Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

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.

Kate Bowler invites two of her sharpest friends—Ross Douthat and Molly Worthen—to help her make sense of the current American religious landscape: why the long “decline” story may be shifting, why religious curiosity is popping up in unexpected places, and why the loudest forms of Christianity often feel more online, more political, and more embarrassing. Together they sort through what people mean by “Christian nationalism,” how much of it is symbolism versus policy, what weak institutions and internet incentives are doing to faith, and what still gives them hope for the church. SHOW NOTES Ross Douthat Bad Religion Believe The Deep Places Molly Worthen Apostles of Reason Spellbound Pre-order Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler 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 does it mean to live well when danger, loss, and grief are never far away? Kate Bowler talks with theologian, pastor, and writer Patrik Hagman, whose life has been shaped by profound loss—including the death of his father, his young son, and later his wife. Raised in Finland and now living in Sweden, Patrik brings a distinctly Nordic perspective on happiness—not as constant joy or self-optimization, but as contentment, trust, and gratitude that survives close proximity to fragility. This is a conversation about living with fewer explanations and more honesty. About faith that refuses easy answers. About the strange clarity that comes when life gets very small and very bright at the same time. And about learning to be less surprised by tragedy—and more surprised by goodness. If you’re trying to hold grief and gratitude at once, this episode is for you. SHOW NOTES Babettes Kulturhus (Linköping, Sweden) – community space for conversation, fika, and culture Stanley Hauerwas – theologian often referenced in the conversation Patrik Hagman – theologian, pastor, writer, and translator of Stanley Hauerwas’s work Pre-order Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler 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.