Afleveringen
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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:
How to maintain hope in the year ahead
Nicholas’ best argument as to why this is the best time to be alive
His strategies to seeing pain and courage up close over and over again
Why our small actions matter (even when it feels like a drop in the ocean)
If you liked this episode, you’ll love:
Bryan Stevenson on justice in the face of unthinkable odds
David Fajgenbaum on how hope pulls us forward
Sarah Polley on why we should run toward what scares us
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:
Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy — parenting platform, book, and podcast
A Blessing for When You're Not the Parent You Meant to Be
katebowler.substack.com — essays, blessings, and community reflections
Support Guide: When Your Child is in Pain — for parents supporting kids through emotional struggle
Support Guide: Those Who Care for Teens — compassionate care for older children
This episode originally aired September 2025. -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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:
The Aspen Ideas Festival
Being Mortal by Dr. Atul Gawande
The Green House Project
Ari Johnson & Muso Health
Organizations for further action: World Food Programme, UNICEF, American Red Cross -
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:
Tricks for staying curious as we age
How to talk to someone you disagree with
How Alan hopes to destigmatize Parkinson’s Disease
The difference between empathy and compassion and how to practice these important skills
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:
The importance of lament as a response to the human condition
Why we have such a low tolerance for uncertainty
Which scripture to turn to when life comes apart (and which to avoid)
What our response should be to others who are in pain or experiencing tragedy
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:
The ache and joy of making a home in the place that raised you
How small acts of community build a life
The beauty of third places and why talking to strangers still matters
If you liked this episode, you may also like:
Angela Williams on The Caring Power of Community
Sharon McMahon, Drops Make an Ocean
Priya Parker on The Art of Gathering
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
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Sarah Bessey
Evolving Faith Conference & Community
Sacred Harp singing
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
Good Mythical Morning
James and the Shame (Rhett McLaughlin’s music project)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
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
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
As Holy Week arrives, Kate talks with theologian, poet, and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams about joy that doesn’t erase sorrow. Together they explore longing, grief, music, gratitude, hope, and the strange, defiant way joy can sit right beside pain without denying what’s true.
SHOW NOTES
George Herbert, “The Pulley”
Nick Cave
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
There’s a particular kind of pressure that creeps in when we start measuring our lives—where we thought we’d be by now, who we imagined we’d become, how things were supposed to feel. The instinct is to fix it. Optimize it. Get moving.
But what if the invitation is something else?
Kate Bowler sits down with writer and speaker Suleika Jaouad (Between Two Kingdoms, The Book of Alchemy) for a conversation about living inside unresolved questions—especially the ones that ache. Together, they talk about ambition and exhaustion, chronic illness and uncertainty, and the quiet shifts that happen when nothing seems to change.
They explore the tension between momentum and meaning, the limits of self-improvement, and what it looks like to keep going without pretending everything is fixable.
SHOW NOTES
Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals (Substack)
Between Two Kingdoms — Suleika Jaouad
The Book of Alchemy — Suleika Jaouad
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
What if Lent isn’t about giving something up, but about learning how to sit with what’s already gone? In this episode, Kate talks with poet, priest, and theologian Malcolm Guite about the kind of faith that can hold contradiction—the yes and the no, belief and doubt, beauty and sorrow. Malcolm, a Life Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and author of Sounding the Seasons and Lifting the Veil, reflects on prayer as attention, poetry as a language spacious enough for ambivalence, and why faith might need less forced resolution and more honesty.
SHOW NOTES
Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite
Lifting the Veil by Malcolm Guite
Seamus Heaney, Station Island
George Herbert, “Prayer”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, the “terrible sonnets” (including “No worst, there is none”) and The Wreck of the Deutschland
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
C.S. Lewis, “Blue Spells and Flowered Spheres”
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
We live in a world that wants life to be fair. Work hard, make good choices, believe the right things—and things should turn out okay. But what happens when they don’t? In this live conversation, Kate talks with sociologist Mark Rank, author of The Random Factor, about the role of chance in our lives. From the lottery of birth to the timing of a missed phone call, Mark’s research shows how much of what we call success—or failure—comes down to forces we never chose.
SHOW NOTES:
Mark Rank, The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us
Mark Rank – Washington University in St. Louis
Christian Tomasetti et al., research on random mutations and cancer risk (Johns Hopkins)
Every Cure (founded by David Fajgenbaum)
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
Kate Bowler invites two of her sharpest friends—Ross Douthat and Molly Worthen—to help her make sense of the current American religious landscape: why the long “decline” story may be shifting, why religious curiosity is popping up in unexpected places, and why the loudest forms of Christianity often feel more online, more political, and more embarrassing. Together they sort through what people mean by “Christian nationalism,” how much of it is symbolism versus policy, what weak institutions and internet incentives are doing to faith, and what still gives them hope for the church.
SHOW NOTES
Ross Douthat Bad Religion
Believe
The Deep Places
Molly Worthen Apostles of Reason
Spellbound
Pre-order Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
What does it mean to live well when danger, loss, and grief are never far away?
Kate Bowler talks with theologian, pastor, and writer Patrik Hagman, whose life has been shaped by profound loss—including the death of his father, his young son, and later his wife. Raised in Finland and now living in Sweden, Patrik brings a distinctly Nordic perspective on happiness—not as constant joy or self-optimization, but as contentment, trust, and gratitude that survives close proximity to fragility.
This is a conversation about living with fewer explanations and more honesty. About faith that refuses easy answers. About the strange clarity that comes when life gets very small and very bright at the same time. And about learning to be less surprised by tragedy—and more surprised by goodness.
If you’re trying to hold grief and gratitude at once, this episode is for you.
SHOW NOTES
Babettes Kulturhus (Linköping, Sweden) – community space for conversation, fika, and culture
Stanley Hauerwas – theologian often referenced in the conversation
Patrik Hagman – theologian, pastor, writer, and translator of Stanley Hauerwas’s work
Pre-order Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
When many people hear the word Christian today, it comes with a lot of baggage—power, certainty, exclusion, and culture-war posturing. But there are still people of faith whose lives look nothing like that. People whose beliefs show up as love. Patient, persistent, deeply practical love.
Bishop Michael Curry is one of those people. A priest, pastor, and former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Curry has spent a lifetime reminding people that Christianity is not an argument to win or an identity to defend—it’s a practice of love.
Recorded in front of a room full of pastors, this conversation is a kind of holy pep talk for anyone who feels worn down by a fractured, exhausting world.
Show notes:
Pre-order Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Kate Bowler on Substack: katebowler.substack.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
What do we do when the world feels unbearably heavy—and no one is coming to save us?
To kick off Season 16 of Everything Happens, Kate Bowler sits down live with beloved author and truth-teller Anne Lamott for a luminous, funny, and deeply honest conversation about shame, joy, faith, aging, love, and what it means to keep showing up anyway.
Recorded in front of a packed house at the historic Carolina Theatre in Durham, Kate and Anne talk about the shame that follows us from childhood, the relief of putting down our armor, and the small, ordinary acts of love that still matter. This is a conversation for anyone who feels tender, overwhelmed, skeptical of easy answers—and still hungry for hope.
Show notes:
Anne Lamott on Substack
Pre-order Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler
Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway
Watch the live conversation on YouTube
Kate Bowler on Substack: katebowler.substack.com
Anne Lamott
Bird by Bird
Operating Instructions
Traveling Mercies
Good Writing (with Neil Allen)
Maggie Smith, "Good Bones"
Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4”
William Blake, “We are here to learn to endure the beams of love”
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
How do we stay soft in a world that has taught us to be tough? Actress Minka Kelly is known for her roles as Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as Samantha in HBO’s Euphoria. Despite her fame on the big screen, one might not realize the chaos that surrounded her childhood. Being raised by a single mom who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka had to learn how to take care of herself and the adults around her, and, eventually, to forgive her mom.
In this tender conversation, Kate and Minka discuss:
How we can be built from the outside in through our friendships and how our friends become our chosen family
How anger tells us that a boundary has been crossed
The unfinished ways people love us—reconciling our complicated childhoods with the love we feel for each another
How Minka has processed her difficult childhood through a lens of love and grace
The way Minka’s mom was changed by her cancer diagnosis, and how once they found their way to one another again, there could never, ever be enough time
CW: colon cancer, death of a parent, brief mentions of abuse and neglect
Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.
Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful.
This episode originally aired May 2023.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
Author and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor is no stranger to darkness. After experiencing devastating loss, Barbara explores our culture’s pursuit of the sunny side of life. But perhaps there are things we learn in the dark that we can’t learn in the light. Kate and Barbara discuss the two halves of our lives and how to practice courage even in the scariest of circumstances.
CW: Death of parents, tongue cancer
For show notes, the transcript, and discussion questions, click here.
Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful.
This episode originally aired December 2022.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. - Laat meer zien
