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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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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.
The Art of Aging
Who are we as we age? Our culture has such poor language for the who-we-are-ness across time. The ways we grow and the things that threaten to diminish us. Clinical psychologist and bestselling author, Mary Pipher knows a lot about the opportunities and costs embedded in aging. In this episode, Kate and Mary offer us a non self-helpy roadmap for how to age beautifully.
Blessed Are The Mirrors
We have thick cultural scripts for what is deemed inspirational and it usually goes like this: You can do it. Never give up. Everything you need is inside of you today. But what do you really need to hear when life is coming apart? Morgan Harper Nichols is someone whose words of encouragement gently lift our chins toward hope. In this episode, Kate and Morgan discuss how important it is to reflect truth and hope and beauty back to one another.
Spread Too Thin
Our lives have shrunk and our choices have been dramatically restricted. But the obligations never stopped, did they? How do we get off the achievement train and build a beautiful life within constraints? Writer Shauna Niequist was on the fast track to burnout when she received advice that changed the pace of her life entirely. Kate and Shauna talk about the productivity myths we believe and how to embrace a slower, smaller life marked by delight.
Living Alongside Fear
What does it feel like to really live? Some people jump out of airplanes. Others prefer for their feet to stay on the floor. Some seek out the feeling of riding the edge of what is possible, and the rest of us are too tired to think about it right now in this pandemic season. Clinical psychologist Dr. Ken Carter studies thrill-seekers. In this episode, Kate and Ken discuss fear—how we manage it and how we live alongside it.
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