Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
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.
AVAILABLE WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS.
19 MILLION+
downloads
5100+
5 STAR RATINGS
Podcasts on Complicated Families
-
-
-
Suicide Prevention and Hope
With Pamela Morris-PerezHere on the Everything Happens Podcast we don’t shy away from difficult subjects, and today’s episode tackles a topic we’ve been wanting to discuss for awhile—suicide among teens and young adults. My guest today, Dr. Pamela Morris-Perez is someone who approaches this subject with the heart of a grieving mom and the mind of a professor and practitioner who wants to make change possible and wants to teach us how we can help. This is such an important conversation on how communities can help prevent adolescent suicide.
-
Finding the Melody
With Chantal KreviazukChantal Kreviazuk is a Canadian singer, songwriter, composer, and pianist—her voice is the soundtrack of all Kate’s Canadian’s teenage angst. She has had an incredible career with a passion for helping others. Among many things, she’s a powerful advocate for destigmatizing mental illness—a cause near and dear to her heart after her brother struggled to get adequate care for nearly 20 years. She’s said, “When a family member is sick, the whole family is sick.” She offers such wisdom for people who struggle with a hurting family member, or their own mental health, or for their marriages that are sometimes…
-
Run Toward the Danger
With Sarah PolleyDo you ever look back at your childhood and go… certainly that didn’t happen like that? Where were the adults? Academy Award winning director and childhood actress Sarah Polley describes what it was like to not be believed when she was afraid or when she wanted to stop or when she was in pain or when she was in danger. And how, as adults, we can all better protect those around us and learn to look back on our younger selves with compassion.
-
When Life Gives You Lemons
Today, we’re talking about tragicomedy. And isn’t that all of life? The absurdity. The horror. The laughter that somehow cuts through the most difficult of moments. Our guest today, Stephanie Wittles Wachs wrote a beautiful memoir called Everything is Horrible and Wonderful about the death of her brother to an accidental heroin overdose when he was 30 years old.
-
Everything Can Be True at Once
With Bozoma Saint JohnBozoma 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.
-
The Cost of Survival
With Emi NietfeldWhat 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.
-
To Be Loved Like That
With Kwame AlexanderOur 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.
-
Clear Eyes, Full Hearts
With Minka KellyHow 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.
-
No More Do Overs
With Mary Louise KellyWhat 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.
-
Complicated Grief and Complicated Love
With Paulina PorizkovaSupermodel 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.
-
Love Pulls You Forward
With Elaine PagelsOver 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.
-
Back to the Beginning
With Beth MooreBeth 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.
-
Cheers to The Crappies
With Kelly CorriganThis time of year can be rough. Somehow we are supposed to wrap it up or feel complete, but, more often than not, we can look back at a year that, well, sucked.
-
Music That Makes Us
With Fred PennerFred Penner is a Canadian sensation whose television show and hit songs like “The Cat Came Back” was part of so many of our childhoods. But what few of us knew was how much he understood the pain of growing up. He lost his alcoholic father and his 12-year-old sister in the same year. He turned to music. And his gentle wisdom and songs have invited us—children and adults alike—to stay curious and kind in a hard world.
-
Every Family Has a Story
With Julia SamuelJulia Samuel is a psychologist in the UK who specializes in working with families who have experienced complicated stories of loss and love. So often we can feel overwhelmed by our histories – our family histories – and need a boost to confront dysfunction, speak the truth, and find trusted people to help us look back and look forward.
-
More Life, Fewer Explanations
With Stanley HauerwasTheologian 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.
-
Full Circle Faith
With Jeff ChuWriter 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.
-
Everybody Has Something
With Mary Laura PhilpottWriter Mary Laura Philpott had all the regular kind of parental worries until her teenage son had his first seizure. She had to learn to balance her fear alongside her love all the while recognizing that everyone has something they are dealing with.
-
Wrestling With the Faith We Love
With Randall BalmerMany 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.
-
Showing Your Scars
With Ibram KendiIbram Kendi and Kate Bowler have more in common than they would have liked. Historians and professors. Parents of young kids. Diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer at age 35. No history of the disease in their families.
-
Remaking Home
With Tara WestoverWhat do we do when our families are sources of pain, confusion, or harm? How do we (or can we) outgrow our complicated childhoods when we no longer need the defenses we created?
-
Mythbusting Parenting
With Cammie McGovernWe often have very romantic expectations about parenthood. Parenthood is about a mythical child who will be perfect in a way we haven’t quite put our finger on, and the journey to love them to teach us something reasonably easy about ourselves. But what if we are not the parents we thought we’d be? Or our kids are not the kids we thought we’d have?
-
Counting Your Somethings
With Mitch AlbomBestselling author Mitch Albom was at the height of his career when his favorite professor was dying. Mitch then spent his Tuesdays with Morrie—conversations that would change the trajectory of his life and career. Mitch continues to walk right up to the edge with the complicated questions around grief, loss, and hope in his books and charitable work.
-
Peace for Our Anxious Selves
With Taylor HarrisEveryone loves to get VERY BOSSY when it comes to our fears. “Don’t worry, be happy!” Just be brave! But maybe ‘being brave’ doesn’t mean ignoring our fears but living alongside them. After all, we live in a world that offers us few guarantees, don’t we?
-
Being Church on Our Worst Days
With Liz TichenorAuthor and priest Liz Tichenor lost her mom and her baby in the same year. Brand new to leading a church and reeling from the grief, the pain was enough to break her. But it didn’t—because other people carried her through.
-
Tolerating Imperfection
With Kate BaerPoet Kate Baer found herself inundated with the demands of motherhood, and little time to write. Nothing was easy and then, at a breaking point, it felt impossible. If she wanted a creative life, she was going to have to redefine “perfection” (perfect mom! perfect woman!) and learn to tolerate a lot more imperfection instead.
-
Loving a Stranger
With Sarah SentillesWe’re given a story of birds and bees where two people fall in love and out of their love blooms a perfect little creature. But far too often and for far too many, that isn’t the case.
-
Staying Awake to Our Pain
With Alexi PappasWhen she was a child, Alexi Pappas lost her mother to suicide. So when Alexi faced a season of deep depression she knew had to find a different way forward. That’s when her training as an Olympic runner became invaluable.
-
Life After Loss
With Jerry SittserHow do you move forward after an incalculable loss? Jerry Sittser lost his wife, young daughter, and his mom in one horrific accident. But even as his world stopped, the world kept spinning. He had to learn how to parent his three surviving children in the wake of such grief.
-
The Scandal of Grace
With Philip YanceyPhilip Yancey is well-known for his bestselling books like What’s So Amazing About Grace and Disappointment with God. But behind all of that spiritual wisdom was a family secret: his sick father left the hospital against the doctor’s advice, trusting in God to heal him. He wasn’t healed. Out of this experience, Philip has wrestled with deep questions of faith and doubt and suffering.
-
What Your Childhood Means for Your Health
With Nadine Burke HarrisCan trauma you experienced as a kid still affect you now? What about the traumatic experiences of our parents and grandparents? Is there a way to undo what California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris calls the “toxic stress response”?
-
Bonus Episode: Debunking “Everything Happens for a Reason” with Kelly Corrigan
With Kelly CorriganThe Everything Happens team is still on a bit of a summer break, but don’t worry! We’ll be back in August with all new episodes. We thought it might be fun to surprise you with this bonus episode. Kate spoke with her friend, the brilliant and hilarious bestselling writer Kelly Corrigan on Kelly’s Podcast: Kelly Corrigan Wonders. Together, the two debunk conventional wisdom like the notion that “Everything Happens for a Reason.”
-
Julianna Margulies: Getting Unstuck
With Julianna MarguliesChaotic childhoods can leave us feeling stuck. Stuck in the roles and relationships and chaos that once felt familiar. Actress Julianna Margulies (best known for her roles in ER and The Good Wife) found incredible success, but nothing seemed to free her from living into past, traumatic dynamics.
-
Weddings, Divorces, and Loves That Carry Us
With Jamie LeeComedian Jamie Lee is now Netflix’s The Wedding Coach where she’s on a mission to help couples survive the craziness of planning a wedding. A wedding is an event, but a marriage is not an event. During the filming of the show, Jamie’s own relationship began to unravel.
-
Family Lore
With Nicole ChungWhat if the story you’ve been given about your family isn’t the whole truth? Writer Nicole Chung had been told a story like so many adoptees. Your parents wanted a better life for you. God chose you to be part of our family. But then she found out the truth was far more complicated than that.
-
Stories We Tell Ourselves
With Matthew McConaugheySometimes there are stories about ourselves that just need to be true, even if they aren’t. Stories about our ancestors or younger selves that help to explain who we are and offer us a little purpose. When it comes to telling a good story, no one does it better than our guest today: Academy Award winner and author Matthew McConaughey.
-
Family Secrets
With Dani ShapiroWho are we when we can’t answer where we’re from? Who are we when we can’t locate ourselves on family trees or on familiar religious traditions or among genetic traits? How do we live after we thought what was true about our identity is totally upended?
-
The Case for Hope
With Greg BoyleThere 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.
-
A Not-So Hallmark Christmas
With Nikki DeLoachThe 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.
-
Extraordinary Empathy
With Abigail MarshAre 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.
-
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.
-
World’s Okayest Mom
With Kristen HowertonParenting isn’t always Instagram-worthy, but the American myth of perfectionism rarely shows that messy middle. Kristen Howerton, mom of four, therapist, and author of Rage Against the Minivan, gives us the permission slip we all need. The one that says you can opt out of greatness. There is no winning in parenthood.
-
Whole and Holy
With Heather LanierWhat if your life hasn’t turned out like you thought it would? When writer Heather Lanier’s daughter was born with a rare genetic syndrome, she learned that the world will not always see her beloved as good. In this conversation, Kate and Heather discuss how maybe it’s okay that we are not summed up on bell curves. Perhaps the exact bodies in which we dwell are whole enough.
-
Community as a Verb
With Mia BirdsongThere’s a story we’re told about how we should save ourselves through sheer grit. But many fall on the other side of that success metric. In this episode, Kate and writer and activist Mia Birdsong discuss expanding our definition of family and how to show up when our community needs us—both locally and nationally.
-
Fork in the Road
With Wes MooreWes Moore had a rough childhood growing up in Baltimore. His father died when he was a child, he struggled in school and was arrested for vandalism before something shifted. Moore grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, White House fellow, and published writer. And along the way, he learned of another man who shared his same name, but is serving a life sentence in prison. He talks with Kate about what he learned from “the other” Wes Moore.
-
Make Me A Gardener
With Wajahat AliWajahat Ali was about to give a TED talk on the global case for having more kids, when he received news no parent should ever hear. Kate and Waj speak about parenting amid fear, unexpected kindness, and how kids really are our greatest act of hope.
-
The Love Bridge
With Glennon DoyleWe need guides to walk with us when life goes a little off-script. In this episode, Kate speaks with bestselling author Glennon Doyle about unlearning the roles we’re stuck inside even when it costs us and what’s better than being perfect–being human.
-
Finding the Margins
With Angela DuckworthPsychologist Angela Duckworth studies the significance of grit. There are those who experience a difficult circumstance and scrape by, and there are those who thrive in the aftermath. Together, Angela and Kate explore what makes the difference and how we can develop resiliency in ourselves and our kids.
-
The Preacher’s Wife
With Jen HatmakerAuthor 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.
-
How Do We Talk to Kids about Hard Things?
With Sherrie WestinHow do we prepare our kids for a world we can’t always protect them from? Sesame Street creates educational programs to make the most vulnerable among us smarter, stronger, and kinder in the face of difficult realities. On this episode, Kate speaks with Sherrie Westin, the President of Global Impact and Philanthropy at the Sesame Workshop on how to tell our kids the hard truths in age appropriate ways.
-
The Stories of Who We Are
With Andrew SolomonWriter Andrew Solomon never felt like he fit in. But studying other communities that celebrate differences transformed his sense of belonging and his parenting. Which aspects of our kids should we attempt to change and which need to be celebrated? Andrew and Kate discuss what it’s like to be different from our family, find our people, and love our kids across difference.
-
How to Grieve Well: A Special Conversation
With Susan DunlapWhat can we expect in the first moments of loss? How is it possible to grieve someone we may have never met? How can we best support people who are in mourning? In this special conversation, Kate speaks with Reverend Dr. Susan Dunlap about how our minds, bodies, and hearts respond to deep loss and the best practices for allowing ourselves space to grieve well.
-
True Believers
With Mark LukachMark Lukach felt like he was hit with a tsunami when his beautiful marriage was upended by mental illness. With one diagnosis, he lost his wife and gained a lifelong patient. Mark and Kate explore the cost of caregiving and the importance of finding the true believers who will love through it all.
-
The Luckiest Unlucky Person
With Tig NotaroHow 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.
-
Life Worth Living
With Miroslav VolfWhat 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.
-
To Be Loved Like That
With Kwame AlexanderOur 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.
-
Clear Eyes, Full Hearts
With Minka KellyHow 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.
-
The Art of Presence
With John SwintonSome 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.
-
This Place Could be Beautiful, Right?
With Maggie SmithMaggie 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?
-
No More Do Overs
With Mary Louise KellyWhat 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.
-
Don’t Come Out Empty Handed
With Rabbi Steve LederHow 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.
-
Where We Turn for Meaning
With Michael IgnatieffHistorian 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.
-
Complicated Grief and Complicated Love
With Paulina PorizkovaSupermodel 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.
-
Number Our Days
With Tom LongThe 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.
-
Love Pulls You Forward
With Elaine PagelsOver 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.
-
Adapting to Loss
With Frank BruniEvery 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.
-
Back to the Beginning
With Beth MooreBeth 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.
-
Blessing our ACTUAL Lives
With Jessica RichieWelcome 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.
