A Love Affair with the Unknown with Gill Deacon

British actor, director and playwright Tim Crouch has created some of the most unusual and influential stage productions in history. Described as a “theatrical wonder”, the experimental artist believes that the reason audiences attend the theatre is to feel alive, and his plays—which have been performed internationally for decades—take bold creative risks to achieve that. A-list Hollywood actors l...

One of the most prominent litigators in Canada, Marie Henein has a reputation for fearlessness. She credits that courage, and indeed her rise as a powerful criminal defense attorney, in part to her attitude toward what she doesn’t know. A newcomer to Canada as a child, she often felt like an outsider—a formative experience that Marie Henein considers her strength. She makes the case that not havin...

Acclaimed Inuk musician Susan Aglukark has had an extraordinary career, but the personal story behind her Juno Award-winning songs and international accolades hits even harder. Her latest book, Kihiani: A Healing Journey , tracks the multi-generational impacts of colonization and one woman’s brave and creative path to glorious confidence and strength. Susan believes that reconciliation and Indigen...

Becoming a New Yorker and Globe and Mail cartoonist in your early 20s is incredible. Getting diagnosed with chronic pain in your early 20s is pretty devastating—and limits your ability to do the very things that give you a sense of identity. Gabrielle Drolet shares the wild and painful ride of managing a debilitating illness in her warm and remarkably funny memoir Look Ma, No Hands , a book she co...

Having first gained acclaim for finding the awesome in the everyday, Neil Pasricha has grown to become a wildly successful expert on happiness. His many books have sold millions of copies and spent over 200 weeks on the bestsellers lists—mostly because of his evidence-based advice on how we can better handle the strain and uncertainty of our busy lives. Neil Pasricha is so good at reminding us tha...

Since her breakout novel A Complicated Kindness, internationally acclaimed author Miriam Toews has captured our hearts with unforgettable characters and heartbreaking stories. Most of her 10 books have been works of fiction, shot through with threads of her real life experience. In her latest book, A Truce That Is Not Peace, Miriam lays it all bare in memoir form: not just the deaths by suicide of...

Having mega-hit songs and international fame in your early 20s is a tough act to follow, but Steven Page has done the work to figure it out. He has navigated the ups and downs and wild uncertainties of fame for decades— as the former frontman of Barenaked Ladies, and now as a successful solo artist. A much-scrutinized breakup with longtime best friends and bandmates, a headline-grabbing drug arres...

The host of the wildly successful TED podcast How To Be A Better Human , comedian Chris Duffy infuses every conversation with thoughtful curiosity, wit and enthusiasm—including this one! Chris and Gill talk about his determination to help us all bring more laughter into our lives; why humour is such a potent stabilizer in the midst of uncertainty and change; the wisdom he learned from his students...

After an unreasonable number of cancer diagnoses and a nearly two-year battle with long Covid, Gill has learned a lot about navigating uncertainty, yes. She’s also become a model of resilience, something the team at the terrific Psyched Up podcast wanted to celebrate. This week’s episode finds Gill on the other side of the interview microphone. Psyched Up host Dr Diane McIntosh is a psychiatrist a...

Imagine taking over the absolute top job in your field, at a time of unprecedented national and international scrutiny on your team. Oh, and you’re the first woman EVER to hold the position. That is the challenge General Jennie Carignan wakes up to each morning, as Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff, the highest ranking military command in the land. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty about Ca...

Serena Ryder is incredibly comfortable belting her glorious voice into a microphone. A multiple Juno award winner, she sells out concert halls wherever she goes. Songs like “What I Wouldn’t Do”, “Stompa” and more have scored TV soundtracks, and become iconic rallying cries for celebration. But Serena is incredibly courageous about sharing her vulnerable side as well, using her voice to speak up fo...

A long-time productivity and self-help writer for The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman catapulted to international renown with his 2021 book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals . In that book, as well as his 2025 follow up Meditations for Mortals , Burkeman jolts our productivity-obsessed culture awake with the reminder that we can’t possibly get everything under control in the short time we...

How do you go from a corporate job you don’t actually like to living your creative and professional dream? For Anar Ali the path involved a lot of leaps into the unknown. Anar is creator and producer of Allegiance, the top-rated show on CBC Television. Before that she was a respected author with a multi-book deal at a major publisher. But none of it would have happened without listening to her ins...

Waking up each morning to a relentless news cycle of fear and despair, sometimes being hopeful can seem naive. How can we possibly have hope for a future that often feels grim? As award-winning author Andrea Curtis shares in her newest book, hope and struggle actually go hand in hand. The Story and Science of Hope is written for middle-grade readers but the neuroscience behind it offers comfort to...

Living in a post-truth world is wildly destabilizing. With so much conflicting information, how can we trust what is real? Timothy Caulfield is Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy as well as a popular author. In his latest book The Certainty Illusion: What You Don’t Know and Why It Matters , Caulfield cuts through simplistic misinformation and reminds us why science, in all its complexi...

New York Times bestselling author Alex Hutchinson wants us to try new things. A science journalist with a focus on human performance, his new book The Explorer’s Gene is a fascinating dive into why humans are actually wired to not just handle uncertainty but to evolve and thrive because of it.  Betting on the path we don’t know about will yield more rewarding results—even if it doesn’t work o...

As Dragon’s Den kicks off its 20th season, how exciting to launch our second season with Arlene Dickinson—arguably the most iconic dragon of all. You know Arlene as a titan of business and venture capital, but as she reveals with remarkable warmth and candour as she talks with Gill, her secret weapon is her honesty about doubts, vulnerabilities and uncertainty. It’s what makes her YouTube show Arl...

Gill is loving her summer break! Launching this podcast was itself a bit of a leap into the unknown, so it has been wonderfully rewarding to hear good things from so many of our listeners. Your stories, your responses and your appreciation of our guests this season have been great encouragement—just the fuel we needed to drive us forward to season 2. We wanted to share some highlights from listene...

The future can feel shaky, especially for young people starting out right now. Psychology professor and author Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph. D. changed society's understanding of human development when he coined the term “emerging adulthood.” When adult children are living at home—as many are in this economy— future uncertainty can feel oppressive for everyone in the house. Dr. Arnett gives reassurin...

When our health feels uncertain, we turn to our physicians—doctors have all the answers, right? But what about when they don’t? Dr. Kieran Quinn has devoted much of his busy clinical and research time since 2020 to understanding post-Covid syndromes. Though he is considered a top long Covid specialist, it is a condition riddled with unknowns, for which he can offer no remedy, no treatment and very...

If you’ve ever had a secret dream but been too afraid of failure to dare attempt it, Sue Hincenbergs would like a word. Her debut novel—a dark, funny crime story called “The Retirement Plan”—sparked a publishing bidding war and the film adaptation is already in development. (She’s got her fingers crossed for Brad Pitt in a lead role!) Sue makes the case for staying hopeful and working hard, even i...

Super successful urban blogger Jen McNeely made a name for herself when she created the popular Toronto site “She Does the City”. But the toll that lifestyle took on her personal life became untenable and eventually led her to rehab. In sobriety, Jen has made one massive change after another, leaving her career and the city behind; rewriting her life in midlife. Jen is honest and inspiring as she...

If you’ve been paying even a little bit of attention to Canadian politics, you know that change and uncertainty have been dominant themes for several months now. Trump‘s tariffs and talk of annexation are fueling a lot of fear about what lies ahead. Author, journalist and cultural commentator Stephen Marche explores it all in his new podcast "Gloves Off ". But really, adapting to change and facing...

Retirement ain’t what those ‘Freedom 55’ ad campaigns promised. Bestselling author and award-winning journalist Cathrin Bradbury talks openly about her new book This Way Up and the enormous change of this under-discussed life stage: the wild, unexpected and wonderful chapter that opened up in her life when she finally stepped away from the daily grind. Cathrin shares her own reckoning with all the...

Improvisational sketch comedy offers a master class in how to not just handle uncertainty but lean into it. Superstar improv comedians Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus make walking the high wire of unscripted performance look easy. A couple both onstage and off, they have navigated huge life changes together, usually with laughs. When both sets of parents died, they set about processing grief—and a l...