Dr. MCB’s Curiosities

Dr. Marie Claire Bourque
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What are you curious about? I'm Dr. Marie Claire Bourque, Dr. MCB. I'm a psychiatrist, and I ask a lot of questions. My favourite ones are the ones I don't know the answers to. That's where Dr. MCB’s Curiosities starts. We take a question about neuroscience, human behaviour, clinical medicine, or something else entirely, and build a podcast episode or series to explore the answer. I read the research and look at different explanations. What do we know? How do we know it? And what haven't we figured out yet? You get to follow that search with me, without having to work through all the papers yourself. We'll make sense of the science in plain language, including where the evidence is uncertain or the answer is still taking shape. You might leave with a clearer answer, a different understanding of something you thought you knew, or another question worth asking. And if you've got a question I can't answer, send it my way. That's the engine. Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

  1. Episode 1

    What is the landscape of professional sport?

    Episode 1 of 7 in What makes a high-performance culture? Today's question: What are we actually dealing with? In the review after a late loss, the coaches talk about adjustments nobody saw coming, and at the back of the room Nadia, the team's video coordinator for five seasons, says nothing. By the off-season her contract isn't renewed. Nadia is a composite, and Dr. MCB uses her story to show that she did exactly what the building taught her to do. The episode first lays out the seven questions the series will ask, in order, and why each depends on the one before. Then it answers today's question in three parts. What kind of place is elite sport? Not a harder version of a normal workplace, but a different kind of organization. What presses on the people inside it? Eight pressures: everyone on a different clock, more people than places, the body as the workplace, selection that starts in childhood, power gaps, inherited habits, constant turnover, and what sustained stress does to the brain that's trying to cope. Along the way come two research stories: Emily Kroshus and colleagues' 2015 survey of college athletes, in which the pressure athletes felt from coaches, teammates, parents and fans to keep playing went with a lower intention to report concussion symptoms, and Alfred University's national survey of college athletes in the late nineties, in which about eighty percent reported experiences that met the definition of hazing while twelve percent said they had been hazed. And why does going quiet make sense there? Dr. MCB explains the silence calculus, the quiet arithmetic people do before speaking up, names three kinds of silence, shows why the training room is where athletes open up, and asks why nobody fixes any of this: the handcuffs are golden. She also says where the research stops, since most of it is borrowed from other fields. The episode's answer: what we're dealing with is a different kind of organization under eight pressures that stack, which make silence, hidden injuries and short-term decisions the smart move and leave the most information with the people least able to use it. The first job isn't to fix that. It's to make an honest map of your own building, a map, not a score. This series draws on The Psychology of High-Performance Sports Organizations: Culture, Safety, and Leadership by Dr. Marie Claire Bourque and Madeline Antony (Routledge). Find the book. Sources mentioned Research papers March, J. G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science, 2(1), 71–87. DOI Nixon, H. L. (1992). A social network analysis of influences on athletes to play with pain and injuries. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 16(2), 127–135. DOI Kerr, Z. Y., Register-Mihalik, J. K., Marshall, S. W., Evenson, K. R., Mihalik, J. P., & Guskiewicz, K. M. (2014). Disclosure and non-disclosure of concussion and concussion symptoms in athletes: Review and application of the socio-ecological framework. Brain Injury, 28(8), 1009–1021. DOI Kroshus, E., Garnett, B., Hawrilenko, M., Baugh, C. M., & Calzo, J. P. (2015). Concussion under-reporting and pressure from coaches, teammates, fans, and parents. Social Science & Medicine, 134, 66–75. DOI Morrison, E. W. (2014). Employee voice and silence. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 173–197. DOI Audas, R., Dobson, S., & Goddard, J. (2002). The impact of managerial change on team performance in professional sports. Journal of Economics and Business, 54(6), 633–650. Arnsten, A. F. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422. DOI Woo, E., Sansing, L. H., Arnsten, A. F. T., & Datta, D. (2021). Chronic stress weakens connectivity in the prefrontal cortex: Architectural and molecular changes. Chronic Stress, 5, Article 24705470211029254. DOI Gouttebarge, V., Castaldelli-Maia, J. M., Gorczynski, P., Hainline, B., Hitchcock, M. E., Kerkhoffs, G. M., Rice, S. M., & Reardon, C. L. (2019). Occurrence of mental health symptoms and disorders in current and former elite athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 53(11), 700–706. DOI Pilkington, V., Rice, S. M., Walton, C. C., Gwyther, K., Olive, L., Butterworth, M., Clements, M., Cross, G., & Purcell, R. (2022). Prevalence and correlates of mental health symptoms and well-being among elite sport coaches and high-performance support staff. Sports Medicine—Open, 8, Article 89. DOI Bernier, M., Bagot, P., Sondt, N., Levillain, G., Vacher, P., Doron, J., Martinent, G., Fournier, J. F., & Kermarrec, G. (2025). The effectiveness of psychological interventions in elite sport: methodological issues and opportunities to gather evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1516760. DOI Books and reports Hoover, N. C. (1999). National survey: Initiation rites and athletics for NCAA sports teams. Alfred University. Report (PDF) Bridgewater, S. (2010). Football management. Palgrave Macmillan. About the host Dr. Marie Claire Bourque Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

    What is the landscape of professional sport?

  2. Episode 2

    Is it safe to speak up in professional sport?

    Episode 2 of 7 in What makes a high-performance culture? Today's question: Is it safe to speak up? Four people at one club go quiet, and only one of them was ever told to. Through Marta, a composite story about an assistant coach who is shut down once in one staff meeting, Dr. MCB works out how a single sentence can switch off the truth in an entire building, and what it takes to switch it back on. She takes three questions in turn. What switched off: psychological safety, a belief the whole team shares that admitting a mistake, asking a question or disagreeing won't be punished, which isn't comfort, trust or belonging and doesn't remove the consequences of what someone discloses. Why going quiet was the smart move: the status gap, rivals for a place, a public audience, a price that isn't the same for everyone, and the fact that everyone watches what happens to the person who speaks first; and because people go quiet out of fear, resignation or loyalty, those are three different silences with three different fixes. And what switches it back on: finding out whether anyone has tested the room lately (the Sentence Test), separating a decision from the way it's delivered (performance safety), a route for bad news that gets an answer within a day or two, and repairing in public. Two research stories carry the argument: Amy Edmondson's early hospital study, where the best nursing teams turned out to report the most medication errors, and the neonatal intensive care study she did with Ingrid Nembhard, which showed what a leader's invitation does to a status gap. Is it safe to speak up? Dr. MCB's answer is that in too many elite sport environments it isn't yet, because honesty still costs too much; the way to assess your own is to look at what happens when someone speaks. Most of the evidence comes from outside sport, and the tools are practitioner tools, not validated tests. This series draws on The Psychology of High-Performance Sports Organizations: Culture, Safety, and Leadership by Dr. Marie Claire Bourque and Madeline Antony (Routledge). Find the book. Sources mentioned Research papers Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. DOI Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2006). Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(7), 941–966. DOI Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. R. (2007). Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open? Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869–884. DOI Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Botero, I. C. (2003). Conceptualizing employee silence and employee voice as multidimensional constructs. Journal of Management Studies, 40(6), 1359–1392. DOI Rice, S. M., Walton, C. C., Pilkington, V., Gwyther, K., Olive, L. S., Lloyd, M., Kountouris, A., Butterworth, M., Clements, M., & Purcell, R. (2022). Psychological safety in elite sport settings: A psychometric study of the Sport Psychological Safety Inventory. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, 8(2), e001251. DOI Taylor, J., Gretton, T. W., & Sweeney, L. (2026). Performance safety: Conceptualising psychological safety when errors have consequences. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 38(1), 1–15. DOI Morrison, E. W. (2011). Employee voice behavior: Integration and directions for future research. The Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 373–412. DOI Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological safety: A meta-analytic review and extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113–165. DOI Fransen, K., McEwan, D., & Sarkar, M. (2020). The impact of identity leadership on team functioning and well-being in team sport: Is psychological safety the missing link? Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 51, Article 101763. DOI Hurst, P., Kavussanu, M., & Stirling, A. (2026). Elite athletes report lower psychological safety and are less likely to report interpersonal violence compared to recreational athletes: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 38(3), 297–312 (published online 2025). DOI Vella, S. A., Mayland, E., Schweickle, M. J., Sutcliffe, J. T., McEwan, D., & Swann, C. (2024). Psychological safety in sport: A systematic review and concept analysis. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17(1), 516–539. DOI Books and reports Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons. Publisher Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall. About the host Dr. Marie Claire Bourque Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

    Is it safe to speak up in professional sport?

  3. Episode 3

    What makes a sport culture toxic?

    Episode 3 of 7 in What makes a high-performance culture? Today's question: What makes a sport culture toxic? A new coach is hired to fix a culture. He opens every door, and nobody walks through. Through Tomás, a composite story, Dr. MCB works out the three things that were broken at his club, none of which was him. First, whether the place is demanding or damaging: does feedback target what you did or who you are, does disagreement cost you your place, and who ends up managing the leader's moods. Second, where the harm actually starts, with the coach or above the coach, and how to trace it. Third, the toxic triangle of leader, followers and environment that keeps a pattern alive after one person is removed. Along the way she tells two research stories: a brain-imaging study of what putting a feeling into words does to the brain's alarm, and the paper that named the toxic triangle. The episode's answer: harmful behaviour that the organization allows to keep happening, and the person the review names may be only part of it. It closes with a ten-minute weekly check, with at least one person outside the coaching chain and periodic independent review. Its thresholds are practitioner prompts, and never a reason to delay medical care or responding to suspected abuse, a safeguarding concern or immediate danger. This series draws on The Psychology of High-Performance Sports Organizations: Culture, Safety, and Leadership by Dr. Marie Claire Bourque and Madeline Antony (Routledge). Find the book. Sources mentioned Research papers Einarsen, S., Aasland, M. S., & Skogstad, A. (2007). Destructive leadership behaviour: A definition and conceptual model. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 207–216. DOI Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 176–194. DOI Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 178–190. DOI Schyns, B., & Schilling, J. (2013). How bad are the effects of bad leaders? A meta-analysis of destructive leadership and its outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 138–158. DOI Stirling, A. E., & Kerr, G. A. (2009). Abused athletes' perceptions of the coach-athlete relationship. Sport in Society, 12(2), 227–239. DOI Stirling, A. E., & Kerr, G. A. (2014). Initiating and sustaining emotional abuse in the coach–athlete relationship: An ecological transactional model of vulnerability. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 23(2), 116–135. DOI Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. DOI Cortina, L. M., & Magley, V. J. (2003). Raising voice, risking retaliation: Events following interpersonal mistreatment in the workplace. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 8(4), 247–265. DOI Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Botero, I. C. (2003). Conceptualizing employee silence and employee voice as multidimensional constructs. Journal of Management Studies, 40(6), 1359–1392. DOI Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Occupational Behaviour, 2(2), 99–113. DOI Mayer, D. M., Kuenzi, M., Greenbaum, R., Bardes, M., & Salvador, R. (2009). How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle-down model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(1), 1–13. DOI Mawritz, M. B., Mayer, D. M., Hoobler, J. M., Wayne, S. J., & Marinova, S. V. (2012). A trickle-down model of abusive supervision. Personnel Psychology, 65(2), 325–357. DOI Harsey, S. J., & Freyd, J. J. (2020). Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO): What is the influence on perceived perpetrator and victim credibility? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 29(8), 897–916. DOI Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2014). Institutional betrayal. American Psychologist, 69(6), 575–587. DOI Books and reports Freyd, J. J. (2018, January 11). When sexual assault victims speak out, their institutions often betray them. The Conversation. Article Safeguarding guidance International Olympic Committee. Draw the line. Guidance on recognizing and reporting harassment, abuse and concerns about athlete welfare. IOC guidance About the host Dr. Marie Claire Bourque Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

    What makes a sport culture toxic?

  4. Episode 4

    How do teams make good decisions under pressure?

    Episode 4 of 7 in What makes a high-performance culture? Today's question: How do we decide when it matters? A senior player loses his temper with a member of the support staff, and someone has a quiet word with him. A younger player does the same thing and is benched. Dr. MCB starts with what the people in that dressing room learn from the two responses, and asks how an organization can make decisions that match the values it says it holds, especially once it is under pressure and already hoping for a particular outcome. She draws on Ann Tenbrunsel and David Messick's 2004 paper on ethical fading, where the ethical part of a decision becomes harder for the person making it to see, and on what healthcare and aviation call Just Culture and the research into procedural justice. The suggestions are a way of working rather than a tested method: look back at the decisions already made and ask what was protected when two things the organization cared about came into conflict (she calls this conflict archaeology); keep abuse, harassment, retaliation, welfare concerns and credible risks of serious harm out of ordinary team discipline and in an independent pathway, with a lower threshold in youth sport; agree a few questions to ask whoever is involved, including whether the same process would follow for someone with less standing; write down who decides what; and after a loss, wait seventy-two hours before major decisions unless they were planned beforehand, which never means waiting on an urgent health or safeguarding concern. To begin this week, put your last three discipline decisions side by side and ask someone you trust what they notice. This series draws on The Psychology of High-Performance Sports Organizations: Culture, Safety, and Leadership by Dr. Marie Claire Bourque and Madeline Antony (Routledge). Find the book. Sources mentioned Research papers Tenbrunsel, A. E., & Messick, D. M. (2004). Ethical fading: The role of self-deception in unethical behavior. Social Justice Research, 17(2), 223–236. DOI Staw, B. M., Sandelands, L. E., & Dutton, J. E. (1981). Threat-rigidity effects in organizational behavior: A multilevel analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(4), 501–524. DOI Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386–400. DOI Cruickshank, A., & Collins, D. (2012). Culture change in elite sport performance teams: Examining and advancing effectiveness in the new era. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 24(3), 338–355. DOI Cruickshank, A., Collins, D., & Minten, S. (2014). Driving and sustaining culture change in Olympic sport performance teams: A first exploration and grounded theory. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 36(1), 107–120. DOI Books and reports Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall. Dekker, S. W. A. (2012). Just culture: Balancing safety and accountability (2nd ed.). Ashgate. DOI Reason, J. (1997). Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Ashgate. DOI Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. Plenum Press. About the host Dr. Marie Claire Bourque. Her newsletter, Dr. MCB’s Curiosities, is at curiosities.dr-mcb.com. Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

    How do teams make good decisions under pressure?

  5. Season 1 Trailer

    What are you curious about?

    Dr. MCB’s Curiosities starts with a question. Dr. Marie Claire Bourque (Dr. MCB), a psychiatrist, explores the research through a podcast episode or a connected series. Neuroscience, human behaviour and clinical medicine are some of the places those questions can lead. Follow the search in plain language: what we know, how we know it, and what remains uncertain. About the host: Dr. Marie Claire Bourque Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

    What are you curious about?
See All Season 1 (5)

Trailer

About

What are you curious about? I'm Dr. Marie Claire Bourque, Dr. MCB. I'm a psychiatrist, and I ask a lot of questions. My favourite ones are the ones I don't know the answers to. That's where Dr. MCB’s Curiosities starts. We take a question about neuroscience, human behaviour, clinical medicine, or something else entirely, and build a podcast episode or series to explore the answer. I read the research and look at different explanations. What do we know? How do we know it? And what haven't we figured out yet? You get to follow that search with me, without having to work through all the papers yourself. We'll make sense of the science in plain language, including where the evidence is uncertain or the answer is still taking shape. You might leave with a clearer answer, a different understanding of something you thought you knew, or another question worth asking. And if you've got a question I can't answer, send it my way. That's the engine. Dr. MCB’s Curiosities is produced by PIPACO Tech. Dr. MCB is a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine. The views expressed are her own and are not endorsed by either university. This podcast is general education, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship.

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Marie Claire Bourque
  • Episodes
    5
  • Seasons
    1
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Dr. M.C. Bourque Professional Corporation
  • Show Website
    Dr. MCB’s Curiosities

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