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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. Sales and Distribution by Lemonada Media https://lemonadamedia.com/
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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 Lan…
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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 obsessi…
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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…
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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 …
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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 Jaoua…
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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 e…
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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 hon…
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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 mo…
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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 K…
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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 real…
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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 conversatio…
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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 al…
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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 wildern…
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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 fo…
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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 comp…
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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 bea…
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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…
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