A Love Affair with the Unknown with Gill Deacon

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 could only write with the help of adaptive voice-to-text technology. In this delightful conversation, she tells Gill how she has grown through this challenging time; how creativity helps with making sense of uncertainty; and how facing adversity deepens our compassion. Gabrielle’s story is a bracing reminder that we always get to choose how we handle the hard things that beset us.
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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 that we always get to choose how we respond to life’s unknowns and challenges, and if we take the time to look for it, we can find lots to be grateful for. You’ll want to take notes in this wide-ranging conversation, as Neil shares with Gill his thoughts on how our devices are sabotaging our ability to handle uncertainty, and how we can re-invigorate our relationships to bring more meaning, joy and confidence into every day.
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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 both her father and her sister, but the all-but-unbearable struggle it has been for her to make sense of it. As warm and hilarious in person as she is on the page, Miriam Toews is a courageous reminder that uncertainty is literally all we have, and the idea that we’d ever be able to have all the answers is sheer folly.
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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 arrest, and a candid struggle with mental health, Steven Page is a very public example of courageously navigating hard things and finding joy and purpose along the way. You’ll be moved by his generous, warm-hearted vulnerability in this wonderful conversation that feels like a great hangout with the nice guy who lives next door. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 when he taught fifth grade; and why we should all take ourselves less seriously, especially now. Plus an early peek at some of the strategies Chris shares in his book Humor Me -released January 6, 2026- on how to get better at being funny and finding the comfort and joy of humour wherever you look.
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