Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

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

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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)

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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

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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.