Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

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...

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...

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 th...

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...

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, o...

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,...

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 surpri...

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...

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 s...

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 Kate to talk about what happens when helping become...

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 really need from the adults who care for them. If you’...

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 conversation, Kate Bowler speaks with Father Ron Rolheiser—be...

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 all at once. To hold your own hand when everything f...

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 wilderness of uncertainty, to be in the company of unansw...

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 for waiting. For loneliness. For a life built around...

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 complicated families, appropriate smallness, and what...

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 beauty, the cost, and the messy, sacred hope of it al...

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 the truth. So what happens when the person who sp...

What happens when someone believes in you–before you’re even ready to believe in yourself? In this powerful conversation, Kate sits down with legendary basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) to talk about trust, leadership, and the important work of calling out greatness in others. From his storied career at Duke to coaching Team USA, Coach K shares what he has learned about the power of hones...

Lent is here—the season we stop pretending we’re fine and admit that life is…a lot. It’s forty days of naming what’s fragile, walking toward the hard truths, and resisting the urge to skip straight to the happy ending. In this special Ask Kate Anything episode, Kate answers your biggest, messiest questions: How do we stay soft in a brutal world? How do we practice Lent when life is already exhaust...

Loneliness is more than just a feeling—it shapes how we see ourselves and the world around us. It can make us withdraw, hesitate to reach out, or convince us that connection is for other people. But Dr. Vivek Murthy has spent years reminding us of what is most true: we are meant to hold each other up. As U.S. Surgeon General (twice!), Vivek confronted some of the biggest public health challenges o...

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 To...

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...

We have thick cultural scripts for what is deemed inspirational and it usually goes like this: You can do it. Never give up. Everything you need is inside of you today. But what do you really need to hear when life is coming apart? Morgan Harper Nichols is someone whose words of encouragement gently lift our chins toward hope. In this episode, Kate and Morgan discuss how important it is to reflect...

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 embr...