Stay ConnectedAre 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.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof understands how to hope—especially in the face of despair or disappointment. He has spent his life shining a light on global tragedies like the Tiananmen Square massacre or the genocide in Darfur. And yet, despite all the horrors he has born witness to, he maintains a sense of hard-won optimism. “Hope is a muscle,” he says, and one we can all learn to develop.
In this live conversation, Kate and Nicholas discuss:
If you liked this episode, you’ll love:
This episode originally aired September 2024.
There are no training manuals for this. Just a child staring up at you with cartoon eyes and an inner monologue that asks: Am I doing this right? Am I ruining them?
Kate sits down with Dr. Becky Kennedy—a clinical psychologist and creator of Good Inside—to talk about the heartbreak and hope of parenting. What does it mean to raise (or re-raise) someone with compassion and boundaries, especially when you never learned how?
Whether you're parenting toddlers, teens, or the little one inside yourself, this conversation offers grace for anyone trying again.
Show Notes:
This episode originally aired September 2025.
In this episode, Kate speaks with surgeon, writer, and public health leader Dr. Atul Gawande about the deeply human questions that surface when medicine meets its limits. What does it mean to be a good doctor when a cure isn’t possible? What do people really mean when they say they want “quality of life?”
Together, they talk about caregiving, end-of-life decisions, and how the most honest conversations in healthcare begin—not with answers—but with better questions.
For anyone living with chronic illness, caring for someone they love, or wondering what it means to live a good life with limits, this conversation won’t offer easy fixes. But it might offer something just as rare: clarity, compassion, and the courage to ask what really matters.
This episode originally aired September 2025.
Watch the full episode on YouTube: Kate C. Bowler on YouTube
Subscribe to Kate’s Substack: katebowler.substack.com
Show notes:
We don’t usually have repeat guests on this podcast… except we’re making an exception for the wonderful and wise Alan Alda. Alan Alda, of course, is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and podcast host. You probably know and love him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H or Senator Arnie Vinick on The West Wing. He is endlessly curious on just about every topic—which makes him the perfect person to talk to about empathy, learning across differences (and disagreement), and how we might age into new hobbies and careers.
In this conversation, Alan and Kate discuss:
This episode originally aired March 2024.
Scripture can become a weapon in the hands of the ultra-certain. As if every pain or suffering is part of “God’s divine plan.” So how should we understand and apply the Bible to our real lives with our real-life problems?
NT Wright, a New Testament scholar, is a trusted expert to help us understand what truths resound across time and circumstance and which don’t. In this conversation, Kate and Tom dig in especially on Romans 8:28 which is the Pauline version of EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Is that what Paul intended to say? Is there maybe another, more life-giving way to interpret it instead?
Kate and NT Wright also discuss:
This is a bit of a Bible-nerd out, but I would trust no one else to help us better make sense of where is God when we’re suffering than NT Wright.
This clip originally aired in October 2023.
Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.
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 even better takes root.
They reflect on the surprising twists that led from political aspirations and magazine dreams to woodworking, parenting, and a television show that celebrates belonging. Along the way, they explore how creativity is born out of necessity, making a home, building a community, and loving the place where you are.
In this episode, they discuss:
If you liked this episode, you may also like:
This episode originally aired June 2025.
What happens to faith when certainty collapses? Kate Bowler sits down with theologian and former underground priest Tomáš Halík to explore belief forged under surveillance, the spiritual value of doubt, and why going deeper—not louder—might be the only faithful response to a fractured world. Together, they consider silence, suffering, and what it means to remain open to God when clarity is nowhere to be found.
SHOW NOTES
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Touch the Wounds — Tomáš Halík
The Afternoon of Christianity — Tomáš Halík
Kate Bowler is joined by Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sarah Bessey for an honest, funny, and deeply tender conversation about what it means to be people of faith right now. When the world feels overwhelming—personally and globally—they explore small acts of love, embodied community, and “cozy faith” as resistance to despair. From knitting circles and prayer shawls to church, doubt, and the stubborn choice to keep loving the world, this episode is about finding hope in ordinary, human ways.
SHOW NOTES
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Braving the Truth by Rachel Held Evans (edited by Sarah Bessey)
Books by Nadia Bolz-Weber — Pastrix, Accidental Saints, Shameless
Books by Sarah Bessey — Field Notes for the Wilderness, A Rhythm of Prayer, Jesus Feminist
What if humor isn’t just a personality trait—but a survival strategy?
Kate Bowler sits down with writer Jenny Lawson and entertaining YouTuber Rhett McLaughlin to talk about the strange, often dark roots of comedy. From childhood anxiety and taxidermy-filled homes to lifelong creative friendships and faith that evolves, they explore how silliness, honesty, and absurdity help us live with what hurts. This is a conversation about being “too much,” laughing at what’s not funny, and finding connection in the weirdest parts of being human.
SHOW NOTES
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened — Jenny Lawson
Furiously Happy — Jenny Lawson
Broken (in the Best Possible Way) — Jenny Lawson
How to Be Okay (When You’re Not Okay) — Jenny Lawson
Rhett & Link / Mythical Entertainment
James and the Shame (Rhett McLaughlin’s music project)
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On the day her new book Joyful Anyway releases, Kate pauses before the interviews and travel to reflect on a harder question: what does it mean to talk about joy in a world that feels fractured, exhausting, and uncertain? In this short, personal episode, she pushes back on the pressure to optimize our way into happiness and instead explores a stranger, sturdier kind of joy—one that shows up alongside grief, ordinary stress, and lives that don’t quite match the ones we imagined. With a reading from the book and a few honest reflections, this is an invitation to consider what might be better than happiness—and how joy might still find us anyway.
SHOW NOTES
Joyful, Anyway by Kate Bowler — Available everywhere books are sold.
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch on YouTube
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