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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. 

LISTEN TO NEW EPISODES OF EVERYTHING HAPPENS EVERY TUESDAY.
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Podcasts on Resilient Faith

  • Season

    Episode

    How Will We Live Our Beautiful, Terrible Days?

    With

    How do we navigate life within these beautiful, terrible days? In this special live episode of the Everything Happens podcast, Kate sits down with American broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff at the historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC to discuss Kate’s latest book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! Together, they explore what it means to live through the best of days, the worst of days, and all the in-betweens.

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    How Will We Live Our Beautiful, Terrible Days?
  • Season

    Episode

    Mostly What God Does

    With

    How do you have faith that can hold all of reality—the beautiful, the terrible, and everything in-between? The TODAY Show’s Savannah Guthrie thinks carefully about this question, especially given that her job is reporting the news every morning.

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    Mostly What God Does
  • Season

    Episode

    These Beautiful, Terrible Days

    With

    We are kicking off Season 12 of the Everything Happens Podcast (!!) with a little bonus situation because we’re having a little bonus moment. Kate’s new book HAVE A BEAUTIFUL, TERRIBLE DAY! Is available everywhere books are sold today. It is a book of daily meditations meant to ground whatever day you’re having—all of the ups and downs and inbetweens. And who better to talk about that with than my friend, Bob Crawford. Bob is the bass player for the wildly popular band The Avett Brothers, and someone who knows too well how terrible and beautiful life can be.

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    These Beautiful, Terrible Days
  • Season

    Episode

    The Mystery of God

    With

    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…

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    The Mystery of God
  • Season

    Episode

    The Caring Power of Community

    With

    How do you sustain a life of service…especially when your job costs you something? Angela Williams has dedicated her life to advocating for others. She joined the military. She became a lawyer. She became a minister. Wait, now she runs one of the largest service organizations in the world, United Way, as its CEO? Incredible. But what’s behind all this is a story about service. About what it takes to stay in the long, slow work of community. You will believe when she says that it’s hard…and it’s good. At the same time.

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    The Caring Power of Community
  • Season

    Episode

    The Art of Presence

    With

    Some people are the LEAN IN sort. They lean into your unsolvable problems, show up on your impossible days, and walk with you all the way to the end. How do we become them? How do we create belonging when the people we love experience such uncertainty? Practical theologian and mental health nurse John Swinton knows a thing or two about this kind of love. 

    Listen Transcript
    The Art of Presence
  • Season

    Episode

    Don’t Come Out Empty Handed

    With

    How should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness. 

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    Don’t Come Out Empty Handed
  • Season

    Episode

    Number Our Days

    With

    The Reverend Tom Long wrote the book on funerals. No, really. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, Tom reminds us of our place in a bigger story of hope and faith, of interdependence and the importance of community. He describes the necessity of ritual to pull us into a wider, truer story than the trite version our culture likes to tell.

    Listen Transcript
    Number Our Days
  • Season

    Episode

    Back to the Beginning

    With

    Beth Moore has been in the limelight for almost thirty years, but during that time, she revealed very little about her formative family history. Now, this world-famous Bible teacher is ready to tell her story for the first time.

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    Back to the Beginning
  • Season

    Episode

    Blessing our ACTUAL Lives

    With

    Welcome to SEASON TEN of the Everything Happens Podcast! Kate and Jessica talk about their work on the Everything Happens Project and podcast over the past 10 seasons. They also talk about their new book The Lives We Actually Have, which is a book of blessings. Blessings are more than prayers, they also help give you language to describe where God is in real life situations.

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    Blessing our ACTUAL Lives
  • Season

    Episode

    Love Mercy

    With

    Bryan Stevenson (founder of the Equal Justice Initiative) is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable among us.

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    Love Mercy
  • Season

    Episode

    The Season of Waiting (And Waiting…And Waiting)

    With

    Are you ready for Christmas? I used to hate that question. It usually comes when I am already overwhelmed and on the quick path toward burnout. Christmas can easily become another checklist in my already too-full life. But Christmas should feel different. Shouldn’t it? It is the symbol of plenty, of fulfillment, of more-than-enough-ness, and of the expectation that perhaps while we wait for Christ’s birth, we might practice being a little more loving, more forgiving, more patient. Advent is a chance for us to wait for the kingdom of God to break in together. This Advent season join us…

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    The Season of Waiting (And Waiting…And Waiting)
  • Season

    Episode

    More Life, Fewer Explanations

    With

    Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has written some of the most influential books on religion in the 20th century. But behind closed doors, he was suffering more than most of us knew. Here Kate and Stanley talk candidly about his rollercoaster highs and lows of being married to someone with severe mental illness. And why doesn’t God fix our pain? They have some spicy opinions about that.

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    More Life, Fewer Explanations
  • Season

    Episode

    Full Circle Faith

    With

    Writer Jeff Chu was raised in a devout Chinese Baptist community, yet struggled to reconcile being gay with the conservative faith of his family. And the feeling of not-quite-belonging gave his life a strong purpose. He became a journalist and a pastor determined to make communities a place where you don’t actually have to “fit in” to belong.  

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    Full Circle Faith
  • Season

    Episode

    Wrestling With the Faith We Love

    With

    Many of us miss the churches of our childhood and are trying to figure out what pieces of our faith to keep and which to leave behind. My guest today knows that better than anyone. Randall Balmer is a historian of American religion at Dartmouth College, THE expert of American evangelicalism, and a pastor’s kid (PK!) of a fundamentalist preacher.

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    Wrestling With the Faith We Love
  • Season

    Episode

    Suspicious of Joy

    With

    In this special episode, Kate visited the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, at Lambeth Palace in London.

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    Suspicious of Joy
  • Season

    Episode

    Learning to Hold On, Learning to Let Go

    With

    Life is painful. Period. But are there some aspects of our faith or our posture toward the world that can change how we experience it? Father Richard Rohr is everyone’s favorite preacher of love. Love for each other. Love from God.

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    Learning to Hold On, Learning to Let Go
  • Season

    Episode

    Leaning into Uncertainty

    With

    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.

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    Leaning into Uncertainty
  • Season

    Episode

    What Good is Prayer?

    With

    We don’t always know how to move through this strange, distended season. The season before the cure or the vaccine or the answer. Before the money comes through or the job opens up or the heartbreak is over. The season where this is hope for someday, but someday is not now. Perhaps here, we need to learn how to pray. In this episode, Kate and Jesuit priest Father James Martin discuss how prayer is for everyone — believer, doubter, or no-thank you-er.

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    What Good is Prayer?
  • Season

    Episode

    Belonging

    With

    Our bodies tell a story, and we find ourselves having to live inside it. At home. At work. At church. At school. But what happens when the places we love don’t always love us back? 

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    Belonging
  • Season

    Episode

    Loved and Chosen

    With

    What do you do with a world that is full of things to fear? People we won’t please. Kids who die. Parents who don’t change. Writer Anne Lamott doesn’t sugar-coat a single terrible thing, but knows that we also need the kinds of truths we can stand on.

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    Loved and Chosen
  • Season

    Episode

    The Case for Hope

    With

    There are some people who see need and, rather than feeling stuck by the magnitude of the world’s pain, they move toward it. Today’s guest is one of those kinds of people. Father Greg Boyle has worked with former gang members in Los Angeles for over thirty years with Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members and offers free services to facilitate healing. 

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    The Case for Hope
  • Season

    Episode

    The Power of Ordinary Love

    With

    Sometimes it feels like the world is irreparably broken. A climate crisis leading to more hurricanes, fires, warming oceans, a political season that has ripped families and friends apart. A pandemic that has left us more isolated than ever and even more delicate than before. Even the strongest among us may wonder, “What hope is there? Is love enough to save us?” My guest today is someone who believes in the kind of love that can change everything. In this episode, Kate and Bishop Michael Curry talk about the power of ordinary and extraordinary love to remake ourselves and our…

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    The Power of Ordinary Love
  • Season

    Episode

    Your Work is a Calling

    With

    What does it mean to be called to something? What if that job wears you thin? What if you think you’ve aged out of your vocation? In this episode, Kate and the Reverend Dr. Will Willimon talk about what to do when the roles we play cost us more than we’re willing to pay and how aging invites us to take a new look at our purpose. (Also, you’ll hear about the time Kate offered Will a bit of necessary… perspective.)

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    Your Work is a Calling
  • Season

    Episode

    Ordinary Miracles

    With

    Sarah Bessey speaks right to the soft spot where our deepest pain and deepest hope meet. The place where in the bleakest of nights we whisper, What if this doesn’t get better? If you find yourself in that tender spot today, this conversation is for you. 

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    Ordinary Miracles
  • Season

    Episode

    The Emergency Button

    When fear is overwhelming, sometimes you need to press the button—the emergency button. In this special episode, Kate gets real with the people that she calls when she needs to push the button. You’ll hear from comedian Joel McHale, writer Nora McInerny, preacher Beth Moore, and Kate’s mom for a little dose of courage (and a lot of yelling by one of these people) in these uncertain times.

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    The Emergency Button
  • Season

    Episode

    The Preacher’s Wife

    With

    Author and speaker Jen Hatmaker ruled the Christian marketplace as the evangelical darling. But when her theology shifted, she learned how harsh the penalties could be. Kate and Jen speak about what it means to lead faithfully when you lose certainty.

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    The Preacher’s Wife
  • Season

    Episode

    The Face of Love

    With

    Sister Helen Prejean didn’t know what she was getting into when she became pen pals with an inmate on death row, a story told in the film, Dead Man Walking. Now, she’s a fierce advocate against the death penalty. Sister Helen and Kate talk about finding purpose as a discovery that often begins with gentle nudges and tiny yeses.

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    The Face of Love
  • Season

    Episode

    The Speed of Love

    With

    The quality of time depends on our abilities and disabilities, possibilities and limitations. In a world of speed and productivity, Kate speaks with disability theologian John Swinton on how slowing down deepens our ability to love.

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    The Speed of Love
  • Season

    Episode

    Life After Dark

    With

    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.

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    Life After Dark
  • Season

    Episode

    The Insight of Outsiders

    With

    Before Nadia Bolz-Weber became famous as a foul-mouthed pastor and bestselling author, she was an alcoholic and stand-up comedian. This episode is devoted to the insight of outsiders, and how Nadia learned to confront her own demons with hard truths, good company and a delightfully inappropriate sense of humor.

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    The Insight of Outsiders
  • Season

    Episode

    The Luckiest Unlucky Person

    With

    How do you live knowing life can just come undone at a moment’s notice? In the span of a few months, Tig Notaro received three life-threatening illnesses, unexpectedly lost her mom, and went through a breakup. Tig is a brilliant comedian whose real life informs her comedy and has a lot to teach us about living honestly in the face of reality.

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    The Luckiest Unlucky Person
  • Season

    Episode

    Life Worth Living

    With

    What makes a good life? How would you answer that question? Not just life in the abstract… but what makes YOUR life good? Professor Miroslav Volf teaches a popular class at Yale University which guides students through these kinds of questions and might help us all think a little more deeply about what our lives are adding up to be.

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    Life Worth Living
  • Season

    Episode

    To Be Loved Like That

    With

    Our most precious relationships are often our most complicated, aren’t they? Poet and bestselling author Kwame Alexander wrote an honest book of poems and essays that name the difficult and beautiful and heart-wrenching conversations we have (or should be having) with the people we love and with the ones who love us.

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    To Be Loved Like That
  • Season

    Episode

    Clear Eyes, Full Hearts

    With

    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.

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    Clear Eyes, Full Hearts
  • Season

    Episode

    The Art of Presence

    With

    Some people are the LEAN IN sort. They lean into your unsolvable problems, show up on your impossible days, and walk with you all the way to the end. How do we become them? How do we create belonging when the people we love experience such uncertainty? Practical theologian and mental health nurse John Swinton knows a thing or two about this kind of love. 

    Listen Transcript
    The Art of Presence
  • Season

    Episode

    This Place Could be Beautiful, Right?

    With

    Maggie Smith (poet and author of books like Keep Moving and You Could Make This Place Beautiful) chronicles the aftermath of a painful divorce she didn’t see coming. How do we raise our kids in the wake of such change? And how do we reconcile who we are and who we are becoming? 

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    This Place Could be Beautiful, Right?
  • Season

    Episode

    No More Do Overs

    With

    What happens when the people we built our lives around stop needing us? Or when we have to pick between our meaningful careers or our family? And what do we do with the ambiguous grief that comes with every expected and unexpected change? Today, Kate takes an honest look at juggling the demands on our time and on our heart with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.

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    No More Do Overs
  • Season

    Episode

    Don’t Come Out Empty Handed

    With

    How should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness. 

    Listen Transcript
    Don’t Come Out Empty Handed
  • Season

    Episode

    Where We Turn for Meaning

    With

    Historian and Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff explores the cracks in our seamless worldviews… or at least the worldviews we thought were seamless until we’re faced with tragedies of all kinds. In this wide-ranging exploration, Kate and Michael probe humanity’s enduring attempt to console ourselves and construct meaning from our pain.

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    Where We Turn for Meaning
  • Season

    Episode

    Complicated Grief and Complicated Love

    With

    Supermodel Paulina Porizkova has been in the public eye all her life. But it has been a rollercoaster of soaring successes and deep heartache. Grief and pain comes to us all, and in those moments, we need our shared humanity (and not our super-anythingness) to build a bridge back to others.

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    Complicated Grief and Complicated Love
  • Season

    Episode

    Number Our Days

    With

    The Reverend Tom Long wrote the book on funerals. No, really. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, Tom reminds us of our place in a bigger story of hope and faith, of interdependence and the importance of community. He describes the necessity of ritual to pull us into a wider, truer story than the trite version our culture likes to tell.

    Listen Transcript
    Number Our Days
  • Season

    Episode

    Love Pulls You Forward

    With

    Over thirty years ago, Elaine Pagels’ young son and husband died within the same year. In this tender conversation, Kate and Elaine discuss surviving the aftermath of such devastation, the painful explanations religion often offers, and how we love and keep loving even after so much tragedy. 

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    Love Pulls You Forward
  • Season

    Episode

    Adapting to Loss

    With

    Every problem New York Times columnist Frank Bruni faced had a simple fix. Doctors offered reasonable solutions for reasonable problems. Preventative care guaranteed future health. That is, until he woke up one morning without vision in his eye. This experience forced him to rethink how much of life is in our control and how to live fully in the face of unfixable problems.

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    Adapting to Loss
  • Season

    Episode

    Back to the Beginning

    With

    Beth Moore has been in the limelight for almost thirty years, but during that time, she revealed very little about her formative family history. Now, this world-famous Bible teacher is ready to tell her story for the first time.

    Listen Transcript
    Back to the Beginning
  • Season

    Episode

    Blessing our ACTUAL Lives

    With

    Welcome to SEASON TEN of the Everything Happens Podcast! Kate and Jessica talk about their work on the Everything Happens Project and podcast over the past 10 seasons. They also talk about their new book The Lives We Actually Have, which is a book of blessings. Blessings are more than prayers, they also help give you language to describe where God is in real life situations.

    Listen Transcript
    Blessing our ACTUAL Lives