Earlier this year I found myself at an impromptu party, seated across from a tall stranger in a suit named Michael. A mutual friend introduced us and then issued a simple instruction: “Tell Michael a story.”
Nervously, I reached into the vault and summoned an old favorite. Something about an ex-girlfriend from the south of Spain, a game show, and the late great American bebop clarinetist Tony Scott.
After finishing the story, I asked Michael why he was so interested in collecting stories.
And he told me about a monthly storytelling series he hosts called The Tell.
A week later, I went to check it out. I was completely seduced by the whole situation. The audience arrives not knowing exactly what they’ll see, only that they’ll hear four storytellers and two musical performances over the course of two sets.
It might be someone famous. It might be someone completely unknown. The mystery is part of the attraction.
It felt strangely familiar. Like some version of what I imagined New York might be before I ever moved here. The experience is curated but unscripted, intentional but not overly polished. So I asked Michael to describe it.
“Is this gonna be funny? Is it gonna be thrilling? Is it gonna be… moving? And you just don’t know,” he said.
A quick search into Michael Leviton himself revealed an equally unpredictable character. He’s a writer, photographer, teacher, a musician—someone whose career doesn’t follow a straight line.
How, I wondered, did this all begin?
His answer was both telling and somewhat unconventional. “Through a series of insane events, I went to an astrologer…”
That unlikely moment led him to reconnect with a radio producer… which led to an appearance on This American Life… which led to sudden attention… which finally convinced a venue to take a chance on his idea. A storytelling series unlike the others he had seen before.
“I didn’t really like the stories at The Moth very much… the kind of rehearsed way they tell them.”
What he wanted instead was something looser. Stories told chronologically. Without polish. Without a moral. “I like stories that are wild rather than relatable,” he told me.
And maybe most importantly, stories where the teller doesn’t pretend to have figured everything out.
“If I’m talking about my own foolishness… people will draw their own conclusions,” he explained.
Over the course of a decade and hundreds of installments, The Tell has become a kind of social experiment. People meet there, fall in love there, and build friendships there.
As Michael told me, some audience members have said it’s changed what they want from their lives—from their conversations, even from their relationships.
And yet, for all its success, he resists the usual pressures. He generally avoids doing press or promotion. And when people ask him what he wants to do with it—how he’ll grow it, scale it, monetize it—his answer is simple: “I think it already happened. I turned it into this.”
For Leviton, fun is the strongest currency. “Do you think it would be more fun if I did those things?” he asked.
The next installment of The Tell happens tonight at the Georgia Room in the Freehand Hotel.
There is no telling who might show up.
Visit thetellstories.com for more information.
