The Kindness Matters Podcast

Send us Fan Mail A car overheats on a scorching Sunday in 1969. No phones, no call boxes, no easy way out. What happens next is the kind of true story that quietly rewires your brain: a young cowboy pulls over, tows a stranded father and son into town, recruits a mechanic after church, and turns a miserable breakdown into one of the best days of their lives. That’s the heart of my conversation with Neal Foard, one of the most trusted modern voices in heartfelt storytelling. We get into why ...

Send us Fan Mail The moment you realize “the system” can’t carry this for you is the moment you become your child’s advocate. I sit down with Ashlyn Thompson, co-founder and executive hope director of Parent Empowerment Network, to unpack the kind of courage that gets built in hospital rooms at 2 a.m. Ashlyn shares the story of her daughter Emery’s rare congenital condition, bladder exstrophy, and what it’s like to hold joy and grief at the same time on the day your child is born. We t...

Send us Fan Mail A lot of us know the feeling: you’re doing your best, your kid needs you, and inside your own head the weather turns. I sit down with Kendall Consini Moore, the writer behind Cloudy Day Chronicles and the author of Mom’s Cloud and the Beach Adventure, to talk about a simple idea that can change family communication: giving big feelings a name kids can actually use. We get specific about how her “cloud” metaphor was born from a bedtime story and a real parenting worry, and ho...

Send us Fan Mail Silence can feel like a conversation killer, but what if it’s the fastest path to trust? We sit down with John Nepper, a speaker, educator, and leadership trainer with 35+ years of experience, to unpack a practical approach to kindness and leadership that works in real workplaces, not just on posters. We talk about why storytelling in leadership matters, how small talk becomes meaningful when you’re intentional, and what John calls the Story Formula for Extraordinary Retenti...

Send us Fan Mail Kindness can sound like a soft idea until you meet someone who survived because other people refused to look away. I’m joined by Betsy Ronel, host of Heavens To Betsy: Let’s Talk Midlife, and her story is as heartbreaking as it is human: she lost her husband suddenly in a car accident, right as they were growing their family, and her life changed overnight. What happened next wasn’t a miracle cure. It was something more believable and more repeatable: strangers showing up wit...