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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During our summer break, we are re-airing some of our favorite episodes! Margaret Renkl calls herself a backyard naturalist—but not because she has any particular expertise. From the birds in her yard to the bugs in her flower beds, she has learned the art of attention. Nature has taught her a speed at which to live, to hope, to stave off despair.
In this conversation, Kate and Margaret discuss:
Perhaps, we can borrow some of Margaret’s innate curiosity together and see how it might open us up to wonder and love and connectedness once again.
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.
We are re-airing some of our favorite episodes during our summer break, and this one with Shauna Niequist is a gem. Our obligations never stop, do they? How do we get off the achievement train and build a beautiful life within the constraints of our own limitations? Writer Shauna Niequist was on the fast track to burnout when she received advice that changed the pace of her life entirely. Kate and Shauna talk about the productivity myths we believe and how to embrace a slower, smaller life marked by delight.
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.
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 Lanecia calls holy seeing. In this episode, Kate and Lanecia discuss how creativity can be an act of resistance and the hope she discovered on a blank canvas.
CW: Miscarriage, death of a child, racism
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.
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 obsession with doing more, achieving more, and smiling through it all.
Instead, what if we embraced a gentler kind of ambition? Kate reflects on the sacred permission of Sabbath, the theology of rest, and how even our underachieving might be a form of holy resistance.
If you’re feeling overcooked, overwhelmed, or just plain over it—this one’s for you.
Relevant Links:
Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann
Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day by Kate Bowler
A Blessing for the Burnt Out, Soul-Drenched, and Sun-Weary
Kate's now on Substack! Read her writing here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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 as a way of really living.
In this episode, Kate and Liz discuss:
CW: some spicy adult language
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.
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 all that equates our worth with what we do, fix, or achieve.
This conversation is an invitation to live differently—to embrace rest, love, and the sacredness of simply being. For the overachievers, the caregivers, and the deeply tired (you know who you are): you are already enough.
In this conversation, Kate and Maria discuss:
How to see one another (and ourselves) through a lens of love
How to give yourself permission to rest and procrastinate
The difference between meaningful work and the hustle that leaves us hollow
If you liked this episode, you’ll also love:
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.
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 Jaouad knows this terrain well. She’s a writer, artist, and advocate, beloved for her memoir Between Two Kingdoms and her new offering The Book of Alchemy—a creative companion for those learning to live when life doesn’t go according to plan. Diagnosed with leukemia in her twenties and now navigating her third relapse, Suleika brings a voice shaped by experience, beauty, grief, and humor.
Together again on the Everything Happens podcast, Suleika and Kate talk about:
If you liked this episode, you might also like:
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.
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:
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 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 honest conversation, Stacey and Kate talk about what it means to love someone all the way to the end, and then somehow keep living. They explore the invisible labor of caregiving, the loneliness of anticipatory grief, and the weird sacredness of the small things that break you. There are no perfect endings here. Just the beauty and brutality of trying to live inside a love that doesn’t get to last.
Heads up: There’s some strong language in this episode—because sometimes life is just too much for tidy words.
In this conversation, Kate and Stacey discuss:
If you liked this episode, you’ll also like:
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 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 mother’s illness, what she regrets, and what she’s still learning. She shares how her father’s openness to his own diagnosis reshaped the way she wants to live now—with more transparency, more humor, and more love. Together, Kate and Kimberly explore how love and loss keep unfolding, long after the moment you thought goodbye had already come.
In this conversation, Kate and Kimberly discuss:
If you liked this episode, you might also like:
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.
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