Deep Dive with Kate Bowler on the Crappy Files 2025

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kelly and Kate Bowler return for their annual, end-of-the-year "Crappy Happy" tradition—this week, the crappy. They wade into the losses that don't announce themselves all at once: the thinning of what used to feel full, the realization that some struggles are life sentences, and the slow unraveling of institutions that once felt solid. Kate reflects on what it costs to do slow, unglamorous work in a world that no longer values it and Kelly considers what happens when systems built to protect everyone start serving only one. They talk about acceptance as a form of hope, the surprising need to be bone tired, and how to tell the difference between people fighting for their side and people protecting what shelters us all. It's an honest, grounding conversation—with the happy coming next week. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
0:08.8	I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering, along with my writer, podcaster friend Kate Bowler,
0:14.1	about the hardest moments of 2025, personally, professionally, and globally.
0:20.0	This is part one of an annual project we call
0:22.4	Crappy Happy, where Kate and I get super honest about what went wrong before we celebrate
0:27.3	what went right. Kate, you know from the podcast, Everything Happens. She teaches at Duke
0:32.6	University. She's written several bestsellers, including Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've loved.
0:39.4	After years of being told that she had incurable colon cancer, I am happy to say she was declared cancer-free.
0:48.1	Kate is one of the most direct voices I know.
0:51.9	If you want to talk about pain and loss and faith and what it takes to
0:56.1	keep showing up when life doesn't go the way you planned, the best place you could possibly go
1:01.1	is to Kate Bowler. Here's our conversation.
1:08.6	Hi, Kate Bowler. Oh my gosh. Kelly. It's that time of year. Could it be? I know. That
1:17.6	really caught me off guard this year, I have to say. Yeah, I think, too, because we did this, is this our third time?
1:26.1	Yeah, it is. It is. Our third annual Happy Crappy.
1:29.7	I have come to rely on it as a way of having a retrospective moment. It is. It was really
1:36.7	interesting. Like yesterday I thought, oh, I should like take a minute and go for a walk and think
1:40.8	about what these three things are for crappy and three things are for
1:44.5	happy. So for the listener, just to review, we do one whole conversation about what was
1:50.2	crappy this year, personally, professionally, and nationally or globally. And then we come back
1:56.1	the next week and do a nice, positive episode on what was was happy personally, professionally, globally.
2:03.0	But, Kelly, this is how I know that you actually love me, is that you're willing to have a
	...

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