The Kindness Matters Podcast

Send us Fan Mail A sober living home can be more than a roof. It can be a turning point. We sit down with Amber Miller, the founder of Angels House of Healing, to hear how she turned grief, addiction recovery, and a promise to break a generational cycle into a real transitional living community for women. Her story starts with losing her mother to alcoholism at 44, and the clarity that the deeper wound was unhealed trauma. From there, Amber shares what it took to get sober, face shame, and re...

Send us Fan Mail What if the strongest performance tool you have isn’t a dashboard, but dignity? We sit down with Paul Meunier, executive director of the Youth Intervention Programs Association, and author of the book Relationships Are Everything: What Youth Workers Teach Us About Leadership, to unpack why kindness and empathy are not soft—they’re the hard, practical skills that power trust, retention, and meaningful results. Drawing on decades as a psychotherapist, community leader, and advo...

Send us Fan Mail A bold claim said empathy is “toxic.” We took that personally—and turned it into a rich, practical conversation about what empathy really is, how it works, and why it makes families, classrooms, and communities stronger. With consultant, author, and caregiver Linda Lemos, we move past slogans and look at empathy as a skill you can learn, teach, and use every day without lowering standards or excusing harm. We start with caregiving, where pain and patience collide and where b...

Send us Fan Mail The world feels sharper than it used to. Conversations cut faster. Systems feel colder. And many good people feel tempted to harden—not because they don’t care, but because they’re tired. In this final bonus episode of The Kindness Matters Podcast, Mike shares why staying soft in a harsh world is not weakness—it’s courage. Drawing from his new book, Still Changing A World: Small Acts of Kindness That Make a Big Difference, he explores how we can protect our humanity without b...

Send us Fan Mail In this bonus episode of the Kindness Matters podcast, host Mike Rathman shares the heart and hope behind his new book, Still Changing a World: Small Acts of Kindness that Make a Big Difference. Instead of a sales pitch, Mike offers an invitation into the “why” behind the project and reflects on what it means to keep choosing kindness in a world that feels sharper, faster, and more divided than ever. He reads a short passage from the book’s introduction, exploring how t...