Joey took the microphone alone for this one, with a slide he made himself, and told a story I had only heard in private: the year he was told he could not graduate on time, the year he hid from it, and what finishing did for him.
Brian, Joey and me on ageism in both directions: the 15-year-old who belongs in the adult class, the 20-year-old who was scared to teach, an 18-year-old rookie dominating the playoffs, my one-year-old and his basketball form, and Bob Nimlow, a Golden Gloves boxer who started acting in his eighties, beat the twenty-year-olds for a role written as a young priest, and called it one of the best things he ever did.
Joey’s story, told by all three of us: out of a basement and a Fortnite squad, a job he turned down first, and a mop. Why doing the work when nobody is watching is the key to everything, and what it took for him to believe it.
Danielle Parker, a high school teacher and a student here since 2018, came on the morning after an online masterclass feeling five steps back. What positivity actually is: the decision you make the night before, starting your affirmations over when the world changes, the coffee shop that beat a giant by doubling down on its drive-through, the question that invented the teacher cam, and how to journal wins and losses so you can find your own way out of a rut.
Ariella asked how you become your character when the 50 questions give you facts you don’t know what to do with. Why the questions are a starting point and never the finish, how to take one question and write the short story under it, finding the key to a line, why every fight needs context, inside out then outside in with an animal, and how I built a backstory that let me love a man who shot his father.
An episode of Mornings with Matt on the lie actors tell with their eyebrows and the lies the rest of us tell with our phones. Why a character starts with the shoes, what ‘putting mustard on it’ means, and the Epictetus line that comes down to three words.
The title came from Joey’s search history. Jason Jackson, Joey and I made up the rest: Chip, who feeds the horse late; Megan, who is always right; Seymour, a talking horse who wants a female acquaintance and a house to live in; two strays with a Marlboro saddle; and Deputy Officer McGee with a warrant about square footage. How a play finds its ending in a word from the first minute.
Amanda grew up in Indonesia, is signed with an agency, trains with us, and can’t tell her family she’s an actor without hearing get a real job. What I told her: stop putting yourself in the pain, answer the question in three words, and then work like you’re in med school, because that’s where the confidence comes from.
No suggestion, no plan, sixteen minutes. Joey is Uncle Joey, I’m Little Mark, and the science project on the table has popsicle-stick trees, an ant colony in paper clothes, a graveyard with named headstones, a prison, and one detail Uncle Joey really should not have explained. How a scene builds itself when two people agree with everything.
Joey put a chart on the table: podcast numbers up, up, up, then down. What we decided to do about it, the outdoor table I stripped and stained for two weeks in 110 degrees, the difference between honest and petty, and why we overuse the word love.
A coaching call with Tyler Weeks, a coach and actor who had more time than ever and was spending it on video games and TikTok. Why more free time made him less consistent, the one question that gets you out of bed, treating acting like a startup, my non-negotiables, why you post before it feels good enough, and the seven-day media fast I sent him on.
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