Kate Bowler with Rainn Wilson

Please note:

-- Tickets cannot be re-sold on re-seller platforms. Re-sold ticket will not be honored.

-- Tickets are non refundable and are not transferable.

-- All ticket holders should be ready to show ID at the event.

-- The name(s) you provide during registration will be on a will-call list at the event, where you will check-in and get your ticket to enter the theatre.

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Join us for an in-person and virtual* Live Talks Los Angeles event:

*Virtual event airs on May 4 at 4pm PT/7pm ET

discussing her book, "Joyful, Anyway"

TICKETS:

• $50 General Admission ticket + signed book
• $75 Two General Admisison tickets + ONE signed book
• Additional signed books available for purchase at event

• The virtual version of this event airs on May 3, 2025, at 4pm PT/7PM ET and is available on video-on-demand for five days. Tickets include a signed book
• Tickets for the virtual event can be purchased here (includes the signed book)
• ASL interpreter provided upon request.
• Free parking at the venue

Spend an evening with Kate Bowler—bestselling author, Duke professor, and expert at telling the truth about being human—in conversation with actor Rainn Wilson. They will discuss joy that doesn’t require us to pretend everything is fine. Expect laughter, honesty, and the rare relief of being told the truth: you can’t always be happy—but you can be joyful, anyway.

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Kate Bowler is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, No Cure for Being Human, Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, Blessed, and The Preacher’s Wife and hosts the popular podcast Everything Happens. A Duke University professor, she earned a master’s of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD at Duke University.
Rainn Wilson is an Emmy Award nominated actor, best known for the role of Dwight Schrute in NBC's The Office. He is the host of the Peacock docu-series Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss in which he travels the world in search of happiness. He is author of the New York Times bestselling Soulpankake: Chew on Life's Big Questions as well as his comedic memoir, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith and Idiocy. His most recent book is Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. His diverse career includes television, movies, Broadway, unscripted series, animation, and podcasts.

“Joyful, Anyway is colorful and layered, unafraid of the occasional gut-punch of raw feeling and vulnerability—much like Kate Bowler herself. She suffers no fools, especially the toxic optimists.”—Jerry Seinfeld

You can’t always be happy, but you can be joyful, anyway.

We live in a culture convinced that chasing happiness will optimize our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our lives. But in the meantime, bad news usually stays bad: illness, chronic pain, grief, and disappointment don’t obey our timelines or vision boards. We are left wondering why, if we’re doing everything right, life still feels so hard.

Honest and bracingly tender, Joyful, Anyway proves that experiencing joy does not depend on resolving everything that makes life difficult. Drawing on a decade of living with serious illness and a lifetime studying America’s obsession with progress, Kate Bowler shows why people so busy chasing happiness miss out on actual joy.

Joy isn’t something you can optimize or manufacture—it finds us at the edge of expectation, when life interrupts our scripts. Joyful, Anyway gives language for the ache we all carry and practices for “putting yourself in the way of joy”: loosening control, introducing novelty, choosing charity, and staying open to the surprising, technicolor moments that pull us back into life.

Joy reminds us that no matter what, life is still worth loving. For every time we ask is this it?, joy will answer: There is more.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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