Does Everything Happen for a Reason?
In partnership with our friends at Sakara
Published on:
“You’re desperate to find causality even where there is none,” says Kate Bowler. She’s a historian at Duke Divinity School and the author of the memoir Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. And she makes us laugh, even when she’s talking about death, dying, and grief. In this episode, Bowler tells Elise Loehnen what happened after she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in her mid-thirties. She shares the moments she stopped feeling like a person, the pressure she felt to be “the best” cancer patient, to find explanations, to treat everything as a lesson that she needed to learn. She talks about how her beliefs eventually shifted. And how perhaps the biggest lesson is that it’s not always on us to figure it all out. “I was never a problem to be solved,” says Bowler. “I was just a person to be loved.”
Benny Blanco
Gwyneth sits down with music producer, musician, and author benny blanco for a live conversation about his path from a behind-the-scenes producer to a global star—plus his favorite thing to do with goop Kitchen leftovers.
Joan Nguyen and Sarah Willersdorf
Joan Nguyen and Sarah Willersdorf discuss what AI can actually do right now—how execution is being democratized, why women are well-positioned to win, what can't be automated, and why this window is closing fast.
Esther Perel
Gwyneth Paltrow sits down with famed psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel to talk about the ways AI is affecting modern dating and relationships.
Emily Hickey, Julie Rice, and Elizabeth Cutler
In this episode of the Pursuit Series, brand strategist Emily Hickey talks with Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler about how they transformed SoulCycle from a single studio into a phenomenon. They revisit the decisions that shaped the brand, the purpose that fueled its growth, and finding inspiration at different stages of life.
Dr. Tara Narula
Many people don’t know this, but heart disease is the leading cause of death in women. In 2023, 1 in 5 women died from heart disease. Gwyneth sits down with Tara Narula, MD, a board certified cardiologist and CNN medical correspondent to talk about some of the lesser-known factors that can make women at-risk for heart disease – and the steps that we can take to protect our heart health.