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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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Ask Kate Anything: Season Five Finale
How do you get through a terrible day? What should you not say to someone with cancer? What keeps you believing in God? We thought it might be fun to have you, dear listener, interview Kate for today’s episode, instead. Kate offers gentle ideas for how to be a good friend to struggling loved ones, how she has found pockets of productivity in this dumpster fire of a year, and what she is hoping for in the New Year. Plus, she ends with a benediction for a year that didn’t turn out like we thought it should.
A Not-So Hallmark Christmas
The pandemic has introduced many to living with uncertainty. But for some, uncertainty has always been their norm. Actress Nikki Deloach has starred in several Hallmark Christmas movies, but her life hasn’t matched the happily-ever-after plot-lines of her characters. Nikki’s dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia and her son was diagnosed with congenital heart defects in utero… all in the same week.
Beauty in the Breaking
Emergency Rooms are the theater of life itself. For ER Dr. Michele Harper, work has become a calling—to bear witness to people’s problems both large and small, to advocate for better care, to catch those who fall through society’s cracks, to stand up against discrimination, to remind patients that the pain they have endured is not fair… it was never supposed to be this way.
Bless the Nurses
At the core of nursing is the ability to love a stranger, to care indiscriminately. Christie Watson was a nurse in the UK for 20 years before she began teaching nurses. But when COVID-19 hit, she knew she needed to stand with her colleagues. So she put on her scrubs once again. In this moving conversation, Kate and Christie discuss the cost of COVID on healthcare workers, chaplains, and those who can’t be by their loved ones’ side when they need it most. If you are a nurse, know a nurse, or have been cared for by one before, this…
I’m Doing My Best (Life Now)
Though magazines and movie stars try to convince us otherwise, we aren’t all living our BEST LIFE NOW. When humor writer Samantha Irby lost both of her parents at 18, she developed the perfect coping mechanism: finding the absurd in everything. In this conversation, Kate and Samantha have a wide-ranging conversation about topics like grieving their Sweet Valley High life goals, and how losing your parents as a child is the worst form of losing agency, and how important it is to speak honestly about our bodies and love them still.
Stubborn Hope
What does it mean to be blessed? If you were to scroll through social media, you’d assume that “blessed” are the ones with gorgeous, matching families living in open style floor plans. But Jesus had other things in mind. When the Reverend Jan Richardson lost her husband, she continued to write counterintuitive blessings like “A Blessing for the Brokenhearted.” In this episode, Kate and Jan talk about the ways grief cracks us open and the ways blessing invites us to stubborn hope.
Extraordinary Empathy
Are some people more empathetic than others? By studying those on the opposite end of the compassion spectrum–those with psychopathy–researcher Dr. Abigail Marsh discovered something surprising. In this episode, Kate and Abigail talk about the use of fear, what it really means to be brave, and how we can all learn to better belong to one another.
The Power of Ordinary Love
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…
Bless This Body
There are some secrets we’d rather not tell, but that eat us alive anyway. Writer Susan Burton was trapped in an eating disorder with no good name. Today’s conversation is not a victory story. Issues with our bodies are not ones we overcome because our bodies are, you know, living things. Kate and Susan discuss how we struggle against shame and learn to have compassion for ourselves and our fragile, beautiful bodies.
Medicine with a Soul
How do doctors, nurses, and other caring professionals keep their hearts soft when there are forces that make it hard to stay that way? With her radically compassionate approach to medicine, Dr. Victoria Sweet calls us to slow down in a world that loves quick fixes. In today’s conversation, Kate and Victoria give us more language about what helps us all stay connected to the people we serve.
Your Work is a Calling
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.)
When Hope Seems Lost
What do you do when all hope feels lost? Abstract artist Lanecia Rouse Tinsley is no stranger to the hopelessness that comes with grief. In extended isolation, 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 Lanecia discuss how creativity can be an act of resistance and the hope she discovers on a blank canvas.
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