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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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Becoming Enchanted
Living in uncertainty can lead to a sense of languishing. How do we wake up from this feeling? Katherine May has written gorgeous books like Wintering and Enchantment that help us better understand how to live wide-awake to the world around us.
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.
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.
Love That Carries Us
How do you think about faith and hope when your prayers aren’t answered? What about when they are? Rivs and Steph 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 occured to get him the care he needs to survive. His wife, 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…
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…
The Art of Noticing
Margaret Renkl calls herself a backyard naturalist—but not because she has any particular expertise. From the birds in her yard to the bugs in her flower beds, she has learned the art of attention. Nature has taught her a speed at which to live, to hope, to stave off despair.
How to Really Know Someone
We may think we understand people. Where they are coming from. Why they act the way they act. … But what if we’re wrong? New York Times columnist David Brooks’ family motto was “Think Yiddish, Act British.” He knew how to keep a tight lid on his emotions, which could be useful… until he realized that he would need to learn a lot more about the role of empathy to love the people around him. Now, he’s sharing the result of his curiousity on how we might get better at really knowing people. Perhaps that simple skill can help combat…
The Rituals of Grief
So many of us have experienced a before… and an after. The lovely writer Clover Stroud had her before and after at a young age. When she was 16, her mom was in a horse-riding accident that left her severely disabled until she died… 22 years later. The suddenness of that accident layered with the ongoingness of that level of caregiving bonded Clover and her big sister, Nell in remarkable ways. Then, Nell unexpectedly died.
The Mystery of God
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…
The Caring Power of Community
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.
The Cost of Survival
What does it really mean to “survive” when what you survive… lingers? Emi Nietfeld went from being homeless to graduating from Harvard. But the rags-to-riches story isn’t ever completely true. It skips over the hardest parts—complicated families, long-term trauma on brains and bodies, the ways we wish we could go back and undo what has been done.
Understanding Today’s Teenagers
How difficult is it to be a parent today? After a pandemic? With social media breathing down our necks? It’s so hard! Navigating the delicate balance between granting independence and providing guidance can be daunting as a parent.
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