Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Philip 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, doubt, and suffering. 

In today's conversation, Philip and I discuss: 

• What it was like growing up in Christian fundamentalism 
• Being wounded by the church
• The cost of unforgiveness
• The mystery and hunger of grace

This conversation forced me to wonder about how grace works. Perhaps grace, as Philip would say, is a scandal. Because it forces us to think about a love that is unearned, undeserved, and unmerited. All we know sometimes, is that WE need it. 

So, blessed are we who live here. In this mystery—this scandal—of grace.

CW: polio, abuse

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The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose?

In this episode, Kate reads an excerpt of No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) — her new memoir that releases TODAY!

We all wish we could boil our life down to simple formulas. Easy-to-grab mantras that tell us how to live. Things like: You only live once! or What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! or just Think Positively! I guess I'll just have to make lemonade out of all those lemons I've been given. But what about when you realize life isn't a series of choices?

More often than we'd like to imagine, things come apart, and what we thought was in our control just isn't anymore. We have to learn to live here. Outside of formulas, outside of cliches, outside of easy steps. We all have to learn to be human, again today.

No Cure for Being Human mines these formulas to find something that is truer, gentler, and maybe a little bit more honest.

Like how all the modern-day-stoics tell you to BE PRESENT! It seems so simple, right? In response to all that is out of control, we should zero in on what is in our control. But the consequences of only living in the present is that we might ignore the past or put a wall around the future. And there is so much wisdom there. Until, of course, it forces us to put too much of our lives on hold in the suspended animation of now, so that's what I thought I might talk to you about today. 

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What if we never fit in? Or always miss the script that everyone else seems to so easily understand? From Arrested Development’s Buster Bluth to Veep’s Gary Walsh or Toy Story 4’s Forky, Emmy Award Winning actor Tony Hale is an expert in awkward. 

In this episode, Kate and Tony talk about:

• How acting is an act of empathy
• What it feels like to feel outside of the Acceptable People
• Having grace for our most awkward moments

This conversation will offer you a little gentleness for our awkward selves, our in-pain selves, our out-of-step selves, our misunderstood selves. Bonus: it will also make you laugh.

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What kind of food tastes like love to you? Food has a beautiful way of making us feel less lonely in our pain or in our isolation or in our grief. Star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, Antoni Porowski understands the power of a delicious meal to bring us together and remake us with love. 

In this episode, Kate and Antoni discuss:

• How food transcends time and distance and can remind you of who you are
• Antoni’s biggest cooking mistake (and how it might give us all a little permission to fail and try again)
• How food can help us to grieve
• What NOT to do when you deliver food to people who are going through a tough time

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Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today and receive a FREE 18" navy blue pennant. Learn how by clicking here.

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Is it possible to be happier? Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin wondered if she could discipline herself to take tiny steps in order to be more content with her actual life. But what about those of us facing something daunting or insurmountable or tragic? Is it possible for us to be happier?

In this conversation, Kate and Gretchen discuss:

• When we’re forced to reevaluate our life and what might happen if we just try a little harder
• How our senses anchor us to the present
• The difference between happiness and joy
• If happiness is a selfish endeavor 
• The definition of limited agency (and why we should try to find a place between EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE and NOTHING IS POSSIBLE)

Kate ends with A Blessing For Permission to Try.

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Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today and receive a FREE 18" navy blue pennant. Learn how by clicking here.

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Can 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”?  

In this conversation, Kate and Nadine discuss:

• Why “picking yourself up by your bootstraps” is an incomplete (and unhelpful) story
• A better way to define resilience
• How your zip code might determine your health
• How fostering nurturing relationships help heal our bodies 
• What baby rats can teach us about learning to change 

Kate ends with a Blessing for if You had a Painful Childhood. And whew, will this episode crack you open and heal the tender parts of you you didn’t know needed it.

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Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today and receive a FREE 18" navy blue pennant. Learn how by clicking here.

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Can hilarity and sorrow co-exist? Comedian and actress Cecily Strong (of Saturday Night Live fame) is professionally funny. But after a series of losses, she was forced to discover how devastation and love sometimes exist at the same time—both in great measure. 

In this conversation, Kate and Cecily discuss:

• Why we need to practice changing
• How much of our lives is determined by almostness 
• Moving past the “winning” and “losing” paradigm for illness
• When we can stop being afraid (and how maybe fearlessness is for psychopaths)
• Loving people’s uniqueness
• Why allowing yourself to feel big emotions can be daunting, and how love, beauty, and maybe even magic can be present simultaneously

Kate ends with a Blessing for the Both/And. This deep conversation about the cost of love will surprise you with its tenderness and offers us all a little room to grieve the things we’ve lost.

CW: glioblastoma

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Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today.

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The Self-Help Industry would like to convince us that everyone is capable of change. Just drink this! Read this book! Pick up this daily habit! Follow these 5 Steps! But how much change are we really capable of? 

It’s such a tender question that is best reserved for a brilliant and agile mind, so who better to pose this to than the spectacular brain of Malcolm Gladwell? 

In this conversation, Kate and Malcolm discuss:

• Why living in the future is a kind of pernicious myth and why the past is inherently better… (ignore the fact that these are two historians. No bias to see here). 
• How difficult it is to not just interpret a stranger but to love one.
• The case for humility and forgiveness
• Why we should be willing to rethink our certainties

Kate ends with a Blessing When You Are Forced to Change. It may be one we all need during these strange times.

CW: they briefly discuss the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of a child

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Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today.

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We all wish we could fix our lives. And it works!

Until it doesn't.

Until we lose someone we love. Or an addiction ruins the family vacation. Or our parents die. Or we never get that baby. Or we lose our financial security. Or, I don't know, a global pandemic takes away all of our plans. 

Until we realize that we are Fragile. Finite. Prone to hangryness. And just... human, again today. And maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

My name is Kate Bowler. I'm a professor at Duke University. A wife. A mom. and... at age 35 I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, which was not exactly something I would have picked either. 

How do we live alongside the things we didn't choose? The things we can't get back? How do we learn to live when our lives can't be so easily fixed ... like the wellness and self-help culture would like to convince us?

Join me for this season of the Everything Happens Podcast where I will speak to thinkers, authors, experts, comedians, and actors about what they’ve learned in difficult times. Together, we will break down common formulas for how to live… mine them for their truths, and, hopefully, discover something thicker, richer for how to live, beautifully in our actual, fragile lives and broken bodies and delicate relationships. 

Because there’s no cure for being human. But we are all good medicine. 

New episodes begin on August 17th. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don’t miss an episode.

In the meantime,

• Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
• Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

Oh! And I have a brand-new book coming out on September 28th called No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear). Pre-order your copy today.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 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."

Kate Bowler has trouble nodding along when people say things like “Don’t put that into the universe!” and “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” But what she simply CANNOT endure is when someone assures her that “everything happens for a reason.” Her point of view is tied to two absurd truths of her life: she’s a divinity professor at Duke, and she had Stage 4 cancer. She split her time between studying how religion works and getting surgeries that move her belly button around and then recovering from them with her husband who she’s been with since she was in braces and her son, who at six, doesn’t really get why sometimes she can’t do dance parties with him. This conversation will fill you up. Guaranteed.

Listen to more episodes from Kelly Corrigan Wonders.

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