Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Are you living your best life now? Not always? GREAT, ME NEITHER. 

My name is Kate Bowler. I’m a Duke professor, bestselling author, and your friendly neighborhood Canadian.

This is a show for people who have learned that life is… well, complicated. And we need better language to tell the truth about all of our ups and downs and in-betweens. I’ve always been fascinated by how we, as humans, try to make sense of suffering and happin...

Comedians have the ability to be unsparingly honest in ways that buck all cultural norms. It’s a truth-telling that so many of us crave. 

Cue Rob Delaney. 

Rob is a comedian, actor, writer, and director. His memoir, A Heart That Works is an unsparing account of the death of his beautiful son, Henry. Rob lives in London with his family where Kate visited him for this honest and hilarious conversation. 

Kate and Rob discuss:

There is this quote by writer and theologian Frederick Buechner. He writes, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.” …But I always sort of wanted to amend his original words. Because the more honest truth is: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Be a little afraid.”

Life is so beautiful. And life is so hard. For everyone. Sometimes at the same time. That is the premi...

How should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness. 

In this conversation, we discuss:  

• The mysterious w...

This is the story of one young doctor’s race against the clock as he searches for a cure for his own rare disease.

In this conversation, Kate and David Fajgenbaum discuss:

• how love can turn hope into action
• what limited agency means
• how small steps can lead to big change

This episode originally aired in 2020. Stay tuned to the end to hear an incredible update from David and the work he is up to now. He has expanded from ...

How hard is it to be a parent today? After a pandemic? With social media breathing down our necks? It’s so hard! Navigating the delicate balance between granting independence and providing guidance can be daunting as a parent. 

Dr. Lisa Damour (New York Times bestselling author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers) has dedicated her life to unraveling the intricacies of adolescence and offering practical, heartfelt advice.

In this c...

What do you learn standing so close to the edge with so many people? Listen for wisdom on mortality and hope—like how the habits of love are hard to break and what makes a ‘good funeral’ directly from a thoughtful and funny funeral director himself.

In this episode, Kate and Thomas discuss: 

• How the habits of love are hard to break, no matter how old the person died who you grieve
• How those we grieve know our hearts and our lo...

Our most precious relationships are often our most complicated, aren’t they? Poet and bestselling author Kwame Alexander wrote an honest book of poems and essays that name the difficult and beautiful and heart-wrenching conversations we have (or should be having) with the people we love and with the ones who love us. 

In this conversation, Kwame and Kate discuss: 

• How we can’t outrun our grief
• How our own parents love us in th...

There is a strange tension when we want so badly for the people we love to support us, but want to shield them from the pain at the same time. This is a beautiful, terrible kind of love. 

In this conversation, Kate and bestselling writer Suleika Jaouad discuss:

• What it is like to be the one suffering—all the guilt and shame and rage and mercy and grace 
• How we can create better economies of love around those who need it
• The to...

Are some people more empathetic than others? By studying those on the opposite end of the compassion spectrum–those with psychopathy–researcher Dr. Abigail Marsh discovered something surprising. 

In this conversation, Kate and Abigail discuss: 

• The usefulness of fear
• What it means to be “brave”
• How we can all learn to belong to one another
• The power of empathy (and why it actually feels good to give to others)

This conve...

What if your life hasn’t turned out like you thought it would? When writer Heather Lanier’s daughter, Fiona, was born with a rare genetic syndrome, she learned that the world will not always see her beloved as good. In this conversation, Kate and Heather discuss how it’s okay that we are not summed up on bell curves. Perhaps the bodies in which we dwell are whole enough.

In this conversation, Kate and Heather discuss:

• When our...

Pain is like a geography—one that isn’t foreign to palliative care physician, Dr. Sunita Puri. Kate and Sunita speak about needing new language for walking the borderlands and how we all might learn to live—and die—with a bit more courage.

In this conversation, Kate and Sunita discuss: 

• How to walk with one another through life’s ups and downs—especially health ups and downs
• What “palliative care” means (and how it is distinct...

When a group of young moms died around the same time, clinicians Dr. Justin Yopp and Dr. Don Rosenstein wanted to refer their widowed spouses to a grief support group… but none existed. So they started their own. 

In this conversation, Kate, Justin, and Don discuss:

• The grief of imagined futures 
• The particular needs of parents with cancer and those of widowed parents
• How to talk to kids about cancer 
• How to parent while you h...

How do we navigate life within these beautiful, terrible days? In this special live episode of the Everything Happens podcast, Kate sits down with American broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff at the historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC to discuss Kate’s latest book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! Together, they explore what it means to live through the best of days, the worst of days, and all the in-betweens.

Together...

We become the sum of so many people throughout our lives. Kate speaks with one of the funniest people on the entire planet, comedian Samantha Bee, about the people who made her, her. What virtues did they create? What absurdity ensued? How does she think about how she impacts her own kids? 

In this conversation, Kate and Samantha discuss:

• Samantha's hand of God moment that changed the trajectory of her life
• How the people who ...

Here on the Everything Happens Podcast we don’t shy away from difficult subjects, and today’s episode tackles a topic we’ve been wanting to discuss for awhile—suicide among teens and young adults. My guest today, Dr. Pamela Morris-Perez is someone who approaches this subject with the heart of a grieving mom and the mind of a professor and practitioner who wants to make change possible and wants to teach us how we can help. This is ...

Chantal Kreviazuk is a Canadian singer, songwriter, composer, and pianist—her voice is the soundtrack of all Kate’s Canadian’s teenage angst. She has had an incredible career with a passion for helping others. Among many things, she’s a powerful advocate for destigmatizing mental illness—a cause near and dear to her heart after her brother struggled to get adequate care for nearly 20 years. She’s said, “When a family member is sick...

Sometimes we can fix our lives and sometimes can’t. So when self-help and self-care fall short, what do we need to turn instead? Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute of NBC’s The Office) says that what we need is a spiritual revolution. This conversation is rich and challenging and invites us all to think about the virtues we need to sustain a life and how we might cultivate these virtues not just for our own wellbeing but for that of the ...

Our lives are rarely predictable or at all in our control. Sometimes what happens to us or around us can reshape our entire trajectory. Nicky Gumbel is someone whose life was dramatically changed. He thought he was going to be a very fancy lawyer… just like everyone else in his family, but that’s not what happened. Nicky became one of the pioneers of the Alpha Course where 30 million people have been introduced to Christian faith a...