Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

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. 

In this conversation, Kate and Iliza address: 

• A plan to make laughter a national healthcare plan (just kidding)
• How comedy connects us with one another
• Redefining self-care into something a little more practical

This conversation is brought to you by Aspen Ideas: Health and was recorded on location in Aspen, CO.

CW: miscarriage

Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you think about faith and hope when your prayers aren’t answered? What about when they are? 

Steph and her husband, Rivs, 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 occurred to get him the care he needed to survive.

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 when she was 14. So how does she understand faith and hope and miracles after Rivs' survival? 

In this conversation, Kate and Steph discuss:

•     How do you talk to kids honestly about life and death and hope?
•     How pain is a conduit for empathy 
•     How to allow things to just suck and not feel pressure to find any brightsides
•     How to think about faith, hope, and miracles without idolizing certainty 

Steph is someone who knows intimately that life sometimes just happens and that we have to learn to live alongside all of that pain and that joy and that love that somehow coexists.

CW: cancer, death of a parent

Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 too tired, too careworn, or too old—and gives us a little homework to start today. 

In this conversation, Kate and Catherine discuss: 

• How to break up with your phone (and why we turn to our phones in the first place)
• How to create more opportunities for fun in the midst of regular days and too-full lives
• The simple practice Catherine uses to bring more joy to her days

Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

In this conversation, Kate and Margaret discuss:

•         What we miss when we imagine we have to drive somewhere else to experience nature, instead of noticing it around us
•         What birds teach us about what means to be a good mother
•         How to learn to love even the mosquitoes and wasps
•         Where Margaret experiences moments of holiness
•         How we might all start to be besotted by beauty

Perhaps, we can borrow some of Margaret’s innate curiosity together and see how it might open us up to wonder and love and connectedness once again. 

Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 curiosity on how we might get better at really knowing people. Perhaps that simple skill can help combat the loneliness, despair, and the divides in our social fabric.

In this conversation, Kate and David discuss: 

• How to love people with severe depression
• How to see people as beloved children of God
• Practicing intimacy and empathy
• The difference between illuminators and diminishers

CW: suicide

Everything Happens is brought to you by Cologuard®. Are you 45 or older? Start screening for colon cancer with Cologuard, an effective and noninvasive screening option for adults 45 and older at average risk for colon cancer. Rx only. Learn more at Cologuard.com/everything

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So many of us have experienced a before… and an after. 

My friend, 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 and suffered a serious brain injury 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 grief of losing her sister is captured in Clover’s beautiful book, The Red of My Blood—a book that captures the visceral feelings of grief. The pain. The beauty. The staying wide awake to the life that’s in front of us despite it all. The “how do I go on parenting with all this grief?” The “give me a sign” feeling we crave when our loved ones are gone.

In this conversation, Kate and Clover discuss: 

• Kids who have to grow up too fast due to tragedy and who we become because of it
• How some people have to live in ongoing trauma or extended grief due to caregiving or chronic illness
• The unexpected glimmers of beauty that can sustain us amid the ache of loss
• Why we need rituals to hold us together during deep grief

Kate went to visit Clover at her farm outside of Oxford in England to talk about the things in our lives that almost destroy us but also form us in some remarkable ways too. 

CW: cancer, traumatic brain injury, horse accident, death of a sibling

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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:

• The importance of lament as a response to the human condition
• Why we have such a low tolerance for uncertainty
• Which scripture to turn to when life comes apart (and which to avoid) 
• What our response should be to others who are in pain or experiencing tragedy

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. 

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, the 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. 

In this conversation, Kate and Angela discuss: 

• Why we need community now more than ever
• The case for interdependence and why it's so important to give up on individualism 
• How to sustain a life of service (hint: it has something to do with joy)

CW: cancer, caregiving

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  

This is an incredible story about resilience—what it is, and what it isn’t. You’re going to love the way she talks about the power of her efforts. And the ways she learned to get back up, but should have never had to. 

In this conversation, Emi and Kate discuss: 

• the cost of resilience
• the downsides of relying on the individual therapeutic to solve every problem (and why we should be looking for ways to create systemic or family solutions too)
• how hope and ambition can pull you toward a future
• the complexities of navigating the value of success when weighed against the lasting impact of trauma

Emi carefully interrogates what it really means to “overcome” anything. It makes us all feel less alone when we can say, honestly, that some things can be conquered and some things conquer us. 

CW: brief mentions of suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self-harm, adverse childhood, hoarding, trans issues

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How hard 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. 

Dr. Lisa Damour (New York Times bestselling author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers) has dedicated her life to unraveling the intricacies of adolescence and offering practical, heartfelt advice.

In this conversation, Lisa and Kate:

• offer a more reassuring definition of mental health (hint: it’s about having the right-sized feelings that fit the situation at hand and managing those feelings effectively). 
• emphasize the importance of being a steady presence in kids’ lives, as well as offer scripts to try with your own teenager
• give language to what parents might be feeling if they missed this kind of parenting themselves

 CW: Mental Health awareness 

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

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter). 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.