Insights

Hundreds of thousands of people watch Brittlestar's videos every week. His comedic and family-friendly videos have been seen more than 600 million times on various platforms.  With fans all over the world, speaking engagements all over North America, collaborations with celebrities such as Ryan Reynolds, Brittlestar is living the social media celebrity dream… not bad for a Dad from the suburbs. He...

Shelagh Rogers is a veteran broadcast journalist and was a fixture on CBC Radio for over 40 years. She hosted and co-produced the 15 year run of The Next Chapter, the award winning radio program dedicated to writing in Canada until her retirement from CBC in 2023. Shelagh has admired Jillian for decades and recognizes her fellow blue-haired sister as a powerful storyteller herself.

Kate Bowler, PhD is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, and an Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke University. She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or not) we’re capable of change. She is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel and The Preacher’s Wife: The P...

Suzette Mayr’s Giller-Prize winning The Sleeping Car Porter transports us to another time and place. But how does a writer “get" there? In this conversation, we’ll talk about art as a portal to empathy, and why historical fiction helps us change the way we see the past - and the future.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Christine Gibson turned to TikTok to help people cope with their distress. Her videos were a sensation, and she became known as the “TikTok trauma doc.” But TikTok is only a small part of Dr. Gibson’s body of work, and in this conversation, we’ll explore everything from her ascent to social media fame to the many coping strategies she offers patients - and her man...

Dr. Jean Marmoero’s new book, “The Last Doctor”, is the powerful story of her experience providing medically assisted death. This hour-long conversation will explore the psychological - and practical - realities of providing medically-assisted death, the emotional challenges for provider and patient, and the lingering, complex questions of what constitutes a life worth living - and who decides. Da...

Popular Music & Variety presents Adriana Barton in conversation with Dr. Jillian Horton as part of our Arts, Medicine & #Life series / Musique populaire et variétés présente Adriana Barton en conversation avec Dre Jillian Horton dans le cadre de notre série Arts, Medicine & #Life
 
 Thank you Canadian Medical Association, MD Financial Management, and Scotiabank Merci L’Association médicale canadie...

With a background in internal medicine, hematology, and molecular biology, Dr. Nancy Olivieri has worked in thalassemia, a blood disease primarily of children of emerging countries, for over 30 years, including in Asia through Hemoglobal®, a charity she founded to improve worldwide care for these children. In 2003, Dr. Olivieri completed a Masters in Medical Ethics and Law at Kings’ College, UK wi...

Sue Goyette lives in K'jipuktuk (Halifax). She has published a novel and eight collections of poetry, including Ocean (winner of the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award and finalist for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize), The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl, Penelope and Anthesis. Her latest collection, Monoculture: monologues is forthcoming from Gaspereau Press in spring 2022...

Darrel J. McLeod is the author of Peyakow and Mamaskatch, which received the Govenor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction. He is Cree from Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. Before deciding to pursue writing in his retirement, McLeod was a chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nati...

Anna Mehler Paperny talks to Jillian Horton about mental health care in Canada and her own observations - both as journalist and patient. Anna Mehler Paperny is a reporter and the author of the book Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me, which was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writer's Trust Prize for Nonfiction. Anna is a reporter at Reuters and has worked at The Globe and Mail and Global News. Sh...

Clara Hughes , a dual-season Olympian, is the only athlete in history to win multiple medals at both the summer and winter Olympic Games. She also knows what it’s like to weather more than one season when it comes to mental health. She joins Dr. Horton to talk about her decision to pursue public advocacy, and to discuss why performance-driven cultures like medicine and sport need personal narrativ...

Student doctors are taught a formulaic way of “taking” patient histories and repeating their stories. Somewhere along the way, the essence of the person - and why they are seeking care in the first place - is often lost. Join author and physician Dr. Jillian Horton in conversation with noted author and storyteller Ivan Coyote as they discuss the difference between professionalism and authenticity...

In this episode of the Arts, Medicine and #Life series Dr. Horton speaks with Dr. Alika Lafontaine about Indigenous healing and what we can all learn from it. The conversation also examines systemic racism, compassion and culturally safe care. Dr. Alika Lafontaine is an award-winning physician, past-President of the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada and the first Indigenous physician lis...

In this episode of Arts, Medicine and #Life the tables are turned for our host as Popular Music & Variety presents the national book launch of "We Are All Perfectly Fine" by Dr. Jillian Horton. Executive Producer Heather Gibson leads a dynamic and thoughtful conversation that includes readings by Dr. Horton. “Funny, fresh, and deeply affecting, We Are All Perfectly Fine is the story of a married m...

When five-time Olympic champion Hayley Wickenheiser retired from hockey after 23 years, holding the record for most assists, points and goals for the Canadian Women’s National Team, she set her sights on another challenge: becoming a doctor.  But while medicine and sports may seem to share certain similarities, they do not share a common culture when it comes to taking care of our bodies or prepar...

In this episode of Arts, Medicine and #Life series host Dr. Jillian Horton speaks with journalist Paul Adams and neurosurgeon Dr. John Sinclair, about the long and lasting impact of moments of compassion in clinical care, debunking the notion that compassion fatigue is an inevitable consequence of a life in medicine, and helping to chart a path forward for patients and healthcare providers looking...

In episode 2 of the Arts, Medicine and #Life series Dr. Mamta Gautam dispels myths about physician burnout, and provides practical strategies any individual can deploy to rediscover their personal priorities. Dr. Mamta Gautam is an internationally recognized expert on burnout in physicians and gender equity in medicine. A psychiatrist by training, she has long been known as “The Doctor’s Doctor”....

This is episode one of a five part series titled Arts, Medicine and Life. In this discussion Dr. Jillian Horton sets the stage for the series, reflecting on her own journey through medicine, as well as ways in which the arts have helped her deal with both professional and personal experiences with deep suffering.