Explore every episode of the podcast The Giving Game
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
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| Griffin Pinkow - More Than What You See | 30 May 2026 | 01:04:34 | |
What happens when your entire future changes overnight? In this episode of The Giving Game, Griffin Pinkow opens up about vision loss, resilience, identity, and why blindness didn’t stop him from building a life centered around purpose and impact. Through The Foreseeable Future Foundation, Griffin is working to create support, awareness, and opportunity for individuals navigating blindness and visual impairment while challenging the way the world views disability altogether. This conversation is honest, emotional, inspiring, and surprisingly funny at times — not about limitation, but about perspective, adaptability, and refusing to let hardship define your future. No sports talk. No filters. Just real conversations that matter. | |||
| Changing The World Through A Swing: Isaac Sekulima | 27 May 2026 | 01:00:00 | |
Main topics: Isaac’s childhood and early entrepreneurship in Uganda The transformative power of gratitude and humility Building a social impact foundation for African children Overcoming hardship and faith in life’s purpose The role of love and forgiveness in personal growth Cultural differences in dating and marriage expectations The importance of community and mentorship in life and sport Isaac’s aspirations to inspire worldwide and connect with global golf events How generosity and intentionality can change destinies | |||
| From Green Beret to NFL: Nate Boyer on Purpose Beyond the Uniform | 08 May 2026 | 00:48:19 | |
In this powerful and often hilarious episode of The Giving Game, host Sophia Whitesell sits down with Nate Boyer—a former Green Beret, Seattle Seahawks long snapper, filmmaker, and founder of Merging Vets and Players (MVP).What starts with a mix-up about his identity quickly turns into a deep conversation about life after elite environments—whether that’s the military or professional sports. Nate shares how both veterans and athletes struggle with identity and purpose once the “uniform” comes off.He explains how MVP creates a community where former athletes and veterans come together, train, and open up through peer-led “huddles,” helping each other navigate mental health, transition, and purpose.The conversation also explores:The realities of military life vs. civilian lifeThe importance of mental health for veteransNIL money and young athletesNate’s journey into filmmaking, including his movie MVP (now on Netflix)And a mission-driven fundraiser to support veterans and athletesThis episode blends humor, honesty, and impact—while ultimately challenging listeners to give back and support a meaningful cause.Donation link: http://Donorbox.org/wegotyourback | |||
| Why Travel Ball Is Killing Community Sports | Tyson Ross on The Giving Game | 15 May 2026 | 00:47:39 | |
Former MLB pitcher Tyson Ross joins The Giving Game to talk about why youth sports are becoming inaccessible for everyday families — and what he’s doing to change that. Tyson opens up about growing up in Oakland, the life-changing impact of community baseball, and how his nonprofit, Loyal to My Soil, is working to bring free camps, equipment, and coaching resources back to underserved communities. The conversation goes far beyond baseball. Tyson and Sophia talk parenting in the age of screens, raising grounded kids while living around professional sports, balancing competition with fun, and how modern youth sports culture puts pressure on families financially and emotionally. Tyson also shares hilarious stories from his childhood, college life at Berkeley, his first car, staying on the family phone plan, and the realities of parenting as a former professional athlete. Most importantly, he explains why community matters more than trophies — and how even a simple social media share can help grow the mission. Loyal to My Soil provides:
DONATE HERE GUEST SOCIAL
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| Welcome to The Giving Game | 04 May 2026 | 00:00:35 | |
What happens when you take sports away from athletes? You find out who they really are. Hosted by Sophie, The Giving Game is a one-of-a-kind podcast where athletes step out of the game and into something bigger. No stats. No scores. No surface-level interviews. Each episode is tied to a real, 7-day fundraising challenge—supporting causes that matter to the guests and giving listeners a chance to be part of something meaningful. You’ll hear raw conversations, unexpected stories, and a side of athletes the world rarely sees. This isn’t about sports. It’s about impact. And the real question is… do you want to play? | |||
| The Hidden Struggles of Athletes and How to Overcome Them with Ben Zobrist | 12 Jun 2026 | 00:54:26 | |
In this episode, Sophia Whitesell interviews Ben Zobrist about his journey through sports, mental health, and his charity Champion Forward. They explore the importance of emotional wellness, authenticity, and redefining success beyond achievements. | |||
| Baseball, Badges & Purpose with Matt Stone | 07 Jun 2026 | 00:59:54 | |
Former baseball player, police officer, and Playin Thru host Matt Stone joins The Giving Game for a powerful conversation about mental health, vulnerability, and why so many men suffer in silence. Having spent years in both baseball and law enforcement, Matt has seen firsthand that some of the strongest people on the outside are often fighting battles nobody else can see. Together, we discuss the challenges of accessing mental health resources, the stigma surrounding asking for help, and why changing the conversation could save lives. This episode isn’t about sports—it’s about the people behind the uniforms and the importance of reminding others that they don’t have to face life’s toughest moments alone. | |||
| Hope in the Hardest Moments: Dave Dravecky’s Incredible Journey | 19 Jun 2026 | 00:54:49 | |
What happens when the career you’ve worked your entire life for is taken away in an instant? In this powerful episode of The Giving Game, former San Francisco Giants pitcher Dave Dravecky shares his journey through cancer, depression, loss, and the mental health struggles that followed. After being diagnosed with cancer in his pitching arm, Dave faced challenges that went far beyond baseball. He opens up about the emotional toll of uncertainty, the impact on his mental health, and the moments when hope felt impossible to find. Dave also shares how faith, family, and community helped him persevere through life’s darkest seasons and how he now helps others facing cancer and adversity through his nonprofit, Endurance. This conversation is a reminder that no matter what you’re facing, hope is never out of reach. In this episode: ⚾ Dave’s battle with cancer 🧠 Mental health during life’s toughest moments 🙏 The role faith played in his recovery ❤️ Finding purpose through pain 🤝 How Endurance is helping people facing cancer today If this story inspires you, please like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who may need a little hope today. MentalHealth #CancerSurvivor #DaveDravecky #TheGivingGame #Hope #Faith #Resilience #MentalHealthAwareness #CancerSupport #Podcast | |||
| From the Field to the Community: Laurence Maroney's Mental Health Mission | 26 Jun 2026 | 00:51:22 | |
Discover the inspiring journey of NFL player and community advocate Laurence Maroney as he shares insights into mental health, the importance of giving back, and how he is transforming his community through his foundation. This episode emphasizes the critical need for mental health support, especially among athletes and youth, and offers practical ways to foster resilience and compassion. Donate for LM39 Foundation: | |||
| Soccer as a Tool for Social Change: Dr. Hajar Abulfazl's Inspiring Journey | 10 Jul 2026 | 01:05:47 | |
In this episode, Dr. Hajar Abulfazl shares her inspiring journey from Afghanistan to the US, highlighting how soccer empowers refugee and immigrant youth, especially girls, to build confidence, leadership, and community. Discover how sport can be a tool for healing, advocacy, and social change. | |||
| From Navy to NASCAR: Jesse Iwuji's Journey of Giving | 06 Jul 2026 | 00:38:24 | |
In this episode, Jesse Iwuji shares his journey from Navy officer to race car driver and philanthropist. We explore his charitable work with veterans, kids facing illnesses, and organizations supporting long-term missions, emphasizing the importance of giving back and living with purpose. | |||
| Gamifying Giving: Ryan Beckmann on Hero Picks and Reinventing How America Donates | 01 Aug 2026 | 01:23:18 | |
This is a special one. Host Sophie Whitesell sits down with Ryan Beckmann, founder of Hero Picks, to announce a major collaboration between their two platforms — and to unpack the story behind an idea that started with a hockey shootout bet and turned into a new way to fundraise for good causes. Ryan walks through how it all began: his son Tino's terrifying week in the Phoenix Children's ICU, a text from former NHL goalie Eddie Lack that turned into an unlikely friendship, and a charity shootout challenge that snowballed from "let's keep it small" into a sold-out rink event with pro athletes, WWE talent, and a Jackass alum taking slap shots. What followed were more events, Ryan's own nonprofit, and a hard lesson: even great events with real star power don't raise nearly as much as people assume. That gap is what led to Hero Picks — a platform that "gamifies giving" through Hero Tokens, prediction games, and sweepstakes-style entries into real experiences (meet-and-greets, FaceTimes, on-ice moments, memorabilia) — all while directing dollars toward smaller, deserving nonprofits that get buried under the small number of organizations that receive the majority of U.S. donations. Sophie and Ryan dig deep into why fundraising has barely evolved in decades, why storytelling (not size) is what actually moves donors, and why smaller nonprofits have an underrated advantage: real, personal stories big organizations can't replicate. Hero Picks is launching soon — details on how to get it are below. What We Cover
Ryan Beckmann is the founder of Hero Picks, a platform built to "gamify giving" by combining predictions, sweepstakes-style rewards, and real athlete and celebrity experiences to drive donations toward nonprofits — including smaller, under-the-radar organizations often overshadowed by major national charities. Ryan's journey into fundraising began with grassroots charity hockey events built around personal relationships with professional athletes, and evolved into a broader mission to modernize how people give. | |||
| Alex & Alyssa Highsmith on Fighting Food Insecurity, Faith & Building a Foundation Together | 31 Jul 2026 | 00:49:50 | |
Alex Highsmith and his wife Alyssa join The Giving Game for a rare joint interview — one where host Sophie Whitesell openly admits she knows nothing about Alex's NFL career and everything about the couple's foundation. That's exactly the point of this conversation. Alex and Alyssa pull back the curtain on what it actually takes to run the Alex Highsmith Family Foundation, debunking the assumption that athletes just write checks and let a team handle the rest. Both are hands-on every week — Alex on Tuesday meetings between football commitments, Alyssa deep in the sponsorship and operations side as, in Alex's words, "the backbone of the foundation." The headline announcement is Alex's Locker Room, a new initiative launching in partner high schools in Pittsburgh and Wilmington, NC, aimed at tackling food insecurity among student athletes — providing meals, hydration, hygiene essentials, and nutrition education for kids who qualify for free and reduced lunch. Alyssa, a certified nutritionist and nurse, explains why fueling young athletes properly is about more than food access — it's about education they'll carry for life. The couple also opens up about their foundation's back-to-school drives, the Dancing Grandma Scholarship (named for Alex's late grandmother, who went viral dancing when he was drafted), the Run for Colorado Scholarship honoring a high school classmate lost to violence, their faith, how they met and got engaged, and what it's really like navigating NFL life as a couple who insists on staying grounded and involved. If this conversation moved you, you can support the Alex Highsmith Family Foundation using the link below. What We Cover
👉 Website: AlexHighsmithFamilyFoundation.org 👉 Instagram & Facebook: linked in bio Can't give financially? Subscribe to the foundation's newsletter, follow along with Alex's "Fuel Up Fridays," and share their mission — community support matters as much as dollars. | |||
| Jennifer George on Building Girls Basketball Worldwide, Athlete Identity & Life After Sports | 25 Jul 2026 | 00:53:59 | |
She showed up to a $50,000 boarding school with no shoes — and that moment changed everything. In this episode of The Giving Game, host Sophie Whitesell sits down with Jennifer George, founder of Girls Basketball Worldwide Foundation, for a wide-ranging, no-sports-talk conversation about basketball as a tool, not an identity. Jennifer shares the origin story behind her foundation, born from her time playing for Jamaica's national women's basketball team and coaching at Montverde Academy, where she watched firsthand how talent alone isn't enough — kids from humble beginnings need real support to make the most of life-changing opportunities. Jennifer opens up about growing up in Orlando with a strict, British-military father and a "yes mom" who balanced things out, choosing recreation and event management over criminology after a rocky freshman year, and building a decade-long career as a strength and conditioning coach before founding her nonprofit. She and Sophie dig into life without kids by choice, the "rich auntie" life, and why nobody questions men the way they question women who don't want children. The conversation turns candid around athlete identity: Jennifer's advice for young athletes on separating self-worth from performance, the danger of treating sports as "the end all be all," and why she pushes girls in her program to know who they are outside the game. She also talks about the power of the Professional Athletes Community (PAC), the real cost and stigma athlete-led nonprofits face when competing for donor dollars against big-name organizations, and a brand-new partnership with Bras for Girls to support middle schoolers navigating an awkward age. If Jennifer's story moved you, consider supporting Girls Basketball Worldwide Foundation using the links below. What We Cover
👉 Website: girlsbasketballwf.org 👉 Social: Girls Basketball Worldwide (Instagram) Donations, sponsorships, and partnership inquiries can be made directly through the website. | |||
| MMA Fighter Justin Wren on Addiction, Recovery & Fighting for Congo's Forgotten Pygmy Tribe | 17 Jul 2026 | 00:57:00 | |
What happens when an MMA fighter stops fighting against people and starts fighting for them? In this episode of The Giving Game, host Sophie Whitesell sits down with Justin Wren — former MMA fighter, keynote speaker, and founder of Fight for the Forgotten — for a conversation that goes far beyond the cage. True to the show's rules, there's no sports talk here. Instead, Justin opens up about hitting rock bottom with addiction, surviving two suicide attempts, and the sunrise that changed everything. Justin shares how he was adopted into the Pygmy tribes of the Congo Basin rainforest — the Mbuti, Efe, and Batwa peoples, among the oldest and most marginalized people groups on Earth — and how that second family inspired a nonprofit unlike any other. Fight for the Forgotten has helped secure over 3,000 acres of land rights, brought clean water to more than 100,000 people through 200+ sustainable water projects, and recently opened a critical access hospital with a thriving maternity ward. Every donation to Fight for the Forgotten during this campaign will be TRIPLED thanks to two matching gifts. Give at the link below and turn $10 into $30. What We Cover
Justin Wren is a former professional MMA fighter turned humanitarian, keynote speaker, and founder of Fight for the Forgotten, a nonprofit dedicated to building better lives for the Pygmy peoples of the Congo Basin through holistic, locally led community development — land rights, clean water, farming, education, healthcare, and sustainable livelihoods. Two matching donors mean every dollar you give right now is worth three. A $10 gift becomes $30. A $100 gift becomes $300. 👉 Donate at fightfortheforgotten.org or fftf.org Connect with Justin Wren
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| Stephen Piscotty on Losing His Mom to ALS and Turning Grief Into the ALS Cure Project | 07 Aug 2026 | 00:40:33 | |
Former MLB outfielder Stephen Piscotty joins The Giving Game to talk about the ALS Cure Project, the nonprofit he co-founded with his father after losing his mother, Gretchen, to ALS in 2018 — during the middle of his professional baseball career. Stephen walks through what ALS actually does to the body, why so few people understand the disease until it touches their own family, and the devastating combination of staying fully mentally present while slowly losing physical control. He shares what it was like caring for his mother at home through her final months, the perspective her attitude gave the whole family, and her request that drove the foundation's mission: to spare others from the same fate. The conversation goes deep into the science side of the ALS Cure Project, led largely by Stephen's father, a retired researcher from Lawrence Livermore National Lab who has poured himself into drug repurposing studies, multimodal data collection, and gene-combination research aimed at understanding what actually causes ALS. Stephen is candid about the unique challenge of fundraising for a rare disease compared to more widely recognized causes, and reflects on life after baseball — three young kids, a part-time hitting coach role with the Oakland A's system, newly discovered golf frustrations, and full "stay-at-home dad" energy. If Stephen's story moved you, you can support the ALS Cure Project using the link below. What We Cover
Stephen Piscotty is a former Major League Baseball outfielder who played eight seasons in the big leagues, including with the St. Louis Cardinals and Oakland Athletics, and twelve seasons professionally overall. After his mother Gretchen passed away from ALS in 2018, Stephen and his father co-founded the ALS Cure Project, a nonprofit focused on funding ALS research, including drug repurposing studies, large-scale data collection, and genetic research aimed at finding a cure. Stephen now works as a part-time hitting coach within the Oakland A's minor league system and is raising three young children. Support the ALS Cure Project👉 Website: ALSCure.org The ALS Cure Project is an all-volunteer organization. Recurring donations, one-time gifts, and volunteer opportunities for upcoming events are all available through the website. | |||
| Sergio Garcia on Family, Giving Back & Building FORE Kids ATX in Austin | 14 Aug 2026 | 00:44:00 | |
Professional golfer Sergio Garcia joins The Giving Game to talk about the Sergio and Angela Garcia Foundation and its flagship event, FORE Kids ATX — a two-day fundraiser in Austin that's raised over $10 million for local kids and families in just four years. Sergio walks through the event's three-part format: a gala dinner with live and silent auctions, a "prom-style" celebrity and pro golf day, and a newly added Mahjong tournament. Funds support four organizations: the Center for Child Protection, Dell Children's Medical Center, Experience Camps, and the Agila Foundation — his wife Angela's anti-bullying nonprofit. Sergio and Angela met at a golf tournament while she was a sports reporter for NBC and Golf Channel, and the two have been full-time residents of Austin since 2022 after years split between Spain and Switzerland. The conversation covers what motivated Angela to start the anti-bullying foundation, why fundraising is harder for niche and locally-focused causes than for widely recognized ones, and the moments from hospital visits and adaptive golf clinics that keep the couple committed to the work. Along the way, Sergio also gets pulled through a lighthearted "guess your sponsor" personality quiz, talks fatherhood with his two kids, and shares his (very particular) approach to packing and ironing golf polos. If Sergio's story moved you, you can support the Sergio and Angela Garcia Foundation using the link below. What We Cover
Sergio Garcia is a professional golfer originally from Spain who now lives full-time in Austin, Texas. Alongside his wife Angela, a former NBC and Golf Channel sports reporter, Sergio co-founded the Sergio and Angela Garcia Foundation, which hosts the annual FORE Kids ATX fundraiser benefiting central Texas children and families. The event has raised more than $10 million since its launch in 2022, supporting organizations including the Center for Child Protection, Dell Children's Medical Center, Experience Camps, and the UGLI Foundation, Angela's anti-bullying nonprofit. Support FORE Kids ATX👉 Website: FOREKidsATX.org This year's event takes place October 29–30. Donations, event tickets, and volunteer opportunities are all available through the website. | |||