Call Me Tony

Tony used to work with a man who was addicted to crack and alcohol. While Tony and his wife were struggling to afford formula and diapers for their infant son, his coworker quietly made sure the baby was taken care of before spending money on his own addictions.

It challenged Tony’s assumptions about addiction, weakness, selfishness, religion, and what actually makes someone a good person.

Eighteen years later, his friend is sober, but sobriety didn’t turn him into a good friend. That person was there all along.

This episode of Call Me Tony looks at the difference between functioning well and having good character, and why knowing someone’s biggest struggle may tell us far less about them than we think.

“If at first you don’t succeed, give up!”

My dad used to say that. I thought it was shit advice because almost everyone else was telling me the opposite: try, try again. Never quit. Keep pushing.

Almost 30 years later, I’m starting to think Dad might have been onto something.

In this episode, I talk about the difference between taking a break and genuinely giving up, why persistence isn’t always a virtue, and the strange freedom that can come from letting something actually end.

Sometimes we eventually come back with a fresh perspective.

Sometimes we discover there was never a good reason to go back.

Maybe giving up deserves a better reputation.

I used to gobble up every bit of news I had time for. It left me stressed, angry, and carrying emotional reactions to things I couldn't influence.

These days, I don't follow the news. I seek out information when it directly affects me, the people I care about, or a decision I can actually make.

In this episode, I talk about the pressure to "stay informed," why I don't think being less informed is necessarily a bad thing, how news competes for our attention, and what became more obvious in my own life when I stopped paying attention to everything happening somewhere else.

The world is going to keep happening whether I'm watching it or not. My own life is happening too.

When I was a kid, the rule was pretty straightforward: have fun and come home when the streetlights come on.

For hours at a time, we were largely responsible for ourselves. We took stupid risks, got hurt, wandered into places we shouldn't have been, fought with our friends, worked things out, and occasionally learned the hard way why our parents had rules in the first place.

Some of what we did was genuinely dangerous. I'm not interested in romanticizing that.

But as we've made childhood safer, more supervised, and more structured, I wonder if we've also taken away some of the experiences that prepared us for adulthood.

In this episode, I talk about risk, independence, conflict, screens, changing communities, and the difference between knowing someone will rescue you and knowing you can handle your own shit.

Maybe the problem isn't that kids today are different.

Maybe we gave them a completely different childhood.

In the first episode of Call Me Tony, I told a story about someone I'd loved when I was young. Someone I hadn't seen since 1994, but who remained a significant part of my emotional life for more than two decades.

At the time, Facebook kept suggesting her as someone I might know. I chose not to reconnect. I wanted to preserve what we'd had rather than find out what reality might do to the memory.

Years later, I went back and listened to that episode.

I remembered almost every word. I still understood the person who recorded it. I still agreed with most of what he said.

I just didn't feel the same fondness attached to the memory anymore.

This isn't really a story about getting over someone. It's about recognizing that something which once had enormous power over you has quietly become history.

The relationship mattered. The love mattered. The longing mattered.

None of it needs to disappear for me to stop trying to live in it.

Curiosity has shaped my life. It has changed my beliefs, challenged my assumptions, and helped me see the world differently. I wouldn't want to lose that.

At the same time, I've learned that not everything valuable needs to be completely explained.

In this episode, I explore the difference between curiosity and control, why we feel uncomfortable with uncertainty, and how the search for answers can sometimes cause us to lose sight of the experience itself.

This isn't an argument against critical thinking. It's a reflection on knowing when to keep asking questions and when it's okay to simply let something matter.

We all like to think we evaluate evidence objectively.

I'm not sure we do.

In this episode, I explore why different beliefs often seem to receive different standards of evidence, whether belief is actually a choice, and why certainty can become a trap. Along the way, I reflect on my own experiences changing my mind, why curiosity has always been more persuasive than humiliation, and why I'm far more interested in how people think than what they think.

Seven years ago I recorded a short podcast asking myself a difficult question: Am I a failure?

Finding that old script forced me to confront a different question entirely. By what standard do we decide whether a person has succeeded or failed?

In this episode I revisit that younger version of myself, not to correct him, but to understand him, and explore how my thinking has changed over the last seven years.

How do we know when someone has truly changed? This episode explores the difference between remembering the past and allowing it to permanently define the present. It's a reflection on accountability, evidence, boundaries, and why we should be careful not to confuse history with identity.

Two days after my father died, I walked into a toy store and found comfort in a place I never would have expected: a giraffe finger puppet named Richard.

What began as an impulsive purchase quickly became a private coping mechanism during one of the most difficult periods of my life. While arranging a funeral, supporting family members, and trying to hold everything together, Richard became a quiet source of comfort that nobody else fully understood.

In this deeply personal episode, I reflect on the loss of my father, the pressure of being strong for others, the childhood lesson to "grow your own muscles," and the unexpected ways people sometimes find their footing when life changes forever.

This is a story about grief, responsibility, love, memory, and a small giraffe finger puppet that helped carry the weight of a difficult season of life.

Connect with the show:

YouTube: https://youtu.be/7hNQ5lXLH_0

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fischer.acb

Website: https://acfischerpod.neocities.org/