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Mayim Bialik's Breakdown

Vanessa Bayer & Jonah Bayer: Transcendental Meditation & Confronting Cancer with Humor

Mayim Bialik's Breakdown

Mayim Bialik

Comedy, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.85.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Vanessa Bayer (SNL, I Love That for You) joins us in the MBB studio to discuss using humor to cope with her cancer diagnosis as a teenager, her tenure as one of longest-running female cast members of Saturday Night Live, and her transcendental meditation practice. She opens up about her Make-A-Wish experience, landing SNL and the resiliency working on the show entails. Vanessa’s brother Jonah Bayer (writer, podcaster, musician) joins in virtually to discuss his current studies in a Clinical Mental Health Counseling program, what inspired him to enter into the mental health field, and why he’s interested in the mental health of creatives in particular. He opens up about his experience navigating Vanessa’s illness, his own battle with leukemia, and how he uses yoga to maintain his mental wellness. Vanessa and Jonah profess their deep love of Blossom, explain their working relationship as siblings, and consider the difficulties around getting started with any mental health treatment.

Vanessa & Jonah's Podcast, How Did We Get Weird?: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-did-we-get-weird-with-vanessa-bayer-and-jonah-bayer/id1586365658

 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm going to ask a hard question, you don't have to answer it.

0:06.2

Did you contemplate like that?

0:09.1

I really did not and I'll tell you one time I remember I was in the hospital and I was

0:16.7

with my mom and I was like waiting to get some kind of scan or something and it was taking

0:21.0

forever and I remember asking my mom about it was like the only time death across my mind

0:27.0

and she looked at me like this is crazy.

0:29.6

I don't know that I've ever talked about this before, publicly, but probably you get

0:33.5

a lot of this mind because you're, who doesn't want to tell you so.

0:38.8

And I remember my mom looked at me with both eyes, which is a really hard thing to do because

0:43.7

I'm not, now I'm going to make, but like, you know how you normally look at one eye.

0:47.6

Okay.

0:48.6

She looked at me with both eyes.

0:49.6

She looked at me dead in the eyes.

0:51.6

No, no.

0:52.6

I'm not funded.

0:53.6

Okay.

0:54.6

And she said Vanessa, you're not going to die and then I was over it.

0:58.4

That's the only time I remember being scared because I think I was so optimistic about

1:03.3

it.

1:04.3

I just wasn't letting myself sort of go into that space.

1:08.0

It's my ambiolic spray down.

1:10.5

She's going to break it down for you because you know, she knows a thing or two.

...

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