163 episodes

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/

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler Lemonada

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.8 • 4.2K Ratings

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

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/

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

    Bozoma Saint John: Everything Can Be True at Once

    Bozoma Saint John: Everything Can Be True at Once

    Bozoma Saint John is a successful marketing executive, but she is also a woman who knows the rollercoaster of profound love and deep loss. She shares her hard-won wisdom and complicated grief as she faced her husband’s terminal cancer diagnosis. 

    In this conversation, Kate and Bozoma: 


    Give us permission to tell the whole truth (even when it isn’t a neat)
    Speak honestly about the complicated realities of caregiving 
    Discuss how our roles change within families from daughter to parent or spouse to caregiver
    Describe anticipatory grief 

    CW: adult language, death of a child during pregnancy, death of a spouse

     

    Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

     


    Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.

    Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 53 min
    Anna Sale: Hard Topics, Softer Conversations

    Anna Sale: Hard Topics, Softer Conversations

    In this conversation, Kate and Anna discuss:


    How conversations might engender the intimacy we need to get by
    Fostering the right interpersonal and listening skills it takes to approach a difficult topic (especially when you’re feeling nervous)
    Best practices for responding to someone’s hard news
    How learning to listen might bridge differences of all kinds

    What do we lose when we don’t talk about hard things? And what might we gain if we do?

    Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything


    Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.

    Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 47 min
    Iliza Shlesinger: Laughter is the Best Medicine

    Iliza Shlesinger: Laughter is the Best Medicine

    Comedian Iliza Shlesinger is refreshingly candid, especially about things many women can relate to, like the sheer exhaustion that comes from juggling life's demands (dare we say, it's like a badge of honor?), pregnancy loss—a topic that often remains in the shadows, and how our accounts of self-care really go off the rails when bubble baths become the solution to all of life’s problems. 

    In this conversation, Kate and Iliza address: 


    A plan to make laughter a national healthcare plan (just kidding)
    How comedy connects us with one another
    Redefining self-care into something a little more practical

    This conversation is brought to you by Aspen Ideas: Health and was recorded on location in Aspen, CO.

    CW: miscarriage

     

    Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

     


    Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.

    Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 27 min
    Steph Catudal: Love That Carries Us

    Steph Catudal: Love That Carries Us

    How do you think about faith and hope when your prayers aren’t answered? What about when they are? 

    Steph and her husband, Rivs, have the kind of story you might see in a blockbuster movie. Rivs was a professional endurance athlete who was suddenly put on life support with a mysterious lung disease. But then a confluence of shocking events occurred to get him the care he needed to survive.

    Steph grew up as part of the Church of Latter Day Saints, a faith that believed that if she prayed hard enough, miracles would happen. But then her dad died when she was 14. So how does she understand faith and hope and miracles after Rivs' survival? 

    In this conversation, Kate and Steph discuss:


        How do you talk to kids honestly about life and death and hope?
        How pain is a conduit for empathy 
        How to allow things to just suck and not feel pressure to find any brightsides
        How to think about faith, hope, and miracles without idolizing certainty 

    Steph is someone who knows intimately that life sometimes just happens and that we have to learn to live alongside all of that pain and that joy and that love that somehow coexists.

    CW: cancer, death of a parent

    Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything


    Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.

    Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 46 min
    Bless This Overwhelming Day

    Bless This Overwhelming Day

    If you're feeling like everything in your life is spilling over everywhere, maybe we could learn to bless the narrowness of our lives. The fact that sometimes we need to rein it in or maybe shut some things down and then bless what is. Here's a blessing for an overwhelming day.

    Catherine Price: Serious About Fun

    Catherine Price: Serious About Fun

    Don’t Waste Your Life. Savor Every Moment. Live in the Present. 

    Culture has a lot of prescriptions for how to live a good life. But what if we don’t know where to start? Writer and researcher Catherine Price started to notice how much time she was spending on her phone and how the habit was sucking joy from her life. Instead, she wanted to learn how to have fun again. What is fun? How do you have it? Can you become a more fun person? Catherine debunks the myths around what it means to have fun—especially when we think we’re too tired, too careworn, or too old—and gives us a little homework to start today. 

    In this conversation, Kate and Catherine discuss: 


    How to break up with your phone (and why we turn to our phones in the first place)
    How to create more opportunities for fun in the midst of regular days and too-full lives
    The simple practice Catherine uses to bring more joy to her days

     

    Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

     


    Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.

    Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 47 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
4.2K Ratings

4.2K Ratings

Belinda Gaston ,

Caregivers- must listen

Every caregiver needs this podcast and specifically this episode! Bozoma Saint John and Kate are painfully honest about all the emotions. And yes, I was ready for the care taking to end!! Thank you for your vulnerability!!

Topaz for November ,

conversations, laughter, real life

Real conversations, real laughter, real life problems, and sometimes some real solutions

I’m ALWAYS happy to listen and happy to have listened.

NLA2021 ,

Save the episodes up for when you really need them

I first heard Kate Bowler on On Being, another amazing podcast. I go to this podcast when I need a hug from my mom. When I need someone to be real about crap and pain but give a glimmer of hope and beauty

Top Podcasts In Society & Culture

CNN
iHeartPodcasts
Spotify Studios
iHeartPodcasts
Caro Chambers
iHeartPodcasts

You Might Also Like

Kelly Corrigan
Jen Hatmaker
On Being Studios
Glennon Doyle and Audacy
Suzanne Stabile
Tokens Media

More by Duke University

Dr. Brad R. Fulton
Duke Chapel
Mark Goodacre
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Seas The Day Podcast - Duke University Marine Lab