A Fiercer Delight with Matt Gordon

The world can feel heavy, full of pain that outpaces our joy. A Fiercer Delight is Matt Gordon’s search for something brighter - conversations with coworkers, business leaders, neighbors, and friends who are chasing goodness, truth, and wisdom in their real, messy lives. Each episode explores the human experience - failures, turning points, small delights, and big transformations - to uncover how we might live with more light, more hope, and more joy. Starting with local voices and expanding nationally, A Fiercer Delight invites you to sit in on candid, thoughtful, sometimes funny talks that just might leave you inspired to find a fiercer delight of your own.

A Fiercer Delight with Matt Gordon is a society podcast hosted by Faith and Community, with 32 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Faith and Community hosts A Fiercer Delight with Matt Gordon, a society show with 32 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #33

  Lindsay Butcher: Jazzercise, Achilles, and Practicing Joy

  Sep 29, 202630 minS1

  What happens when the movement you love disappears in one step across a Walgreens parking lot? Lindsay Butcher teaches Jazzercise, loves to run, and spent seven months relearning how to live without either. Lindsay started Jazzercise as a customer in 2016, became an instructor in 2020, and taught her very first class to an empty room after auditioning by video. Then her Achilles ruptured while she was walking into Walgreens with her daughters. Her husband ran over from the golf course, and two strangers who happened to be nurses helped get her into the car. During recovery she scooted down to her home gym to do core work and shadowboxing on her knees, and she asked her oldest daughter to tell her, "buck up, buttercup." Matt and Lindsay talk about the hard lesson of letting people help you, and about how much joy those helpers get from doing it. They also get into being an out-loud fan of things, from Taylor Swift (three weeks after surgery, Lindsay traveled to Germany to see her) to Peloton to pretty notebooks. Along the way you'll hear about her daily coffee, journal, and list of five things she's grateful for, and about the Buffalo Wild Wings job that changed how she talks to strangers. Plus: the one-line idea from a Peloton instructor that Lindsay keeps coming back to, about what we get good at when we practice. Follow us today for some weekly joy.

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  Episode #32

  Ronnie & Liz Lee: House Parties, Mahjong, and 23 Years

  Sep 22, 202640 minS1

  What does 23 years of marriage still look like when you catch each other smiling from across the room? Ronnie and Liz Lee sit down together, a rare double guest on the show, to talk about what makes their partnership work. They met as friends at Columbia College, bonded over mahjong and basketball in her dorm room, and reconnected years later at one of Ronnie's East Campus house parties. Liz recommends Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings and Mistborn for weekend reading, while Ronnie has moved on to UFO podcasts and reruns of Alone. They also tell the story of building a backyard volleyball court just so their family of four could play together. Ronnie and Liz talk about mutual respect, feeling fully accepted, and staying curious with each other instead of trying to change one another. They talk through how joy and happiness do not have to be opposites, and how the small, ordinary parts of a life together (chores, coffee in bed, slow Saturday mornings) matter as much as any big moment. Plus: Ronnie's daily gratitude practice, and the lesson he learned on hundreds of miles of recruiting road trips with his youngest son. Follow us today for some weekly joy.

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  Episode #30

  Angie Sanders: Buckets, Housewives, and Staying Regulated

  Sep 15, 202632 minS1

  What if the smile you give the world could finally match the one you feel inside? That's the question a middle school journal entry planted in Angie Sanders long before she had words for it. Angie talks with Matt about the children's book "Have You Filled a Bucket Today" and the idea that every person carries an invisible bucket that our words and actions either fill or drain, herself included. She and Matt trade notes on Jonathan Haidt's image of the elephant and its rider, her treadmill habit of watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and the ten minute guided dance she does behind a closed door every morning. Underneath the laughs, this conversation is about staying steady when life tries to knock you off balance. Angie and Matt dig into humility, choosing curiosity over assumption with the people closest to you, and the strange habit we all have of cutting out the very things that help us most the moment life gets hard. Follow us today for some weekly joy.

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  Episode #31

  Brandon Hoops: Wendell Berry, Farms, and a Fiercer Life

  Sep 8, 202633 minS1

  What does it look like to live a full, unhurried life, and to keep planting trees you will never sit under the shade of? Wendell Berry, the farmer, novelist, and poet, died this year at 92, and Matt brings back returning guest Brandon Hoops for a special tribute episode. Brandon first found Wendell Berry through a college roommate and never stopped reading, he now owns more books by Wendell Berry than by any other author. He talks about growing up on Nebraska farmland with his grandfather, how Wendell Berry captured that same slow, rooted life in novels like Jayber Crow, Hannah Coulter, and The Memory of Old Jack, and the time he mailed Wendell Berry a book to sign as a wedding gift for a friend. Together Matt and Brandon dig into what made Wendell Berry different, a man who turned down literary fame in New York for sixty years on a Kentucky farm, wrote about "membership" and community instead of individualism, and treated slowing down as a discipline rather than an accident. They talk about his fiction, his Sunday walking poems, and the idea of practicing resurrection, planting something good even when you will never see it grow. Plus: what Wendell Berry said about his own faith when a reporter pushed him for a final word of wisdom. Follow us today for some weekly joy.

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  Episode #29

  Cole Stoecklein: Wendy's, Golf, and the Joy Gallery

  Sep 1, 202647 minS1

  What does it take to find real joy in a Wendy's parking lot in Lebanon, Missouri? For Cole Stoecklein, it started as a lucky ritual on drives to Mizzou and turned into something closer to superstition. Cole talks about growing up between Minneapolis and Bentonville, Arkansas, and how being one of the smallest kids in his class pushed him toward golf, a sport he first learned alongside his dad's friends and later fell back in love with at Mizzou. Along the way is the story of that Wendy's, the cherry vanilla Dr Pepper that became part of the ritual, and how his wife Morgan finally called an end to it. Matt and Cole dig into what happens when something you love turns into an obligation, and how small, ordinary things can carry real weight and meaning. They also talk through what Cole calls a joy gallery, a practice for holding onto gratitude and good memories, from his wedding day to watching his son George grow up. Plus: Cole shares an idea he is still working through, a way of finding meaning in the hardest seasons of life, not just the easy ones. Follow us today for some weekly joy.

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