Look, nobody wants to listen to mediocre quality audio, and I’m using AirPods Max, and I know the audio is great.

And so I’m sorry, but you’re listening.

If you want to skip this episode, go ahead.

I have a funny story to tell and a thing to talk about.

Maybe it’s funny, maybe it’s not.

I don’t know.

I haven’t said it yet.

If you want to skip it, I forgive you.

If you’re ready to listen to spite this weird audio, let’s do it.

Your Daily Lex.

That’s what the show is.

Your Daily Lex.

I am the titular Lex.

If you’ve never listened to the podcast before, this is everything you need to know.

I’m Lex Friedman.

I’m the real Lex Friedman, and this is a podcast where I spend roughly five minutes a day talking about what’s going on in my life, and I never miss a day ever except for weekends.

And I lie once per episode, and that was the one.

So I am in Pittsburgh.

I’m on what qualifies as a work trip, although it’s a crazy kind of work.

But I had this fun experience today, and I had a stressful experience today.

So I’ve mentioned some of what I’m doing here in Pittsburgh, but it’s an improv heavy gig that I’ve landed.

It included one full day of shooting in some studio spaces, and that was today.

And then the next two days are strictly improvising, improvising, interacting with real humans, like with innocent bison at a conference.

And so today was the shooting day, and they had sent me some storyboards a couple weeks ago, and then I realized, hey, the storyboards had a script, do you want to send me the script?

And earlier this, I guess, maybe Thursday or Friday, they sent me the script.

And I was like, boy, this is a lot of script.

This is 10 or so pages all told, and it’s just me.

And it’s pretty dialogue heavy.

And they had said, make it your own, feel free to improvise some, have some fun with it.

And so it was a script, right?

And they kind of, they want you to do the script.

So I’m, geez, I started looking at it Friday, and I really don’t have a lot of time to study it.

And then Saturday, I don’t really have a lot of time to study it.

And then Sunday, I read it.

I mean, I read it a couple times Saturday, I read it a couple times Sunday.

And then I was reading it on the plane Sunday, I got bumped into first class on Sunday, which is very exciting.

And that person next to me sees that I’m reading a script, and she’s like, are you an actor?

And I simply said, yes, yes, I am.

And I’m studying those lines.

I come to the hotel, I studied those lines.

I record the lines.

I listen to them while I’m doing my bedtime routine, you know, getting ready for bed.

Then I’m like, what if I played it on a loop all night while I’m sleeping?

And then I Google, does that work?

And mostly the answer is no, that’s not a way to learn things.

However, scientists say if it’s a thing you already know a little, that listening to a thing on a loop while you’re sleeping can, can be a little bit helpful.

So I’m like, well, it can’t hurt.

It definitely doesn’t say it makes it worse.

The only way it could hurt is if it made me sleep poorly.

I could turn it off at any point during the night, but let me play this loop all night long, which I did.

It did wake me up a couple of times, but I slept and it was fine.

So then today I’m there and I’m doing the scripted part.

It’s, it’s stressful because first of all, they weren’t doing one and a half of the scenes that I had.

So I spent some time memorizing things I didn’t need to know, which awesome.

Not their fault, but truly not their fault.

I can explain more, but it’s not enough detail.

It’s not enough time to go into all the details.

It’s not worth the detail.

That’s what I had to say.

So anyway, I’m, you know, uh, doing these things and sometimes I am memorizing right before we do a scene because they’ve got to do their technical setup, the equipment setup, and then I can have some time to memorize.

And every once in a while, um, I would, most of the time I would do great.

Most of the time I would give myself an A to an A plus for line memorization and for, you know, knowing the line or not knowing the line, not slowing me down.

Right.

Cause you gotta, to deliver the line well and to do your blocking and to be funny or charming or whatever, you have to just know the line.

You can’t be remembering the line, if that makes sense.

Most of the time I was doing well.

Every once in a while, I would only get an A or an F.

There were times where I did not know it, but I couldn’t get it and I needed a little bit of extra time.

And I was telling, um, and they were very, very patient because I was much better, I think, at all of those things than they had expected.

And, uh, they, they were, they thought it’d be much harder and we finished two hours early on the shoot day today.

So good.

But I told the editor that he could probably make a super cut of my saying the F-bomb because I said one every time I didn’t know.

And he said, Oh, I’m going to do that.

That’s a great idea.

Anyway, we finished, like I said, well, a couple hours to spare, an hour and a half or so.

And I’m back at the hotel.

I get in the elevator.

It’s one of those elevators where you push the button on the end.

Some of you saw the story on the internet already, but I’m going to tell it better.

So it’s one of those elevators where you push the button ahead of time before you get in and I pick it, I push it.

And it’s like, Oh, you should go to elevator D, which is already open.

People are in.

I kind of hustled to it because the doors were already closing.

I go, you want D?

And I’m like, yes, D.

Sorry to make this one a local.

And just saying sorry to make this one a local made some of those people laugh.

And that was funny, which I enjoyed.

Um, but, uh, so then since they had already laughed once, I was like, I’ll make another joke.

And I go, boy, these elevators with no buttons on the inside sure have their ups and downs.

And one of them says, I guess you’ll be here all week.

And I said, I will, which I hope lifts your spirits.

And since it is a button elevator, I couldn’t make the joke about how sometimes the elevator really pushes my buttons.

So I didn’t.

Also, I just want to say in the most recent episode of Your Daily Licks, which I guess was this past Friday, I had two tagged Lexus at the end and nobody said anything.

I thought for sure somebody would mention it and nobody did.

So maybe you all missed it because it could have surprised you.

You could have not known it was there.

Anyway, that’s today’s episode.

I don’t know how many episodes I’ll do while I’m here in Pittsburgh, but you got this one.

And yeah, have a great day.

Lex.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.