The Tony Michaels Podcast

Send us Fan Mail

Five Minutes in America is a new weekday audio series written and told by Tony Michaels.

Each five-minute episode tells a complete American story about ordinary people, shared responsibility, and the constitutional principles that bind us together.

The first story, “The Fence,” is available now. Follow the new show so the next story is waiting when the weekday series begins September 7.

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/five-minutes-in-america/id6805530471

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/5FGk01MvG8IVSLIA0MHHGn

Listen on The Coffman Chronicle:
https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/s/five-minutes-in-america

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Perfectionism does not always look like fear.

Sometimes it shows up early, carries a clipboard, and points toward one more little thing a responsible person ought to fix.

In this episode of Along the Way, I look at the difference between craft and perfectionism, business and busyness—and the moment I finally allowed The Fence to stand on its own.

Listen to Five Minutes in America:
https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/s/five-minutes-in-america

Paid members of The Coffman Chronicle receive all five stories together on September 5, before weekday public release begins September 7:
https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/subscribe

What have you kept perfecting because you are afraid to call it finished?

I’m Tony Michaels. I’ll see you... along the way.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Success isn’t a spotless notebook. Success is refusing to surrender authorship.

Help put Five Minutes in America on the radio—and hear the stories first as a paid member of The Coffman Chronicle:

https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/

If somebody asked me to sum up everything I have learned about success in one sentence, this would be it:

It is impossible to fail.

We fail at things. We lose opportunities. We make mistakes. We write sentences we wish we could erase.

But those failures are events inside a life. They are not the verdict on a life.

Your life is the notebook. Your purpose is the pencil. The eraser reminds us that a mistake does not have to become a commandment.

You can make a correction. You can learn from the pages you cannot change. And while there is still an empty line in front of you, you can write the next sentence yourself.

In this episode of Along the Way, I also share the first taste of the music for Five Minutes in America—my new storytelling program coming to radio five days a week, five minutes at a time.

These stories won’t tell you which political team to join or ask you to spend five more minutes angry at somebody you have never met. They will take you to kitchen tables, fence lines, bait shops, front porches, and courthouse squares—places where ordinary people reveal who they are.

Paid members of The Coffman Chronicle will hear Five Minutes in America before the stories reach radio. Membership is $8 monthly or $80 annually, and it helps carry these stories from my notebook to the airwaves.

So let me ask you:

Who’s writing your story?

Tell me in the comments—and share this with someone who may be ready to take their pencil back.

I’m Tony Michaels. I’ll see you along the way.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

I loved butchering chickens.

My mother hated it.

And believe it or not, that story helped me sell more than one bathroom.

During my years in bathroom-remodeling sales, I learned that the best way to stop being strangers wasn’t a clever sales pitch. It was to listen.

A question about someone’s house could lead to a story about where they grew up. Their memory would make room for one of mine. By the time we sat down to discuss the bathroom, we weren’t merely a salesman and a customer anymore.

This week, a passage from *How to Win Friends and Influence People* reminded me that the people who give us their time make our work possible and they deserve the very best we can give them.

In this episode of 'Along the Way', I consider what those sales appointments taught me about storytelling, gratitude, and the childhood memories that can open our hearts to people we have only just met.

What story from your childhood do you tell when you want somebody to understand where you came from?

Tell me down in the comments.

I promise I’ll listen.

'Along the Way' is my Sunday journal about building 'Five Minutes in America' and becoming the storyteller the work requires.

Get your free pocket Constitution at https://YourPocketConstitution.com.

I’m Tony Michaels. Stay free and I’ll see you along the way.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

My high school art teacher gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice I’ve ever received.

The funny thing is—she first gave it to me twenty-five years ago.

This week on Along the Way, an old art portfolio, a new sketchbook, and Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—” helped me understand where this show truly begins: inside the notebook.

We spend a lot of our lives aiming at what we desire—money, recognition, applause, success. But a desire is not a task.

You cannot do fame.

You can return to the page. You can shape the cup. You can tell the story.

Find the work that—if you keep doing it—will carry you toward the life you desire.

Find your if.

What is the work you keep returning to? Tell me in the comments.

Along the Way with Tony Michaels is a weekly journal about the challenges, discoveries, and lessons found while doing the work. New episodes every Sunday.

Read more stories: 
https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Some stories entertain us.

Some stories stay with us.

This is the story that stayed with me.

When I was a teenager on a family vacation to Colorado, I heard a storyteller named Scotty Vaughn perform "Rindercella," a classic story written by Archie Campbell of Hee Haw. I had no idea that one evening at the Flying W Ranch would shape the way I would tell stories for the rest of my life.

Looking back now, I don't think I brought that story home.

I think...

It brought me.

Today I'm building Five Minutes in America—a storytelling project dedicated to preserving the stories, character, and principles that have always made America worth passing along.

If this kind of storytelling speaks to you, I'd love to have you become a member. Members get an early look at every new episode of Five Minutes in America, along with behind-the-scenes conversations as we build this storytelling company together.

Become a Founding Member here:
https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/subscribe

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

For years, I thought I was building a podcast.

I was wrong.

I was building a body of work. A community. A place where we could tell the truth, challenge power, laugh together, and try to make sense of this country.

The Tony Michaels Podcast is going to take a break while we prepare for what comes next.

This video is a letter to everyone who has listened, watched, subscribed, shared the show, supported the work, or simply spent part of their day with me over the years.

I’m not walking away from the work.

I can finally see what we’ve been building.

This isn’t launch day.

But it is Day One.

Read and subscribe to The Coffman Chronicle:
https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/

Stay connected and subscribe here so you don’t miss what comes next.

I’m Tony Michaels.

Stay free.

Watch the video on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/H-M3mZUpyIQ

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What if the biggest lesson a boy learned at a Little League game had nothing to do with baseball?

In today's Opening Argument, Tony Michaels tells the story of one father, one umpire, and one unforgettable evening that reveals the difference between being a fan and being a citizen.

Sports need fans.

A republic needs citizens.

If we've turned politics into spectator sports, what does that mean for the future of the Constitution?

Watch today's Opening Argument and join the conversation.

☕ Presented by Squawk Boss Coffee

Before you buy better coffee, learn how to wake up the coffee you already have.

Get your free Freshness Guide at WakeUpYourCoffee.com

📖 Read more at TheCoffmanChronicle.com

If this episode made you think, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who still believes America is worth arguing for.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

The American Front Porch – Episode 1: The Fence

Somewhere in your memory... there's a fence.

Maybe it was painted white. Maybe it was barbed wire. Maybe it stood behind a Little League ball field or along a gravel road that led home.

This isn't really a story about fences.

It's a story about the ordinary places where Americans learned the habits that make self-government possible—responsibility, stewardship, neighborliness, and citizenship.

The American Front Porch is a new storytelling series exploring the objects, places, and memories that quietly shaped generations of Americans.

Because sometimes the most important lessons weren't taught in classrooms or courtrooms.

Sometimes they were learned beside an old fence.

If this story meant something to you, share it with someone who remembers a fence of their own.

🇺🇸 Carry the Constitution with you:
 YourPocketConstitution.com

📰 More stories and daily commentary:
 TheCoffmanChronicle.com

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

When the rules apply to some people but not others, trust begins to break.

Today’s Opening Argument starts on a factory floor, where one worker watches a simple safety rule become optional for someone with the right connection. But the lesson is bigger than one workplace.

A republic can survive hard rules.
 What it cannot survive is selective rules.

When power starts handing out exceptions to the connected, ordinary Americans learn that justice has become negotiable.

Presented by Squawk Boss Coffee.
 Get the free Freshness Guide at https://wakeupyourcoffee.com/

Read more at https://www.thecoffmanchronicle.com/

Support the show