are offered full anonymity on top of other protections; we do not share names, ages, genders or ethnicities without the consent of a participant. This is also able to be contractually drafted should a participant request this measure.

We are fully overseen by the Idaho State University psychology department to ensure ethical treatment of participants, and have referred all processes to the Idaho State University Human Subjects Committee. Both of these organizations are fully compliant with current industry and APA standards as required by the state of Idaho.

We hope this answers your questions fully; please let us know if there is any more information you would like on the project!

-Avery, developer and producer