The Catholic Man Show

Dave asked for a family update, and Adam finally had the one he wasn't sure he'd get to give. Baby Mary has handled every step down on her oxygen, and after a conference room full of her doctors went through her case one specialty at a time, the plan is to bring her home, likely by the end of October. She'll keep growing there on low-flow oxygen until her open-heart surgery this winter. After a year when the hard way became the normal way, the kids have finally met their sister. Adam wants everyone who's been praying to hear...

SHOW NOTES

Adam opened with a cross-examination. Is perseverance a virtue? Dave pleaded the Fifth. When the breaks are beating the boys, do you keep them on the run until you cross the goal line? Counsel says yes. And did that heroic virtue just re-crown the rightful champions of the 11th annual Catholic Man Show Camp Out cornhole tournament? It did. Last year's title went to Jake and Justin out of Texas on what the guys still call a technicality, the technicality being that they lost. This year Jake and Justin had them down early, a "best...

Eleven years now the monks of Clear Creek have let a field full of Catholic men camp on their land, and Adam opened the show by thanking Fr. Francis Bethel for the charity it takes to put up with them. Father said they don't bother the monks at all. They do their best to keep it that way. Adam admitted he feels something every time he drives onto the property, and Father said that's what people tell him all the time: they come through the front gate and feel peace. For the monks, that's not an experience. That's just...

Fr. Bonaventure Chapman came back to Tulsa, and the night before this recording he stood in front of a room of men and talked about prayer. Adam woke up the next morning, remembered what Father said, actually did it, and reported back that it helped. At least on that one day. Father took the win: one day works, that's great. The line that stuck was the smallest one in the whole talk. Do a little, habitually. When his spiritual directees hand him a Lenten list, he almost never crosses anything off, because each thing on the list is usually...

Adam opened by asking Fr. Bonaventure Chapman to explain his love of toads, and Father asked back whether this was going to be the essay version. It was. It started with Hopper, a good-looking male toad caught on Mother's Day when Father was a kid, the first real pet in the house. You can tell a male toad by the forearms, which he needs for holding on. But a pet is a deposit, and theology is what you do with a deposit. Every animal exists because it is supposed to, and each one reflects some attribute of God, because...

Dave came to Adam's house to record and brought a host, a co-host, a topic, and a bottle of whiskey. No laptop. No microphones. No headphones. No headphone amp. Second time he has pulled that off. In his defense, he already hauled a computer over there for a permanent setup so he would not have to schlep gear across town every week, and in Adam's defense, that computer is still sitting there unplugged. So they went home, came back the next night, and recorded anyway. Second night in a row. For such a time as this.

Sponsor...

Dave turned 40 this week, one day before they hit record, and he wants it understood that he has been looking forward to this. Thirty was a bummer. Forty is different. He expects his forties to be a decade of proficiency instead of a decade of learning how to do everything for the first time: better father, better disciplinarian, better coach, better husband, better at the farm. A decade of potency, he called it, which Adam immediately took in the least charitable direction available and turned into a bit about donating blood and testosterone at the same time. Before that...

They're back after a short break, and Dave wants it on record: he hates it when people come back from a break and announce they're "back, better than ever." Feels fake every time. Adam's not convinced Dave is back better than ever either. What is real is wiffle ball practice, and for the first time in a couple of years the guys feel genuinely good about their team, not fake-hype good. Mark Gabriel is pitching, and he's looking stout. There's also a new rule this year: a 55 mile-an-hour speed limit, introduced specifically to make the tournament Blake Lawson-proof. Blake...

Dave is back from northern Michigan, and reality is terrible. The family cabin—built by a relative generations ago—delivered everything Tulsa could not: low-80s afternoons, cool nights, fires, golf, and a lake smooth enough for water skiing.

Dave’s three oldest girls all learned to ski, which meant it was time for their seasoned-skier father to show them how it’s done. The only problem was the pontoon boat. It had enough power to pull the kids, but not quite enough to launch a grown man from a shallow-water slalom start. After several attempts and several...

Dave's summer vacation got cut from three months down to two, and Adam has a theory. New baby, plus he hasn't been working near as hard. Dave tried to get a second opinion from Anthony Fauci, who invoked the Fifth on advice of counsel, so we're left with the ruling as it stands. Either way, the new van is getting loaded and the Niles family is headed to a cabin in Michigan for two weeks. Fifties at night, fires in the morning and the evening, which means chopping enough firewood to replace what you burn. Golf, swimming, and a...

We had a guest walk in with gooey butter bars, so you already know it was a good night. Deacon Michael Halbrook is back, his fourth trip to Tulsa (one more and Dave's putting him in a green jacket), and Lady Pamela's baking came with him. Adam's oldest, Luke, was in studio too, which almost never happens, because mom was away and there were no rules. Luke's been out most nights hunting the raccoon that's been picking off the family chickens. No kill yet. But he knows what he's after now, and that's half the hunt.

This...

Adam's about to be Coweta's biggest celebrity. Porter and Prairie Farm's SEO game has worked so well that a Tulsa news station called wanting an interview about egg prices and how they're crushing family farms. Problem is, Adam has no idea what egg prices are doing anywhere else. He just knows what he charges, and that they've lost 35 chickens in two weeks. Lady Haylee, in her prudence, said maybe skip the interview. Adam already said yes. The real debate of the week: overalls or no overalls for the camera. Overalls, obviously. Carhartt, not blue jean, collared shirt underneath. Now...

For the 4th of July, the 250th birthday of America, Adam did the most Okie thing a man can do to celebrate: he took the family to a rodeo. Both boys went mutton busting, Friday and Saturday. Leo, six, drew a slow sheep the second night and rode it a full 17 seconds, hanging on and hollering "keep going, keep going!" into its ear because he knew he needed that sheep to move to score.

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Sponsor: The Amen app (from the Augustine Institute)

The Amen app is the free Catholic prayer app the...

Adam took the family on his parents' annual vacation this week, and Grandpa rented four jet skis. With a house full of kids, four turned out to be exactly the right number. Adam threw Luke off the back four times, which he's counting as a win. But the real event was the card game. If you've never played spoons with the Minihan family, know this going in: it ends in blood. Sheetrock has been broken. Tables have taken damage. Adam came home with a scratch, a bruise, and a loss he's still sore about. His sister Kaylin was his...

There's a new Niles in the world. Joshua Benedict Rex was born this week, and Dave wants you to know how stressful it all was. For the dad, that is. The pressure. The anxiety. All those things. None of which come to mind right now. Joke's on Dave, though, because Lady Pamela got to the birth center, the midwife offered to break her water, and Joshua arrived eleven minutes later. That's boy number three, bringing the count to three boys and four girls. Adam got the "we're going in" text at the hospital, stopped to pray, and barely beat...

Adam's on the front porch watching one of those Oklahoma sunsets that make you forgive the state for everything else. Dave pulls up. Walks toward the house, chest out, confident, ready to record. Adam asks the only question that matters: did you bring the equipment? He did not. New baby syndrome. Joshua got his first bath that night, Lady Pamela's still on the mend and bending over a tub isn't on the menu yet, and somewhere between bathing the kids and getting out the door, the recording gear stayed home. So Dave logged a solid hour of windshield time...

Dave took another trip to the emergency room this week — though this one wasn't for him. His daughter Bernadette and one of his boys built a foam block bridge, she went off the side of it, landed on the wall, and broke her clavicle. Clean break. When Adam got the x-ray, he zoomed in, screenshotted just the broken collarbone, and sent it to Lady Haylee with no context — let her think Adam had been out grinding, building fences, shouldering it like a tough guy. Bernadette, for the record, is doing great. Three weeks and she's back to normal. As Dave...

Adam's youngest son, John, locked himself in the bathroom. No big deal — kid's fine, sang songs in there for forty-five minutes like a champ. The problem was the doorknob. Broken cam, broken spring, faceplate screws on the wrong side, and no way in. So Adam did what any father of six at the end of a long day does: he took an angle grinder to the thing and ground the entire doorknob into a pile of metal shards on the floor. Dave's suggestion — order the door open under holy obedience — came in a little too late.

Then Dave t...

Dave's been throwing parties. Three in four days. Confirmation sponsor for a friend's son, family and friends over the next night, and then — because the universe has a sense of humor — some local gentleman decided to remodel Dave's brick mailbox. With his truck. At speed. Bricks were found over a hundred feet away. The guy left his license plate behind, which Dave is now holding like a man who accidentally picked up evidence and doesn't know what to do with it. The driver's fine. Well — he's in jail. But he's alive. Dave wants him to know that God's mercy is alw...

Indian paintbrush showed up at Porter Prairie Family Farm this week — native Oklahoma wildflower, first time Adam's seen it on his property. He didn't plant it. Nobody did. The seed bank was just dormant, waiting for the soil to be right. Two years of cattle grazing in the back pasture, no mowing, better land management — and something long dormant finally decided it was safe to bloom. Joel Salatin talks about this: when the practices change, when a property gets new stewardship, the land seems to know it. So does grace.

David's been busy in a different direction. He w...

We open the show on a wiffle ball game in the backyard. Adam's pitching. Jude's at the plate — right-handed, like always. Adam throws a sinker. Jude cranks it. Home run. On dad. In front of the whole family. Adam shakes it off, gets ready to deliver some justice on the next at-bat… and Jude steps over to the left side of the plate. "Jude, what are you doing?" "Dad. Just pitch the ball." Brushback pitch. Second swing — gone. Out of the park. Left-handed. Turns out Jude found out earlier that day he can bat from either side and forgot to men...

We open the show on Oz Pearlman — the mentalist who's been showing up on every podcast and somehow keeps reading minds for a living. Adam just caught him on Modern Wisdom, where Pearlman walked the host through his exact internal thought process — what he picked, what he second-guessed, what he settled on — like he had a pipeline straight into the man's head. Adam now rearranges his schedule whenever Oz pops up on a screen. So consider this a formal invitation: Oz, come drink whiskey with us. Tell us our favorite bourbon. We'll pour the Glencairns.

Speaking of — this wee...

Adam went out to the shop and heard birds. Which would be fine — except the shop has closed-cell spray foam insulation. Thick stuff. Solid. Apparently it doesn't matter, because the birds had been pecking through it anyway, six spots deep, living inside the walls like they owned the place. He grabbed a can of expanding foam, took his six-year-old Leo out to help seal the gaps, and watched Leo immediately stick his hand in the wet foam. It went everywhere. On Leo. On the shop doors. On a previous car that is now long gone. If you've ever tried to...

Dave's cows got out again.

The gate was shut. Just not latched. There's a difference — a difference Dave now knows in vivid detail, courtesy of the Broken Arrow Police Department and at least one very stressed heifer on the turnpike. Nobody died. The cows are back. The neighborhood is bonded. And apparently this is just a tradition they keep at Niles Ranch and Fecundity Farm.

This week Adam and Dave sat down with a glass of Dancing Panda — a straight Kentucky bourbon, eight years, 100 proof, with an unexpected apple-cinnamon finish — and got into someone most Cathol...

Most Catholic dads are working hard in their home. The problem? They’re not working on it. There’s a difference between a household that runs because you’re there holding it together — and one that’s been designed to form your wife and children for heaven even when you’re not in the room.

In this episode, Dave and Adam get into John Cuddeback’s framework for the domestic church, pull from their book Living Beyond Sunday, and share the 3 telltale signs your home is running on willpower instead of design. Plus: what to do about it, how mornin...

In this episode of The Catholic Man Show, Adam and David crack open a rare Teeling whiskey from Ireland and dive into a topic most men never examine: avarice.

Often reduced to “greed,” avarice is far more subtle—and far more dangerous. Drawing from St. John Cassian, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the spiritual tradition of the Church, the guys explore how a disordered attachment to material things can quietly shape our lives, distort our priorities, and even blind us spiritually.

They discuss how modern “grind culture” can normalize avarice, why money itself is uniquely deceptive among the...

What is time for?

In this episode, Adam and David reflect on the gift of time through the lens of Catholic theology, fatherhood, prayer, suffering, work, and even Nick Saban’s famous process-driven mindset.

The conversation begins with updates on baby Mary and a moving reflection on the fragile beauty of life, suffering, healing, and hope. From there, the discussion turns toward a deeper meditation on time itself: how easily we waste it, how often we rush through it, and how every moment is a gift given by God.

Drawing from St. Augustine, St...

David and Adam are back in the groove for Lent. They open with a timely conversation about Pope Leo's call for priests to stop using AI to write homilies, and why that warning matters far beyond the pulpit. The guys explore how AI threatens the muscles of human creativity, the irreplaceable nature of human-to-human proclamation of the Gospel, and where men should draw their own lines before the technology draws them for you.

Then it's deep dive time into Dante's Divine Comedy — specifically the Dantinian ordering of sin, love, and the moral life across the Inferno and Pu...

Adam Minihan and Dave Niles open this episode with a story about two broken-down vehicles, a newborn daughter named Mary, and a prayer over a dying engine that — Amen — actually worked. From there they settle in with some Basil Hayden bourbon and turn to a piece of Dante most people have never read: the Convivio, his unfinished philosophical treatise written during his exile from Florence.

The main topic: wonder. What it is, why Dante considered it the most critical virtue to cultivate in adolescence, and what we lose when we crush it in our kids... often without real...

We’re back, and life got real

It has been the lightest recording stretch the show has had in almost ten years. Adam owns the delay and explains why. Since the last episode, baby Mary arrived very early at around 27 weeks and about two pounds. She was baptized immediately, and there is a question about whether she was also confirmed due to the use of holy oils and the circumstances.

A few days after birth, Mary underwent an intense and invasive surgery that lasted more than six hours. The surgeon later said it was the ha...

What does it actually mean to persevere?

In this episode, Adam and David unpack the Catholic understanding of perseverance—not as white-knuckled suffering, but as faithfully enduring in the pursuit of the good over time.

Using insights from St. Thomas Aquinas, they explain why perseverance is less about dramatic hardship and more about showing up day after day in prayer, marriage, fatherhood, and work—even when there is no immediate payoff.

From the slow labor of a sow giving birth, to the monotony of daily prayer, to the demands of being present as a fa...

In this episode of The Catholic Man Show, Adam and David discuss the essential role of fathers in catechizing their children... not just by teaching information, but by forming habits, traditions, and a lived love for the Catholic faith.

Adam shares a personal update about his family and the power of prayer and community during a time of serious medical uncertainty. From there, the conversation turns to what real catechesis looks like in the home: modeling prayer, creating a culture of beauty, building liturgical traditions, and making the Eucharist the center of family life.

The...

This episode moves from a lighthearted family practice of setting “New Year’s disciplines” into a serious, practical conversation on Josef Pieper’s The Concept of Sin. Adam and David argue that modern culture often avoids the word “sin” not because sin disappeared, but because the concept of sin has been replaced with softer language: mistakes, weakness, psychological explanations, or vague “bad choices.” Pieper’s central claim, they explain, is that sin is not merely a moral misstep but a rejection of reality itself.

The conversation ties sin directly to freedom. Only a truly free person can sin, because sin r...

Opening: Joy evangelizes (and kids teach us)

The Thomistic pivot: Why life feels like a blur

Aquinas on happiness: What won’t satisfy

Cy Kellett, host of Catholic Answers Live, joins the Catholic Man Show for a wide-ranging and surprisingly practical conversation on evangelization. If the idea of “sharing your faith” makes you uncomfortable, intimidated, or quietly guilty, this episode is for you.

The guys talk about why evangelization feels scary for normal Catholics in the pews, why it is not optional, and why God never asked you to be effective. He only asked you to be faithful. Cy explains why pressure to “get results” is misplaced, how discouragement is the devil’s favorite weapon against evangelists, and why introverts might actu...

Ever wake up with that “today is the day” feeling, like you are ready to conquer the world? The guys start there, take a hard left into Pinky and the Brain, and somehow end up pondering what it was like when Christ rose from the dead.

From there, it turns into a practical, tradition-packed episode on celebrating Christmas well. Not the Hallmark version, and not the American “Christmas ends on December 26” version either. The kind that actually follows the liturgical calendar, keeps Advent as Advent, and treats Christmas as a season, not a day.

Along the way...

In this episode, Adam and David welcome back longtime friend and mentor Matthew Christoff of EveryCatholicMan.com to talk about what it really means to become a happier Catholic man.

Matthew shares the story behind his new devotional, “Becoming a Happier Catholic Man 2026,” and why he believes every man can be happier by drawing closer to Jesus, embracing suffering, and living a zealous Catholic life.

Topics discussed:

This episode is packed — saints, miracles, Marian devotion, vocations, fatherhood, fasting, silence, and the rise of a new generation of men hungry for God.

Fr. Charbel, a Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate, joins Adam and David in Tulsa along with first-class relics of St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Charbel, sharing powerful stories of faith, mission, intercession, and what young Catholic men are longing for today.

IN THIS EPISODE

1. Meet Fr. Charbel — his order, his mission, and why Marian consecration is central

Fr. Charbel introduces the Franciscans of the Immaculate, an order foun...

This episode starts with an apology and an update. It’s been a wild stretch—hospital visits, birthday mishaps, broken teeth, truck trouble, cows and pigs headed to the processor—but also a lot of grace and gratitude.

Adam shares about Lady Haylee's recent medical scare during pregnancy, the prayers from patrons, and what it’s like to walk through real uncertainty as a husband and father. The guys reflect on how quickly life can tilt from “normal” to “barely holding it together,” and yet how God can still anchor everything in hope and gratitude.

Over whiskey (a...

Opening: Setting the Record Straight

No, The Catholic Man Show isn’t joining The Daily Wire. A sincere congrats to Matt Fradd on taking Pints With Aquinas to a bigger platform—and a case for celebrating a brother’s success without the cynicism.

Why Moves Like This Matter

Media realities, families to provide for, and why “selling out” is usually just a lazy take. Bigger reach can mean more souls reached—full stop.

Pilgrimage Debrief: Rome, Florence, and Awe