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. 

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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. 

***

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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 

***

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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

***

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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. 

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

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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.

***

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What kind of food tastes like love to you? Food has a beautiful way of making us feel less lonely in our pain or in our isolation or in our grief. Star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, Antoni Porowski understands the power of a delicious meal to bring us together and remake us with love. 

In this episode, Kate and Antoni discuss:

• How food transcends time and distance and can remind you of who you are
• Antoni’s biggest cooking mistake (and how it might give us all a little permission to fail and try again)
• How food can help us to grieve
• What NOT to do when you deliver food to people who are going through a tough time

***

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Is it possible to be happier? Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin wondered if she could discipline herself to take tiny steps in order to be more content with her actual life. But what about those of us facing something daunting or insurmountable or tragic? Is it possible for us to be happier?

In this conversation, Kate and Gretchen discuss:

• When we’re forced to reevaluate our life and what might happen if we just try a little harder
• How our senses anchor us to the present
• The difference between happiness and joy
• If happiness is a selfish endeavor 
• The definition of limited agency (and why we should try to find a place between EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE and NOTHING IS POSSIBLE)

Kate ends with A Blessing For Permission to Try.

***

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Can trauma you experienced as a kid still affect you now? What about the traumatic experiences of our parents and grandparents? Is there a way to undo what California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris calls the “toxic stress response”?  

In this conversation, Kate and Nadine discuss:

• Why “picking yourself up by your bootstraps” is an incomplete (and unhelpful) story
• A better way to define resilience
• How your zip code might determine your health
• How fostering nurturing relationships help heal our bodies 
• What baby rats can teach us about learning to change 

Kate ends with a Blessing for if You had a Painful Childhood. And whew, will this episode crack you open and heal the tender parts of you you didn’t know needed it.

***

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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 from hospice) 
• The difference between what medicine can do and what medicine should do 
• Sunita’s script for how to talk to patients facing difficult diagnoses 

This conversation originally aired in 2020 but it is one of our all-time favorites.

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.

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Can hilarity and sorrow co-exist? Comedian and actress Cecily Strong (of Saturday Night Live fame) is professionally funny. But after a series of losses, she was forced to discover how devastation and love sometimes exist at the same time—both in great measure. 

In this conversation, Kate and Cecily discuss:

• Why we need to practice changing
• How much of our lives is determined by almostness 
• Moving past the “winning” and “losing” paradigm for illness
• When we can stop being afraid (and how maybe fearlessness is for psychopaths)
• Loving people’s uniqueness
• Why allowing yourself to feel big emotions can be daunting, and how love, beauty, and maybe even magic can be present simultaneously

Kate ends with a Blessing for the Both/And. This deep conversation about the cost of love will surprise you with its tenderness and offers us all a little room to grieve the things we’ve lost.

CW: glioblastoma

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The Self-Help Industry would like to convince us that everyone is capable of change. Just drink this! Read this book! Pick up this daily habit! Follow these 5 Steps! But how much change are we really capable of? 

It’s such a tender question that is best reserved for a brilliant and agile mind, so who better to pose this to than the spectacular brain of Malcolm Gladwell? 

In this conversation, Kate and Malcolm discuss:

• Why living in the future is a kind of pernicious myth and why the past is inherently better… (ignore the fact that these are two historians. No bias to see here). 
• How difficult it is to not just interpret a stranger but to love one.
• The case for humility and forgiveness
• Why we should be willing to rethink our certainties

Kate ends with a Blessing When You Are Forced to Change. It may be one we all need during these strange times.

CW: they briefly discuss the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of a child

***

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We all wish we could fix our lives. And it works!

Until it doesn't.

Until we lose someone we love. Or an addiction ruins the family vacation. Or our parents die. Or we never get that baby. Or we lose our financial security. Or, I don't know, a global pandemic takes away all of our plans. 

Until we realize that we are Fragile. Finite. Prone to hangryness. And just... human, again today. And maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

My name is Kate Bowler. I'm a professor at Duke University. A wife. A mom. and... at age 35 I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, which was not exactly something I would have picked either. 

How do we live alongside the things we didn't choose? The things we can't get back? How do we learn to live when our lives can't be so easily fixed ... like the wellness and self-help culture would like to convince us?

Join me for this season of the Everything Happens Podcast where I will speak to thinkers, authors, experts, comedians, and actors about what they’ve learned in difficult times. Together, we will break down common formulas for how to live… mine them for their truths, and, hopefully, discover something thicker, richer for how to live, beautifully in our actual, fragile lives and broken bodies and delicate relationships. 

Because there’s no cure for being human. But we are all good medicine. 

New episodes begin on August 17th. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don’t miss an episode.

In the meantime,

• 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.

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The Everything Happens team is still on a bit of a summer break, but don't worry! We'll be back in August with all new episodes. We thought it might be fun to surprise you with this bonus episode. Kate spoke with her friend, the brilliant and hilarious bestselling writer Kelly Corrigan on Kelly's Podcast: Kelly Corrigan Wonders. Together, the two debunk conventional wisdom like the notion that "Everything Happens for a Reason."

Kate Bowler has trouble nodding along when people say things like “Don’t put that into the universe!” and “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” But what she simply CANNOT endure is when someone assures her that “everything happens for a reason.” Her point of view is tied to two absurd truths of her life: she’s a divinity professor at Duke, and she had Stage 4 cancer. She split her time between studying how religion works and getting surgeries that move her belly button around and then recovering from them with her husband who she’s been with since she was in braces and her son, who at six, doesn’t really get why sometimes she can’t do dance parties with him. This conversation will fill you up. Guaranteed.

Listen to more episodes from Kelly Corrigan Wonders.

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In our season six finale, Kate takes us back to the very beginning. In this episode, you’ll hear the unlikely beginning of the Everything Happens podcast, the most terrified Kate’s ever been (for fun reasons), and how love and beauty can surprise us in some of the most unlikely of spaces. 

Our team needs a little rest and vitamin D then we’ll be back with new episodes in August (don’t worry!). In the meantime, listen to some of our all time favorite episodes:

• with M*A*S*H* actor Alan Alda on the power of empathy
• with The Fault In Our Stars author John Green on living with chronic illness
• with palliative care physician Dr. Sunita Puri on living with uncertainty
• with humorist Samantha Irby on the power of the absurd

In the meantime, visit nocurebook.com to learn more about Kate’s NEW BOOK coming out at the end of September. Find Kate online @KateCbowler and subscribe to our weekly email newsletter at katebowler.com.

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Chaotic childhoods can leave us feeling stuck. Stuck in the roles and relationships and chaos that once felt familiar. Actress Julianna Margulies (best known for her roles in ER and The Good Wife) found incredible success, but nothing seemed to free her from living into past, traumatic dynamics. In this conversation, Kate and Julianna discuss the roles we get trapped inside (I’m the cheerful one! I’m the dutiful one! I'll keep it together!) and how love can surprise us through unlikely strangers and new relationships. Kate ends with a blessing for a permission to change. 

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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 Part Two of our conversation with bestselling author Suleika Jaouad, Kate and Suleika discuss what it is like to be the one suffering—all the guilt and shame and rage and mercy and grace and how we can create better economies of love around those who need it. Kate ends with a blessing for those who feel like their problem is too much to handle—a blessing if you feel like "the bad thing."

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There are two different worlds people inhabit. In one world, people feel infinite bounce. They can see every silver lining and believe in their bones things will always get better and that any set back is probably temporary. But then, there’s the other world. These people know what it feels like to live scan-to-scan and hold their breath when the doctor’s number shows up on their phone. Bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad knows what it means to carry this dual citizenship between the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. In this conversation, Kate and Suleika discuss what it was like to have a terrible diagnosis as a young person and how to keep living when you can’t go back to the way things were. Kate ends with a blessing for those who have lost too much, too quickly.

CW: cancer as a young person, incurable illnesses, fertility treatments

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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 who challenge us (even if it makes us wildly uncomfortable… thanks a lot, Adam!). Oh! And if you listen through to the end, you'll hear a special announcement.

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How do we find “enough” in a life that keeps getting…. harder? Our lives are shrinking. We are shrunk by the pandemic or by illness or by age or by any number of losses. And it can be difficult to feel satisfaction and enjoyment again, especially in the midst of a self-help culture that tries to tell you “EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.” In this episode, Kate speaks with writer and advice columnist Heather Havrilesky about finding contentment in our bodies, in our parenting, in our relationships, while living a life we didn’t choose. Sometimes we need a smoking appliance day (…that will make more sense when you listen).

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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 have cancer

Together, they uncover the magic of we.

This summer, we are re-sharing our all-time favorite episodes. While this conversation originally aired in 2020, Kate caught up with Don and Justin to get an update on what they are working on lately. You won’t want to miss their important (and practical!) update.

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

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How do we navigate the life in-between? In-between relationships and jobs and friends. In-between independence and dependence. In-between the life we have and the life we’ve always wanted. In this episode, Kate and artist Mari Andrew discuss these liminal spaces, what to do when we’re stuck with the B-side versions of ourselves, and how to make a little more space to explore all the colors of this place in-between.

CW: Guillain-Barre Syndrome, loss of a parent

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When something truly awful happens, we can’t forget. That memory isn’t just stored in our brains. Our bodies keep the score too. Researcher and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has spent his life studying the affects of trauma on adults and children. In this eye-opening conversation, Kate and Bessel address the nature of trauma, how helplessness and agency affect our experiences, and ways to get unstuck.

CW: trauma, PTSD

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Comedian Jamie Lee is now Netflix’s The Wedding Coach where she’s on a mission to help couples survive the craziness of planning a wedding. A wedding is an event, but a marriage is not an event. During the filming of the show, Jamie’s own relationship began to unravel. In this episode, Kate and Jamie exchange hilarious wedding stories (including what 22-year-old bride Kate did on her wedding day) and discuss the micro-griefs of a divorce, and share ways to show love to people experiencing this particular kind of loss.

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Our culture’s obsession with hyper-instrumentalization has meant everything has to be FOR something. But when you are facing unfixable or chronic problems, maybe it’s better to do something for no reason whatsoever. Depression, anxiety, and a grab bag of auto-immune diseases have made humorist Jenny Lawson an expert in the art of the absurd. In this conversation, Kate and Jenny share their tips to getting through horrible days, the evils of insurance bureaucracy, the delight of taxidermy, and discovering joy that you don’t have to “choose.” 

CW: depression, suicidal ideation, chronic illnesses, vampires

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We don’t always know how to move through this strange, distended season. The season before the cure or the vaccine or the answer. Before the money comes through or the job opens up or the heartbreak is over. The season where there is hope for someday, but someday is not now. Perhaps here, we need to learn how to pray. In this episode, Kate and Jesuit priest Father James Martin discuss how prayer is for everyone — believer, doubter, or no-thank you-er. 

You may be wondering, but Kate. I know you don’t know me but… prayer? Really? This seems a bit sanctimonious. What if I don’t believe in God? Or at least don’t believe that prayer works? What if I’m not the kind of person who prays? Why are you being so bossy about this? Full disclosure: I’m not an amazing pray-er. But I do love people who love to pray. And today I thought we could talk to a wonderful person who can help give us a little more spiritual language to be here, a little scared. A little disappointed. A little hopeful.

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Our bodies tell a story, and we find ourselves having to live inside it. At home. At work. At church. At school. But what happens when the places we love don’t always love us back? In this episode, Kate speaks with theologian Dr. Willie Jennings about the way institutions don’t always value our embodiment and how instead we might create spaces of belonging and love.

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What if the story you’ve been given about your family isn’t the whole truth? Writer Nicole Chung had been told a story like so many adoptees. Your parents wanted a better life for you. God chose you to be part of our family. But then, she found out the truth was far more complicated. In this episode, Kate and Nicole talk about how she learned to look beyond the simple answers and live in the grey space, where stories can’t be neatly summed up in villains and heroes, tragedy and miracles. This conversation will help you live amid uncertainty with a bit more courage.

CW: adoption story

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Sometimes there are stories about ourselves that just need to be true, even if they aren't. Stories about our ancestors or younger selves that help to explain who we are and offer us a little purpose. When it comes to telling a good story, no one does it better than our guest today: Academy Award winner and author Matthew McConaughey. In this episode, Kate and Matthew talk about the stories we tell about ourselves, the mottos that animate our lives, and the half-truths that are true enough.

For discussion questions, transcript, and show notes: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/

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What do you do with a world that is full of things to fear? People we won’t please. Kids who die. Parents who don’t change. Writer Anne Lamott doesn’t sugar-coat a single, terrible thing, but knows the kinds of truths we can stand on. In this conversation, Kate and Anne talk about the good, strong hopes we can reach for. That we are loved and chosen. And friendships and snacks hold us together when we're feeling lost.

For discussion questions, transcript, and show notes: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/anne-lamott-loved-and-chosen/

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Who are we when we can't answer where we're from? Who are we when we can't locate ourselves on family trees or on familiar religious traditions or among genetic traits? How do we live after we thought what was true about our identity is totally upended? In this conversation, Kate speaks with writer Dani Shapiro about uncovering life-altering and long-hidden family secrets, what it means to belong, and what to do when the truth is… complicated.

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/

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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, they discuss:

• The apology Kate wishes she would have gotten (and the moving story about when she did)
• How fragility unites us
• How can we be more empathetic towards people we disagree with

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

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There are some people who see need and, rather than feeling stuck by the magnitude of the world's pain, they move toward it. Today's guest is one of those kinds of people. Father Greg Boyle has worked with former gang members in Los Angeles for over thirty years with Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members and offers free services to facilitate healing. In this conversation, Kate and Father Boyle discuss how living at the margins turns us inside out, how crucial hope is to healing, and why we should all embrace his understanding of kinship.

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/greg-boyle-the-case-for-hope/

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Today’s episode is all about love—the loves that constitute us, the loves that break our hearts, and the loves that keep us going. Actress, producer, and entertainer Priyanka Chopra Jonas is one of the most recognizable people in the world. In this episode, Kate and Priyanka discuss the places and people, loves and losses that make us who we are. Love that is big enough to break our hearts is the only kind worth having.

CW: cancer, death of a parent

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/

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People love to pretend that there are simple formulas for living your best life. Now eat this and you won't get sick. Find that love and you'll never be lonely. Get that promotion and you won't feel like a failure to have that kid and you'll be fulfilled forever. Our culture tells us that we are the masters of our destiny until we aren't. Until a diagnosis or loss or global pandemic or divorce or transition sweeps over our lives and changes everything, then we realize there are some things you can choose and some things you can't. And it's OK that life isn't always getting better.

We can have beauty and meaning, community and love, but we will need to face the truth. Life is a chronic condition and there's no cure for being human.

This season of the Everything Happens Podcast, I will have conversations with some wonderful and kind and hilarious people who've given up on the idea of best life, now I'll talk to actors about their loves and losses, researchers on how our bodies remember our stories, writers who've discovered their families were full of secrets, and spiritual teachers who remind us to look for the light.

This podcast is a place for us to see life as it really is beautiful, terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between. So let's be human on that journey.

Let's be human together.

A new season of the Everything Happens Podcast launches on Tuesday, February 9th. New episodes will release every week.

Visit katebowler.com to sign up for regular notifications and find show notes, transcriptions, and more.

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How do you get through a terrible day? What should you not say to someone with cancer? What keeps you believing in God? We thought it might be fun to have you, dear listener, interview Kate for today’s episode. She offers gentle ideas for how to be a good friend to struggling loved ones, how she has found pockets of productivity in this dumpster fire of a year, and what she is hoping for in the New Year. Plus, she ends with a benediction for a year that didn’t turn out like we thought it should.

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/ask-kate-anything-season-five-finale/

Download a free Advent Devotional at https://katebowler.com/advent

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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 the same week. In this conversation, Kate and Nikki discuss how to live with constant uncertainty, how to stay open to both the terror and the beauty of living close to the edge, and how to make Christmas meaningful when hope is hard to come by. 

CW: suicidal ideation, postpartum depression, a parent grappling with a child’s fragile diagnosis, dementia 

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/nikki-deloach-a-not-so-hallmark-christmas/

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Emergency Rooms are the theater of life itself. For ER Dr. Michele Harper, work has become a calling—to bear witness to people’s problems both large and small, to advocate for better care, to catch those who fall through society’s cracks, to stand up against discrimination, to remind patients that the pain they have endured is not fair… it was never supposed to be this way. In this episode, Kate and Michele talk about the importance of radical honesty when it comes to advocacy as well as the racial and socio-economic disparities that keep people disproportionately affected by the pandemic… and the anxiety and stress that follows. And still, even after all she has seen and all she has walked through, Michele finds great hope in being broken. Yes, we are shattered, but yes, we will be made into something new.

CW: domestic violence, a doctor discusses a patient’s experience of sexual assault and a patient’s suicidal ideation, racial discrimination

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/michele-harper-beauty-in-the-breaking/

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At the core of nursing is the ability to love a stranger, to care indiscriminately. Christie Watson was a nurse in the UK for 20 years before she began teaching nurses. But when COVID-19 hit, she knew she needed to stand with her colleagues. So she put on her scrubs once again. In this moving conversation, Kate and Christie discuss the cost of COVID on healthcare workers, chaplains, and those who can’t be by their loved ones’ side when they need it most. If you are a nurse, know a nurse, or have been cared by one before, this one is for you.

CW: COVID-19, dying alone

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/christie-watson-bless-the-nurses/

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Though magazines and movie stars try to convince us otherwise, we aren’t all living our BEST LIFE NOW. When humor writer Samantha Irby lost both of her parents at 18, she developed the perfect coping mechanism: finding the absurd in everything. Kate and Samantha have a wide-ranging conversation about topics like grieving their Sweet Valley High life dreams, and how losing your parents as a child is the worst form of lost agency, and how important it is to speak honestly about our fragile, imperfect bodies and love them still.

CW: Chronic illness, death of parents, MS

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/samantha-irby-im-doing-my-best-life-now/

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What does it mean to be blessed? If you were to scroll through social media, you'd assume that "blessed" are the ones with gorgeous, matching families living in open style floor plans. But Jesus had other things in mind. When the Reverend Jan Richardson lost her husband, she continued to write counterintuitive blessings like “A Blessing for the Brokenhearted." In this episode, Kate and Jan talk about the ways grief cracks us open and the ways blessing invites us to stubborn hope.

CW: Death of a spouse

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/jan-richardson-stubborn-hope/

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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 quite surprising. In this episode, Kate and Abigail talk about the purpose of fear, what it really means to be brave, and how we can all learn to better belong to one another.

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/abigail-marsh-extraordinary-empathy/

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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 love us shape us into who we become
• What siblings or friends or partners teach us about intimacy

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

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Sometimes it feels like the world is irreparably broken. A climate crisis leading to more hurricanes, fires, and melting glaciers. A political season that has ripped families and friends apart. A pandemic that has left us more isolated than ever and even more delicate than before. Even the strongest among us may wonder, "What hope is there? Is love enough to save us?" My guest today is someone who believes in the kind of love that can change everything. In this episode, Kate and Bishop Michael Curry talk about the power of ordinary and extraordinary love to remake ourselves and our communities along with us.

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/bishop-michael-curry-the-power-of-ordinary-love/

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There are some secrets we'd rather not tell, but that eat us alive anyway. Writer Susan Burton was trapped in an eating disorder with no good name. Today's conversation is not a victory story. Issues with our bodies are not ones we overcome because our bodies are, you know, living things. Kate and Susan discuss how we struggle against shame and learn to have compassion for ourselves and our fragile, beautiful bodies.

CW: Disordered eating

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/susan-burton-bless-this-body/

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How do doctors, nurses, and other caring professionals keep their hearts soft when there are forces that make it hard to stay that way? With her radically compassionate approach to medicine, Dr. Victoria Sweet calls us to slow down in a world that loves quick fixes. In today's conversation, Kate and Victoria give us more language about what helps us all stay connected to the people we serve.

CW: Describes father's seizures and medical mistreatment, doctor describing patient care

For show notes, transcripts, and discussion questions: https://katebowler.com/podcasts/victoria-sweet-medicine-with-a-soul/

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