Everything Happens with Kate Bowler
Duke Professor Kate Bowler, an expert in the stories we tell about success, failure, suffering, and happiness, hosts this podcast. After her own experience with Stage IV cancer, she engages in conversations with funny and wise people about living with the knowledge that everything happens. The podcast explores how to navigate life's ups and downs with humor and insight.
Episodes
Aging is a Privilege with Dr. Mary Claire Haver
Aging is a privilege — but perimenopause and menopause can still blindside you. Kate Bowler sits down with Dr. Mary Claire Haver, board-certified OB-GYN and bestselling author of The New Menopause and The New Perimenopause, to explain what’s actually happening in the body during perimenopause and menopause, why symptoms like brain fog, frozen shoulder, and anxiety get dismissed or misdiagnosed, an
How to Break Generational Cycles in Motherhood with Libby Ward
What if becoming the parent you want to be requires unlearning some of what you were taught?
Author and creator Libby Ward joins Kate to talk about breaking generational cycles, people-pleasing, parental burnout, and the complicated work of becoming the parent you didn’t have. Libby shares how motherhood forced her to confront her own limits—and reconsider the impossible standards she’d absorbed
Listen Again: We Are Good Medicine with Vivek Murthy
Loneliness is more than just a feeling—it shapes how we see ourselves and the world around us. It can make us withdraw, hesitate to reach out, or convince us that connection is for other people. But Dr. Vivek Murthy has spent years reminding us of what is most true: we are meant to hold each other up.
As U.S. Surgeon General (twice!), Vivek confronted some of the biggest public health challenges
Listen Again: Where We Turn for Meaning with Michael Ignatieff
Historian and Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff explores the cracks in our seamless worldviews… or at least the worldviews we thought were seamless until we’re faced with tragedies of all kinds. In this wide-ranging exploration, Kate and Michael probe humanity's enduring attempt to console ourselves and construct meaning from our pain.
In this conversation, Kate and Michael discuss:
Why t
Listen Again: The Luckiest Unlucky Person with Tig Notaro
How do you live knowing life can just come undone at a moment’s notice? In the span of a few months, Tig Notaro received three life-threatening illnesses, unexpectedly lost her mom, and went through a breakup. Tig is a brilliant comedian whose real life informs her comedy and has a lot to teach us about living honestly in the face of reality.
In this conversation, Kate and Tig discuss:
Tig’
Listen Again: Serious About Fun with Catherine Price
Don’t Waste Your Life. Savor Every Moment. Live in the Present.
Culture has a lot of prescriptions for how to live a good life. But what if we don’t know where to start? Writer and researcher Catherine Price started to notice how much time she was spending on her phone and how the habit was sucking joy from her life. Instead, she wanted to learn how to have fun again. What is fun? How do you hav
Listen Again: Hope is a Muscle with Nicholas Kristof
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof understands how to hope—especially in the face of despair or disappointment. He has spent his life shining a light on global tragedies like the Tiananmen Square massacre or the genocide in Darfur. And yet, despite all the horrors he has born witness to, he maintains a sense of hard-won optimism. “Hope is a muscle,” he says, and one we can all lear
Listen Again: Am I Ruining My Kid? with Dr. Becky Kennedy
There are no training manuals for this. Just a child staring up at you with cartoon eyes and an inner monologue that asks: Am I doing this right? Am I ruining them?
Kate sits down with Dr. Becky Kennedy—a clinical psychologist and creator of Good Inside—to talk about the heartbreak and hope of parenting. What does it mean to raise (or re-raise) someone with compassion and boundaries, especially w
Listen Again: What Makes Life Worth Living? with Atul Gawande
In this episode, Kate speaks with surgeon, writer, and public health leader Dr. Atul Gawande about the deeply human questions that surface when medicine meets its limits. What does it mean to be a good doctor when a cure isn’t possible? What do people really mean when they say they want “quality of life?”
Together, they talk about caregiving, end-of-life decisions, and how the most honest convers
Listen Again: Stay Curious with Alan Alda
We don’t usually have repeat guests on this podcast… except we’re making an exception for the wonderful and wise Alan Alda. Alan Alda, of course, is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and podcast host. You probably know and love him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H or Senator Arnie Vinick on The West Wing. He is endlessly curious on just about every topic—which makes him the perfect person to talk to
Listen Again: The Mystery of God with N.T. Wright
Scripture can become a weapon in the hands of the ultra-certain. As if every pain or suffering is part of “God’s divine plan.” So how should we understand and apply the Bible to our real lives with our real-life problems?
NT Wright, a New Testament scholar, is a trusted expert to help us understand what truths resound across time and circumstance and which don’t. In this conversation, Kate and T
Listen Again: Everyone’s From Somewhere with Erin & Ben Napier
Erin and Ben Napier didn’t plan on becoming household names. They were just trying to build a beautiful life in their beloved hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, one house, one neighbor, one Main Street at a time. In this heartwarming conversation, Kate talks to the stars of HGTV’s Home Town about what happens when our plans fall apart and something even better takes root.
They reflect on the surpr
Doubt, Depth, and the Future of Belief with Tomáš Halík
What happens to faith when certainty collapses? Kate Bowler sits down with theologian and former underground priest Tomáš Halík to explore belief forged under surveillance, the spiritual value of doubt, and why going deeper—not louder—might be the only faithful response to a fractured world. Together, they consider silence, suffering, and what it means to remain open to God when clarity is nowhere
How to Love the World Anyway with Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sarah Bessey
Kate Bowler is joined by Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sarah Bessey for an honest, funny, and deeply tender conversation about what it means to be people of faith right now. When the world feels overwhelming—personally and globally—they explore small acts of love, embodied community, and “cozy faith” as resistance to despair. From knitting circles and prayer shawls to church, doubt, and the stubborn choice
Joy, Absurdity, and the Weird Ways We Survive with Rhett McLaughlin and Jenny Lawson
What if humor isn’t just a personality trait—but a survival strategy?
Kate Bowler sits down with writer Jenny Lawson and entertaining YouTuber Rhett McLaughlin to talk about the strange, often dark roots of comedy. From childhood anxiety and taxidermy-filled homes to lifelong creative friendships and faith that evolves, they explore how silliness, honesty, and absurdity help us live with what hur
Joyful Anyway (Yes, Even Now)
On the day her new book Joyful Anyway releases, Kate pauses before the interviews and travel to reflect on a harder question: what does it mean to talk about joy in a world that feels fractured, exhausting, and uncertain? In this short, personal episode, she pushes back on the pressure to optimize our way into happiness and instead explores a stranger, sturdier kind of joy—one that shows up alongs
The Strange Gift of Joy with Rowan Williams
As Holy Week arrives, Kate talks with theologian, poet, and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams about joy that doesn’t erase sorrow. Together they explore longing, grief, music, gratitude, hope, and the strange, defiant way joy can sit right beside pain without denying what’s true.
SHOW NOTES
George Herbert, “The Pulley”
Nick Cave
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
Tour da
Living the Questions (Without Fixing Yourself) with Suleika Jaouad
There’s a particular kind of pressure that creeps in when we start measuring our lives—where we thought we’d be by now, who we imagined we’d become, how things were supposed to feel. The instinct is to fix it. Optimize it. Get moving.
But what if the invitation is something else?
Kate Bowler sits down with writer and speaker Suleika Jaouad (Between Two Kingdoms, The Book of Alchemy) for a conver
What If Prayer Isn’t What You Think It Is? with Malcolm Guite
What if Lent isn’t about giving something up, but about learning how to sit with what’s already gone? In this episode, Kate talks with poet, priest, and theologian Malcolm Guite about the kind of faith that can hold contradiction—the yes and the no, belief and doubt, beauty and sorrow. Malcolm, a Life Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and author of Sounding the Seasons and Lifting the Veil, refl
The Randomness of Everything with Mark Rank
We live in a world that wants life to be fair. Work hard, make good choices, believe the right things—and things should turn out okay. But what happens when they don’t? In this live conversation, Kate talks with sociologist Mark Rank, author of The Random Factor, about the role of chance in our lives. From the lottery of birth to the timing of a missed phone call, Mark’s research shows how much of
The New Shape of American Religion with Ross Douthat and Molly Worthen
Kate Bowler invites two of her sharpest friends—Ross Douthat and Molly Worthen—to help her make sense of the current American religious landscape: why the long “decline” story may be shifting, why religious curiosity is popping up in unexpected places, and why the loudest forms of Christianity often feel more online, more political, and more embarrassing. Together they sort through what people mea
What If Happiness Isn’t What You Think It Is? with Patrik Hagman
What does it mean to live well when danger, loss, and grief are never far away?
Kate Bowler talks with theologian, pastor, and writer Patrik Hagman, whose life has been shaped by profound loss—including the death of his father, his young son, and later his wife. Raised in Finland and now living in Sweden, Patrik brings a distinctly Nordic perspective on happiness—not as constant joy or self-optim
There Is More Good Among Us Than We Think with Bishop Michael Curry
When many people hear the word Christian today, it comes with a lot of baggage—power, certainty, exclusion, and culture-war posturing. But there are still people of faith whose lives look nothing like that. People whose beliefs show up as love. Patient, persistent, deeply practical love.
Bishop Michael Curry is one of those people. A priest, pastor, and former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Ch
Anne Lamott on Love, Shame, and Being Human
What do we do when the world feels unbearably heavy—and no one is coming to save us?
To kick off Season 16 of Everything Happens, Kate Bowler sits down live with beloved author and truth-teller Anne Lamott for a luminous, funny, and deeply honest conversation about shame, joy, faith, aging, love, and what it means to keep showing up anyway.
Recorded in front of a packed house at the historic Car
Listen Again: Clear Eyes, Full Hearts with Minka Kelly
How do we stay soft in a world that has taught us to be tough? Actress Minka Kelly is known for her roles as Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as Samantha in HBO’s Euphoria. Despite her fame on the big screen, one might not realize the chaos that surrounded her childhood. Being raised by a single mom who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka had to learn how to take care of
Listen Again: Life After Dark with Barbara Brown Taylor
Author and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor is no stranger to darkness. After experiencing devastating loss, Barbara explores our culture’s pursuit of the sunny side of life. But perhaps there are things we learn in the dark that we can’t learn in the light. Kate and Barbara discuss the two halves of our lives and how to practice courage even in the scariest of circumstances.
CW: Death of pa
Listen Again: Loving Mercy with Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson (founder of the Equal Justice Initiative) is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable among us.
In this episode, Kate and Bryan discuss:
The hope that motivates Bryan in this slow, sometimes frustrating work of justice
What it means to be a ‘stonec
Listen Again: Living with the End in Mind with Kathryn Mannix
What if you started thinking really concretely about small, hard choices? That’s exactly what palliative care physicians do every day. They help us think about what we really want—knowing that we have limited time and limited resources. You’re going to love our guest today, Dr. Kathryn Mannix, palliative care physician and cognitive behavioral therapist. She offers practical steps to help people a
Listen Again: Oliver Burkeman on New Year, Same Me
Does life ever feel like an endless to-do list? Like if you could just wake up tomorrow with a little more discipline, you’d finally master your schedule, achieve balance, and feel…enough?
On today's episode, Oliver Burkeman (bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals) and Kate unravel some of the beautiful lies we cling to about time and control, the fantasy of hyper
Third Annual Happy Crappy: Let’s End with the Happies
What happens when joy shows up anyway? In their third annual Happy Crappies, Kate and her dear friend Kelly Corrigan dare to name what went right in 2025 — personally, professionally, and globally — without apology or superstition. From deeply human moments that no machine could replicate, to long-overdue reckonings that reframe decades of pain, they trace the quiet ways meaning emerges when peopl
Third Annual Happy Crappy: Let’s Start with the Crappies
What happens when the things you tried to fix turn out to be forever? In their third annual Happy Crappy, Kate and her dear friend Kelly Corrigan wade into the personal, professional, and global losses of 2025. From chronic pain that refuses to budge, to families that shrink and institutions under siege, they name the hard things with tenderness, wit, and just the right amount of downer. Along the
Advent: Love Comes Down
By this point in December, love has been merchandised within an inch of its life. It jingles in ads that say if you really love someone, you should buy them a luxury car with a bow the size of a house.
But Advent tells another story. God did not arrive in a grand gesture—no skywriting, no fireworks, no leather interior with heated seats. Love slipped into a Bethlehem stable, swaddled in rags.
T
Listen Again: Jenna Bush Hager - Get in the Game
The TODAY Show’s Jenna Bush Hager sits down for a wide-ranging conversation with Kate Bowler. Together, they share about the importance of family and intergenerational relationships (Jenna shares such tender stories about her grandparents), how they hope to let their kids make mistakes and be met with grace, and how they both (try to) find beauty in ordinary, regular days and regular problems.
I
Advent: Blue Christmas
Every grocery store speaker is now officially blasting “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” And let’s be honest: sometimes it feels like a demand. The happiest Christmas music can feel like salt in the wound when life is heavy. If this season is not “merry and bright” for you, you’re not alone.
That’s why many churches will hold “Blue Christmas” services next week. It’s an American traditi
Listen Again: Father Richard Rohr on Learning to Hold On, Learning to Let Go
Life is painful. Period. But are there some aspects of our faith or our posture toward the world that can change how we experience it?
Father Richard Rohr is everyone’s favorite preacher of love. Love for each other. Love from God.
In this conversation, Kate and Richard talk about:
How great love and great suffering can move us into a new stage of life
The spirituality of subtraction
Maki
Advent: A Protest Song
We’ve all seen the Christmas pageants where Mary is very sweet and demure and she is wearing a tablecloth pulled from the church dining hall. Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much impossible courage Mary had from the beginning. She finds out that she is pregnant in a completely scandalous way. But what does this divinely-prepared, teenage girl do when an angel crashes into her life with an anno
Listen Again: Nikki DeLoach on a Not-So Hallmark Christmas
The pandemic introduced many to living with uncertainty. But for some, uncertainty has always been their norm. Actress Nikki Deloach has starred in several Hallmark Christmas movies, but her life hasn’t matched the happily-ever-after plot-lines of her characters. Nikki’s dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia and her son was diagnosed with congenital heart defects in utero… all in t
Advent: Begin Again
Well, here we are. December has arrived (shudder). And with it, the great cultural sprint: decorations, office parties, and the annual anxiety dream about whether you will accidentally forget someone on your gift list (spoiler: you will). Some of you already finished your shopping over Thanksgiving and have a freezer full of perfectly labeled Christmas cookies. (Who are you?! Come to my house and
Listen Again: Anna Sale on Hard Topics, Softer Conversations
In this conversation, Kate and Anna discuss:
How conversations might engender the intimacy we need to get by
Fostering the right interpersonal and listening skills it takes to approach a difficult topic (especially when you’re feeling nervous)
Best practices for responding to someone’s hard news
How learning to listen might bridge differences of all kinds
What do we lose when we don’t talk
Nikki Grimes on Complicated Childhoods, Forgiveness, and Extraordinary Grace
What happens when childhood teaches you more about survival than safety? Poet and author Nikki Grimes joins Kate to talk about growing up with profound instability—and still choosing to see beauty, feel joy, and offer forgiveness. In this moving conversation, they explore memory, trauma, faith, and the small pockets of belonging that shape a life.
SHOW NOTES:
Books by Nikki Grimes: Ordinary Haz
More Happier: Do Holidays Leave You Exhausted, Not Restored? Priya Parker, Francis Lam & Kate Bowler on Celebration
Today, we’re sharing a conversation from the More Happier podcast between Kate, Gretchen Rubin, Priya Parker, and Francis Lam.
It’s easy to get swept up in a cycle of holidays that feels more like a relentless to-do list than a source of joy. In this Celebration Roundtable, we talk about how to embrace the holidays as opportunities for intentional connection and meaning.
See omnystudio.com/liste
Through the Lens of Love with Tim Shriver
Tim Shriver—educator, author, and longtime Chairman of Special Olympics—joins Kate for a tender, funny, deeply practical conversation about dignity: what changes when we decide everyone matters, how relationships (not information) do the real work, and why service is more than “being nice.” Together they trace a family story from Rosemary Kennedy to Eunice Kennedy Shriver to millions of athletes,
Small Talk Survivors with Sarah Wildman
What happens when you live on a planet where grief rewrites the language of everyday life? Kate Bowler speaks with writer and New York Times editor Sarah Wildman about her daughter Orli’s incandescent life and staggering courage while living with terminal cancer. Together they explore the limits of positivity culture, the fierce tenderness of caregiving, the sacred discomfort of truth-telling, and
Relentless Tenderness: A Conversation on Healing with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau
It’s tempting to be a very serious person in a very serious world. But what if staying soft was the most loving thing we could do? In this vulnerable and playful conversation, Kate sits down with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau—mental health advocate, speaker, and writer—to talk about childhood wiring, the masks we wear, and how we begin the lifelong work of coming home to ourselves. If you’re navigating
So Much Love, So Much to Lose with Catherine Newman
Loving people is a gift—and a liability. The more we love, the more there is to lose. In this hilariously honest and deeply tender conversation, Kate talks with beloved writer Catherine Newman about the strange pairing of love and fear. Together, they explore how parenting, grief, humor, and hospice care shape us into people who laugh while crying and keep showing up anyway. If you’ve ever whisper
Naming the Silences with Miriam Toews
When someone you love is in pain—but can’t say the words out loud—what can you do? Kate speaks with beloved Canadian novelist Miriam Toews (All My Puny Sorrows, Women Talking, A Truce That Is Not Peace) about the silences that shape us: the kind that settle into families, into churches, into whole communities where mental illness is unnamed and suffering goes unspoken.
Together, they talk about t
Listen Again: Standing in the Gap with Parker Palmer
How do we stay hopeful in the face of despair and disillusionment—especially when politics threaten to tear us in two? Kate speaks with Parker Palmer, a writer, teacher, and activist. As you’ll hear, he has gone through seasons of deep clinical depression, and has hard-won wisdom to share with us on how to survive, how to regain a sense of agency, how to remain hopeful despite it all.
In this ep
Learning to Be Joyful, Anyway: A Big Announcement
Joy won't cure you, but it will carry you.
After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. Alive. Blessed. But she still ached—for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day.
So she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A l
For Those Who Feel It All with Dr. Ellen Vora
Everywhere you turn, there’s something to worry about. And sometimes that buzzing hum of anxiety is trying to tell us something important—about our body, our heart, our world. In this episode, holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora joins Kate to talk about the difference between false anxiety (the kind sparked by sleepless nights or too much caffeine) and true anxiety (the kind that whispers: someth
America’s Caregiving Crisis: A Conversation with Ai-jen Poo
What happens when love isn’t enough to hold up a broken system?
Ai-jen Poo—award-winning organizer and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance—joins Kate Bowler to talk about caregiving in America. Who provides it. Who’s left out. And why we need a system that treats care as the sacred, shared labor that it is.
Together they explore:
Why more than 100 million Americans are
Jen Hatmaker on Divorce, Deconstruction, and Rebuilding from Scratch
What happens when the life you were supposed to have… disappears?
Jen Hatmaker joins Kate Bowler for a conversation about faith, divorce, and the slow art of healing. After the collapse of her marriage and being pushed out of the evangelical world, Jen had to figure out how to live again—how to co-parent, pay bills, go to therapy, and mother herself after decades of being the “pastor’s wife.”
Th
Am I Ruining My Kid? A Conversation with Dr. Becky Kennedy
There are no training manuals for this. Just a child staring up at you with cartoon eyes and an inner monologue that asks: Am I doing this right? Am I ruining them?
Kate sits down with Dr. Becky Kennedy—a clinical psychologist and creator of Good Inside—to talk about the heartbreak and hope of parenting. What does it mean to raise (or re-raise) someone with compassion and boundaries, especially w
When Caregiving Becomes Codependency: A Conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert
When someone you love is in pain—whether they’re sick, addicted, or falling apart—you show up. Again and again and again. You make the calls. You hold the line. You carry what you can. But what happens when love, loyalty, and devotion blur into something harder to name? When care turns into codependency, and compassion starts to erase your sense of self?
Kate sits down with best-selling author El
What Makes Life Worth Living? Atul Gawande on Mortality, Medicine, and Meaning
In this episode, Kate speaks with surgeon, writer, and public health leader Dr. Atul Gawande about the deeply human questions that surface when medicine meets its limits. What does it mean to be a good doctor when a cure isn’t possible? What do people really mean when they say they want “quality of life”?
Together, they talk about caregiving, end-of-life decisions, and how the most honest convers
How to Change (But Not Overnight)
You were supposed to be a whole new person by now. Sun-kissed and emotionally regulated. Inbox at zero.
But here we are—still tired, still trying, still wondering if change is even possible. In this episode, I reflect on the seasons when we ache to become someone else. Someone better and explore the ancient idea of virtue—especially the least sexy one, prudence—as a compass for who we’re becoming
Listen Again: How to gather in meaningful ways with Priya Parker
We are re-airing some of our favorite episodes during our summer break like this one with expert facilitator, Priya Parker. After the pandemic took apart so many of our favorite ways of hanging out, we might be out of practice. Or too tired or overwhelmed. Priya encourages us all to practice being together for different reasons. And they don’t have to be nearly as fancy or predictable as we might
Listen Again: How to fall in love with the world again with Margaret Renkl
During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes! Margaret Renkl calls herself a backyard naturalist—but not because she has any particular expertise. From the birds in her yard to the bugs in her flower beds, she has learned the art of attention. Nature has taught her a speed at which to live, to hope, to stave off despair.
In this conversation, Kate and Margaret discuss:
Listen Again: Why you don’t have to prove your worth by overworking with Shauna Niequist
We are re-airing some of our favorite episodes during our summer break, and this one with Shauna Niequist is a gem. Our obligations never stop, do they? How do we get off the achievement train and build a beautiful life within the constraints of our own limitations? Writer Shauna Niequist was on the fast track to burnout when she received advice that changed the pace of her life entirely. Kate and
Listen Again: How to keep creating when grief steals your hope with Lanecia Rouse
During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes. What do you do when hope feels lost? Abstract artist Lanecia Rouse Tinsley is no stranger to the hopelessness that comes with grief. In extended isolation because of the pandemic, a nationwide reckoning with race, and our own personal losses, we could all use a bit of what Lanecia calls holy seeing. In this episode, Kate and
The Summer of Too Much: Practicing Holy Underachievement
Ah, summer. The season of sticky popsicles and even stickier expectations. It’s supposed to be the time of rest and freedom, but more-often-than-not, it’s anything but. In this solo episode, Kate shares from her very real, very mosquito-bitten summer, exploring the myth of summer as effortless bliss and what it means to resist our culture’s obsession with doing more, achieving more, and smiling th
Listen Again: Why you don’t need a purpose to be creative with Elizabeth Gilbert
During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes.
In this live conversation recorded at Duke University, the indomitable Liz Gilbert (of EAT, PRAY, LOVE fame) joins Kate for a discussion about the courage to create. Listen as Liz helps us expose our exhausting American need to make everything useful and lets us embrace beauty as a way of really living.
In this episode, Kat
Listen Again: Why you are not what you do with Maria Bowler
During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes! In a world that constantly demands more—more work, more achievement, more hustle—how do we learn to pause? Kate sits down with her sister Maria Bowler, a writer, creativity coach, and spiritual director, to talk about the pressures of the “producer self,” that voice inside us all that equates our worth with what we do, fix, o
Suleika Jaouad: Survival Is a Creative Act
Sometimes, the bad thing happens—again. The kind of news that flattens your plans, your energy, your sense of who you are. And you think, surely that’s enough now. Haven’t we hit the quota for suffering? But there’s no quota, just the long middle where life doesn’t follow a script and you’re left figuring out how to be a person again.
Suleika Jaouad knows this terrain well. She’s a writer, artist
Erin & Ben Napier: Everyone's From Somewhere
Erin and Ben Napier didn’t plan on becoming household names. They were just trying to build a beautiful life in their beloved hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, one house, one neighbor, one Main Street at a time. In this heartwarming conversation, Kate talks to the stars of HGTV’s Home Town about what happens when our plans fall apart and something even better takes root.
They reflect on the surpr
Stacey Heale: The Aftermath of the Aftermath
When Stacey Heale’s husband, Greg, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, life became a blur of caregiving, grief, and trying to hold a family together with two small children and no time to waste. Overnight, Stacey became a caregiver, medical advocate, emotional buffer, and the person holding all the impossible pieces.
In this tender and fiercely honest conversation, Stacey and Kate talk about what
Kimberly Williams-Paisley: Where The Light (Still) Gets In
When Kimberly Williams-Paisley’s mother was diagnosed with a rare form of dementia, life became a long stretch of uncertainty, grief, and surprising moments of delight. There were dinners to make. Kids to raise. A thousand tiny losses tucked inside ordinary days.
In this tender and funny conversation, Kimberly reflects on the long goodbye of her mother’s illness, what she regrets, and what she’s
Amanda Doyle: When Fixing Isn’t Loving
Some people become the ones others depend on. They organize the plans, remember the details, carry the weight. They know how to fix things—quietly, efficiently, lovingly. That kind of strength can shape a whole life. Until it begins to hollow something out.
Amanda Doyle has spent much of her life being that person. In this conversation, she joins Kate to talk about what happens when helping becom
Lisa Damour: How to Talk to Teenagers
We used to be afraid of teenagers. Now we’re afraid for them. Anxiety, depression, social media, school pressures, loneliness—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed about what it means to raise or support a teenager today. But Lisa Damour has spent decades helping us understand what’s actually happening in the emotional lives of teenagers—and what they really need from the adults who care for them. If you’
Father Ron Rolheiser: The Ache That Makes Us Human
There’s an ache at the center of being human. The kind that doesn’t go away with a fresh to-do list or a good night’s sleep. It’s the longing for more. The grief of what wasn’t. The quiet ache of ordinary life—school pickups, grocery runs, scan results, and the slow accumulation of things we didn’t choose.
In this tender and deeply wise conversation, Kate Bowler speaks with Father Ron Rolheiser—b
Melinda Gates: That Clearing in Between
There are seasons when everything feels a bit undone. A marriage ends. A child grows up. A job shifts. And suddenly, we’re no longer who we were…and not yet who we’ll become.
Melinda French Gates has lived through some of life’s biggest transitions. In this conversation, she reflects on what it means to stay open when life is changing—quietly or all at once. To hold your own hand when everything
Sarah Bessey: Faith That Survives
What happens when the faith that once held you starts to unravel? When the certainty you clung to turns to dust? Sarah Bessey knows what it’s like to watch faith fall apart—and somehow find something more honest, more spacious, more real on the other side. In this Holy Week conversation, Kate and Sarah talk about what it means to sit in the wilderness of uncertainty, to be in the company of unansw
Simone Gorrindo: The Cost of Love and Duty
What happens when the person you love is called to something that takes them away? Again and again and again. Journalist Simone Gorrindo never expected to become a military wife. Raised in a liberal anti-war family, she had her whole life mapped out–until she fell in love. And love, as it turns out, isn’t just about saying yes. Sometimes it asks for waiting. For loneliness. For a life built around
Jeff Chu: Good Soil
What happens when a journalist-turned-seminarian finds God in a pile of rotting vegetables? You get Jeff Chu—writer, pastor, and accidental theologian of compost.
In this tender and funny conversation, Jeff and Kate talk about what it means to be changed—by grief, by love, by the kind of calling that makes zero practical sense. They talk about complicated families, appropriate smallness, and what
Pádraig Ó Tuama: In the Name of Belonging
What does it mean to live alongside people you don’t agree with? And love them anyway? Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and conflict mediator from Ireland, where belonging has always been complicated and peace is fragile at best. In this conversation, Kate and Pádraig explore what it takes to live together in the midst of disagreement—the beauty, the cost, and the messy, sacred hope of it al
Amy Griffin: Some Warriors Weep
We all carry stories. Some smooth over the past, making things easier to bear. Others—the truer ones—break us open. Amy Griffin knows what it’s like to hold a secret so tightly, it starts to define you. As a child, she was sexually assaulted by a teacher—a painful truth she buried for years. But eventually, staying silent became harder than telling the truth. So what happens when the person who sp
Coach K: Love in Winning, Love in Losing
What happens when someone believes in you–before you’re even ready to believe in yourself? In this powerful conversation, Kate sits down with legendary basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) to talk about trust, leadership, and the important work of calling out greatness in others. From his storied career at Duke to coaching Team USA, Coach K shares what he has learned about the power of hones
The Hardest Part: A Lent for Real Life
Lent is here—the season we stop pretending we’re fine and admit that life is…a lot. It’s forty days of naming what’s fragile, walking toward the hard truths, and resisting the urge to skip straight to the happy ending.
In this special Ask Kate Anything episode, Kate answers your biggest, messiest questions: How do we stay soft in a brutal world? How do we practice Lent when life is already exhaus
Vivek Murthy: We Are Good Medicine
Loneliness is more than just a feeling—it shapes how we see ourselves and the world around us. It can make us withdraw, hesitate to reach out, or convince us that connection is for other people. But Dr. Vivek Murthy has spent years reminding us of what is most true: we are meant to hold each other up.
As U.S. Surgeon General (twice!), Vivek confronted some of the biggest public health challenges
Listen Again: N.T. Wright
Scripture can become a weapon in the hands of the ultra-certain. As if every pain or suffering is part of “God’s divine plan.” So how should we understand and apply the Bible to our real lives with our real-life problems?
NT Wright, a New Testament scholar, is a trusted expert to help us understand what truths resound across time and circumstance and which don’t. In this conversation, Kate and T
Listen Again: Adam Grant
Everything is in flux. Nothing is the same anymore. How do we live amid all of this uncertainty? Well, psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant believes we may have to do some re-thinking. In this episode, Kate and Adam speak about the courage it takes to think again about things that we once felt so certain about, how “imposter syndrome” might be a good instinct, and how we all need friends
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