In 1961, after a head-on collision on Sunset Boulevard, Mel Blanc lay in a coma for about two weeks. Doctors got no response until one leaned in and asked how Bugs Bunny was feeling. A weak voice answered, and then Tweety chimed in. This episode uses that documented moment to explore how the pioneer of modern voice acting built a physical instrument so deeply grooved into his brain that his characters could pull him back to consciousness.

The conversation follows Blanc from a teacher’s insult that prompted him to change the spelling of his name, through vaudeville and a stint as the country’s youngest orchestra conductor, to the Jack Benny Program where he improvised the sound of a broken-down Maxwell with his throat. It covers his arrival at Leon Schlesinger Productions in 1936, the anatomy of his unusually thick vocal cords, the raw carrots and spittoon in the booth, his fight for an on-screen credit, recording The Flintstones from a full body cast, and the industry’s struggle to replace him after his death in 1989.

• Why doctors compared the structure of his throat to opera legend Enrico Caruso
• The truth about the carrot allergy myth and why timing, not taste, required the spittoon
• How the credit Voice Characterization by Mel Blanc forced Hollywood to treat voice acting as a billable art form
• Stan Freberg’s refusal to fill in for Bugs and Porky, and how recording gear was hauled into the hospital room
• Decades of smoking, emphysema and COPD, and the epitaph he chose: That’s all folks