An actor cast as the younger version of a much older, much more famous one admits he did not know much about him going in, had never been told they looked alike, and had to go and do the research after the fact.

Armen Nahapetian is an actor who plays the younger version of Joaquin Phoenix's character in Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid, and who has been acting since he was five or six.

Armen opens up about being a quiet and fairly nervous person off camera, and about acting being the thing that lets him express what he otherwise would not be brave enough to. He talks about one of his earliest jobs, playing a young vampire in promo work, hours in the makeup chair having his whole body airbrushed, and learning early that the glamorous part is a small fraction of the day. He gets candid about the lead actor on this film being present and ready at every moment, never disappearing back to his trailer while the crew reset, and going out of his way to look after the people around him. He describes going far in an audition for another series, thinking he had it, signing contracts, and then being told they had gone another direction, and what happened right after. Armen also explains the choice he made in his self tape that he knew would look strange to anyone watching it out of context, and why he did it anyway, plus what it was like meeting a very well-known actor at the premiere and deciding to just go over and say hello.

What comes up:

- Being cast as somebody's younger self without knowing their work

- Hours of airbrush makeup, and what acting actually costs in time

- A lead actor who never left the set between setups

- Losing a role he had already signed for, days before this one

- Why he made a choice on tape he knew would look odd

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A working voice actor takes the mechanics apart instead of listing the credits, starting with the theme park job where every pause had to land in exactly the same place, five times over.

Katie Leigh is a voice actor, writer and director whose credits include Muppet Babies, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Wayside, Darkwing Duck, Dungeons and Dragons and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and who has voiced Connie Kendall in Adventures in Odyssey for more than three decades.

Katie opens up about never intending to do this at all, and about the plain fact that got her here, which is that her voice simply never changed and people kept telling her she sounded twelve. She talks about a first job that had nothing to do with cartoons and everything to do with matching somebody else's performance, a skill that fed straight into the voice matching she has done in features ever since. She gets candid about what a children's programme has to carry for two audiences at once, and why a show has to be listenable for the parent in the room. Katie walks through her word for what separates a voice from a character, a term she coined and now uses in workshops, and explains why she tells people to get out of the booth and go have a life. She also reflects on the working arrangement between voice actors and agents today, and on the one thing she would tell herself at twenty eight.

What comes up:

- The plain physical fact that started the whole career

- Matching a Maharaja, and where that skill came from

- The word she coined for what a voice is missing

- Why staying in the booth makes you worse at the job

- What agents actually do for voice actors now

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An MIT engineering student decided that uncertainty and chaos were features rather than problems, went into acting because of it, and the conversation runs the whole way from that decision to Shredder, Inception, and the income curve nobody warns you about.

Tohoru Masamune is the actor behind Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the security guard who speaks the first line of Inception, and voice work across American Dad, We Bare Bears, and Kung Fu Panda, from a family of scientists and an engineering degree at MIT.

Tohoru opens up about being the artist inside several generations of scientists, and the moment he decided his profession should also be his obsession, the way his father's was. He talks about the college friend who made ridiculous movies for fun, the girlfriend at a commercial agency, and the buddy who left a Dunkin Donuts job to be an assistant to an assistant in Hollywood, which made him jealous in a way a vice presidency never did. He gets candid about showing up to the Inception audition dressed as the wrong kind of security guard, not having read the stage directions, and being cast anyway by a director who wanted the first ten minutes to feel like confusion. Tohoru walks through building Shredder from the original comics and the darker IDW run rather than the cartoon, and the interpreter who could not translate the speech they handed him twenty minutes before rolling. He also reflects on the two roles that changed him as a craftsman, and on the income curve nobody in the industry warns you about.

What comes up:

- Why the uncertainty principle sold him on an acting career

- Turning up to the Inception audition as the wrong kind of guard

- Building Shredder out of the comics instead of the cartoon

- The speech nobody could translate, handed over twenty minutes before rolling

- The income curve the industry does not warn you about

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Thirteen years old, no idea who the Russian playwright was, so she snuck into the workshop anyway and was handed a scene to perform cold in front of the conservatory director. That is roughly how the whole career starts.

Tisha Custodio is an actor and musician who appeared in the Disney+ series Big Shot, after training at Orange County School of the Arts and performing Shakespeare from the age of thirteen.

Tisha opens up about being a shy child who deliberately auditioned for an arts high school to break out of it, and about the lesson she keeps returning to, that nobody is really watching you fail because everyone is busy with their own thing. She talks about wandering into a Chekhov workshop she knew nothing about, being handed a scene cold, and the conservatory director telling her she was good at classical work and should audition for a Shakespeare company. She gets candid about how much of her craft came from simply watching working actors around her rather than from instruction. She describes the audition process for a basketball series, relearning the game the day of, and the coordinator who taught the whole cast from the ground up. Tisha also talks about twelve and fourteen hour days, needing a creative outlet that was not acting, the co-star whose original songs pushed her to write her own, and the perfectionism that makes live performance the next thing she has to get past.

What comes up:

- Auditioning for an arts school specifically to stop being shy

- A Chekhov workshop she was not supposed to be in

- Relearning basketball the same day as the audition

- Fourteen hour days, and needing a second creative outlet

- Why the stage is the hurdle she has not cleared yet

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A father who went bankrupt in music sits beside a son whose song passed a billion streams, and neither of them gives the version you would get from a label, including the five years spent driving truck.

Dave Faber is the frontman of the Canadian band Faber Drive and a working songwriter, and his son Isaiah records as Powfu, whose track death bed has passed a billion streams.

Dave opens up about the drum set his father bought him at sixteen with two conditions attached, practise every day and only play Christian music, and the phone call to a friend that made him a singer instead of a drummer by accident. He talks about Total Jids and Seed and Faber Drive, a stage dive that went badly for the man who tried it next, and the five years he spent driving truck after the band left him bankrupt with a wife and four kids. Isaiah gets candid about hating the drums he was made to practise, finding GarageBand on his grandparents' computer, and starting from zero followers on SoundCloud in grade twelve. The two of them walk through the moment on Sunset when Dave yelled that's my son at a stopped car and the car turned around and came back. They also reflect on the song Isaiah wrote as a surprise for his wife and played at their wedding, the Spanish track that reached the Chainsmokers by accident, and a line from a book about being the drip of water that hollows the stone.

What comes up:

- The drum set, and the two rules that came with it

- Going bankrupt and driving truck for five years

- Starting from zero followers on SoundCloud

- The car at the stoplight that turned around and came back

- The Spanish song that found the Chainsmokers

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A manager talks openly about the years he was not managing anyone, and about the offer he turned down for a sixteen year old client when he had no other offers on the table and no real reason to say no except that it felt wrong.

Geir Luedy is a Norwegian manager, musician, songwriter and producer from Bergen who has managed Aurora since she was sixteen, and later signed Sigrid.

Geir opens up about growing up in a house where his father played piano, his mother sang opera, and both older brothers were already in bands, and about quitting school to become a tape boy for eleven hours a day, seven days a week. He talks about the London deals that collapsed, the crash he says takes years rather than moments, and what he actually learned about himself in the gap before he found his way back. He gets candid about turning down a much larger American offer for a young artist because it did not feel right, and about why he waited a year and a half before putting anything on paper with her. Geir breaks down what he looks for in a record label before the contract is even discussed, why a deal that is too hot can hurt an artist, and the trait he thinks separates a manager who lasts from one who does not. He also gets into burnout after decades of sixteen hour days, his real system for an inbox he cannot empty, and one very unlikely night in a studio.

What comes up:

- Quitting school to be a tape boy for seventy seven hours a week

- The London signings that fell apart and what he took from them

- Why he turned down the bigger deal with nothing else lined up

- What he checks in a label before anyone mentions money

- Burnout, and the conversation he keeps having with himself

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Four decades of working credits and the conversation still spends most of its time on the unglamorous part, which is how a teenager with no contacts got anybody in Los Angeles to pick up the phone.

Bob Bergen has been the voice of Porky Pig since 1990, was the promo voice of the Disney Channel, played No-Face in the English dub of Spirited Away, and has taught voice acting for more than three decades.

Bob opens up about the Saturday mornings his mother spent listening to a line from a cartoon repeat itself in the next room, and about the fact that he had no idea any of this was a job. He talks about the values his parents built into him under real pressure, including a mother who decided to walk out the door with a smile she did not feel until one day she noticed it had become real. He gets candid about being a class clown who once received detention specifically for a bad impression, and about the calls he placed as a teenager to some of the biggest names in the business simply because nobody had told him he could not. Bob walks through the run of jobs before the booth, from puppeteering behind a screen at a theme park to a training class of thirty six that ended with about five people passing, to a children's game show he taped five times a day while working full time somewhere else. He also reflects on an audition he knew he would not get, the total stranger sitting across from him in that lobby, and the single question he asks anyone who tells him they have a great voice.

What comes up:

- Detention for a bad impression, and the principal who set the standard

- Calling the biggest names in the business as a teenager

- A training class of thirty six, and how many made it through

- The lobby conversation with a stranger who did fine for himself

- Why he says a good voice is not the qualification

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A developer and musician makes the case that the two jobs run on identical machinery, and the conversation goes somewhere a tech interview never does, into meditation, rage, and an album structured like a three act play.

Cowboy Coder is a professional developer and musician whose album puts the two halves of his life in the same room, built as a three act play from personal ground through rage and power dynamics into philosophy.

Cowboy Coder opens up about what music does that almost nothing else can, changing your state of being in an instant, and why he thinks code has a version of the same trick. He talks about the first real hurdle in learning to program, which is not syntax but the mental leap into building something that is not physical and is somehow still real. He gets candid about the way he actually solves hard problems, stepping away and going into a meditative state until the answer presents itself rather than hammering at the desk. Cowboy Coder walks through the parallel he keeps returning to, that a song and a piece of software both get a very short window to take somebody somewhere, and that both fail without a clear intention behind them. He also reflects on chasing an audience versus showing an audience what it wants, and on the old video game soundtracks he is now rebuilding with fresh energy.

What comes up:

- Why he thinks code and songwriting run on the same engine

- The mental leap that stops most beginners cold

- Solving problems by stepping away instead of pushing harder

- What a three minute window forces you to decide

- The old game soundtracks he is bringing back

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An unusually long and unusually candid conversation with a performer who has been on network television twice and both times ended up with almost nothing to show for it, and who explains exactly why he stopped going back.

Verbal Ase is a beatboxer, voice artist and YouTube creator, the maker of Cartoon Beatbox Battles, whose work has been shared by Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes and Will Smith.

Verbal opens up about the first time he did it in front of people and everyone clapped, and how confusing that was because he thought he was terrible. He talks about beatboxing on the New York subway with other performers, learning to point and pull faces while the technical beatboxers stayed in the zone, and how making people laugh turned out to be the actual skill. He gets candid about combining the two things he could do, character voices and beatboxing, into something he could not find anyone else doing, and about leaving that idea alone for two years before making a second episode. He walks through KB Toys, Marshalls, and the toy he can still spell out from memory, and why standing out beat blending in for him. He describes what it felt like to watch major artists share his work in a single week, and the disappointment of meeting a childhood hero and learning how his tricks were done. Then he gives his account of the show he auditioned for more than once, the fourteen hour waits, and who he believes is actually making the decisions.

What comes up:

- Beatboxing in a subway car and learning to be funny with it

- Putting character voices and beatboxing together for the first time

- The week Timbaland, Timberlake and Will Smith all shared his work

- Meeting a hero and learning how the trick is done

- His account of two auditions, and why he will not go back

The talent show material in this episode is one performer's personal account of his own auditions.

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A twelve year old was brought in to re-voice a finished Disney film scene by scene, matching lips that belonged to another actor, and the conversation follows that story all the way to the point where he quietly stopped acting altogether.

Seth Dusky is a former child actor out of Huntington Beach who worked across twenty to thirty commercials and a co-star run on Big Time Rush, and who voiced Milo in Disney's Mars Needs Moms after the role had already been performed by Seth Green.

Seth opens up about an acting class he took at nine with all three of his brothers, the agents who were brought in to watch their monologues, and the two who called him afterwards. He talks about a run of Hot Wheels, Ben 10, and the first ever Orbeez commercial, and about the school teacher who sat on set with him while the crew lit the next shot. He gets candid about how the Mars Needs Moms job actually worked, going scene by scene through a finished film, matching a mouth that belonged to somebody else, with no idea at first whether he had even been hired. Seth walks through a red carpet he was put on with no warning, meeting the cast he never got to work with, and interviews he describes as a blur. He also reflects on the drives that grew from thirty minutes to two hours, the homeschooling that followed, and the point at fifteen where he simply let it go.

What comes up:

- Four brothers, one acting class, and two phone calls

- Filming the first Orbeez commercial ever made

- Re-voicing a finished film to somebody else's mouth

- Meeting the cast for the first time on a red carpet

- Why the drives, not the work, ended his acting career

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