Everything Happens is a research and storytelling center dedicated to helping people live faithfully and honestly in a world shaped by uncertainty, suffering, and hope. Through interdisciplinary research, public scholarship, storytelling, and community-based initiatives, Everything Happens (led by Dr. Kate Bowler) develops the moral imagination needed to face life as it actually is—not as we wish it were. The Center creates spaces where people can tell the truth about pain, practice compassion and interdependence, and learn the virtues that sustain connection, meaning, and faith in ordinary life.
Subscribe to our Podcast
Are you living your best life now? Not always? This is a podcast for you. Duke Professor Kate Bowler is an expert in the stories we tell about success and failure, suffering and happiness. She had Stage IV cancer. Then she didn't. And since then, all she wants to do is talk to funny and wise people, like N. T. Wright, Suleika Jaouad, Father Greg Boyle, Sharon McMahon, and Padraig Ó Tuama, about how to live with the knowledge that, well, everything happens.
Events
Dr. Kate Bowler’s live events bring people together for honest conversation about faith, real life, joy, and the ache of being human. As a historian and storyteller, she convenes scholars, faith leaders, artists, and public voices to explore how we live faithfully in a world shaped by uncertainty—offering language for what hurts, what matters, and what carries us through. Find a full list of upcoming events on katebowler.com.
Books and Resources
Dr. Kate Bowler untangles our culture’s fixation on positivity and self-help, challenging the myths we cling to about success, suffering, and personal transformation. Across eight books—four New York Times bestsellers—and her popular Substack, Bowler combines rigorous scholarship with personal storytelling to expose false promises and offer more.