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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.
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Learning to Be Joyful, Anyway: A Big Announcement
Joy won’t cure you, but it will carry you. After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. Alive. Blessed. But she still ached—for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day. So she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A lemur sunbathing. A belly laugh at a funeral. A dive into the Atlantic with a shark wrangler. In Joyful, Anyway, Bowler takes us on a hilarious and tender journey through big questions and…
For Those Who Feel It All
Everywhere you turn, there’s something to worry about. And sometimes that buzzing hum of anxiety is trying to tell us something important—about our body, our heart, our world. In this episode, holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora joins Kate to talk about the difference between false anxiety (the kind sparked by sleepless nights or too much caffeine) and true anxiety (the kind that whispers: something isn’t right here). Together, they explore practical ways to tend to our overtaxed nervous systems and how to live with more steadiness and grace in a world that never lets up.
America’s Caregiving Crisis
Ai-jen Poo—award-winning organizer and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance—joins Kate Bowler to talk about caregiving in America. Who provides it. Who’s left out. And why we need a system that treats care as the sacred, shared labor that it is. If you’re carrying the care of someone else—or fearing the moment when you will—this conversation is for you.
Divorce, Deconstruction, and Rebuilding from Scratch
What happens when the life you were supposed to have… disappears? Jen Hatmaker joins Kate Bowler for a conversation about faith, divorce, patriarchy, and the slow art of healing. After the collapse of her marriage and being pushed out of the evangelical world, Jen had to figure out how to live again—how to co-parent, pay bills, go to therapy, and mother herself after decades of being the “pastor’s wife. This is for the people who are learning how to live when the story changes. A conversation about grief, grace, and not doing it alone.
Am I Ruining My Kid?
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.
When Caregiving Becomes Codependency
When someone you love is in pain—whether they’re sick, addicted, or falling apart—you show up. Again and again and again. You make the calls. You hold the line. You carry what you can. But what happens when love, loyalty, and devotion blur into something harder to name? When care turns into codependency, and compassion starts to erase your sense of self? Kate sits down with best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love, Big Magic) to talk about the toll and the tenderness of caregiving. Liz’s new memoir, All the Way to the River, chronicles her years caring for someone she…
What Makes Life Worth Living?
Dr. Atul Gawande has spent his life at the intersection of healing and human limitation. In this conversation—recorded live at the Aspen Ideas Festival—Kate and Atul wrestle with some beautifully uncomfortable questions: What do we do when there’s no fix? What makes a life still feel like yours? From terminal diagnoses to parakeets in nursing homes to the quiet revolutions of primary care, this episode is a deeply human exploration of what it means to be cared for.
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