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/
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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. In this conversation, Kate and Michael discuss: Why truth…
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. In this conversation, Kate and Tig discuss: Tig’s…
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…
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof understands how to hope—especially in the face of despair or disappointment. He has spent his life shining a light on global tragedies like the Tiananmen Square massacre or the genocide in Darfur. And yet, despite all the horrors he has born witness to, he maintains a sense of hard-won optimism. “Hope is a muscle,” he says, and one we can all…
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…
In this episode, Kate speaks with surgeon, writer, and public health leader Dr. Atul Gawande about the deeply human questions that surface when medicine meets its limits. What does it mean to be a good doctor when a cure isn’t possible? What do people really mean when they say they want “quality of life?” Together, they talk about caregiving, end-of-life decisions, and how the most honest…
We don’t usually have repeat guests on this podcast… except we’re making an exception for the wonderful and wise Alan Alda. Alan Alda, of course, is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and podcast host. You probably know and love him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H or Senator Arnie Vinick on The West Wing. He is endlessly curious on just about every topic—which makes him the perfect person to talk to…
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…
Erin and Ben Napier didn’t plan on becoming household names. They were just trying to build a beautiful life in their beloved hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, one house, one neighbor, one Main Street at a time. In this heartwarming conversation, Kate talks to the stars of HGTV’s Home Town about what happens when our plans fall apart and something even better takes root. They reflect on the…
What happens to faith when certainty collapses? Kate Bowler sits down with theologian and former underground priest Tomáš Halík to explore belief forged under surveillance, the spiritual value of doubt, and why going deeper—not louder—might be the only faithful response to a fractured world. Together, they consider silence, suffering, and what it means to remain open to God when clarity is nowhere…