To improve their character voices, Mike and Chris chat with actor, musician, filmmaker and voice coach Darren McStay whose Youtube channel “Improve Your Voice” has millions of downloads. Darren teaches warm up techniques, why it’s important to commit to a character and tips on sticking with that character. Maybe the best advice Darren teaches during the episode is how to use physicality and body-focus to perfect your voices. If all your characters sound the same, this episode is perfect for you.

"Cats" is a topic, but it's not until you say something like "Cats bother me as an economist." have you transformed your material into a premise. In this episode we make that distinction. We also learn how Mike's comedy teaching classes in Dallas are coming alone. And we talk about Mike's aha moment during improv training. Listen to this episode if you're unclear how to morph a topic into a premise, if you want improv advice, or you want to learn how Mike's brain works when punching up jokes for someone else's writing.

We asked each of our last 12 comedy pro guests what they'd tell new comedians to do if they had an hour a day to write jokes. Here's a compilation of their best advice.

• Lenny Schmidt
• Nathan Timmel
• Steph Clark
• Kevin Rogers
• Dan Bakkedahl
• Dan Carlson
• Doby Maxwell
• Tom Clark
• Dr. Caleb Warren
• Jake Vevera
• Rich Talarico
• Adam Bloom

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