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 way to interpret it instead? 

Kate and NT Wright also discuss:

This is a bit of a Bible-nerd out, but I would trust no one else to help us better make sense of where is God when we’re suffering than NT Wright. 

This clip originally aired in October 2023.

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here.

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 surprising twists that led from political aspirations and magazine dreams to woodworking, parenting, and a television show that celebrates belonging. Along the way, they explore how creativity is born out of necessity, making a home, building a community, and loving the place where you are. 

In this episode, they discuss:

If you liked this episode, you may also like: 

This episode originally aired June 2025.

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 to be found.

SHOW NOTES

Watch the live conversation on YouTube

Touch the Wounds — Tomáš Halík

The Afternoon of Christianity — Tomáš Halík

Kate Bowler is joined by Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sarah Bessey for an honest, funny, and deeply tender conversation about what it means to be people of faith right now. When the world feels overwhelming—personally and globally—they explore small acts of love, embodied community, and “cozy faith” as resistance to despair. From knitting circles and prayer shawls to church, doubt, and the stubborn choice to keep loving the world, this episode is about finding hope in ordinary, human ways.

SHOW NOTES

Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

Watch the live conversation on YouTube

Nadia Bolz-Weber

Sarah Bessey 

Evolving Faith Conference & Community

Sacred Harp singing

Braving the Truth by Rachel Held Evans (edited by Sarah Bessey)

Books by Nadia Bolz-Weber — Pastrix, Accidental Saints, Shameless

Books by Sarah Bessey — Field Notes for the Wilderness, A Rhythm of Prayer, Jesus Feminist 

What if humor isn’t just a personality trait—but a survival strategy?

Kate Bowler sits down with writer Jenny Lawson and entertaining YouTuber Rhett McLaughlin to talk about the strange, often dark roots of comedy. From childhood anxiety and taxidermy-filled homes to lifelong creative friendships and faith that evolves, they explore how silliness, honesty, and absurdity help us live with what hurts. This is a conversation about being “too much,” laughing at what’s not funny, and finding connection in the weirdest parts of being human.

SHOW NOTES

• Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

• Watch the live conversation on YouTube

• Let’s Pretend This Never Happened — Jenny Lawson

• Furiously Happy — Jenny Lawson

• Broken (in the Best Possible Way) — Jenny Lawson 

• How to Be Okay (When You’re Not Okay) — Jenny Lawson 

• Rhett & Link / Mythical Entertainment

• Good Mythical Morning 

• James and the Shame (Rhett McLaughlin’s music project)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the day her new book Joyful Anyway releases, Kate pauses before the interviews and travel to reflect on a harder question: what does it mean to talk about joy in a world that feels fractured, exhausting, and uncertain? In this short, personal episode, she pushes back on the pressure to optimize our way into happiness and instead explores a stranger, sturdier kind of joy—one that shows up alongside grief, ordinary stress, and lives that don’t quite match the ones we imagined. With a reading from the book and a few honest reflections, this is an invitation to consider what might be better than happiness—and how joy might still find us anyway.

SHOW NOTES

• Joyful, Anyway by Kate Bowler — Available everywhere books are sold.

• Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

• Watch on YouTube

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Holy Week arrives, Kate talks with theologian, poet, and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams about joy that doesn’t erase sorrow. Together they explore longing, grief, music, gratitude, hope, and the strange, defiant way joy can sit right beside pain without denying what’s true.

SHOW NOTES

• George Herbert, “The Pulley”

• Nick Cave

• Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

• Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

• Watch the live conversation on YouTube

• Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a particular kind of pressure that creeps in when we start measuring our lives—where we thought we’d be by now, who we imagined we’d become, how things were supposed to feel. The instinct is to fix it. Optimize it. Get moving.

But what if the invitation is something else?

Kate Bowler sits down with writer and speaker Suleika Jaouad (Between Two Kingdoms, The Book of Alchemy) for a conversation about living inside unresolved questions—especially the ones that ache. Together, they talk about ambition and exhaustion, chronic illness and uncertainty, and the quiet shifts that happen when nothing seems to change.

They explore the tension between momentum and meaning, the limits of self-improvement, and what it looks like to keep going without pretending everything is fixable.

SHOW NOTES

• Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals (Substack)

• Between Two Kingdoms — Suleika Jaouad

• The Book of Alchemy — Suleika Jaouad

• Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

• Watch the live conversation on YouTube

• Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if Lent isn’t about giving something up, but about learning how to sit with what’s already gone? In this episode, Kate talks with poet, priest, and theologian Malcolm Guite about the kind of faith that can hold contradiction—the yes and the no, belief and doubt, beauty and sorrow. Malcolm, a Life Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and author of Sounding the Seasons and Lifting the Veil, reflects on prayer as attention, poetry as a language spacious enough for ambivalence, and why faith might need less forced resolution and more honesty.

SHOW NOTES

• Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite

• Lifting the Veil by Malcolm Guite

• Seamus Heaney, Station Island

• George Herbert, “Prayer”

• Gerard Manley Hopkins, the “terrible sonnets” (including “No worst, there is none”) and The Wreck of the Deutschland

• T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

• C.S. Lewis, “Blue Spells and Flowered Spheres”

• Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

• Watch the live conversation on YouTube

• Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We live in a world that wants life to be fair. Work hard, make good choices, believe the right things—and things should turn out okay. But what happens when they don’t? In this live conversation, Kate talks with sociologist Mark Rank, author of The Random Factor, about the role of chance in our lives. From the lottery of birth to the timing of a missed phone call, Mark’s research shows how much of what we call success—or failure—comes down to forces we never chose.

SHOW NOTES:

• Mark Rank, The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us

• Mark Rank – Washington University in St. Louis

• Christian Tomasetti et al., research on random mutations and cancer risk (Johns Hopkins)

• Every Cure (founded by David Fajgenbaum)

• Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway

• Watch the live conversation on YouTube

• Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.