Re-Air: Tara Strong: These Characters Are All Part of Me

Summary

Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown – "Re-Air: Tara Strong: These Characters Are All Part of Me"

Original Release: January 30, 2026
Host: Mayim Bialik with co-host Jonathan Cohen
Guest: Tara Strong

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Episode Overview

Revisiting a standout episode, Mayim Bialik and Jonathan Cohen dive deep with Tara Strong, legendary voice actress behind dozens of beloved animated characters (Powerpuff Girls, Fairly OddParents, Harley Quinn, My Little Pony, Hello Kitty, and more). More than a fun exploration of her craft, the episode uncovers the emotional, psychological, and even mystical dimensions of performance, creativity, empathy, body image, family, manifesting positivity, and the challenges of being vocal about humanitarian views in public—especially in a volatile social media climate.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Tara Strong's Origins and Craft

• Early Ambitions & Support

  • Knew from age five her purpose was to perform, despite no family showbiz background.
  • Parents, though not wealthy, were supportive, providing lessons and encouragement.
  • First pro performance was in Yiddish, for which she learned phonetically.
  • Landed the first-ever English-speaking Hello Kitty role at 13.
  • Quote – “I was the first English-speaking voice, the first time [Hello Kitty] had a mouth was me at thirteen.” (06:23)

• Developing Voices & Characters

  • Loved doing accents, voices, and pretending from an early age.
  • Describes the process as natural, like “breathing”—characters "live in my head" and come forth as needed.
  • Has to ensure characters (even similar ones) remain distinct: “I couldn't live with myself [if they weren’t].”
  • Quote – “For me in my process, I see them in my head...when it's their turn to come down, they do. I become these characters so that it makes people feel something...” (08:33)

• Emotional Resonance

  • Feels like a “conduit” for comfort and connection; often meets fans who share how a character changed their lives (e.g., kids with autism, childhood loneliness).
  • Considers convention appearances not just lucrative but deeply meaningful for human connection.

Mental Health, Empathy, and Manifestation

• “Parts” of Self & Acting

  • Discusses how acting and creating voices is more than manipulation—it’s an expression of empathy, comfort, and emotional intelligence, both professionally and personally.
  • Quote – “We all have these different personas we drop into. You just have a wider repertoire and they each have personalities.” (13:36, Jonathan Cohen)
  • Moments of emotional resonance are cited—anecdote about making her mother laugh in the face of cruel bullying due to her mother’s weight and her sister’s special needs.
  • Highlights advocating for dignity in her work, such as objecting to negative representations in scripts. (27:00+)

• Body Image and Positivity

  • Candidly discusses the impact of her mother’s and sister’s struggles on her own worldview; growing up around body shaming and bullying inspired a fierce sense of anti-hate.
  • Speaks on societal judgments, personal body challenges, and the ongoing journey to self-acceptance.
  • Quote – “I’ve definitely struggled...with borderline eating disorders, starving myself, bulimia...and if I say today I don’t struggle with it, I’d be lying. But I do appreciate the women who put themselves out there at all sizes to make people see beauty comes in all sizes.” (29:42)

Spirituality, Intuition, and Magic

• Belief in Magic and Intuition

  • Describes feeling genuinely “plugged in”—downloads creativity from something bigger, referencing personal and family rituals and “mommy magic.”
  • Speaks openly, even playfully, about intuitive and mystical experiences—including “signs” from her mother after her passing.
  • Quote – “Heck yes, I am tuned in. Those are my people up in the stars...after this, I get to go back to my star planet and share everything I learned.” (54:47)

• Manifestation (Science & Spirit)

  • States she was “doing the Secret before 'The Secret.'”
  • Describes manifesting as not just wishful thinking but living in the energy of already having what’s wished for; positivity correlates with more opportunity and resilience, citing both intuition and emerging brain science.
  • Emphasizes it is NOT about blaming oneself for setbacks or illness, and rails against the toxicity of victim-blaming in pop manifestation culture.
  • Quote – “Positive thoughts have more power...if you don’t believe you can make yourself better, it’s harder to manifest good things.” (46:34)
  • Quote (on resilience) – “If you try every day to go to the best case scenario…I think slowly you can pull yourself from those things.” (48:06)

Navigating the Entertainment Industry and Setbacks

• Breaking Through in LA

  • Details early struggles: “eviction-notice broke,” doubts, thinking maybe she should return to Canada, then landing three huge concurrent roles (Powerpuff Girls, Batgirl, 101 Dalmatians) which secured her place.
  • Credits luck, perseverance, and a “voiceover angel” (Marsha Goodman) for timely opportunities.

• Creativity in the Booth

  • Examples of spontaneous creativity that landed roles (inventing a stuttery chicken, a unique twist for Raven in Teen Titans)—demonstrates boldness and intuition are key.

Social Media, Advocacy, and Public Backlash

• Social Presence: Rewards and Harms
  • Used to be a hidden profession; now voice actors have “faces,” fans, and sometimes hazards.
  • Most fan interactions are positive, but discusses the occasional inappropriate behavior and persistent social media toxicity, especially on Twitter/X.
  • Quote – “I like helping people, I like promoting shows that I'm on, I like making jokes, I like making people feel good...I do not like the bullying and I think X is the worst.” (73:07)

[70:22 – 78:13]

Addressing Islamophobia Accusations & Firing

• Tara recounts how she was accused of "Islamophobia" on social media after expressing solidarity with Israel post-October 7 attacks and lost a project as a result.
• Describes a career-long commitment to humanitarianism, anti-hate, and peace—including financial support for Gaza relief.
• Points out the narrative manipulation on social media and "trial by tweet," with accidental "likes" or misinterpreted posts weaponized against her.
• Emphasizes it's possible (and essential) to hold space for both Israeli existence and Palestinian suffering.
• Quote – “This is why twitter x is dangerous…people run with things and then the press runs with it and it can be devastating.” (78:13)
• Quote – “If your fundamental issue is that I believe Israel should exist, we’re going to have a fundamental problem, because I can hold both of those things.” (84:41, Mayim Bialik)
• Tara highlights pervasiveness of online antisemitism and advocates empathy, peace, and coexistence, referencing positive examples of collaboration and unity.

Family, Advocacy, and Empathy

• Supporting “Special” Siblings
  • Tara and Jonathan both discuss the impact of caring for family with disabilities (Tara’s sister; Jonathan’s brother), with moving anecdotes on protection, understanding, and empathy.
  • Tara details supporting her agoraphobic sister from afar, making sure she feels seen and loved.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• [06:23] Tara Strong: “I was the first English-speaking voice, the first time [Hello Kitty] had a mouth was me at thirteen.”
• [08:33] Tara Strong: "For me...I see them in my head…when it's their turn to come down, they do...I become these characters so that it makes people feel something."
• [13:36] Jonathan Cohen: "We all have these different personas we drop into...You just have a wider repertoire and they each have personalities."
• [29:42] Tara Strong: “I’ve definitely struggled... with borderline eating disorders... But I do appreciate the women who put themselves out there at all sizes to make people see beauty comes in all sizes.”
• [46:34] Tara Strong: “I do not think you invite bad. I think that should be removed from that information...I don't think you asked for your kid to have a disease...”
• [54:47] Tara Strong: “Heck yes, I am tuned in. Those are my people up in the stars...”
• [73:07] Tara Strong: "I do not like the bullying and I think X is the worst [platform]."
• [78:13] Tara Strong: “This is why twitter x is dangerous…these interpretations and things that people run with and then get people to run with and then press runs with that can be devastating.”
• [84:41] Mayim Bialik: “If someone has a problem with the fact that I believe Israel should exist, we’re going to have a fundamental problem because I can hold both of those things."
• [88:35] Tara Strong: “No Jew wants genocide, no Jew wants an innocent person to suffer. We want to invite you over for matzo ball soup. Period.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:00 | Tara’s early career and first roles | | 06:22 | The Hello Kitty milestone | | 08:33 | Tara's creative process: “They live in my head…” | | 13:30 | The experience of channeling multiple characters in daily life | | 14:14 | Emotional ties to characters, impact on fans | | 27:00 | Empathy, advocacy, and representation in media | | 29:42 | Body image pressures, eating disorders, acceptance | | 33:44 | Moving to LA: hardships, breakthroughs, “voiceover angel” | | 39:35 | Divine intervention and manifesting confidence | | 45:24 | Explaining the science and limits of manifestation | | 54:47 | Spiritual connection, magic, and rituals | | 70:22 | Social media and the double-edged sword of visibility | | 73:07 | Specific social media harassment experiences | | 78:13 | On the Islamophobia accusation, firing, and expressing solidarity| | 84:41 | Holding space for both Israeli and Palestinian suffering | | 88:35 | Tara’s call for empathy and coexistence |

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Tone and Notable Moments

• Conversation is candid, warm, and at times deeply emotional—balancing humor with vulnerability.
• Tara’s ability to shift instantly into beloved character voices delights hosts and underscores her thesis about personas being truly “part of” her.
• Emotional highlights include sharing how her mother’s support shaped her, the grief and magic surrounding her mother’s passing (55:00), and moments of advocacy for her family and broader community.
• The latter third offers incisive—yet compassionate—commentary on social justice, activism, and the tendency for oversimplification and cruelty in digital discourse.

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Conclusion & Follow-up

The episode is a testament to empathy—as personal practice, as a professional necessity, and as the foundation for a better world. Tara Strong’s holistic approach to voice acting, mental wellness, spirituality, and advocacy offers powerful lessons on resilience, self-acceptance, and the importance of standing up (vocally and otherwise) for what matters.

Where to follow Tara:

• All social platforms: @tarastrong
• Upcoming: Tara’s first-ever voice acting masterclass and community (announcements via social)

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From Mayim, Jonathan, and Tara: Let’s keep feeding the “good wolf”—with creativity, compassion, and a commitment to both joy and justice.

Transcript

[Reggie]

Reggie i just sold my car online.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Let'S go grandpa wait you did yep.

[Reggie]

On carvana just put in the license plate answered a few questions got an offer in minutes easier than setting up that new digital picture frame you don't say yeah they're even picking it up tomorrow talk about fast wow way to go so about that picture frame ah forget about it until carvana makes one.

[Tara Strong]

I'M not interested car selling made easy on car pick up these may apply.

[Mayim Bialik]

Mind bialix breakdown is supported by helix sleep like many of us i'm spending a ton more time indoors winter's in full swing sleep is even more important during the colder season because it's peak cold and flu time so now is the perfect time to invest in a new mattress i've had pretty much every sleep problem that you can name sweating at night back pain limbs falling asleep anyone else we were so excited to hear that helix wanted to partner with us years ago all the incredible feedback that we had heard about them i've had my helix for i think four years now and it's been a huge huge upgrade from our last mattresses jonathan also has one our kids all have them we highly recommend taking the helix sleep quiz find your perfect mattress in under two minutes everyone sleeps differently and we're confident you'll find a helix mattress model specifically designed for your specific sleep position and feel preferences i took the quiz and i was matched with a midnight mattress because i want something firm and i generally sleep on my side jonathan is in case you're wondering their models with memory foam layers provide optimal pressure relief and cradle your body in the areas that it needs most it's the perfect combination of comfort and support also there are cooling features on helix mattresses that can keep you from overheating at night go to helixsleep dot com breakdown for twenty percent off sitewide exclusive for listeners of mayimbialix breakdown that's helixsleep dot com breakdown for twenty percent off site wide make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know that we sent you helixsleep dot com breakdown hi i'm mayim bialik and i'm jonathan cohen and welcome to our breakdown we're kicking off the new year with a bang and with some good excitement and hilarity many of us are setting fresh intentions trying to build momentum trying to think about what healthy habits can take us through twenty twenty six so we are revisiting an episode that we did with tara strong one of the world's most recognized and recognizable voice actors she has voiced powerpuff girls fairly odd parents harley quinn she was the voice of hello kitty the list goes on and on but this is a hilarious episode and a really significant one for the work that we do here at.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Mayim bialik's breakdown a very notable aspect of this episode is that mayim breaks down the science of manifesting yes there is science behind that word that has been taken over by some of the hippies but but mime explains to us how our brains can actually help us achieve and get the things that we want as well tara opens up about her own manifestation process for attracting positivity her way and she's able to tune in to something greater also i have.

[Mayim Bialik]

A long history of friendship with tara so i make sure to ask her to explain in detail her belief in magic and angels it's a really great conversation and also reminder check us out on substack we're putting up some really fun exclusive content there engaging with the substack community all year long so please.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Check it out and now we hope you enjoy this revisiting of the episode with tara strong break it down tara.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Welcome to the breakdown thanks for having me in reading your bio it is worth mentioning you work on many television shows at the same time yes that's true like i think i counted eight.

[Tara Strong]

Yeah i i think sometimes sometimes it's like four and sometimes it's ten at.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

The same time so you and i used to audition in kind of the same circles at the same sort of period of time and there was a time when i got voiceover work and then we ended up getting to do an episode of recess together and then i stopped getting work and i realized you were getting more and more by.

[Tara Strong]

The way we also did lloyd in space together we were a two headed.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Monster we were a two headed monster that's right but it's really it's an astounding impressive resume that you have in that you are able to have your voice on so many different platforms at the same time and i have to ask was this like a dream of yours as a child like i have an amazing voice and i'm gonna get to be on ten shows at the.

[Tara Strong]

Same time no okay i knew when i was five years old that i think you're the same wanted to be singer dancer actress it's all i wanted and i knew that before i knew it was a career it just looked fun and that's i came here to perform and no one in my family was a performer except a grandfather who was a cantor but nobody knew anything about showbiz i grew up in toronto my mom was a caterer my dad was a pharmacist we had a toy store i grew up in this toy store my parents were the first to import hello kitty into toronto i have a picture of myself as a five year old with my dad in a hello kitty furry costume and we didn't have a lot of money but they were very supportive of me fulfilling this dream and i had lots of acting singing dancing classes my whole life my first sort of professional performance was at the yiddish i spoke hebrew not yiddish but i learned it phonetically and all the bubbies called me the wundermaidloch and it was very wonderful and then i finally got an agent and i got my first theater production at toronto's downtown limelight dinner theatre which was the music man and a lot of people's first show was the music man and my first on camera show which was a show with mister t and my first cartoon which was hello kitty i was the first i was the first english speaking voice the first time she had a mouth was me at thirteen wait.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

This blew my mind i didn't know.

[Tara Strong]

This about you i started when i was thirteen and you were hello kitty first first series that was the title role of hello kitty first time she had a mouth it's the first time she had a mouth what'd she sound like what'd she sound like hello kitty's furry tail theater's proud to present the.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Wizard of paws that's exactly what i think hello kitty should sound like yeah.

[Tara Strong]

She does yeah so i didn't know and in toronto i had a very well rounded career i had a sitcom that was you know i was the kid in the sitcom i had lots of film and tv roles a lot of runaway production stuff that went to toronto that i shot and tons of cartoons beetlejuice care bears my pet monster you know garbage pail kids all kinds of crazy stuff so that when i came here it wasn't a blank resume right i had a very extensive resume but even with that it did take some time i was eviction notice broke for like two and great story the person who gave me hello kitty saved my la existence and called me and said will you be on the new inspector gadget show it's called gadget boy and heather so she gave me hello kitty and then she gave me the job that kept me in los angeles and her name is marcia goodman so she's my she's my voiceover angel she's.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Your yeah fairy godmother so okay so i want to go back to what you did with your voice when you did your hello kitty voice i can't do that with my voice a lot of people can't do that when did you realize you had this kind of ability to create voices very distinctive from yours are you sure you can't do.

[Tara Strong]

That i can't do that i think you just think you can't do that but i bet if you had the challenge to do that like what if they're like okay we want you to play june foray in her lifetime story and you have to practice i bet.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

You can do it you're being very you're being very humble because everybody has different vocal cords and everybody has different different musculature that's true in those parts like you do things with your with your voice and with your vocal cords that don't hurt your voice like i can do things with my voice but i can only do it a couple times when did you realize that you had the ability to sort of do a variety of different sounds than most.

[Tara Strong]

People can make probably pretty young cause i did always do funny voices my sister and i had our own little fake radio station and we record ourselves and i was the kid at st six seven years old that would take my mom's hand and say let's pretend we're from england in this store like i loved doing accents and voices always so it's definitely like i think like look mayim you came with a brilliant brain and a gorgeous singing voice and acting abilities there's no question there are kids that come that play the piano guitar we know these kids can paint shit at like i don't know can we say shit on this show at like five years old right like you come with certain gifts so i think one of mine is the ability to manipulate my voice create characters that seem to make people feel something which is what really matters right a lot of people come to me and say oh i really want to do voiceover and that's their voice and i'm like have you had any acting experience right because it's not about having a interesting voice or a unique voice it will work for some commercial careers or promo careers or like a job here and there that they have a very distinct voice that that works for but to sustain a long career where you are creating multiple characters you do need to have most of us have that can do this a pretty normal sounding voice and can manipulate our sound to become other characters which is what happens right you don't just change your voice you for me in my process i see them in my head they live in my head when it's their turn to come down they do and i become these characters so that it makes people feel something when they're watching it and you know have you gone to comic cons yes you know when you go and people are like you are my childhood you i you know i didn't have friends till this show i thought i was the only person like me till this show and then you realize the impact that you have on people it's so beautiful so i consider it like this beautiful gift that i was given to share love and light and i feel so lucky every time i book something even now i started when i was thirteen i'm fifty one even now i drop to the floor hands up to the sky like yes cause i love it it's what i do so.

[Jonathan Cohen]

When you just dropped into that character a moment ago and you just said they live in your head like is it busy in your head like there's a lot of character yes it's very.

[Tara Strong]

Busy and i think a lot of people have busy brains but i don't know if they have them in all the different voices i have a lot of it's not that they're all speaking at the same time it's that they live there in their own little spaces and when it's their turn to come out and play it's not like i do anything it's like breathing i can't really describe it they just come out i know when it's my it's this character's turn and i also know specifics right like i've played maybe five six seven ten versions of harley right so harley quinn on a video game might be like oh you know it's time to kick some ass and she's like more like action and then on a kids show she might be like hi babs let's go out and play and she's like really hyper and then i've played her very dark and so when i get a script i want to hear dark harley well i did a very dark harley and she wasn't even the same like she was like a boston harley like it was like a lower and she was very evil but what i'm saying is when i see the script and read you know the character description or whatever's going on in the stage directions i know exactly which version of that to tap into like when we did rugrats right there was a baby dill hey that's why poobies and then there's an older dill he's still the same guy that's outrageous sarah.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Like i know you and i've seen you work and every time it's just it's really unbelievable to me does it ever get confusing meaning is there ever a point when you get a script and it's like oh which how it's sounding too much like this other one or do they feel so distinctive it's.

[Tara Strong]

Never confusing when it's an established character and sometimes people were like can you do like timmy turner on this show and i'm like no timmy turner lives on the fairly oddparents so we're not gonna do that but i at one point was playing like five different tragic sixteen year old girls at another point i was playing like five different ten year old boys and each of them had to have something distinct about them or i couldn't live with myself because they're their own entity for sure so the only time it gets confusing is if there's like a guest star and you know how it is sometimes they're like oh can you do this extra character and then somehow that extra character just comes back and you don't remember what it is but they play it for you right right that's the only time it gets confusing what about not.

[Jonathan Cohen]

In a script like i'm still stuck with all these characters residing in your head and like do they appear when you're not working all the time but.

[Tara Strong]

But it's more like i do voices all the time i do voice like if you're friends with me if you're dating me you're gonna hear not just.

[Jonathan Cohen]

This this is what i'm the most interested in is like when in your regular life are you basically processing the world and because all these characters are living in your head like certain experiences are going to draw up this personality i'm not saying you have multiple personalities i'm not saying that but i am i think like you can't help if you know these characters so deeply they become a bit of a part of you and how could you not like we we all have these different personas that we drop into you just happen to have a wider repertoire and they each have personalities which i think is.

[Tara Strong]

Just awesome they do and it's a very symbiotic relationship so that there's a lot of me in bubbles and there's a lot of bubbles in me and i'm probably most like bubbles because i'm super sweet i want everyone to be friends and then if you piss me off i will go hardcore like that's me in person right i'm just usually very light positive attraction let's go do fun shit everybody come to my house but like okay i will kick your ass if i have to that's like right that's me so and then there are other characters that feel very part of me twilight sparkle is like super part of me and when i first read for that part so powerpuff girls was created by a man named craig mccracken and he is married to lauren who worked on that show and she created my little pony friendship is magic which is the biggest fandom i've ever seen in my life and it was unbelievable and so fun but that character came about because she came to my house and said hey i'm putting together a pitch for a new version of the ponies with more depth in their characters as opposed to just selling toys and i think that's why it spoke to so many people and she had me read three different characters and just for the pitch presentation and she said as soon as she heard me do twilight she knew i was going to be that character and i think it's because part of me is very similar to her and another same thing she's always like ready to lead the pack she wants everyone to be friends she wants to do everything right she loves to read she's like loves magic i love magic like when you say is it you know a part of you like there is a part of me like let's get weird a minute that feels like these creatures are sentient and so like when someone says to me i wanted to end my life till i met raven and they're crying and they're hugging me the best story ever was this woman her daughter was dressed as raven and she was talking and talking and talking and talking and i looked over and her mom was crying and a lot of people cry when they meet me but this was like unusual crying so i went over to see if she was okay and she said my daughter hasn't spoken in five years she's severely autistic and when she heard you were coming she has not spoken stop talking and so i feel like like a conduit for these you know i know that sounds weird but it's like it can't just be me like i feel so lucky that something i did helped someone like that and i hear stories like that all the time so i mean maybe i'm a crazy person but they feel very sentient to me they feel like they matter a lot of my major characters and also i feel very lucky that there's been so many major characters right not many people can say i was batgirl and harley and timmy turn and bubbles and now miss minutes and all these characters that really touched people's lives raven twilight sparkle like these are very important to people around the world and when i go to cons around the world people like oh you go for the money no the money's nice but that exchange of light magic and energy is so beautiful and important to me and sometimes people like you know you shouldn't hug everybody or you shouldn't do this how can i not hug someone when they come to me and said my childhood was so hard and fairly oddparents was the only thing that got my dad to sit down with me and like can i have a hug no like no you know i just it's a beautiful exchange i just had a con two weeks ago and a guy was a grown man was crying to me saying his daughter was born autistic and or very young they found out she was very autistic and couldn't really connect and he's like i was so worried that i would never connect with her i didn't know how to connect with my kid and then i was feeling like a terrible person and then we sat down and watched my little pon and that's our thing and we communicate through that and like thank you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

There'S something that jonathan mentioned you know it's known as dissociative identity disorder now instead of multiple personality disorder but it's something that even people who do like internal family systems work where you look at different parts of you there are different different parts of us that have different personas and they have different needs and you know in some of the really interesting research on people with dissociative identity disorder sometimes personalities will have different blood pressure they'll have completely different physiological things meaning you know when people split into parts it's usually because of trauma and you know really really fragmented things but the notion that there are different parts of us that live in us is not outside of the realm of understanding and it doesn't just have to be in clinical situations but there's something you said that i really wanna since we're getting deep there's something i wanna dig into a little more you said that you understood from a young age that you could manipulate your voice and i wonder if that ever felt like also an emotional ability not to be manipulative but to be able to change i mean as actors that's what we have to do we have to make you believe something we have to make you feel good we have to make you comfortable right and for me i had a lot of that in my home of origin i don't know if you did but the notion of maybe that's part of this sort of gift as you said is that when you're given the ability to be a performer to make people feel something it really is the ability to change where you are for other people's in some cases comfort and and sometimes that means for their enjoyment or their entertainment but i wonder if you can talk a little bit about if you noticed that kind of outside of your artistic abilities i.

[Tara Strong]

Know like when you said that the first thing that felt true was to make people laugh i really liked that especially with my mom my mom was my kindred spirit and my mom was very heavy and her whole life was bullied and i never saw her eat to excess she's first generation russian jew grew up in a catering world where i'm sure they made not great choices growing up but she wasn't like someone that overate and everyone in her family had thyroid and diabetes and problems right and she was in a tremendous amount of pain both physically and emotionally children would laugh at her adults would laugh at her kids would come to me at school and say your mom's the fattest person ever and i would see her cry and i would hold her hand and tell her she's the most beautiful person i've ever seen and she is and i miss her so much like i miss helping her you know like i miss being an arm for her in her later life she had horrible osteoarthritis she used to say it was like stepping on a knife and like the fact that she had to endure people making fun of this beautiful soul made me so sad and when i made her laugh when i made this very sad human laugh she took such joy in seeing me perform on stage on a show on a cartoon whatever it was in person making voices doing funny things my mom's laugh was like my external success for sure for sure so probably to bring joy and make people laugh and also like you said to make people believe things like last over covid i did an on camera series in toronto that was basically if harley was a mom that was this character and it was a wonderful part cause i usually play like you know cute teacher or bitch slut whatever like i have roles that i tend to book but like third on the call sheet at forty nine was kind of awesome and it was with adrienne moore from orange is the new black and it was for netflix canada it aired here on imdb tv so i don't know where you can find it but to play this terrible person that was basically using her daughter to date some kid to sell drugs it was really crazy and i don't know that i looked so beautiful but it was a performance that i was very proud of in terms of acting and believability and making people feel because when you can make people feel empathy for the villain and the bad character i think that's like a really wonderful thing and so i do think there's something about making people feel something and making people have empathy for other people like i'm a very very empathetic soul i think most real actors are right we know how other people feel we care about how other people feel and we want to help portray that and help that when i was doing a rugrats episode you know like whenever the rugrats would go into adventures you'd see the adventures and there was an episode where the kids were at a car dealership and they said let's pretend we're under the sea and all the fish were people and this heavyset lady walks by and you know tommy pickles is like look there's a whale and i stopped tape and i went to the producers and i'm like can we make it a muscle man so that we don't perpetuate that hatred and they're like no problem so like a big part of me is wanting to keep perpetuating that i.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Wonder if you can talk a little bit more about that you know i think you know our culture kind of goes back and forth with how we feel about you know clinical discussions of obesity and bmi and all these things i wonder if you can talk a little bit about you know sort of what you see in terms of like what is body positivity you know what what does that look like if you think about you know kind of your mom's experience and especially being the child of someone right who's receiving all of this hatred and and bullying i mean it's not even bullying it's you know it's it's ignorance and it's it's horrible i wonder if you have any sort of reflections especially as your career is so much about appearance like it has to be for us even if you're a voiceover actor right as your primary you know work that's so true it's.

[Tara Strong]

So true it's so important because also sometimes they want you to do press also they draw a character to look like you a little bit more or create a character for you so it is an important piece and i do remember as a child watching a movie of the week and saying oh i want to be that girl i want to be on a movie i want to be in teen beat magazine i want to do all that i mean i was a huge fan of yours by the way the moment i saw you in beaches i was obsessed i think i told you that the first time i met you like you're a super magical talented insane being thank you and also by the way i grew up with a sister who was very different mentally she had a brain injury at one years of age and comes across like someone on the asperger's scale and was also bullied her entire life and i would have her back so i had the experience of watching someone different and someone obese and what that looks like in terms of being mean for no reason right these are very very good humans these are sweet caring humans that would do anything for you and i think it did give me a base and an understanding that maybe someone else wouldn't about why you shouldn't say that to someone or be mean to someone or make a judgment call right like i said i never saw my mom overeat you look at a big person like oh they must eat all day but we have that friend that's this skinny that can eat french fries and cake all day and never gain weight and they don't realize how lucky they are because there's a million different bodies when you go to the beach there are not two bodies the same i've definitely struggled with borderline eating disorders starving myself bulimia anything to feel like i look good enough for the camera and it's very challenging and if i say today i don't struggle with it i'd be lying i don't feel good if i don't work out every day i like to feel good and look good and keep inside and outside healthy so it's a very big part of me and i also saw growing up what happens if you don't take care of yourself and exercise young right you can't just start at sixty and i mean maybe you can but it's harder right like it's better to sort of try to maintain and i don't have a perfect body i've like never loved my legs you know there are girls that could go out with a little mini skirt it's never been me i just i danced when i was a kid i'm five foot two got you know bigger thighs i've got a jew booty i'm like i'm not a waif right and i i never like i don't want to be i'm i'm more happy in my skin now and go this is me i you know i'm pretty happy with it but i do appreciate the women who put themselves out there at all sizes to make people see beauty comes in all sizes and thank god like what i find beautiful isn't what someone else i mean sometimes it is but like you know some people really like people with a lot more meat on them some people really like people more slender so like thank god that's open like love everybody let everyone do what they're gonna do don't judge people i just i despise bullying on such a big level because it's ingrained in me and my it's in my bloodstream right like to to be mean to people for no reason to hate an entire group of people like all of that where you hate an entire group you hate fat people you hate lgtbq you hate black people jewish people muslim people you hate as people you hate whatever you hate to hate an entire group is for the one same reason do you know what it is there isn't one you can hate someone who wronged you in business in love you can hate someone that's okay but to hate an entire group to have a judgment against an entire group makes zero sense and shouldn't be tolerated and everybody should learn that we are all one person and should love each other and see each other and help each other that's what we're here.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Today i love that.

[Mayim Bialik]

I wonder if.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

You'Ll talk a little bit more about moving away from toronto how old were you when you came to la i.

[Tara Strong]

Was twenty nineteen twenty i always wanted to come to la always i knew i would always come here and i got into college i got into amda new york and a college in toronto and i booked three movies and i had to choose and i chose movies and i had three callbacks for toronto's beauty and the beast for belle and i didn't get it and i was so devastated that i'm like i'm going to la and i came and i didn't really know anyone i knew the guy that played my dad on a sitcom who has now passed he was a comic named mike mcdonald and his wife bonnie let me stay with them in glendale and i was there for a few months it was so sweet of them big earthquake was my second week ninety four oh gosh yeah and it was very very hard to leave my mom because you know i was there for her so completely both physically and emotionally and we are so close it was very very hard to leave and my sister and my dad and my friends and a career that was consistent it was hard but i knew that's what i had to do there wasn't ever a question on that and i think you know after that the only other person i really knew well was also from our same high school jonathan nev campbell and we got an apartment together she moved down yeah and wore my shirt to audition for party five and booked it so i think it's the shirt i think it was.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

The shirt how long after you were here until you were able to kind of support yourself cause i'm always curious about sort of you know we see you with this incredibly impressive resume now and you're a grownup and you know you have two grown kids but i'm curious if you talk a little bit about what it was like when you were young and what those doubts were like or were you afraid that maybe you made the wrong decision or were you kind of on on a roll and just kept going well i i.

[Tara Strong]

Always knew this is what i was here to do there wasn't a black backup plan there wasn't anything else i would try or do like i always knew that was what i had to do and like i said we didn't have a ton of money we were fine i didn't have a shower in my house i shared a room with my sister till i was sixteen i wasn't someone that came from a lot of why do you mean there wasn't a shower i mean there was a bathtub and you know it wasn't like a big cool house it was like splash in the bathtub it wasn't till i was like sixteen that i kept begging that we finally got a really shitty shower put in it was like trickle trickle and i always had long hair it was terrible and then when i moved to la i was super broke like eviction notice broke and i remember at one point crying in my apartment by myself thinking like nobody knows i'm here right now in this moment you know when you have those moments where like nobody knows this little sphere that's around me of sadness right now that i'm sitting in nobody knows that i'm here nobody cares i can't pay the bills i can't keep asking my mom and dad to send me money they don't have a lot of money like maybe i should go back to canada cause at least i know i will work there they know me there and it's a much smaller pool of activity in toronto and i've been working since i'm thirteen maybe i should go back but i really wanted to stay also the weather's so much better i really really want to stay and like i said marsha goodman called me and asked me to do gadget gadget wasn't what kept me here what kept me here is i had a few little on camera things and then i booked the powerpuff girls and batgirl which was huge alongside kevin conroy and mark hemmel and also one hundred episodes of one hundred and one dalmatians which never happens back me up here mime it was a guaranteed hundred episodes no that's not.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Even a thing yeah so those three.

[Tara Strong]

Happened at the same time and then hollywood was like who's this girl wow and that's what kind of kept me.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Here those three yeah and this was before you were married like you were still just wow this episode is brought.

[Tara Strong]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

Does that feel like divine intervention to have that all happen in.

[Tara Strong]

That moment i've had a lot of moments that felt like i had help for sure one of the most i think important ones to me just cause she's so important is like i said when i was doing all these tragic girls batgirl was my own voice right she was very real and not like a perky she she was sort of serious and on the darker side of a teenage girl i was also playing kylie on extreme ghostbusters very dark character sharina wicket on.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Detention yes detention thank you i was on detention with you yeah i did detention yep and so.

[Tara Strong]

I thought well i'll probably book starfire because the character description said she was a grown up bubbles hello i'm a grownup i am literally bubbles and i'm grown up so i'm gonna book that part and they still wanted me to read for raven so i read just relying on my acting skills putting myself in those moments and of course it sounded like batgirl which was for the same people i'm like oh probably not gonna get that and i'm walking past out of the recording studio to where producers writers casting engineers are in the bay and i look at andrea romano and i'm like can i try something else and she's like sure and i don't know where it came from god shot angel shot whatever you wanna call it i just had this idea that she had a weird role whenever she spoke which by the way doesn't hurt my voice and when other people came to visit they're like wow tara you're working really hard on this show but that is what booked the part is that like i had i didn't know before i was going in that i was gonna do that same thing with one hundred one dalmatians i was auditioning for a chicken that thought she was a dog and the character description was she was like hyper and gets flustered and right before i went in right before i called my mom i'm like i have this crazy idea she's like what i'm like would it be funny that like since she's so hyper that every time there's like a b or a p she gets caught and she starts clucking she's like what do you mean i'm like you know i can put up with the grilling jokes the shit fake referen even you asking me why every time i cross the rubber duck she's like yes do that i.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Mean that's like also a level of it's a level of independent creativity that i think a lot of people don't think about when they think about you know the actual performance level of voiceover actors and you know i i've gotten.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I want to hear that part again.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

I'Ve gotten i've gotten asked this question because i used to do a lot more voiceovers when i was younger and you know i used to get asked that and i always had to see a picture i always had to see a picture of it if they didn't have a drawing if they didn't have anything it was i mean it wasn't impossible but that was what gave it like there was usually physicality that went to it and it's not unlike playing a character role which not every actor gets character roles meaning if you're more of a classic leading lady or leading gentleman you often don't play character roles you play like the handsome lead or you play like the pretty girl that everybody wants to date but for those of us who who have like character roles that we do it's much more similar to me to voiceover because you really have to craft that i wonder if you can talk about like manifesting and you know kind of the positivity that you have there seems to be this kind of running theme of you having a sort of confidence that feels like it comes from somewhere else and i wonder does it feel does it feel like intuition does it feel like you're able to harness something what is manifesting for you well like thank you.

[Tara Strong]

For saying that and seeing that because it feels true and at one point my ex mother in law showed me the movie the secret and i was like okay oh i already know this i do this by nature i already know this i've known this my whole life i knew when i was five i was gonna move to los angeles and be a successful actress i knew i'd have a house with a shower i knew i wouldn't worry about money i knew i'd make people happy i always knew these things i've never been someone to worry about money and i think that's a really big thing right when you start learning about the laws of attraction they tell you don't worry don't say i wish i had i want to have cause then if you replay that in a year what's the message i wish i had i wish i had the laws of attraction are feeling like you already have it not just saying it thinking it feeling like it and then trying to parlay that energy into your daily life and let's pretend it works fifty percent of the time forty percent of the time that's better than never right right people that are constantly thinking everything bad happens to me i'm always unlucky i'm always sad they are and they keep bringing that on themselves and i feel bad for people stuck in that i've been stuck in depression i've been stuck in doubt and then this part of me that knows i'm here to spread love and light resurfaces you are here to do this when i feel insecure i let the strongest parts of myself take the wheel eh i'm gonna get let harley handle the situation i'm gonna let someone else take this for a minute and then that'll bring me back into my highest version of myself but i am a very big believe of checking in with yourself i listen to meditations all the time that i love i can send you some of my favorites that put me in a place of feeling good and inviting the best things that we have on this planet to you i really do live that way and i just i don't know i rely on it a lot and it's important to me to keep thinking positive and spreading love and light that's what we.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

We'Re here to do and i just i want to clarify because i don't think you i don't think this is what you meant but i just want to clarify the notion is not that people i mean i guess there's some element of you know you know what are we attracting right what are we creating but i think also you know for people who who are struggling right with depression things like that the notion is not you did this to yourself.

[Tara Strong]

But absolutely not i have a really big problem i have a big problem with that i don't first of all not everyone knows everything you could sit with someone who's like i speak to ghosts and i know this happens when you die and they could still be full of poop or that's their experience or whatever it is nobody here on this planet right now knows everything we're here to learn nobody knows what happens when you die or how whether or not the laws of attraction work or whatever and there are a lot of people putting out videos that i think are very destructive i do not think you invite bad i think that should be removed from that information i don't think you asked for your husband to have an affair i don't think you asked for your kid to have a disease i don't think you're not talking.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

To me specifically no no i'm talking.

[Tara Strong]

To people in the world and i do think sometimes people that are like obsessively believing in whatever video they've seen that oh i must have brought this bad unto myself no you did not bring bad unto yourself i do believe that positive thoughts have more power and maybe you can speak to this because they say they've scientifically tested that positive thinking seems to bring more energy and i just think that if you don't believe in something bigger if you don't believe that you can try to make yourself better it is harder to manifest good things but i don't think anyone should feel like they brought on a bad situation unless you physically did something bad but i just i don't believe that no i don't know what that is i don't understand it and it's heartbreaking to see someone you love suffer but i don't think they brought it.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Upon them themselves yeah that makes sense and we know that the brain just has a better capacity for resilience when it is geared towards positive thinking i mean that's literally what you know science is proving that's consistent with what a lot of people like you intuitively knew right when you say there's more power to positive thinking it's because it causes the ability for expansion for more synaptic connections like for your brain to literally access more and in particular to access more of you know the sort of chemistry that then perpetuates more positivity another.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Way of saying that and i think it's a very good clarification is when we say resilience what we're saying is like you have more problem solving ability.

[Tara Strong]

Right and right if you're suffering and you know that side of you exists and i have suffered not to say everything's been beautiful for me there's been very hard times i've had moments where i get why people want to end things i've been stuck in cycles of sadness depression but i think if you have that piece of you to hold on to i want to get back to that feeling that person that mental state i think it's helpful to anchor yourself in the best case scenario rather than the worst case scenario right when you don't feel well and you go to webmd you're dying of everything like automatically go to the worst case scenario if you try to every day automatically every day go to the best case scenario i think slowly you can pull yourself from those things i feel very fortunate that i had a strong base to to pull myself to to get myself out of hard situations that we met is that what you meant jonathan.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well yes i want and and i think it's important to clarify the science of manifesting or at least part of it you know what does it mean to actually put good into the world and good will come back because i i i saw the secret i saw many of these teachers and some of it i think is botched as you said you know that we bring things on ourselves but what we know and in other experts that have come on this show for example susan david she talks about how when we are facing distress we have cognitive narrowing meaning that we default to the most uptight constricted parts of ourselves it's very hard to find solutions in that space we have a lot more black and white thinking versus when mime is talking about resilience what resilience means is actually having a lot more cognitive flexibility that allows us to see it's not this or that it may be somewhere in between and that in between might be the solution so like for example and i'm just you know i don't know what happens for you in a moment where you find a character or you find a solution but for example if you were in the booth and you saw something like the overweight character and you just tensed up you wouldn't have the resources to find the solution versus if you you are channeling that part of yourself that knows there are resources that knows that you could say something that there holds the possibility of a solution therefore you manifest a solution because you are bringing more of yourself you are bringing that energy to be available for the scenario and you're able to interact and find a solution yeah i think that's.

[Tara Strong]

True also mayim i meant to yes say yes that's true to you too yes that's true jonathan yes that's true.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

You only say the canadian are saying.

[Tara Strong]

Kingdoms i wanted to also give you a yes that's true on cause i forgot to say this earlier visualizing a visual representation of the character if i have an audition and i do all my auditions right here i'm in my little home studio right now i'll put the character side by side and look back and forth and we do get physical in the booth we do have a physical thing that happens and so jonathan back to your point when you visually yourself out of a situation i see i do sometimes see those characters i do have a physical thing that happens to me that can help me and i'm lucky that that part of me is so strong i'm lucky i'm.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Not saying this is what i'm saying but i'm gonna be this person just for the sake of argument that's like that's naive and like lucky you like you were gifted with this positivity and like i what if i wasn't and what if my chemistry is like no no like downward spiral like i think you can work there was not a way out it's hard i think you.

[Tara Strong]

Can work on it i think mental.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

And we know right we know that medication is not the only way to work on it which used to be what doctors told you like oh you're not feeling like tara is today we're gonna give you this pill to make more terra hormones right we're just gonna.

[Tara Strong]

Like increase the are you coming up with a marketing idea right now no.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

But i think what what we're now learning and a lot of of what a lot of what jonathan and i do try and talk about and emphasize on this podcast is there are ways to get outside of yourself and it doesn't just have to be with pharmaceuticals and it also doesn't just have to be with psilocybin like you live in la everybody's like microdosing that's why everyone's in such a good mood but you know the notion that meditation that you know law of attraction stuff or you know i was just i've been revisiting the emotional freedom technique right even though i'm in a hard place place i'm still loved by something bigger than all of this and i'm like saying it to myself and feeling like a ridiculous person right but those are ways that we don't necessarily need to just turn to a pharmaceutical or turn to psilocybin and be like look i'm all better but how can i you know create my own little manifestation circle in my.

[Tara Strong]

Own brain and i think like you know this i think it's a daily practice just like if you want to dance you're probably going to be dancing every day if you want to be fit you're gonna work out every day and all of your muscles and all of your body parts need some kind of attention every day and i do think if you are just like eh i'm gonna feel good today and not tomorrow not work on it everything's terrible everything's terrible every day and not work on bringing yourself to a different place it makes a difference i think it's and for me even for me it's daily work to put myself in a good headspace if i see something sad if something bad happens i have to work on it i have to put on one of my meditations it's not just like hey let's feel good and and everything's wonderful i think it's work just like like i said if you want to be a singer you can take singing lessons you're going to work out your voice every day it's like another piece of you that has to be worked on every day that's a.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Great point tara i want to circle back to a word that you used that i that struck me you used the word conduit when describing receiving these characters or almost you didn't use the word channeling but that's what what i conjured when you used the word that you were a conduit do you have a sense of being plugged into the universe do you have a sense of that these characters exist you know rick rubin talks about the artist being downloading and having the work is you know fine tuning one's antennae to receive information and then translate it i'm wondering wondering if you could how does that strike.

[Tara Strong]

You i mean i yes like you guys are gonna later go she's crazy.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Yeah oh no he's asking because we know that we believe this we're just trying to see if you do heck.

[Tara Strong]

Yes heck yes i am tuned in those are my people up in the stars after this i get to go back to my star planet and share everything i learned where did you when.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Did you realize that this like is.

[Mayim Bialik]

This something that your parents instilled in.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

You or did you just always feel like you are one with the universe in ways they don't need drugs no.

[Tara Strong]

No no no they didn't that was not part of the thing that i had that was important for who i am from my children from my parents was unconditional love and support right we all know the person that wanted to be a performer that like no you're gonna be a doctor like your dad and everyone else's dad no so i always had that support and that love but they did not teach me about the laws of attraction although my mom was super magic my mom's twin who was like a second mom to me was also super magic and we used to have like magic well we did my my mom's twin liked a lot of sort of wiccan like either not so much ceremony although a lot of the jewish ceremony felt to me like that like my favorite holiday has always been passover because i love all the little things that you do i like anything in any religion that brings people together and you do ritual together i love that we lit the candles every friday night we'd say prayers together there was a summer when i was ten that i was literally woke up one day went outside and broke out in two rash and my entire body and we went to the doctor and i was allergic to the sun i was allergic to the sun at ten couldn't play with my friends at school i was the kid sitting under a tree while everyone was having a good time and my mom came in she my mom told me this later that she came into my room one night and said i'm your mom and i have mommy magic and tomorrow you're going to wake up and not be allergic to the sun and i wasn't what yeah so we believed in magic but i don't know that it was portrayed to me as a laws of attraction or that thing but she definitely believed she was russian she was russian jewish and they definitely believed in yeah we're hungarian.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

And there's witches i mean like there's there's amazing bizarro stories for pretty much all the hungarian women yeah i i.

[Tara Strong]

Love reading like ancient jewish wiccan stuff too like it's very fascinating like magic and kabbalah and i i find it all very fascinating but i'm definitely a.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Believer in magic did you experience that you know you have two sons who i knew when they were little they're now men did you experience any of that kind of intuitive stuff when you.

[Tara Strong]

Were a mom i mean i think probably she was more magical in some ways but me and my boys do a lot of magic stuff together they're very magic like we all like i have these in my studio at all times and i'm like oh i'm going to do raven today i'm going to play with the purple crystal i like things and traditions and ritual i like it all i'm not going to go put a curse on someone but i like i don't know i like that stuff and my kids like that stuff.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Huh my kids think i'm batshit crazy i got crystals everywhere and i'm like hold this you're feeling agitated hold this no that's crazy i blame their father but no i think that's wonderful that you were able to access that but i absolutely did feel separate from my ex husband i absolutely felt a different sense of connection connection to the universe once those humans exited my body meaning oh i grew this person they experienced everything i experienced and also everything my mother experienced because that's when the eggs that made them were actually born was in my mom's belly which sorry guys that's the story you get all of it but i definitely felt i mean to put it plainly i felt like it was a magical experience to grow a human in my body and it was on the outside like that's miraculous it felt very divine to me super.

[Tara Strong]

Magical also i had many experiences that made me know magic was real growing up and as an adult my dad was obsessed with world war two he was a child during world war two and he had in our basement a world war two museum set up that people would come see and i have it now i'm just trying to figure out what to do with it because i don't want to just sell it off but he has like signed hitler documents and over one hundred thousand postcards and things from the holocaust and he had a school room set up he has early edition of every comic and magazine and it was very fascinating and at one time when i was feeling quite rebellious and didn't have my own room i decided to sleep downstairs even though all that stuff was right there and i got out of the shower and i was standing naked for a second and i hear sor whistle it's the one thing this voice bitch can't do but i heard like a you know cat call whistle a cat call and there is no windows in this room it's super dark and creepy and it kept going and i ran upstairs and didn't go do that again i've had like enough for sure and also since my mom passed like her letting me know she's here happens all the time when i'm having a hard day my mom went by lucy she was born lillian but she went by lucy so that's my like magic name if i see that anywhere i'll just ask for it and it'll show up it'll show up i was asking for it the other day i was at a table read for a really cool movie really cool i camera movie and the girl was telling the story that her car had been stolen and she's like there goes lucy down the street her car was named lucy and then there was a lucy in the script i'm like okay thanks mom thanks for checking in yeah i'm a pretty big magic believer so like we're on the same.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Side woo hoo so so you believe in magic and some things that we don't think sound crazy but what about a lot of people talk about angels like being protected by angels is that a thing that is in your wheelhouse.

[Tara Strong]

First of all when my mom died i was at her house in toronto for the funeral i had a two month old aiden in my hand and a two and a half year old sammy and my mom had what they called a mini heart attack two weeks before she died and i had a brand new baby week old baby and she said i know you know what this means you don't need to come and i was like how can i not come like what if god forbid she goes you have a week old baby you don't need to come and a week later she was dead and i was so heartbroken i was like screaming at her why'd you tell me not to come and i kept feeling like she was saying it wasn't my time i didn't know it was my time i didn't know it was my time and my ex had left early it was just me and the kids in her bedroom and my mom had one of those old computers with the printers with the perforated pages you know the holes and my son had been playing with it and when the morning that we left the pap the paper from that printer was on the floor with a pen beside it and there were two words on that piece of paper and it is undeniably my mother's pen and it said time tara and i took it to mean two things one is she really didn't know it was her time and two is that time is so precious on this planet it's so valuable you have to love every moment you can you have to live every moment you can tell people that you love them like it hit me in a very profound way and that was the first appearance of her but i've had many from her so i think someone that you feel very kindred to can come but i also do believe in beings that we don't know that are helping us many of them aren't human you can meet them in meditation i've met a few and i think when you keep putting out love into the world we're not perfect we're all going to make mistakes that's what we're here to do we're learning but when you keep trying to be good and put out good in the world i think you get rewarded with little nudges and little help from your angels that are doing the best they can to help guide you learn everything you can while you're here that's beautifully.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Said that's really beautifully said i wanted to open up i mean since we're you know talking about your mom jonathan has has spoken on this podcast pretty openly about his brother who had a traumatic brain injury when he was seventeen and jonathan was fourteen and daniel's a very very special person very special part of our life and and jonathan's life and obviously his entire family but it's something he talks about it we get a lot of really interesting comments and so i wondered if you might talk a little bit about your sister about what it's like to advocate for someone who's special and i don't know jonathan do you want to add anything else to the to the sibling conversation yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

For me i was the younger brother and when he had his accident he was extremely disabled he had to learn to walk talk recognize family again the prognosis for him was that he would be a vegetable his whole life and he slowly fought against that and relearned all of the things that i just mentioned but one of the hardest parts was as he became two and a half ish years post injury he tried to you know go out in the world and continue to be a young adult and that by that time i had sort of caught up up in terms of what i was going through i was you know in high school and going to parties and meeting people and then sometimes my brother would be there and you know he was very socially well unequipped basically like people couldn't understand him he had a very intense speech impediment he had physical disabilities so you could see that he was different and you know as he would try to connect i would feel very protective of him he also had no filters based on his head injury so you know he he hit on every woman said very inappropriate things but also they couldn't understand him because of the speech impediment but i knew exactly what he.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Was saying he's clear now when he tells me he doesn't like what i'm wearing or how my hair is what.

[Jonathan Cohen]

My face looks like and he you know he's extremely extroverted with no filters and i'm this very shy reserved very cautious and so i'm being placed i'm mortified a lot of the time but i'm also very protective of him and trying to come in make sure he doesn't piss anyone off make sure that the woman he's hitting on doesn't have a boyfriend who wants to destroy him it's so i i know i know what it's like to sort of have someone that you're looking out for a lot and feeling that they need that.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Extra support i love that i think.

[Tara Strong]

When you have someone like that and many people do it gives you an empathy for it right when i see a kid at a conference who obviously struggles in social situations and you see the look on their mom's faces that they're so proud of them that they're speaking or they're so sorry that they're doing this or whatever it is you know what that mom's gone through that dad's gone through siblings gone through to make sure this very special being is protected not bullied and not getting themself in trouble like you said sometimes they say things that aren't awesome you know and i think i think it gives us an empathy for people where people who don't grow up with it don't have that base understanding of it and can be off put or say something mean that then makes that person's heart hurt and i think that's what we want to protect at all costs since my mom died my sister's completely agoraphobic will not leave the house so social interaction is not that important in terms of in the outer world although she does like to be online a lot if it were up to me she'd be in my house in a guest house she'd come with me at all the cons this is her people she loves those people i'll facetime her and get like let her meet her favorite star trek person or whatever i pay for her whole life i help her every single day she does not want to leave toronto so i got her a place there and i send her food every day and i make her do yoga with me on zoom every day and i try to make her feel special loved scene beautiful as much as i can because the world world's cruel world's cruel parents are cruel children are cruel a lot of people the internet's cruel they're cruel so you want to protect them so i get that.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Same and our world is really strange where you know it's so easy to just not have a place right and.

[Tara Strong]

That'S true for people who have any kind of thing that makes them different from someone else as well as a list celebrity i have so many friends that have what do you call that thing imposter syndrome and i'm like you're so and so you have an oscar you're this yeah but we still get it everybody everybody i think that's the thing too that when people are attacking celebrities online especially x twitter that they we are not people and have emotions and feel bad and feel sad yes we do we are people that are successful in this line and it hurts our heart if you say something mean so i think that goes for people who aren't well equipped to handle as well as someone who's wildly successful i think we all struggle with do we belong do we deserve this spot this.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Feels like a good segue to kind of dip into social media you know something that didn't exist when you and i started auditioning being you know being a character on a voiceover show was often a very anonymous way to actually get work and make money and you know i think i don't want to speak for you but but i know for me there were times when that was really my income you know was was voiceover stuff and there were i mean at that point we thought there were so many animated shows before there were six thousand networks but still there felt it felt like there were more shows that you could do voiceovers for than you know be cast in and especially you know i i talk a lot about what it was like being an actor in the eighties like if you didn't have like blonde hair blue eyes and very tiny features and look like generic whatever was supposed to look like it was harder to get roles like that was what most of the roles were i like to say i grew up watching television of like attractive people hooking up with each other like generically attractive people having sex in different permutations was a lot of the show so voiceover work was this like really safe haven and it was a place where you know kids would know that you were doing it or you know some adults would be like oh my kid likes to watch that but there was no real like famer notoriety cut too this last you know i don't know it's twenty years or so i mean i think when i had my first kid i didn't even have a smartphone i think when i had fred my second one i didn't even have a smartphone when he was born so in the last you know fifteen twenty years your role has been not just as an actress and a voiceover you know performer but you've become you know a social media presence for publicity for all of these shows that open opens you up to allow people knowing what you look like and i would imagine it also opens you up to a lot of ridiculousness on social media ridiculousness yeah i'm i'm kind of curious like is this a double edged sword do you feel like do you do you manage your own stuff like i would imagine there's a lot of creepy i'm gonna say creepy dudes because it's an.

[Mayim Bialik]

Expression i'm sure there's creepy ladies as.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Well but what is that kind of attention like how does it change how you sort of conduct yourself such a.

[Tara Strong]

Good question and you're so right since the internet people go like oh who's the voice of this and then they know what they look like and so yes i get recognized in my real life not as much as someone who does primarily on camera but i do and it's usually very sweet most of my fans are very sweet and sometimes like there's you know good things that happen to you like i was going a little fast to a job and the police officer pulled me over and his kid's a really big powerpuff girls fan he's like i can't give a ticket to a powerpuff girl i was.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Like wait did you have to say to him like guess what no no.

[Tara Strong]

He knew who i was i'd be.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Like hey in case you didn't know do you happen to have children who are fans of a television show that.

[Tara Strong]

I'M avoiding i'm saying i haven't done that in scenarios but i was at the apple store in new york maybe six months ago i had dropped my phone under the seat and they know you know how they tell you don't move your seat i moved my seat it was trashed and i went in and they're like we don't have an appointment until tomorrow i'm like ah and then the girl goes hold the phone you're miss minutes you're miss minutes we cannot leave miss minutes without a phone you're gonna go upstairs to this other area and get taken care of so.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Sometimes well there's a special area at apple we didn't know about sometimes it's.

[Tara Strong]

I mean it isn't really it was just like away from everyone else so they couldn't say that i was getting special treatment but sometimes it's nice i haven't had too many terrible experiences in person sometimes sometimes guys like we talked about get weird but i have people around me to help me the weirdest was a guy who tried to sort of touch himself at my table that was he tried to what he tried to touch himself at my table hold.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

On one second a certain part of himself yeah you mean he came up to you and was like because i'm looking at you i need to touch my penis.

[Tara Strong]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Was it the sound of your voice now i need to know or it was just did he know that you were you or was.

[Tara Strong]

It just like european he knew i was me he was in my line he was a very large teenage human with a dad that was already holding him in place he was an unsteady human and he asked me to read a character that he created so i read it and he put his pants and started to touch himself and his dad was like no cracked and pulled away and they were like we're so sorry we're so sorry i'm like i.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Mean that happens to me at the supermarket but i didn't expect it was gonna happen to you like that yeah.

[Tara Strong]

So yeah so anyway that's like the worst but normally in person people are kind and awesome and i think i think animation fans are the sweetest in the world i love them social media i love to connect with them in that way i have spoken to depressed people i'm not lying with guns in in their mouth i like to help people i like to raise money i've raised millions of dollars on twitter for kids with cancer various animal rescues someone in need i like helping people i like promoting shows that i'm on i like making jokes i like making people feel good i like that element i do not like the bullying and i think x is the worst i think of all the social media platforms you.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Mean for that kind of conversation not that it's the worst platform yeah i.

[Tara Strong]

Think twitter twitter x is by far the most bullying rampant hey it's free speech so we can tell you to die bitch if we want to place i find it very hard on my heart of all the places and i just wish i don't know why everybody can't be kind to each other i don't understand this piece but i do know that there are a lot of mentally disturbed people on these platforms there was a girl that told me i should have been aborted during the original trump stuff that was going on i was very vocal and like put out this tweet that i should have been aborted all my fans went after her and i was at a con and three very frail girls came up to me i mean probably one of them had cerebral palsy that's the level i'm talking about they were not solid confident humans and this girl said miss strong your fans are really mean to my friend and the girl was this big i was like oh my god i'm arguing with with you my army of fans are going after you i don't want that i don't want anyone arguing with you and so you have to be very careful when you engage because sane people don't want to go on the internet and ruin someone that's not.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

What sane people do so let's i'm going to parlay this into something that is a delicate conversation that shouldn't be the tel aviv institute posted a very interesting discussion of something that recently happened to you and they they post the oxford dictionary definition of islamophobia which is the dislike or unfair treatment of islam or muslims and the reason that they felt the need to define islamophobia is that you were accused of going on an islamophobic binge on twitter x for statements that objectively speaking had nothing to do with islam or muslim people you were responding to the terrorist organization hamas and you were not just letting let go fired i hate to use the word i don't know why i'm so afraid to say it you were fired from a job that also was part of a is it a kickstarter kickstarter kickstarter a kickstarter that essentially you know utilized your power in the industry to sell a project and you were released with them making a statement it was bandit mill animation saying this was not a difficult decision they felt very very secure and when i looked through a variety of your tweets what i saw is that you were praying for peace you were expressing concern with all suffering that occurred a lot of people don't know about half of the remaining survivors that we estimate are alive of the hostages are actually from thailand they're from nepal some hold i believe mexican and french citizensh so there's a lot of people being held that you expressed concern.

[Mayim Bialik]

For.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

The you know the notion that that standing with israel which was you know one of the hashtags that many of us were using the notion that that was interpreted as islamophobic and as an extension had you lose a job is pretty astounding and i wonder yeah i wonder sort of what that feels like also to be comfortable being open about it to say i'm a person who's a humanitarian who prays for peace who is devastated at the suffering that the people of gaza are experiencing and also at the same time to be accused of islamophobia which is a horrendous thing to be accused of because it is horrendous to hate muslims or islam yeah i wonder if you if you i'm not asking you to defend yourself i don't think you need to defend yourself but i wonder if you can speak to it in terms of the larger context of what happens in in the forums of social media this is.

[Tara Strong]

Why twitter x is dangerous these interpretations and things that people run with and then get people to run with and then press runs with that can be devastating so i'm going to go back and say how this happened like i said i like helping people and this guy came to me on twitter sent me a dm and said hey we're doing a kickstarter for a pilot i'm such a big fan i'd love to have you play this character and i don't typically do things from fans because i don't know who these people are but he was very sweet and showed me some of the art and i recognized that he was working with some people who did have some good experience in the business and and then he told me it was non union and i said i really appreciate this i wish you all the best but i cannot do a non union project and he came back to me he's like the team's willing to go union to have you and we had a dialogue we had a online friendship going i was like great i hook him up with my agent arguably the biggest animation agent in the world spends half a day helping this kid learn about sag how to get a a low budget screen actors guild contract all these things it was a very collaborative process i do the job for less than i would do something else for like you go like sag less rate whatever they call that i go on their kickstarter i help them raise money i'm all in october seventh happens october seventh and this fight is something very important to me that i've been in for a very long time when i was a kid there was a sweet swastika sprayed on our synagogue that my mom was there for that my dad was my grandfather was the cantor my mom and her mom ran the catering business this was our synagogue and it said daiju pigs and when i was sixteen i went on the march of the living we had stones thrown at our bus we had a swastika drawn on our bus when we were going to auschwitz meindanic it was still quite anti semitic although there were beautiful moments we were dancing at a synagogue outside and this old man walked by and he said it'd been so long since he'd seen the jews come home it was very beautiful but it was also still anti semitic went to israel after that had the best time i was singing in the choir there for peace for understanding i came back i sang for arnold schwarzenegger for peace for understanding i've been working for over a decade with an amazing org called children of peace that brings arab israeli families together in israel this is something very important to to me i am a human as i said before that shares light and love and i don't want anyone to suffer anywhere i don't understand how this planet still has wars i don't understand we've learned nothing no one should ever be unalived for some like narcissist's cause like that's just insane to me that we still have wars i want a ceasefire around the world i've sent thousands of dollars to doctors without borders i've sent thousands of dollars to help people in gaza i pray for i have family there i have fifty family members and friends in israel like these are my people this is important to me and this fight for freedom for everybody to be respected and together and live in love and peace and light is important to me and that day was devastating and i tweeted they were smart to start with the people love to hate because there were celebrations people were in the streets quoting hamas statements saying it was a beautiful day they wanna see this happen over and over so i say it was smart for them to start with a place with a country people love to hate and that kid retweeted it i don't even know if he's a kid i don't know how old he is retweeted it and said this is disappointing i'm like what's disappointing i'm speaking about hamas i'm speaking about a terrorist org and then they were saying no i was speaking about muslims and the press bought it but there's evidence that tweet was on the tenth of october israel didn't go into gaza on the tenth of october and also gaza isn't a country i said is a country people love to hate but they took my words and they spun it and also on that day or a few days later there was a tweet that said hamas is isis and i liked it and i also liked a tweet that said thank you for speaking up for the children and and then about twenty minutes later i'm like oh i didn't read the entire tweet and it said something about like islam you know is a problem or something so i unliked it within twenty minutes i was like oh my god that's not like i just read it too fast happens happens when i'm doing a script i'll read i've got a script in front of me i'll read something completely different sure and they took that and a picture i posted of shani luke from my friend who is a muslim activist loe do you know him he's amazing i'll send you his stuff he and i i have been friends long before october seventh and he posted a picture that said this is not freedom meaning the rape of these women and people came at me even though it was a muslim post and they took that to the press and the press bought it which was heartbreaking by the way the rest of the tweet that said thanks for standing up for our children the rest of that tweet was that the jews are killing that was up for two days with my like on it nobody said anything anything didn't make the press because it didn't fit the narrative that i was a terrible person right and i do think now that i know how the press operates right you can say oh the jews run hollywood there's a lot of jews in hollywood well we certainly don't run the press right you see how much negative there is and unless you're a jewish person saying i don't want to be jewish anymore you're an islamophobe right you can't say anything without them attacking you even even though i this is an important thing to me i'm sending them money i love all people it doesn't matter your entire world is defined by you accidentally liking a tweet if you accidentally like the wrong tweet and that makes you a terrible person we are all in really big trouble trust me when you die they're not gonna be like which tweet did you accidentally like right i it's just it was so heartbreaking to see so many people coming at when all i want to do is spread love and light and help it's all i want to do and it's still there people are so mean you can't tweet anything now without people going you know you're a jewish genocider you well and i think.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

That'S yeah and i think you know sort of what my experience has been is you know anyone who's listened to me for any number of years or decades before october seventh knows that you know i've been an advocate for palestinian rights for palestinian dignity for a restructuring of many policies of the israeli israeli government but when it comes down to it if someone has a problem with the fact that i believe israel should exist we're going to have a fundamental problem because i can hold both of those things i can hold love and space for both people in my heart and in a geographic place and for me you know i think what you're talking about is really people showing showing their cards to a certain extent you know if their fundamental issues is that you believe that israel should exist then unfortunately it doesn't matter right it's insane.

[Tara Strong]

Like these people who i think you're right don't know that the things they're chanting the hamas based chants you are asking for me to be unalive you are asking for me and people that i love to not exist it's so crazy to me that people are so outwardly vocally blazingly anti semitic and they say no we're not yes they are anti semitic are up over a thousand percent like you said it's at every college it's online every day every single day in my inbox i get die zionist see you next tuesday every day it doesn't matter if i say i'm pro peace i want everyone to have love i want everyone to be on my little pony like that's how my brain works i want everybody to you know and cartoons were way ahead of rugrats had black family jewish family cartoons are all colors of the rainbow they worship everyone they love whoever they want to love and we all love each other we could all learn from cartoons actually we could all learn a lot coexisting is you know there are beautiful beautiful orgs in israel hands hand in hand schools where kids are together muslim jewish everyone's together the fight should be be against terrorism from everyone there should be no justification for terrorism there should be no justification for rape you should be able to say i'm praying for these children to be returned to their parents without being called a zionist see you next tuesday if a kid was kidnapped in your neighborhood there'd be signs everywhere people wouldn't be tearing them down the fact that people hate jews because they're at war is insane around the world they don't hate christians because america's at war jewish israel has jews christians hindus druze muslims everybody it's a country you can hate the way netanyahu's done things you can hate certain policies but to hate an entire group of people is stupid i don't nobody should and the fact that there's all this very vocal hatred for jewish people is terrifying i don't understand why there are more arrests at some of these rallies where people are causing pretty terrible vandalism a guy died a guy died in california you know it used to be when black lives matter was at its peak we knew to share the mic now it feels like not only do they not want to share the mic they want to take it from us and hit us over the head and kill us look that guy got killed by a megaphone like if i'm saying this feels anti semitic believe me i grew up with this it's in my blood my grandmother escaped the proclaim at sixteen she put all her family on a boat her mom said if i die it's her fault she saved a generation this is in our blood to any jewish person today is alive because your ancestors survived being hunted period don't hate jews you can hate a policy you can hate a war i hate all wars most jews do no jew wants genocide no jew wants an innocent person to suffer we want to invite you over for matzo ball soup period.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Thank you tara it's such a pleasure to get to talk to you about such a variety of things from you know from your voiceover career to the magic that you bring to your love for all people and it just it seems so fitting that you get to live this life you know where you are creating characters that bring so much joy to so many people where can we tell people to find you where do you like to direct people what can.

[Tara Strong]

We plug for you well i'm still on all social media platforms believe it or not i still believe people are good i'm still gonna keep pushing for all of the charity work that i do and helping people and making people feel good and seen and important it matters to me so i'm still there arastrong i'm also arastrong on instagram and on tiktok and i'm going to be for the first time releasing a class with all of my my secrets because at every single con someone says and online how do you get into voiceover i really want to get into voiceover and it is not a simple one answer question and i've never taught before because it is such a small group of people that find success that i didn't want to take someone's money and not be able to offer a reward and i can't guarantee myself a job let alone anyone else so i didn't do it before but at one point my boyfriend's like you get asked this all the time why don't you tell them what you can and make it a commute so i've been working on it for over a year i recorded hours and hours of dialogue sort of like masterclass with all my secrets there's a lot of weird shit too a lot of magic shit of how i create a character what i do everything you need to know to get in but it's going to be a community where we all get to see ourselves and hear ourselves animated and work together and i'm here for people for auditions and blahdi blah blah blah so that's be coming out soon it's all done and edited and i'm like so happy with it cause it's like i said it's not guaranteeing you work it's teaching you all of my little secrets and what i do and i'm just sharing what's in my crazy brain with everybody.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Where will people be able to find.

[Tara Strong]

That i'll announce it on all my social platforms ooh i don't wanna say the name yet cause it came to me kind of like a god shot and it's kind of fun oh i.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Can'T wait can't wait to hear okay so great it's really really it was so great to see you and also really appreciate you sharing you know not just everything going on but specifically what's been going on regarding israel stuff so thank you so much thank you thanks.

[Tara Strong]

For having me.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

I know what you're going to say jonathan what am i going to say you can't believe that i know someone who believes in so many awesome things like crystals and magic and i never told you about her i've been keeping you away from her.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What i was gonna say is she has her life mission of spreading light and love you could spread light love.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

And science why do you have to make me competitive with tarot you don't.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Have to be competitive i'm just saying you know as a motto to live by i think a lot more spreading light and love i'm into it i used to have a email when i was seven like there's a lot okay.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

What was your email no i'm not.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Telling you i'm not telling you now you're to tell us no i can't.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

It was i'm embarrassed light we love to embarrass you what was your email.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Was it like you know if there's a few people in toronto that know what that email was it was a hotmail account oh hotmail and you know i feel like in my late teens early twenties i had i mean i was a little naive but i was unabashed ratchetly pursuing that type of like leading with love and positive just i was like the world is just needs all of that and then i decided i had to make a living somehow and you know practical reality set in and i feel like i i lost some of that i mean i think it's my foundation and i and i believe her i believe that when you come back to a place of love and you know we've spoken about this on the show and even if you come back to the science of what does it mean to actually lead with.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Love oh are you asking me to.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Explain it well i think it actually ties back into some of the stuff we were talking about in terms of having more cognitive flexibility i think that.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Positivity positivity gets a bad rep you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Know because there's toxic positivity which is not what we're talking about no there's.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Toxic positivity which i mean that feels a little judgy but yeah there's there's toxic positivity there's also lip service you know a lot of people give lip service to a lot of this stuff and and the fact is once you can like buy the slogan on a tea towel you know that you can buy in tj maxx which is a place that i happen to love i'm not disparaging tj maxx but once you can buy that slogan on a tea towel at tj maxx it can definitely lose some of the the depth and the nuance and the power behind it but if you'd like to have a happy saying on a tea towel by all means go for it but the larger and and deeper notion which in some ways makes it a smaller notion because it literally starts just with you right it's what's between your two ears this notion that what positivity feels like to your brain is an opening and it's more choice and it's more flexible and it's it is open and the opposite of that that small mindedness you know it's it's a buzz kill it's a it's a joy kill it is a closing i've been dealing with some health stuff recently and i can't tell you how many doctors are like you're we're going to figure this out and i need you to believe that and i'm like but i'm just want to feel sorry for myself it's like yeah but if so many people are telling me it i think that you're onto something right we have to have an openness for hope and the brain knows what that feels like the way that.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Positivity gets a bad rap is that when it's shallow when it's surface people.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Are like no it gets a bad rep when people don't want to hear.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It yeah but people will say it's so easy to be loving and positive when all of your problems are taken care of by someone else or when you don't have to deal with the hard reality of life and difficult choices that we have to make then it's super easy to just be like oh i love everyone and every it's all gonna work out like it's it's seen.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

As trite sometimes well and i think also for people who are feeling negative which i i sometimes am it's very easy to say well because they're skinny because they're prettier because they have more money because they have a bigger house i mean we we as humans can make up any reason you know to to turn inward and to not be open but this is one of the things things that you know having an instructive meditation practice teaches you is that that is all about how you frame things it is as easy to not go there as it is to go there it's flipping a switch right so the question is what do you replace it with you know so this is.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Where i want to go because what we replace it with doesn't necessarily need to be i know what the solution is right holding hold hope that it is not going to be the darkest part of our psyche that surfaces even.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Though i'm going through something difficult even though i'm going through something difficult even though i'm going through i'm going to.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Be okay right she's tapping you're as for people who are only listening m was doing that and she was tapping different parts of her body what were.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

You doing there yeah i was tapping on they're actually acupressure points but yeah there's there's a technique where you're you're acknowledging that you're in the middle of something but you're holding out hope that god loves you you're taken care of you're protected and there's a whole system that goes with this kind of you know tapping technique it's a reassessment of how you feel about it when you're done with a sequence and often it means you have to go deeper and find out what's beneath you know the fear or what you're going through so it's kind of a portal you know to try and learn more about something that you're feeling despair about we also.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Know that the brain will pull reality in the direction it thinks it will go so when she talks about having positivity we will look to reinforce what we're thinking and feeling it's a sort.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Of placebo effect for your brain that.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Works that works and sometimes the placebo effect is like oh it's not actually working but like we know that if i'm sitting in this interview being like no one wants to hear anything i'm talking about i will read your facial cues that may be totally unrelated to anything i'm saying and then project what i believe onto you so then i will create the reality that is happening in my brain so if we do have more openness if we do have more hope if we hold the possibility that things can get better that there are solutions to be had and sometimes that is that a part of that is holding on to or connecting to something greater than ourselves because we can't figure out what the solution may be then it tends to go in that direction it tends to get better by programming ourselves to believe it will there's.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

A cherokee story that i reference frequently a boy goes to his grandfather and he says there's two wolves fighting in the inside of me you know one is darkness and violence and destruction and the other is good i mean i'm mangling this as i say it but and the other is goodness and joy and hope and peace and love and they're fighting and he says to his grandfather you know which is going to win and the grandfather's answer is the one you feed right that's literally that is this what you feed and you know there's actually there's a story in the big book of alcoholics anonymous about a man who's very upset with his wife and he said that the more that he focused on the things he was upset about the larger they grew and when he started focusing on the positive aspects of her those grew right and so when we're in in a relationship with another person not just a romantic relationship when we're in any interaction with another person that's what we're constantly doing we're constantly filtering and you know if i want to believe that the interview is going well i i can look to your face and if you look like you're distracted instead of thinking he's upset with what i'm saying he doesn't like how this is going i can think any number of things maybe he's making an editing note maybe he saw an upsetting message come up cause he didn't turn off his do not disturb you know for messages it could be any number of things but doesn't have to be me that that's what it means you know and then i will seek that you know i will continue to do things and that's the notion of you know self fulfilling prophecy which there's been some research a little bit hard to test as you can imagine it's hard to have a control group for a self fulfilling prophecy the.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Self fulfilling prophecy of the study is that the study turned out to be.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Super good that's right but that really is a very similar notion so i really enjoyed talking to tara about so many things and she's so articulate and expressive and i just love love talking.

[Jonathan Cohen]

To her what we didn't get to do and i want to have her back is just feed her a series of prompts and just have her go nuts with all the different characters she has in her head and i just want five minute mashup of that but until we get that i just want to hear all the voices that you have in your head mayim maybe that will be our next episode mostly the.

[Interviewer (possibly Mayim Bialik or Jonathan Cohen)]

Voices say make sure to subscribe like us leave your comments it helps us hit the little bell icon on youtube and get us anywhere subscribe you get podcasts and from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have see.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You next time it's maya bialik's breakdown.

[Tara Strong]

She'S going to break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Two and now she's going to break.

[Tara Strong]

Down it's a breakdown she's going to break it down.