Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, host of the award-winning podcast Everything Happens, and associate professor of American religious history at Duke University Divinity School. Her work explores suffering, faith, success, grief, and joy, including her recent book Joyful, Anyway.

Joy Can Survive Uncertainty Without Turning Loss Into Gain

At a live taping of The Happiness Lab at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Kate Bowler, the Duke religious historian and author of Joyful, Anyway, argued that joy is not the payoff for suffering well or getting life under control. In conversation with Yale psychologist Laurie Santos, Bowler rejected the cultural pressure to turn loss into growth, gratitude or self-improvement, making the case that joy can survive alongside grief, uncertainty and unfinishedness precisely because it does not require denial.

The Aspen InstituteJun 27, 202619 min read