Everything Happens with Kate Bowler – Details, episodes & analysis

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 happiness. Spoiler alert: there’s no magic formula, but there are some pretty brilliant minds who’ve given it a go. And I’m bringing them straight to your earbuds.

So, if you’re tired of coffee mug platitudes and are looking for something…more, join us. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Subscribe now and, together, let’s find a bit more hope, in a world where, well, everything happens.

A new season of honest-to-God funny conversations starts on September 3rd. 

Mark your calendar. Make sure you’re subscribed. You won’t want to miss this. 

EVERYTHING HAPPENS is available everywhere you get your podcasts. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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:

• The importance of finding people who really understand what you’re feeling

• What not to say to people whose kids have died

• How tragic loss exiles you to a planet where only those who understand grief live

• The ways we hope grief metabolizes in us and transforms us into empathetic, heart-open kinds of people

Rob wants us all to understand that if the unthinkable happens, our hearts still beat so strong in truth and love. 

CW: hard-earned explicit language of a bereaved parent, death of parent, Suicide, death of a child

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 kids are considered “bad” by the world’s standards
• The doctor who said two perfect words to Heather
• How the divine sees everyone as good (and how we should seek to see through those same eyes)
• The difference between capacity building and deficit building

This conversation originally aired in 2020, but it is one we return to again and again for its beauty, its honesty, its courage. 

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When she was a child, Alexi Pappas lost her mother to suicide. So when Alexi faced a season of deep depression she knew had to find a different way forward. That’s when her training as an Olympic runner became invaluable. 

In this conversation, Kate and Alexi discuss,

• The difference between stress and trauma
• The discipline—and joy—of sheer effort
• Good pain vs. bad pain and how to stay inside the uncomfortable for a bit longer 
• The highs and lows of realizing your dreams
• How viewing mental illness as an injury not only destigmatizes depression, but offers tangible next steps toward healing

Too often professional athletes fall into the pure motivational speaker category. But this conversation with Alexi gently threads the needle about what is possible if you stay a little longer in uncomfortable situations when even getting out of bed feels like a win. 

There is so much wisdom we can glean from Alexi’s discipline and willpower.

CW: suicide, depression, mental illness

***

Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you move forward after an incalculable loss? 

Jerry Sittser lost his wife, young daughter, and his mom in one horrific accident. But even as his world stopped, the world kept spinning. He had to learn how to parent his three surviving children in the wake of such grief. 

Now, thirty years after the accident that upended his life, Kate and Jerry discuss:

• Finding honesty about the pain you can never unknow 
• Why it isn’t possible to protect our kids from the tragedies of life
• How to stop counting or comparing people’s grief
• Why we cannot explain our suffering with simple formulas and shallow theology
• Whether miracles can solve our pain

This conversation is an Everything Happens Masterclass on learning to live alongside the reality of lives that come apart for no reason we can explain. 

CW: deaths of family members

***

Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you ever feel a pressure to be positive? Harvard psychologist and bestselling author of Emotional Agility, Dr. Susan David studies the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. Spoiler alert: we don’t need to force ourselves to think happy thoughts. Perhaps there is a better way.

In this conversation, Kate and Susan discuss: 

• The relationship between prescriptive happiness and religion
• What it means to bottle or brood your feelings
• Better strategies to handle difficult emotions
• How to get unstuck from our feelings

This is the permission you were looking for to feel the full range of your human experience—the good and the bad, the beautiful and the terrible. 

***

Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stanley Tucci is a total foodie—of course, he starred in Julie and Julia and brought us the mouth-watering CNN special, Searching for Italy. But when he was diagnosed with oral cancer, his ability to enjoy food might be ruined permanently. 

In this conversation, Kate and Stanley discuss,

• How familiar recipes remind us of home—even if we’re far away
• Why it’s okay to be picky about what we eat (Especially bread. He has a lot of homicidal opinions about how bread should be eaten.) 
• The practical difficulties with eating that often accompanies an illness and treatment
• The anger that comes with great loss
• And the joy of bringing people together around the table

When life gets small, so often our pleasures dry up. But perhaps it is in that smallness that we might compress our attention, to discover the small joys and simple pleasures that make a life well-lived. 

CW: cancer, death of a spouse 

***

Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Philip Yancey is well-known for his bestselling books like What's So Amazing About Grace and Disappointment with God. But behind all of that spiritual wisdom was a family secret: his sick father left the hospital against the doctor's advice, trusting in God to heal him. He wasn’t healed. Out of this experience, Philip has wrestled with deep questions of faith, doubt, and suffering. 

In today's conversation, Philip and I discuss: 

• What it was like growing up in Christian fundamentalism 
• Being wounded by the church
• The cost of unforgiveness
• The mystery and hunger of grace

This conversation forced me to wonder about how grace works. Perhaps grace, as Philip would say, is a scandal. Because it forces us to think about a love that is unearned, undeserved, and unmerited. All we know sometimes, is that WE need it. 

So, blessed are we who live here. In this mystery—this scandal—of grace.

CW: polio, abuse

***

Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy today.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose?

In this episode, Kate reads an excerpt of No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) — her new memoir that releases TODAY!

We all wish we could boil our life down to simple formulas. Easy-to-grab mantras that tell us how to live. Things like: You only live once! or What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! or just Think Positively! I guess I'll just have to make lemonade out of all those lemons I've been given. But what about when you realize life isn't a series of choices?

More often than we'd like to imagine, things come apart, and what we thought was in our control just isn't anymore. We have to learn to live here. Outside of formulas, outside of cliches, outside of easy steps. We all have to learn to be human, again today.

No Cure for Being Human mines these formulas to find something that is truer, gentler, and maybe a little bit more honest.

Like how all the modern-day-stoics tell you to BE PRESENT! It seems so simple, right? In response to all that is out of control, we should zero in on what is in our control. But the consequences of only living in the present is that we might ignore the past or put a wall around the future. And there is so much wisdom there. Until, of course, it forces us to put too much of our lives on hold in the suspended animation of now, so that's what I thought I might talk to you about today. 

***

No Cure for Being Human is now available anywhere books are sold.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if we never fit in? Or always miss the script that everyone else seems to so easily understand? From Arrested Development’s Buster Bluth to Veep’s Gary Walsh or Toy Story 4’s Forky, Emmy Award Winning actor Tony Hale is an expert in awkward. 

In this episode, Kate and Tony talk about:

• How acting is an act of empathy
• What it feels like to feel outside of the Acceptable People
• Having grace for our most awkward moments

This conversation will offer you a little gentleness for our awkward selves, our in-pain selves, our out-of-step selves, our misunderstood selves. Bonus: it will also make you laugh.

***

Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today and receive a FREE 18" navy blue pennant. Learn how by clicking here.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.