Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

<p>Are you living your best life now? Not always? This is a podcast for you. Duke Professor Kate Bowler is an expert in the stories we tell about success and failure, suffering and happiness. She had Stage IV cancer. Then she didn’t. And since then, all she wants to do is talk to funny and wise people about how to live with the knowledge that, well, everything happens.  Find her online at @katecbowler.</p> <p>Sales and Distribution by Lemonada Media <a href="https://lemonadamedia.com/">https://lemonadamedia.com/</a>  </p>

  • 50 minutes 30 seconds
    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

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    31 March 2026, 7:30 am
  • 35 minutes 21 seconds
    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 conversation about living inside unresolved questions—especially the ones that ache. Together, they talk about ambition and exhaustion, chronic illness and uncertainty, and the quiet shifts that happen when nothing seems to change.

    They explore the tension between momentum and meaning, the limits of self-improvement, and what it looks like to keep going without pretending everything is fixable.

    SHOW NOTES

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    24 March 2026, 7:30 am
  • 36 minutes 51 seconds
    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, reflects on prayer as attention, poetry as a language spacious enough for ambivalence, and why faith might need less forced resolution and more honesty.

    SHOW NOTES

    • Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite

    • Lifting the Veil by Malcolm Guite

    • Seamus Heaney, Station Island

    • George Herbert, “Prayer”

    • Gerard Manley Hopkins, the “terrible sonnets” (including “No worst, there is none”) and The Wreck of the Deutschland

    • T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

    • C.S. Lewis, “Blue Spells and Flowered Spheres”

    • Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

    • Watch the live conversation on YouTube

    • Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    17 March 2026, 7:30 am
  • 46 minutes 9 seconds
    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 what we call success—or failure—comes down to forces we never chose.

    SHOW NOTES:

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    10 March 2026, 7:30 am
  • 50 minutes 26 seconds
    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 mean by “Christian nationalism,” how much of it is symbolism versus policy, what weak institutions and internet incentives are doing to faith, and what still gives them hope for the church.

    SHOW NOTES

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    3 March 2026, 8:30 am
  • 49 minutes 45 seconds
    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-optimization, but as contentment, trust, and gratitude that survives close proximity to fragility.

    This is a conversation about living with fewer explanations and more honesty. About faith that refuses easy answers. About the strange clarity that comes when life gets very small and very bright at the same time. And about learning to be less surprised by tragedy—and more surprised by goodness.

    If you’re trying to hold grief and gratitude at once, this episode is for you.

    SHOW NOTES

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    24 February 2026, 8:30 am
  • 39 minutes 36 seconds
    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 Church, Bishop Curry has spent a lifetime reminding people that Christianity is not an argument to win or an identity to defend—it’s a practice of love.

    Recorded in front of a room full of pastors, this conversation is a kind of holy pep talk for anyone who feels worn down by a fractured, exhausting world.

    Show notes:

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    17 February 2026, 8:30 am
  • 47 minutes 1 second
    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 Carolina Theatre in Durham, Kate and Anne talk about the shame that follows us from childhood, the relief of putting down our armor, and the small, ordinary acts of love that still matter. This is a conversation for anyone who feels tender, overwhelmed, skeptical of easy answers—and still hungry for hope.

    Show notes:

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    10 February 2026, 8:30 am
  • 37 minutes 48 seconds
    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 herself and the adults around her, and, eventually, to forgive her mom. 

    In this tender conversation, Kate and Minka discuss:

    • How we can be built from the outside in through our friendships and how our friends become our chosen family
    • How anger tells us that a boundary has been crossed
    • The unfinished ways people love us—reconciling our complicated childhoods with the love we feel for each another
    • How Minka has processed her difficult childhood through a lens of love and grace
    • The way Minka’s mom was changed by her cancer diagnosis, and how once they found their way to one another again, there could never, ever be enough time

    CW: colon cancer, death of a parent, brief mentions of abuse and neglect

    Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

    Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful.

    This episode originally aired May 2023.

     

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    3 February 2026, 8:30 am
  • 32 minutes 3 seconds
    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 parents, tongue cancer

    For show notes, the transcript, and discussion questions, click here.

    Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful.

    This episode originally aired December 2022.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    27 January 2026, 8:30 am
  • 1 hour 1 minute
    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 ‘stonecatcher’ (and why it serves both the one being condemned and the one doing the condemning)
    • The power of forgiveness, maybe especially toward those who don’t deserve it

     

    CW: discussion of slavery, lynching, and other racist violence, death row

    ***

    Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

    Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

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    No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available in PAPERBACK. Order your copy, today.

    Looking for some short spiritual reflections and blessings? Check out GOOD ENOUGH: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Available wherever books are sold.

    Introducing THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (releasing February 14, 2023). Learn more, pre-order, and receive a free pennant, here.

    Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

     

    This episode originally aired December 2022.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    20 January 2026, 8:30 am
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