Soul Boom - Thank God My Mom's Dead. (ft. Holly Brown)

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Comedian Holly Brown opens up about OCD, family addiction, childhood trauma, and using dark comedy to survive. She and Rainn explore grief, forgiveness, religion, and the strange relief that can follow losing a parent. SPONSORS!👇 🛒 Grow Therapy 👉 https://growtherapy.com/soulboom 🛒 Quince 👉 https://quince.com/soulboom🛒 Lola 👉 Get 40% off select Lola Blankets products at Lolablankets.com by using code SOULBOOM at checkout. Experience the world’s #1 blanket with Lola Blankets. 🛒 Get 15% off OneSkin with the code SOULBOOM at https://www.oneskin.co/soulboom #oneskinpod 🙏 Fetzer 👉 https://fetzer.org MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.com/store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for our newsletter! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW US! Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠ Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Executive Produced by: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kartik Chainani⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I lost her and I had this sense of relief after losing her. Why do I feel so free? Why do I feel this freedom? I was like, oh, I'm not worried about her. This is who you become survival mode required you to be. Is a cynical person that felt like the universe was against you. Yeah, my natural tendency is judgmental and cynical and sarcastic. And I think it's a protection when you grow up with a certain amount of kind of dysfunction and trauma.

Everyone's messed up. Everyone's darkly messed up, beautiful portrait. of a human. Let's switch gears a little bit. We've started very dark. I know, but that's, that's me. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hey, I want to give a quick thanks to our sponsors, Grow Therapy, Quince, Lola, OneSkin, and Fetzer. Links and promo codes on screen and in the description, enjoy the show.

Hi, Holly. Hi, Rain. That's my wife's name, Holly. Is it really? So I like saying the word Holly. I have a positive impression saying that word. Does your wife, what's her relationship to Christmas with that name? Yeah, that I think was tough growing up. Like, Holly. And then she was Holly Ann. So, which sounds vaguely. And I'm Holly Annabelle. You're Holly Annabelle. And I often get called Holly Annabelle. That is crazy. And she's really. She's got tattoos too. What the heck? So much going on right here.

Here's what I want to start with. I think it's such an interesting part of mental health and is found in the petri dish of family dynamics. The sacrifice of something far more important for something far less important in a family dynamic is, I think, is very interesting. Like in our family, and I've talked about this before, there was not a lot of love in the family. Like I knew my stepmom loved me. I knew my dad loved me. They didn't love each other. So there was just this kind of like fractured, weird Paul hung over everything.

But ideologically, growing up in my faith community, like love was like the most important force in the universe. There was a lot of talk about love, quotes about love, books of poetry about love, mystical works about love, love and the arts being celebrated. but not actual love in the family. And I would think, like, hey, let's not talk about love. Let's try and, like, put it into action and not talk about it so much. You'd think, like, that would be kind of the first priority. Yeah. You know, it's weird.

When I think back on my childhood, I don't quite connect instantly with the feeling of love either, abundant in my household and not because I know it wasn't there. I do know it was there when I was younger. I know that my parents, like, were very good parents for a short period of time. They did all the things, checked all the boxes, and gave us everything we would have needed for that time. Once things shifted, that memory of the kind of love I receiving then, because I was, say, eight or nine when it shifted, that completely overcame.

Like, took, overtook my ability to think about the love I had before. What do you think happened? Things in my house just started to become untenable. My dad was an alcoholic. Okay. And my parents' marriage was dissolving. And he started to become very violent. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

Both physically and mentally. And it was just overtook everything else I had ever felt before then. You know, when you see this person. And my dad felt like Jekyll and Hyde. When you have somebody, that is so focused on being fun and funny and making life feel like magic. Because he was an actor. He was a trained actor that could take you, you know, on a drive down the PCH, point to the ocean and be like, did you see that? Mermaids? Do you catch the

mermaids? And we didn't catch the mermaids, but I fully believed he did. And so then to have that Jekyll and Hyde flip where he suddenly, that was gone, it was just, it takes the wind out of you. Someone who at one moment is seeing magical mermaids and the next moment violently raging. And you're the, you know, obviously. You're stuck in the middle. stuck in the middle and at times told you're the problem. So it's like, how do you reconcile somebody loving you so much they want to create worlds for you? Yeah. And then they're the reason your world is crumbling around you. I have gone through a very similar process with my parents and through therapy and trying to understand their choices. And both of my parents

suffered incredible amounts of trauma when they were growing up. I mean, my mind, my parents, was kind of weird petri dish pressure cooker trauma theirs was like straight up like crazy trauma like my dad uh you know his his mom dying kind of in front of him when he was young and then his dad taking off and not having food in the house and having to beg for food from the neighbors like crazy like charles dickens kind of stuff right and then my birth mother took off when i was about two and it's been a long, we're very close, and we're getting closer all the time, even she's in her 80s,

and I'm learning more and more about her. But her mom died when she was two. And then she was put into a chicken coop. She lived on a farm in Wisconsin. Her older siblings were all at school. There was no one to take care of her. They were too poor. The dad would go work the fields,

and she was put in like a chicken and a pig pen to just be with the animals all day long. So you meant that literally? She was literally in a chicken coop. I was like metaphorically, chip in a nope, a real chicken coop. She was out on the farm. Wow. Her and like the animals and the dirt.

Like you just, her name was Patricia. Like Patty, you stay there. And when you're, you know, your brother and sister will come home from school at like two and then they'll play with you then and give you a bath or whatever. And she's like a year in a chicken coop. Like that's going to that's going to fuck you up. Yeah. You know.

And you don't know how it's going to fuck you up. some when it's going to present itself. Yeah. Yes. So when she engaged with the hippie years, she went hippie crazy with the whole she bought it, hook line and sinker. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been, you know, it's been a, it's been an honor getting to know her and letting that kind of anger and pain around that dissipate and into, you know, greater empathy and understanding. Yeah. I mean, you know the person's backstory. and it helps you gain empathy for them. And then once you know that, and you can also place every moment in time and be like, well, what was society for, you're not forcing, but the structure of

society, like motivating people to do and maybe they didn't want to. Maybe, you know, maybe my parent, my mom didn't want to have kids. And I say that knowing she told me she didn't want to have kids, but I have empathy for that person that didn't want to have kids and felt like they had to because of checking a box, because of family pressure, because societal pressure. And then you, you, have kids unresolved trauma. It's just there's so many things on this path that allowed me to have empathy for her because it wasn't just her. It was her story. It was what society forced to boxed her into. All these other things that she didn't have control over the way that I looked at my life and said, I have no control over any of this and it's ruining it. But once you realize no one has control,

what do you mean by that? I was reading in kind of some of these questions of some quotes of yours about this idea of control. What do you mean specifically? I have OCD. I got the diagnosis in my mid-20s after actually a misdiagnosis with bipolar disorder, which is very common among women. They get diagnosed both bipolar because it's, you know, emotional. Women are so emotional. And then later, I never connected with that diagnosis. Then once I got the OCD diagnosis, I was like, oh, duh, that's it. But I know that OCD, it can have genetic, it can be passed technically through genetics, but it's also very influenced by trauma.

And from a very early age, I felt like I had no control over, I would wake up and be like, I don't know what I can predict today. Right. There's just no control. No safety net. I didn't have a safety net. Yeah. So when you have no control.

And it's funny because on two of the episodes now, I've talked about my recent OCD diagnosis over this last year or a year and a half. which has been a very fascinating journey. I would not wish on anyone. I know. It's not all cute like it is on TV shows. No. On TV shows, they're like,

I'm going to knock on wood and rearrange my mug and I've got OCD. People talk about it like they want it sometimes. They're like, oh, my God, I'm so OCD about X, Y, Z thing. I'm so OCD. I have to rinse my toothbrush out before I put it in the cup. Like, that's not what it is. That's just like. Basic hygiene?

Yeah, exactly. Well, I've heard you talk about having ADHD. Yeah, and ADHD and OCD go hand in hand as well, which is weird. It doesn't really diagnostically make that much sense because, but OCD is seeking perfectionism, control, uncertainty. And in whatever aspect of your life that it shows up in. And ADHD is kind of like an inability to focus on one thing at a time because your mind is racing ahead of itself. But they're both, they both can be connected to anxiety disorders, and they're also connected developmentally to brain function. And there is a genetic component

as well. I got to talk to my mom about that too and found that she had gone through a period of time with internal OCD thought loops and ruminations that she was just not able to control for years. and they just kept like cycling over and over. So we ought to connect on that as well. But how did yours manifest? When I was really little, I remember, this is how I know it, is something that's also baked in your DNA. I remembered having this cadence,

like this almost metronome feeling in my head that would get really, really fast sometimes. They're just like going off the charts, almost like if you can envision a, you know, something picking up a noise a signal and it's just so in nuts. And I would have this and I would constantly battle. Was it to a rhythm? Like a ting, ting, ting. Yes, it was true rhythm. And I would have this and I would be battling it. And I would say to myself, it would just make me obsess about whatever that rhythm started. Okay, I was thinking about the fact that I threw,

I tried to like paperball toss a piece of trash in the garbage and I missed. And then I would obsess about the fact that I missed if I didn't go put it in right away. And the metronom would go off, off, off, and I would think to myself, don't let other people know this noise is going on in your head. So I would just honestly, wait. It would always go away eventually. And then I go, okay. All right. And I just wouldn't, I would just carry on. Then it would just be present forever. But I always kind of assumed, like, well, it doesn't affect my life every day because the metronome's not going off all the time. Then as I got older, I started to tie those instances of like throwing something or taking a book out of a bookshelf, leaving it, not putting it back. It's not a tidiness thing that the reason I want to put it

back so bad and I obsess over it. It's because my brain says, a brain that was, you know, cultivated by constant catastrophe says, if I don't put this book back, someone I love is going to die. Like, that is exactly what my brain would tell me. If I don't, you know, call this person back at this specific time, and it would not even be that person, someone else, my sister is going to get to a car accident and be injured. Like, you think you can prevent something bad from happening if you're keeping the order of the universe aligned. And it doesn't work like that. But if you have OCD, that's kind of going to be a part of your brain always.

Like once I got the diagnosis of OCD, I was like, oh, of course. I am just upset. I am truly obsessed with trying to control things. And I will always be that way. Did you get OCD-specific treatment? I have and I haven't. I think because my mom had such severe addiction, it has prevented me. until pretty recently from exploring my options.

I don't get the connection there. I was told very early on when I first got diagnosed a bipolar disorder that it needed to be medicated. And I didn't want to. I was like, no, I don't want to be medicated. Medication equals addiction. That's how my mom got addicted. Even if someone looks me in the eye and says, this is not an addictive medication,

my brain still did that. And so I still felt the same way about OCD. And it wasn't until recently when I learned other. methods for OCD. That's what I was asking more about treatment. EMDR is something that I've started. I'm still early in the process because it is hard to let go of control in EMDR. Have you done exposure response prevention?

Not yet. That is something I really want to do because I've developed a lot of, you know, obsessions and some of them prevent me from living a healthy functioning life. Like I am deeply fearful. But I'm curious what your resistance is to this because you've had this diagnosis. diagnosis for a super long time. What has been your resistance to diving into the therapy aspect of it? I was labeled the difficult one so early that I almost felt like the more I tried to dive into my mental health and fix that part of me, quote unquote, or try to learn things about myself that way,

the more I was giving legitimacy to other people telling me that there was something wrong with me. So I avoided it. I just was like, I'll fix it myself. The way that I was, I've been able to march myself through life. I've done it all myself already. I didn't have a parent raising me. I didn't have somebody guiding me. So why am I going to start now? And it took releasing, you know, a wealth, like a fountain of anger, pain, resentment, all these things to be like, oh, it is okay to have help. You just, it was so foreign to you to have it in the first place. Yeah. So I'm starting. It's really a journey now. And I imagine that's a trust. issue as well. Like, can I trust this person to help me? I need to take care of myself. I would find myself in therapy all the time because I was put in therapy very young and I was find myself in therapy trying to control how the therapist viewed me. And I didn't want them to think there was anything wrong with me. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with me. But that's how

I talked to myself. Right. Because everyone else was doing that. Right. So I would just come to therapy and, you know, if I can make them laugh, I was like, I mean, I'll come back because it's a a good audience, but I'm not going to, I don't need this. This guy needs this. And once I, yeah, it definitely, my relationship to therapists and therapy was not healthy for so long. Right, right. Just doing this work of like talking to people about things I'd never talked about has allowed me to be vulnerable in a way that doesn't mean I'm weak. Yeah. But I didn't know how to do that before at all. Exposure response prevention is proven to be super effective. And just as effective as medication, although I'm currently on both.

And it's helped tremendously way, way, way better than I was, I don't know, six or eight months ago. But you expose yourself to the thing that you're most afraid of over and over again without doing anything about it, just sitting with it. So I don't know if that for you would be like having a trash can with a paper ball and purposefully missing. And just doing that over and over again without saying anything, thinking anything to yourself, reassuring yourself without, you know, doing it and just half an hour. Yeah. And just exposing yourself. That's what I call exposure response prevention.

You're preventing the response. You're just drinking in the exposure so that your brain becomes inured to it and realizes, oh, this isn't a threat. This isn't a danger. I'm not going to die. someone's not going to die. This is just uncomfortable. It's just an uncomfortable feeling.

And when it switches from danger to just an uncomfortable feeling, that's when the OCD lives. That sounds like exactly what I'm finally understanding about life is that. And so I'm so much more open to stuff like that than I ever was. I'm actively pursuing different things in therapy now that I've never, ever tried. but the idea of like being the most vulnerable I could possibly be and tell everybody, everything that's ever happened to me on a microphone to the world. Yeah. That was me, like that was a pretty big exposure.

Yeah. And so, and nothing bad happened. Oh, that's great. Yeah. You know, I might have gotten an errant weird DM or two. I'm sure. Saying it nicely. But, you know, nothing, nothing bad happened.

And I thought that, I, That was a very risky move I felt I was taking at the time because I thought, I'm not going to have control over how people see me if I give them all of this. But all it ended up doing is like either filling in the gaps for other people about what they already knew of me or gave them like a window into the person that they know now of like, wow, that's how you got to be this version that I like. I'm not looking at you less because you had all this trauma. I'm looking at, I'm like, I've been overwhelmed. with the amount of people that are like, wow, like you are all okay through all of this. Well, I and everyone thanks you for lancing the boil of your dysfunction on the public stage, on the public stage for our entertainment and amusement.

I love it when people do that. I love how you just said that. Lansing that was beautiful. Lansing the boil of your dysfunction. And, you know, I had to do that through like a, I had to inch myself there and I had to do that through a, kind of comfortable space. And so I did it through like comedy on the show. Yeah, and let's switch gears a little bit. We started very dark. I know, but that's, that's me. Hey, folks, we are big advocates of therapy here at Soul Boom and the summer sunshine is not the cure

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Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets. One of the things I've noticed as I've been in recovery and therapy and men's groups and podcasting is there's often a parent that kind of takes up all the oxygen in the room and gets kind of all the focus and all the attention. You've got a Jacqueline Hyde father, unfortunately, with this terrible disease of alcoholism. He passes away not long after when you're 17, right? He passed when I was like 19. 19. Where was your mom in all of this? Because oftentimes it's the person who takes up all the attention that gets all the focus,

but the other person is playing just as an important role in the dynamic. Yes. So it started there and it went on for about 10. plus years of this very similar dynamic of my dad having his own separate issues that could have been a lifetime of issues for one thing. Then on the other side of dealing with my dad's addiction, my mom started to develop her own addiction. And we really, like on the outset, looked like a very stereotypical home. You know, three kids, mom, dad, my mom was just like this former model and beautiful. My dad was this boisterous actor. And no one would have guessed where our lives

ended up, but my mom started to develop a, she had to a car accident, started to develop a prescription pill addiction. And once my dad's alcoholism just like completely became untenable hers, and then he was kicked out of the house, no one was there to be unchecked. So my mom's addiction started to come, go full steam ahead. It was just two dual addictions happening at the same time. Right. I wouldn't drink so much if you weren't such a problem, child. Yes. Yeah. Like, why do you have to care about this thing, Holly? So once my mom passed and I had this more time to focus on myself than I listened to this podcast, kind of reminded of this other looming thing in my life. I think I knew that I felt like, okay, your mom is gone. There is a weird

freedom that comes with this type. And I loved my mom. She wasn't addict my whole life. And her addiction might have impacted my life and the trajectory of my life. in ways that I'm still going to find out, you know, but I love my mom deeply. I lost her, and I had this sense of relief after losing her. And that relief, after that relief came with me questioning why I was feeling that way? Like, why do I feel so free? Why do I feel this freedom? I was like, oh, I'm not worried about her. And now my, like, truly my brain opened up. And I started to be more positive as a human. And I was a great, I've heard you talk about being very cynical.

And I related to that so much of what you're trying to do versus who you, you know, feel like you are. Yeah, my natural tendency is judgmental and cynical and sarcastic. Same. And I think it's a protection when you grow up with a certain amount of kind of dysfunction and trauma. If you're too cool for school, even though I was never cool. but you know and you have that kind of that that armor and that blanket it protects you and it's a

it's a way to move through the world and not get hurt too bad absolutely because you see pictures of me as a kid i was just just this open vulnerable book you know so i had to kind of develop that and especially in the in the acting world yeah but yeah and then here i am it's podcast spirituality and mental health, trying to foster open hearts and, you know, and loving conversation and further compassion and bringing people together. But my tendency is to be kind of sharp and jaded. Yeah, I feel the exact same way. I think, and I think what it was is I hated that part of myself for so long. But now I value it because I feel like I can assess it after my mom passed. I was, I was like, okay, this is who you become survival mode required you to be.

is a cynical person that felt like the universe was against you. And now that you have a little bit more freedom, you have the time to stop and say, I know that that might be where my brain goes instantly, but I can then keep going and like push it a little further and then go, okay, I'm going to try to be positive. And it was just something that I never tried to do before. Now I have the skills to be able to talk about a person that is complicated and with love. And I didn't feel like I had that because I was carrying so much anger and resentment. And isn't that also a quality of youth where things are much more black and white?

Yes. When you're between 16 and 30, let's say, things are like very clear. This is right and wrong. God damn it, this is not how it is. And you said this and yet you did this. And then you get a little older and you're kind of like, well, we all have our hypocrisies, don't we? Yeah. Yeah.

We've got our, you know, our different kind of dichotomies. Yeah. Failings, strengths. Absolutely. So there's hopefully a little more forgiveness. Have you found forgiveness through this process? Yes. Yeah.

How does that work for you? Being able to paint the picture of my parents' lives, you know, one thing I would tell people is if your parents are alive, I've have those conversations now, if you can. Like, don't, don't wait to have conversations. And when I say conversations, I mean everything from questions you have, but also ask them who they were when they were younger before you, all these other things that maybe you don't come up organically when you have this like parental relationship, but have those conversations with them so that you can understand who they are outside of being your parent. And that's what helped me is looking at my mom who I hated at times, hated my mom. And seeing the person she was

before I entered the picture, then I could look at all her choices and understand them a little bit better. And that just takes this, it gives you a little piece of mind of knowing I, I don't, again, I don't agree with the choices, but I have so much empathy for the person that make them. And it just, it's allowed me to forgive things that. And I don't think forgiveness means like, yeah, I forgive you for, you know, our house foreclosing because you spent all our money on drugs. I forget, I don't forgive you for that necessarily. But I can, I can build my own life now because I have peace with some of your choices. I'm not letting the lack of forgiveness stult to everything.

Yeah. You talk a lot about 90s sitcoms. I do. Your dad worked on the set of Frazier. You were a frequent visitor to the Frazier set, which is just crazy to me. What do 90s sitcoms have to do with your crazy fucked up family? So much. And I think I thought of it initially as a vehicle to tell a story and then I was like,

well, why did I want this vehicle to begin with? Because there's so many interlocking things with it. My dad, like you said, worked in it for my entire childhood or before he got sick. I would visit these sets and I would see this as normal. Like, well, sitcoms are like part of my life. This is my jam. You know, Frazier took over my household because my dining room table was the table that Frazier would eat off of in the show.

Wow. The cups in my home are all caffeine nervosa cups. Our stools were caffeine nervosa stools. Like, I just thought that was normal and it was just an ingrained part of my life. I then fell in love with sitcom because of it, you know, and you're exposed to this world. of like, I leave my home, I go here, and everything's great. Yeah. And I completely fell in love a sitcom, started to lose myself completely.

That is again, this kind of double life. It's a little bit Truman show. It's kind of like, oh, in the world of, you know, it's like that song from a chorus line, everything was beautiful at the ballet, but everything is like fucked up at home. And everything is beautiful. And sitcoms are brightly lit and everyone's getting along and they're so funny and jocular. And but this is my home life is checking my mom's pulse. Yeah.

It was a very weird distinction to be like, I would just use them to escape, really. So I would use sitcoms to escape. So I think it's no... What were your favorite ones? Which ones are we talking about here? You know, it's weird. Frazier was not even top five. Okay.

I was a child, and I would be like, what do I know about Tennessee Williams, not? Yeah. Now as an adult, I remember I called my family after my dad died. I called them all. And I was like, does everyone know how good Frazier is? And everyone's like, yes. We're all aware. I was really big into, you know, full house, Boy Meets World.

I loved the little like one season sitcoms or smaller sitcoms. I loved like step by step. Like truly like the classic sitcoms of my youth. Okay. I was obsessed. Boy Meets World number one. Okay. By far.

I don't even know what happens in that one. Yeah. I mean, classic. I imagine there's a boy and there's a world. Oh, you bet. Yeah. Who was on that one? That was a Ben Savage, Daniel Fischel.

Honestly, like, they're people that, they're largely still involved in that universe. They didn't really go on to do like outside stuff from that. Okay. And I think that's a part of it is I never like, they never left my brain as not their characters. They didn't go on to do spirituality podcasts? No, they didn't branch out. I don't know. I'll get them a call after this.

But they kind of stayed those characters to me forever and I really held on to that. But when those shows, I just remained this gigantic sitcom lover. I love a laugh track. Give me a laugh track. Give me a cue that everything's okay. Even if the joke's bad, I'm like... Producer, insert laugh track into this podcast at this juncture. Thank you.

Oh, man. I would love it. I can't wait to listen back and hear that laugh track. And we're in this time of just such terrible TV comedies and very few good classic sitcom. One of the things I'm getting ready to pitch is kind of like we're trying to create like a classic multicam sitcom. Be still my beating heart. Roseanne kind of stuff. This is my dream.

Yeah. I just think it just, it can be so, like, Fraser is so smart. Friends, the humor on friends is so smart. And sick comes, we had this weird association with like easy humor now. Like once we got into the odds, I feel like that's. It's so hard to do too. Yeah. It's so hard to do well.

But people did. And it's like, why don't, why did we lose that? Why do we ever leave that? I think reality television really like entered the medium and said, oh, people don't want to be guided towards how they feel anymore. They just want to like figure it out themselves. And so laugh tracks then became a little. Well, I think there were a lot of bad ones in the 2000s.

And it's funny, Greg Daniels, the creator of the office, he once described it as, it's like Kabuki Theater has a resemblance to life, but it's not life. You know, it's a guy and he's like stomping and has a sword and like, oh, come over here. Come on. Oh, no. You know, and he's like sitcoms have become kind of kabuki. When they got really bad in 2000, between 2005, 2015, right? In that, they just were so bloated, so many jokes, so little attention paid to character

and to real human moments, that it started to become like this as like, what's that helium, like, you know, snorting helium or what is it when nitrous oxide when you're at the dentist? It's this like bloated reality that has, you're like, oh, that's how, they're in a kitchen. and they seem to be a family, but they're saying things, and there's all this laughter, and what they're saying is not funny at all. So there's this kind of like,

as opposed to like Roseanne that I come back to, it was like everything they said was really funny, and the laughs matched the behavior. And the acting was good, too. I mean, not to knock any of it, but I felt like the acting style changed in later sitcoms too, to favor that kind of humor almost. And that really bugged me for a long time.

I'm like, this is such a perfect medium. Right. And it were letting it waste away. And I think a lot of the pressure was from the networks, like, we need more laughs. Yes. We need more jokes. But if jokes aren't grounded in behavior and character, they're not funny. So they went from famously from three laughs a page to five laughs a page.

You can't do five laughs a page, you know. I mean, do people realize how short of pages? Yeah. Yeah. In TV spacing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that is literally every other line of dialogue. A page is a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute and a half. So you want five laughs in a minute? That's art of, yeah, there's no, no human in the world should be trying to aim for that. Because if you're trying to aim for the laps like that, you're not, you're missing. Yeah. You're missing their like organic reactions to things. Yeah, I felt that way about sitcoms for a long time.

And I'm such a champion of them. And I'm like, let's get them back to where they were. But I felt like they used to be a representation of life in a kind way. Like you're saying where it used to represent life a little better. There weren't like constant laughs. It was still smart, but it was really funny. still a heightened version of reality. But they still resembled pieces of people we knew.

And that's how I felt about my family. I was like, oh, I can see my dad in Tim the Toolman Taylor. Or I can see my mom, you know, as the mom in step-by-step. I can see my sister as this golden child smarty pants. And my little brother is the brother from Malcolm in the middle. Like I could see all of this happening. And I felt comfort in that knowing, okay, my family. does, is a family. But there's nuance behind these people. And I think what sitcoms do is they tap into

that and allow you to like, they say these are real people. These are real stereotypes that you deal with. So you're going to be comfortable watching this. You're going to find familiarity here. But you have to like also dissect that and be like, well, we all are that, but we're just so much more. I'm the rebel. I'm the middle child. So I love seeing that on screen. But like, who is the middle child really? and I got to figure that out. And how did you go into comedy? How did that start? I mean, I escaped into comedy my whole life.

So I think, I was thinking about this. Did you act in high school? I did. My dad was an actor. My mom was, this sounds like I'm bragging. My dad was an actor. My mom was a model. It was just something that I felt like was normal living in Los Angeles.

I was like, yeah, kids wake up. They want to be an actor because they can point and say, that's where acting happens. And I can touch this space. And I thought it was normal. I also thought it was easier to get into. I was like, whoa, oh my God, this is a hard space. And I just avoided everything in life that I could by escaping into comedy. And so when I realized I didn't want to be an actor, I kind of knew I always didn't want to.

Realize I didn't want to be an actor. Don't want to be a model. I just want my entire life surrounded by comedy because then I'll never be sad. Granted, that's not how that works. It's not exactly how it works. I am so glad I found it that way because it did help me through. So you did Upright Citizens Brigade? I did.

How did you transition from improv to stand up? I honestly had a moment of, I think a lot of people need to do this, is have a real self-awareness check and go, am I good at this? This thing that gives me attention, the thing I do like. Am I good at the product that I'm giving? I didn't think I was like good at it when I was really thinking about it. At the improv? At the stand-up.

At improv. And also, I realized this sense of control I carried all. also would show up in other places. Improv, you are required to work as a team. Yep. You are required to... And you can't control the outcome. No. Where a scene is going? Literally, that is built into the entire structure. Even though that's what helps me get lost by watching it. Once I was put in that position, I was like, oh, no, my brain, what I am, what's going to come to mind first for me is sad. And it's not funny right away. I need time to make it funny. I need a little second to make it funny. And I need control. Right. And so I just felt like so at the

whim of other people that I was like stand up as the vehicle that I can stop, write out my thoughts, process them in my way, deliver them in a palatable way to other people. Now, have you been bringing any of your family tragedy into your stand-up or was your stand-up? Did it start kind of with like cookie jokes, Dmitri Martin, and then- Actually did. It weirdly, I remember the first time I ever to stand-up, I was like, I'm going to do one-liners, which is the most insane thing to be like first out of the gate. I'm going to be one-liner gal. No.

Not many people. Do you remember any of your one-liners? One of my earliest is actually one of my favorite jokes I've ever written is it was after my dad had passed. And it's that a lot of dad, a lot of people think that I have daddy issues in my dating life because my dad is dead. But I'm here to tell you all, I don't. I have a very kind, generous partner. He's super kind. He's 85.

And that is one of my favorite ones I've written because. it's so stupid. It's so stupid. But throwing in the 85 later is really weird. And then I like to add a tag where I'm like, and once I teach him how to text, oh, it's over. It's over for people. I'm locking it in. Hey folks.

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breath while you ignore the fact that your soul feels like a raisin. But the folks at the Fetzer Institute believe something deeper. They believe that behind humanity's biggest challenges are spiritual ones. Loneliness, division, disconnection, our inability to see each other, the planet, or even ourselves, as sacred. And they're asking a really beautiful question. What if shared flourishing begins with the sacred? Fetzer supports stories, communities, and spiritual solutions from people around the world who are healing division, caring for the earth, and creating deeper human connection through faith, spirituality, and reverence for love itself. Not dogma, not forcing one belief system, just the radical idea that, hey, maybe the soul matters. Honestly, that's a conversation we care deeply about

here at Soul Boom. You can explore their spiritual solutions library and learn more at fetzer.org. That's Fetzer.org. Thanks, Fetzer. Do you ever want to just shake Corey Matthews from Boy Meets' world and be like, ugh, your life is so perfect, or roll your eyes at the simple problems of the Tanner family? Well, it's time you met a sitcom family that's unlike any you've met before. Because while my life is not like the 90s sitcoms I grew up loving, I'm finally giving my crazy childhood the real star treatment. Hi, I'm Holly Brown, and everybody knows but me is my story.

and narrative podcast about family secrets, dark comedy, and shocking revelations all told through the kaleidoscope of my deep love for 90s nostalgia. So grab your beanie babies, maybe some gushers, and get ready for a genre-bending true story that belongs in the TGIF Hall of Fame, because everybody knows but me. Subscribe to everybody knows but me wherever you get your podcasts. I started to try to inject humor because I actually thought I love humor so much. It saved me in so many ways. Maybe I can process my life through this.

Maybe I can heal. And I constantly would come up to areas where I was like doing that, but then I would stop short because I was not being so super authentic with the audience. So I was scared that if I gave the audience the truth, they couldn't handle it. And so I would write around that. And all comedians do. There's a level of the truth that comes out and stand up. That is, you know, the truth is here. And there's a line where you're not going to, you're not.

going to cross it, even the most kind of confessional comedians. Yeah. But I just, I was obsessed with comedians like, you know, Mike Barbiglia or Maria Bamford that were just like almost invasive how much they were giving away. Right. And you felt like, should I be hearing this? Yeah. I wanted to be that so badly. Did you see Mike Barbiglia's last show about his dad? I was so good. I did. I'm just such a, I, yeah. He's just, he inspired me to want to do that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what I was going to be best at. And I think that took a long time to understand that like, oh, I was trying to force myself to process through stand-up, but that wasn't authentic either.

I need to just heal, not try to force healing here and do it on a stage. So what kind of voice as a stand-up did you ultimately find? I found that I like to deliver difficult truths, but in a silly, silly little way. And, you know, like if I'm going to talk about, I have a joke that I love that's about when I attempted And the joke isn't actually about that, though. I think that's what people don't real. That's what you need to do. Have it be effortless enough that they don't realize what the joke is about. Because I use it as an entry point to talk about it. But I talk about my time in a mental hospital. But at the end, I'm making fun of myself as a person strapped to a psych word bed. And it's so silly that at the end of it,

I mean, I can just say the joke without beating around the bush. Please. But I, I, I attempted to. When I was younger, the mental hospitals are really scary. They're really dark. They're really bleak. But about a weekend. And this really happened. Another patient looked me dead in the eyes. And she was like, oh my gosh, I know where I've seen you before. I saw you do standup years ago in San Francisco and you were so good. And I just saw it myself in that moment like, wow, I really fucking made it. Oh my God. made it. I got recognized for my art and that's all you want is a stand-up, you know, that opportunity to touch your fans like that. But I couldn't touch her because we were both strapped our beds in the psych ward. But wow, it felt so good emotionally, right? It did. I couldn't literally touch her, no. And then I, this is a part that is. And that really happened? That genuinely happened. Someone in the psych ward recognized you. She has since come to shows. Oh, my God. That's fantastic. And it's like those moments in life happened. You're like, I got a rich joke about this. But the, the, the,

lack of truth lies in, okay, then I say this joke that really did happen. I wasn't actually strapped to a skateboard bed, but it is almost like such an un-foreign thing to people that they haven't had that in their life and they can laugh at it because it's not something they're going to wake up and have to like reconcile with, oh, I was strapped to a psych word bed. And then I end that joke by saying, you know, a few days later I did catch that exact same girl say the same thing to a vending machine and that stung. But, you know, and again, that didn't actually. actually happen, but it helps people go like just another little thing. If you give them another little thing to laugh at, that's a little absurdist. Then they can to walk away and go, oh,

she was in a mental hospital. That wasn't even what they were focusing on. But I still got to tell you that I was in a mental hospital. Yeah. So it's a, it's a craft, you know? It's a journey to write these jokes. But as long as you make them silly at the end. And you promise some more dead dad jokes. Oh, boy. Okay. Let's see. what I've got in the chamber. I've got that this one is my favorite. Boy, oh, boy, does it bomb. I don't care, though. Those are every comedian's favorite jokes. When the jokes and you know it's going to bomb, but it's still your favorite joke and you're not giving it up, God damn it. Oh, I'll say it, no, fully knowing it's crickets, but I've utilized that. But it's, you know, my dad worked on Frazier when I was younger. And sometimes when I think about him being gone, that's what I miss the most because I don't know what. to do without tossed salad and scrambled eggs and rain. It's an objective, a stupid show.

My dad, I talk about how, you know, he got cancer when I was 13, and he ended up living so much longer. He lived so much longer than he was told he would, but he wasn't working. By the time he died, he very rudely took his contacts to the grave. And I could have been, I harp on NEPO babies all the time. And the reality is, I would have loved Vietnam baby. I would have welcomed it. And in fact, I would have been the Nepo Baby for all kind of running on a platform, you know, and I would have been so good. My platform would have been Erwan for Erwan. All water should be sparkling and ban the use of deep fake imagery for celebrities and ugly people, you know. So those are just a view. I have more in the chamber. Yeah. And I'm constantly working on because, like, again,

presenting death in a bite-sized manner helps the audience who has maybe not dealt with death. I love the misdirect. It's like, oh, my God, this is so dark. Oh, it's so dark. Oh, it's so silly. Yeah. Oh, it's so silly. Yeah.

And you're just keeping them off balance. That's great. That's the goal. I've very rarely done stand-up, but once I did stand-up where I wrote a bunch of one-liners, they were mostly terrible. And I wrote them on pieces of slips of paper and put them in a shoe box. and I talked about how I had been institutionalized. I was not actually institutionalized.

Oh, interesting. But I said that I was and that while institutionalized, I had written a bunch of jokes. And I just found the shoebox. And I haven't even looked at it. So that was my setup. Oh, you're guiding me through your setup. That was the setup.

And so then I got to read these really weird jokes that mostly didn't work. but the audience legit believed me and thought that these were jokes that I had written in the Looney bin. And so it actually kind of worked. It was almost like performance art. It was very strange. Yeah, that's, I mean, you feel free to use it. Yeah, can you give me that box too? Sure. It's more about the setup than the actual shoe box. I hope you understand that. Yeah. So I will lie that I was in a mental hospital, even though it was. Yeah. But yeah, I think. And also there's always been somebody that it's after.

show that comes up to me that did hear the other parts of the joke. Right. That comes up and goes, I was in a mental hospital. Like, and I, I thank you for making me laugh about it. And, you know, not everyone, very rarely does someone come up and get to tackle that part of the joke that I'm telling. Otherwise, they're just laughing and they go home and they go, ha, ha, ha, ha, that's, that girl was unwell at one point, but she's very funny now. Have you listened to much Gary Goldman? I love Gary Goldman. He's so fantastic. He talks a lot about that being institutionalized and depression. and stuff like that. He was on the podcast. And one of the things you talk about in your podcast is your brother becoming a Christian. Is he like born again? Pretty much. Pretty much.

Because we weren't, while we did attend here and there. Yeah. Occasional church? Very occasional. So you really didn't understand this conversion of your brothers, but you've come around with a deeper understanding. Can you tell us that story? Yeah. My brother, we again, not super religious. My dad was, I loved this part of my dad's, you know, philosophy of life. Like, he was an artist, so he was very, hey, whatever you want is good for me. I am not here to judge anybody, not here to yuck anyone's yum. If you like this religion, go for it. If you, Holly, Casey Carson, my brother and sister, you find it, go for it. But it was never pushed on us at all. And when all the bad stuff started happening in my home, I was really like, well, there's no way God exists. There's no

way. If God existed, why would he let me suffer so much? Constant suffering. I felt like the universe was against me. So much of my life, like truly that is what my obsessive cycles would come about. When my brother was 14 is when my dad passed, and he pretty quickly became very religious. And I was very upset about it for a long time because I was like, I was nervous that religion found him at his most vulnerable. and my perception of that because my perception of authority of any kind or anybody guiding anyone at that point was negative. Like, no one's here to help you.

Everyone's willing to let us suffer. Anyone that does, they have ulterior motives. Like, no one's actually trying to help me in this scenario. And so I thought, 14-year-old boy who's just lost his dad, this religion is like attaching itself at his most vulnerable. And I was worried that he wasn't able to make that choice on his own. And so I've carried that with me until pretty recently.

I just still kind of had this chip on my shoulder about when my brother found religion and why he found religion. And through this process, I've actually finally talked to him about it. And I understood that better and what it gave him. And it's like, how did I not see it before? That's how I feel. How did I not see that religion gave him a soft place to land and community and guidance when he had. had none and, you know, just this space to come to that wasn't riddled with problems, but was riddled with love that we weren't receiving.

And he is like, I think I was worried it would shape him into somebody that I wouldn't recognize, but I see my brother now and he's almost 30 years old and he is the best, smartest, greatest, kindest, most generous, some sex of religion described to certain ideologies that I don't believe in here or there, like whether it's lack of equality in marriage or things like that. And that's not, of course, that is not all religion. But some churches might believe in that. I was worried those things would start to go in my brother's brain.

And then I realized, like, oh, religion is not one size but it's all. And my brother has shaped religion into something that just fully and completely benefits him and makes him whole because he utilizes to be a better person every day. I didn't, I thought religion was like there for the vulnerable, but not in the way that I understood how it was there for the vulnerable. I just thought it was there to like attach on to you because it needed more of you. But it just gave. So I, I've, I've understood, I've not myself gravitated towards any religion yet, but I understand opening up your mind to, hey, this thing out there can actually, give me something positive. I've just never in my life been able to access positivity until now.

And once you access it, you can understand why other people find it in different spaces. So I'm really grateful for whoever my brother is and whatever religion made him into, as a man I see today, I am like, hell yes, no pun intended. I love that kid. Yeah. It's an interesting dilemma with religion and spirituality of like finding faith. You know, amazing grace, I was lost. Now I'm found that oftentimes people get religion, you know, in foxholes. Totally. And when they're at their most vulnerable, I know that I did when I was really suffering

and struggling with mental health crises in my 20s, the only way I thought I was going to get out was through exploring faith and spirituality and kind of getting right with God. and it took me many, many years of unpacking that to kind of find my path. But in a lot of ways, I'm grateful for that. Because I think if everything is just going great in your life, you don't have any need to, why, you know, why worry about God or soul or death of the afterlife or moral choices or any of it? It's like, hey, I'm just going to live a good life and be happy and love the people I'm with. And, you know, life's pretty good.

I'm bupah bupah and and so it is, does religion pray on the vulnerable? Kind of. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Right. Yeah, I think that is, it was really hard for me to think that way when I felt like everyone had bad motives. You know, my own parents were doing things that hurt me. So how could I look at religion and not assume the worst of it? That's what I was doing in every scenario.

And then once I stopped assuming the worst in every scenario, once I reached, realize the universe wasn't out to get me, which I realized in part by sharing my story. And if I thought the universe is out to get me, then how is it out to get everybody? Everyone can relate to a piece of what I've been able to share. And that meant to me that the universe wasn't conspiring against me if all these people could relate. And so now I no longer look at like the universe as somebody that's an entity trying to harm me. I look at it as like, what if I can look at it differently? What if I know that I could get there and I can say, no, I'm going to, I'm going to be positive today. I'm going to actually, I would be laughing at myself if I heard

myself on this podcast a few years ago, but I want to be the person that's like manifesting things now because it's helped other people. And why did I deny that help for so long? And so now I can do that. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thanks. Thanks, Holly. Thank you, Rain. One thing we ask every guest on Soul Boom is their definition of the word soul. Got anything for me? I think soul is reconciling parts of yourself that it's okay to feel, like being okay at peace with feeling something negative alongside something positive. And I think I look at soul because I've dealt with so much death in my life. And I talked about this earlier, but finding peace with death was like rattled my brain for a long time. I was like, what do you mean? I'm happier now that my parents are dead. How is that possible? I love them. And I would get mad at myself for that a long time. I wouldn't express that to anybody. I'm not going to tell people that my life is easier because my dad is dead. Like, I love that guy. But realizing that those two things can exist at the same time and that I can thrive if I access that and know that like death and life, you know, peace can come from death.

gratitude can come from the worst moments of your life. Like, the duality of life and finally being able to be a little bit more in control of what I want to manifest and be positive about has just allowed me to look at humans differently and not assume the worst of everybody and go, okay, everyone's really complicated. Everyone's like, everyone's messed up. Everyone's a darkly messed up, beautiful portrait of a human. but when you're only on the receiving end of the consequences of people, you have a hard time seeing that. When you're able to start building your own life, I think that's when I was able to say, like, okay, this is life for Holly now, untithered to anybody else.

What does that look like? And it looks like me accepting that my parents did things I don't like, but I still love them. How can I do that if I don't have a soul? Wow, that's beautiful. That's great. Thank you. I love that. I haven't heard that one before.

for? Well, I have to love my parents because I do love my parents. I don't have to because they're my parents, but I love them. Yeah. Even despite everything. And that has meant a lot to me to still be able to do that. To love them despite of their failings and inconsistencies. And then it allows us, it sounds so hokey, to love ourselves despite of our inconsistencies and failings. If we're going to dislike a lot about people that you grew up with, you're going to end up disliking a lot about yourself. Yeah. And that self-doubt is a terrible editor. And it will alter the way you view life. Yeah. And once I've been able to, like, tamper that voice down of self-doubt, I can accept my flaws a lot. Yeah. Better. Yeah. And you have a lot of them.

Flaws? Yeah. I mean, have you heard those jokes? Terrible. Whoa. Holly, thanks for coming on Solv. Thanks so much, Rain. Thanks. Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.