Today, we’re sharing a conversation from the More Happier podcast between Kate, Gretchen Rubin, Priya Parker, and Francis Lam.

It’s easy to get swept up in a cycle of holidays that feels more like a relentless to-do list than a source of joy. In this Celebration Roundtable, we talk about how to embrace the holidays as opportunities for intentional connection and meaning.

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Tim Shriver—educator, author, and longtime Chairman of Special Olympics—joins Kate for a tender, funny, deeply practical conversation about dignity: what changes when we decide everyone matters, how relationships (not information) do the real work, and why service is more than “being nice.” Together they trace a family story from Rosemary Kennedy to Eunice Kennedy Shriver to millions of athletes, swap hospital-and-gymnasium epiphanies, and offer a simple lens for disagreeing better. It’s an invitation to the “really real,” where joy and sorrow live together and love makes people—and communities—more fully alive.

SHOW NOTES:

• Special Olympics — The global movement founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver and now led by Tim.
• Dignity Index — A practical tool for scoring how we speak across difference, helping us learn to disagree without contempt.
• Unite — A bridge-building initiative founded by Tim Shriver to foster common ground and shared dignity.
• CASEL — The pioneering framework for social and emotional learning Tim helped develop.
• Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most — Tim’s memoir on faith, family, and the pursuit of a life that really matters.
• Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful.

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What happens when you live on a planet where grief rewrites the language of everyday life? Kate Bowler speaks with writer and New York Times editor Sarah Wildman about her daughter Orli’s incandescent life and staggering courage while living with terminal cancer. Together they explore the limits of positivity culture, the fierce tenderness of caregiving, the sacred discomfort of truth-telling, and the love that carries us when nothing adds up. This is a conversation for anyone who has lived inside the ache—and chosen joy anyway.

Show Notes:

• Sarah Wildman’s award-winning writing at The New York Times

• Leonard Cohen’s “Who By Fire”

• Jewish practices of grief (shiva) and care (bikur cholim)

• Blessing for Life After Loss

• Support Guides: Parenting a Medically-Complicated Child, When Your Child is in Pain, When You’ve Been Diagnosed

• Orli, in all her joy: @orli_halpern on TikTok

• For those of us who live on a different planet now: Small Talk Survivor Tee | Mug

• Kate’s Substack – blessings, reflections, and our tender corner of the internet

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