This Is Who We Are

♪ Make it a bad place ♪ It's Michael Jackson.

♪ For you and for me and me and Ty human race ♪

♪ There are people dying ♪ Hey everybody, I'm Kim Holderness. ♪ Enough for the living ♪ Welcome to LaFly. ♪ This is for you and for me ♪

I feel like they should be the intro of the show. Okay? ♪ We get older, everything ♪ ♪ Capital wrinkles, that's okay ♪ ♪ Here we're laughing when we age ♪

♪ Life is like a comedy stage ♪

“♪ And that's what we got there, friends ♪”

Hey, it's LaFly and it's what's up. Sorry, we were just singing Heal the World. If you know what Heal the World is, and you know the lyrics. This podcast is for you.

If you're middle school, high school honors chorus was asked to perform this at a benefit. Hunter went to Jordan.

Okay, so stop, stop, stop, stop.

Okay, so there was a regular chorus. Yep. And then there was an honors chorus. So what did, what sort of special privileges did the honors chorus get?

Yeah, so a lot of Corio. A lot of Corio. We went to visit our sister city. Where did it? Durham, England.

Oh. We also went to Bethelona. Bethelona. On our senior year trip with where our teacher was like this,

“we're gonna go there in the spirit of peace.”

And like we're gonna blow their minds. Every show we went to, they were like, "What in the world? Do all of that, Mike." You just made them Australia?

There was some cocky accent in Durham. So they weren't impressed with you? They were very sweet. But they're like, "Oh, poor guys." My favorite memory of that entire trip

was we all stayed with families. Okay. And there was this one kid who was like our age who like we stayed with. And the parents tried to cook like American food,

like the lady from better off dead. Like, you know, front stressing. And so they had like hamburgers and hot dogs in the sun sat down for dinner and he went, "Oh, it's everything on the table."

So exactly like that. We add a family quote that all the time. Oh, it's everything on the table. In my buddy's David and Matt were like,

“"We couldn't laugh because we were trying to be polite."”

Aren't those high school trips the best? Where are we going with this show? Anyway, guys, hurry up. Isn't that like a weir, like how are you doing? The world seems very, very heavy right now.

It's, and I feel like we're, wait. And transparency, we're recording this after a really violent weekend in one of our great cities in America in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And all eyes are on Minneapolis right now. So it is very weird to be trying to do our job, which is to make comedy when we are as humans and citizens, just like very upset and depressed. I've been eating nothing but gummy bearers, you guys.

I can confirm that I tried to get you lunch yesterday. And I was like, don't waste your money on a salad, get me gummy bearers. And then you sent me a picture of the specific gummy bears that you wanted.

And then I went and I got you a damn salad because it's something else and some gummy bears. Yeah, and there was like a little emergency with other sold out, but he found some at the checkout, but I might don't waste your money on broccoli.

Just give me gummy bearers. Yeah, so that's where we are. People, people, grieve in different ways and people cope in different ways and yours is. - Through junk food. - Yeah.

I will say that it's hard, but I hope today we can sort of shed some light on what this processes, it might be a little meta, this conversation we're gonna have. - It'd be very meta. And I would love your opinion.

You guys always give such good feedback.

We also have Sam and Ann Marie here. It's good to have you guys here because this is gonna be the kind of podcast that we normally do, but it's about the world, but it's also a lot about us. And so be patient because we're in kind of it.

We're in a situation I bet you some people can relate to, but it's on a little bit of steroids. - Right, for the last couple shows, we've really danced around some current events and this week it seemed like

the journey on the TV was really hard. So I wrote something on our social media. I just was feeling very desperate for hope. There's like 19 monks traveling from Texas to DC, they're walking, it's a 2300 mile journey.

They're walking. And if they come through your community, I beg you to go witness this, because I literally put my shoes on my coat on, I was like, I'm just gonna go.

And I went downtown and I stood there shoulder to shoulder with everybody and I watched them pass by. And when I tell you, it was so moving.

They were, it was just so quiet.

It was just so quiet.

“And just to be around and being community”

with people who also want that sort of peace, we followed them to the Capitol, like we walked to the Capitol. - I was there with you. - By the way, follow, just real quick.

If you're gonna follow the monks, like, - Dude, they're fast. - When you're walking shoes, they walk, I would say they walk at a 5.5 clip. - They are, I think, they listen.

And they have to carry anything, they, like, with them. And they walk so quickly, you guys. (laughing) - I was sort of like, a like jog, actually.

- You know what I mean? You're trying to, like, to your point and enjoy the silence. We're like, everyone that was waiting was gabbing. It was like a Christmas parade.

And then they got there and it went,

like, everyone, it was amazing.

The reverence in the dead silence. And that peace was, like, that was very empowering. And that wasn't coming from them.

“That was coming from what they're doing to us.”

Like, zero, quite. - So yeah, no, feeling moved by that, I wrote a post about that on our Monday social media. I shared some pictures. And it got a lot of feedback, let's say.

And I would say, 92% of the comments were very hopeful. Some people had no idea about the walk and they were just feeling the need for some hope. I would say, would you say, 8%, maybe 10% of the comments were really hard to read.

- Yeah. - About 10%, like, I think there's a, we'll get to it later. I think there were three buckets. There was, thank you for this. Thank you for giving us your feelings.

Thank you for sharing. Thank you for bringing this to light. And then there was like a minority of like, you're not, thanks, but you're not saying enough. - Right. - Like, you should be saying more.

- Yes. - And then the other 8% were. - We'll share some of them here. Stick to comedy, no one wants to hear your politics. Stick to being funny, your political thoughts are whack.

Just keep posting funny posts and songs. Please don't use your account for political purposes. Just be like Elvis or Johnny Carson.

“- Yeah, I remember that specific note was Elvis”

and Johnny Carson never said anything

and they are legends. - And then somebody wrote sounds like Penn needs to write a song for you called "Get a grip." There was also, and I was trying to find it, there was a guy who came on he goes, "Now you've gone too far."

Unfollowing. So that's where I just, first of all, unfollow, please, like do protect your piece unfollow. But I was talking about a peaceful moment in my life and that was too political.

- Yeah. - That was too extreme. - Can I just kind of give a little bit more context on what it was that you posted? 'Cause I think that's important for people to know if they didn't see the post.

It wasn't militant, it wasn't extremist, it had no feelings of retribution. I don't know, did you say, did you type the word ice anywhere in your post? - No. - Okay, so it was,

you were just talking about the juxtaposition of what was going on in Minnesota. What was going on? I think that's all that you said. Like the violence in Minnesota and the peaceful presence

of these monks. So to me, I think you have to take an extra step to feel like you're taking a shot at someone when you read that post.

- Do, is it worth reading that post for too long? - And if you're by the way, we are on YouTube, if you're listening, and if you're not driving and you can sit still, YouTube's a great place to be 'cause you can pop up some of the pictures.

Then you can also see us in that, I'll make you laugh. - That might make you wanna, and follow again. Okay. - Double unfollow. How many times can I unfollow you?

- I woke up this weekend in my insides felt like they were vibrating. That low grade hum of anxiety that tells you something's wrong even before you scroll. A lot of you, by the way, this is me talking,

a lot of you related to that. Horrific violence in Minneapolis and across the country, unprecedented division that keeps pitting neighbors against each other. It's loud, relentless, it feels exhausting.

I rage cried. I screamed at my television, I needed something. I needed hope. I can confer that all of these things were happening. At the same time, 19 monks on day 91

of a walk for peace from Texas to Washington, D.C., 2300 mile walk. We're making a path through our city, even though the temperatures were dropping and the ice storm was coming, I needed to witness this.

As they passed us, it was quiet. The silence was stunning, no chanting, no signs demanding attention, just slow, deliberate steps, and the sound of feet on pavement. And without being told, we followed them to our state capital. I felt my shoulders drop, my breathing slowed,

who want the same thing.

“Peace for our world, for our neighborhoods and for ourselves.”

I wasn't alone.

I don't know how to fix what feels broken right now,

but for a moment, I felt hope. Sending you that feeling now is you read these words. That's what she wrote. Listen, we know you come here for comedy, but we hope you stay for the humanity.

We are human beings first. We are parents first, we are married first, and asking us to ignore what's happening in our country, and in our world is just a bridge too far. But we take it very seriously what we do

because when we run into, when we meet you guys in the airports or at Target, and I think the first thing, and even there right in front of the capital, people were grabbing arms and saying,

"Thank you for making us laugh, thank you for this." And that was, and I have to say there was a comment on YouTube that kind of hit me too.

This woman wrote, "I'd never seen one of your podcasts

before this popped up randomly today. It was perfectly timed. I had my first panic attack in a year, and I was looking for something funny."

“- Yeah. - And so we take funny seriously.”

- We do, and so this is, we're gonna invite you guys to come into this. It's not a debate to the conversation that Kim and I, and that our team members have, anytime something like this happens, right?

How do we serve you in the right way? And one possibility is exactly what Kim did, putting a message of peace and hope onto the internet. And the result is largely favorable, but then, I mean, 8%'s not nothing,

because millions of people saw this. A fair amount of anger, frustration, and really this underlying message of just stick to what you do best. I want to at least consider what that means

and what that says, because those people who came up to us, none of them were saying, "Thank you for the stand that you're taking right now." What they were saying was,

"Thank you for making us laugh during COVID." "Thank you for giving us a diversion." "Thank you for giving us a reason to smile and be hopeful." But it's hard, Kim. I know, it's hard for me to just do that

when these things are going on. - So Monday,

“I think Penn and I were in a position that”

we were being told to kind of like shut up and dance. And so we did,

what we always do and what heals us,

which is create something. Very quickly, Penn wrote a song called, "Don't shoot people in the face." - Head.

- Head. - Don't shoot people in the head. - They rhyme better with other things. - And the vision was, I would be tap dancing.

And the setup was like, "Okay, you guys just want us to tap dance and shut up and dance." I would be tap dancing and he would be singing the song. We were very motivated and Penn had,

he said, "We need to do." Because this could be for the people in Minneapolis, this could be incredibly disrespectful. So we sent it to a dear friend, Sharon McMahon, who is very active on the internet.

She's from Minnesota and she's like, "Post it now, get it out there now." And so-- - She said more than that. - Yeah, she said a lot. But then Penn's like,

"We need to run this by our kids." - We did. We also ran up by other Minnesota friends of ours. So we ran up by another Minnesota family and then we ran up by our kids.

- And the other Minnesota family was like pause. Like you need to, it's, you hit the nail in the head, but like this could be not taken the way you want it to be taken. And then whenever our children loved it

and was singing it all day, and then whenever our children said, "Hey, I would feel unsafe walking around knowing that there are people who are very much on the other side." And so at that point it's done.

Like if it made our children feel unsafe walking around in real life. - Yeah, that became a decision like, okay, we're not gonna do this. I'm glad we ran this by people,

but you did say you were like, "I've got this platform and I can't do anything with it." And you verbalize that. And I know that was frustrating for you, right? - Yes.

And listen, this is not like a poor me thing at all. I just feel like as a citizen of this country, if it is, it's hard to have this big microphone and I can only use it in one way. And I felt like in that way,

So then you had a nice panic attack, which was fun. And then 'cause that rarely happens. And so it was like, you know what, we're not in a position to be.

“- Yeah, so my panic attack was just different.”

It was weird. So for me, it feels like a heart attack, it's cute. - That's cute. - That's cute. - It's adorable.

- It's cute. It happens very quickly. Feel like I'm gonna throw up. I have to curl up in a ball. Like I gag 'cause breathing is hard.

And then doctors let me know if this is not a panic attack. Maybe it's not. And then I get over like the hump and I'm fine. - Yeah, I mean, I'm not the panic attack, but at least I don't know.

- Maybe I just had to fart or something, I don't know. - Maybe. - Yeah, I don't know. But it was bad. And mine was just I was 'cause you

to always talk about vibrating before it happens.

And mine was thinking, I started playing forward, putting this stuff out. I started playing, and this, like I,

“the stick to comedy crew, that eight percent,”

they generally say things very respectfully. - Oh, I think I did, the next one. - The next four, I'm saying four the most part. - Okay. - They're like, look, there's people who are rude all the time,

but even in this subsection, there are people who are, they're like just rooting for us to stay in our lane so that they can keep watching our videos, because if we leave our lane, they're gonna have to unfollow, right?

So a lot of them ask nicely, but that's not what I was hearing. I was hearing, even before our child said, like, I don't feel safe, that was, that was being played inside my head of me causing something

like that, or us causing something like that. By just riling anybody up. So I just started feeling, like I was inside that angry orb that's happening right now, and it just feeling like I was in there was enough

for me to have trouble breathing. - We decided, like, this is not it. We kind of take the ideas to the team, which is Sam and Emory, who we're here right now. We're like, what, what do we do?

And it was a lot of good questions of like, what's the goal? Like, what is the goal of what we wanna do? Do we just wanna plant a flag? Do we just wanna like say where we stand

just for the sake of saying where we stand as that advanced, does that help anybody? Because the content we make, we try, we have sort of an internal, we have questions we ask ourselves,

we never punch down, we only make fun of ourselves,

or we try to only make fun of ourselves. And we wanna give you permission to laugh. We are in a new territory here. We're like in a new, and so we sort of, we went through the process of writing,

and for whatever reason we felt like it needed to be songs,

“because that's what we, I think what we're known for.”

So Emory wrote a couple. We went through the exercise. We're like, what is the thing that we could hold her nice? - That's a new verb. - Hold her nice, and Emory wrote,

a couple parodies. Do you wanna read us some of the lyrics? - More on this after these words. - We did go through the exercise. I think it's important to go through the exercise,

especially in the creative space. If something's on your mind, you have to get it out of your head, and put it on paper, right? - Okay, I'm a millennial, and flight pole sida,

I think is a really fun song. So one of the ones I wrote was more around. (singing in foreign language) - Yes, yeah. (singing in foreign language)

- I'm speaking to sure people know what that is. - Yeah, yeah, wake up every morning to a breaking news alert. But I have to go to work, pretending that I am happy. So a lot of it was like, it is hard to pretend. Like, they're small talk, we go on zooms all day with brands.

How was your weekend? It's like, do we lie? Do we say, hey, I just watched a video of a man being murdered. Like, go on. There was a, we didn't start the fire parody about how it's,

you know, it's only January, it's been three weeks, and the world is bleak. There was a nine to five parody. (singing in foreign language) - To a tragic headline, but we have to pretend

that we're fine, swish mile and not and try to come to life. (singing in foreign language) - I mean, I sort of loved that. - Try and to survive. - True, it's only January trying to survive

things are feeling scary.

- So we spent hours, first of all, thank you.

Like, we said, we're like, let's all take a half hour. She came back to the table with three parody artists. So we went through the exercise, which is important.

Is this making light of something that's deeply,

like deeply serious? If you were on the ground in Minnesota and you hear this song, do you feel like, this is super performative, like, we just got,

“and I think what we decided at the end of the day”

was like, let's let it ride. Let's just, we'll figure it out. And if I could another, like, if a kind of a wave of inspiration hits us where we feel like we can create something that is helpful

and relatable than we would, to be clear, I love all of you here, I love that you're listening, I love that you follow us, but if what we do is upsetting to you because of what our beliefs are and you need to unfollow us, that is,

I'm fine with that. 8% of you were very surprised when I posted it about monks. And so we did get, you know, like 5,000 comments, I think it was, it's just time we reintroduce ourselves. So that if this interests you, you can pull up a seat

and hang out, if this is very offensive, what we're about to say, you can decide that, you know, to protect your piece and go elsewhere. So because you know me, I love a list.

As a business, we have these two things we never punch down

and we wanna give you permission to laugh. As a family, like, as human beings, we've always taught our kids resilience and hard work, but it goes deeper than that. And so I think you came for comedy,

we hope you stay for the humanity, but as a family, I just feel like these are, these are things that are very important in pen, I would love you to add. Pens to I was a pastor, we were both raised in the church, but we were taught about the Jesus who flipped tables

in a temple. Like we were taught about Jesus who challenged leaders and the only Bible quote I know by heart is from Matthew, which is whatever you do for the least of these you do for me.

“And so that was, that was the only thing”

that our my parents really put into my head. - That's a good one, yeah, on my dad's bulletin

of his church, it was Mike a six eight.

- Which is, is it okay if I get half right? Like what is the good Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. So like that's why I like the monk so much, man.

- Yeah. - They were so humble. They did you like, it wasn't a sermon, but they started talking to us. And it was like honestly super apolitical.

It was breathing exercise. - It was breathing exercises, which were like, I apparently need them 'cause I had a panic attack yesterday. So that would have been useful,

but I didn't have the, I just couldn't do it on that day, I was too late. And then like talking about,

“it's still funny that I heard him talk about the internet.”

I was like, this is gonna be interesting monk talk about the internet. He's like, yeah, the internet is causing everyone to have reactions. - Yeah.

- And with every reaction, there is suffering. So like their like stoic kind of vibe is just like, don't react. - I think it's very, they have a very, they have a really active social media team.

And I was like, pan, I wonder what their and if you was like interviewing for their social media. But he did, just so you know, the monk that was speaking, he went through a breathing exercise and he made us all do it.

And I will challenge you at home, not if you're driving. See, breathe in for one, you breathe out for one. You breathe in for two, you breathe out for two. You do this until seven and then back down. And I think you do that seven times.

And then he joked if you lose count, you have to start all over again. But it was, and he kind of walked us through it. If that energy could be contagious throughout the world, it was so peaceful, it was so peaceful.

Okay, next, we believe people can change their minds. That's growth, not hypocrisy. For example, I, Kim, now fully agree that Dijard is a Christmas movie. People evolve.

- That's a big. - I am. - You step for you. - I know. - I will change.

- And, and I agree with this and is one of the reasons why I don't know if I share your exact same views about if you don't like us on follow, so you're later by. Like I want people around who disagree with me. Like I want to have, I want to have intelligent debate

and I hope we still have it. - Yes, and to be clear, I want that too. Like when you're talking about like specific policy, I definitely, I, I craved to hear why I, I'm missing something when we're talking about like human values.

Like that's where I kind of shut down.

for exercising their right as citizens

wasn't controversial. Like that literally is a controversial statement right now. And we missed the time, along those same lines, we believe access to food, safety, and health care shouldn't be controversial either.

- Happy to debate you about how people get that food and how it affects our budget and everything else. But yeah, that's not the baseline. - At the baseline, like, let's feed our country. - Yeah, let's close feed and close our country.

- Yeah, we believe laughter and compassion are not opposites. Sometimes humor is how we survive and sometimes it's how we tell the truth. Yes, I, I, I, I feel like that's the struggle of our team right now is like finding humor

to tell our truth. We don't believe Quote Stay Out of it is the same thing as being kind

when people in our communities are being hurt.

Sometimes silence can keep you complicit. And so sometimes speaking up is the kind of thing to do, we are trying to balance that. And we have taught our children to stand up for their friends who are being marginalized.

And both of my children have been called out and then secretly like rewarded by teachers for standing up for friends. So, one of them battle a mouthy. That's okay.

Kim is super awesome when like young children get mouthy. - Well, I will say our daughter's going to law school and it is the best use of her mouthyness. - Her mouthyness. - And if it's great, she went off on the kid.

It was great though, but then she like the teachers like, okay, we can't really do that, but it was awesome. Okay, bottom line, we'll keep making you laugh. We promise, but we won't pretend the world isn't happening while we do.

We're here for joy, for laughter, and for standing with people who need it. Sometimes on the same post, if you're here welcome, if these values resonate with you, pull up a chair, we're all still learning, growing, and trying

our best to love our neighbors well. If that resonates with you, we'd love to have you here.

“- I just want to add, 'cause like, what do we do now?”

That's the point. We started by talking about what this week has been, how we felt, how we wanted to represent our feelings through our channels and on which channel. We played just some stuff that we tried.

We explained you why that ended up not making it onto the space. There's like safety issues. There's the issue of us putting something out there and then really all of the activity being underneath us,

which can become its own sort of powder keg, right? So there's just this question of how to move forward, like what do we do? And I'm gonna read a YouTube comment. - Oh my God, if we picked to the same YouTube.

- Jennifer Turner, I picked 64. - Oh, you did? Oh, did you? - No, you do it, you do it. But we picked, oh my gosh.

- This is my peer, you're gonna start together. - Think top girl, I have been trying to figure this out. I've been trying to figure this out

“and I think Jennifer figured it out for me, God bless her,”

because all of what we just said, right? Like people say thanks for keeping us happy and this sad depressing world and they seem to like us keeping them happy without, like saying maybe don't show people in the head,

I get that, like that was an interesting experiment.

Here's what Jennifer wrote.

I thought I have as a performing artist at this time in history, making art even silly art is an act of resistance. Joy is an act of resistance. The bad guys are counting on us being so exhausted

by their relentless piling on that we feel guilty caring for ourselves or taking any kind of rest, physical, cognitive emotional. Because if we forget what happiness feels like, we no longer care about the right to pursue it.

Jennifer should write a book. - I feel like Jennifer, we need to put that if anybody does embroidery embroidery, like I'd love that on a pillow. - Yeah, I read that and I start crying

and then of course my mom had commented underneath it. My mom is our number one fan. - She also quoted Dan Savage. - What did she say? - Dan Savage said during the darkest days

of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning. We protested in the afternoon and we danced at night. The dances, what kept us in the fight because it was the dance that we were fighting for. This hit me like a ton of bricks 'cause--

- Oh my god. - I don't even think Jennifer like knows what we're going to right now

“which is this entire thing that we talked about, right?”

And this is very helpful to me because I want what I do to have meaning and to have purpose. - Yeah. - And sometimes that's just joy, right?

- Yeah. - But I also want you to be able to say what's on your mind and most importantly babe, I want you to feel safe to say it.

that the doomsday clock. - Okay. Oh, so I saw this post.

More on this after these works.

“- The doomsday clock follows world events and issues”

and adjusts it to how many minutes until midnight, midnight being the destruction of our humanity and our race. And it's kind of gone like this in this and this. And for example, Sam and I looked at it and what was it?

It was like Cuban missile crisis. - Oh wow. - It got like low as bad, high as good. So Cuban missile crisis right there in the 60s. And we'll put this up for those you're watching YouTube.

Then they solved the Cuban missile crisis goes back up. There were some disarmament talks that happened right that helped out. And then you know where AIDS is? - Where?

- It's like right around 1983, 1984. - On January 27th, 2026, the doomsday clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight. The closest the clock has ever been to midnight and it's history. All I have to say is read the room.

Okay, maybe that happened. Maybe you don't need to tell us about it.

Like, I was, I didn't need to hear the doomsday clock.

- I rejected that. - So I'm trying to make you feel better, like just with science, that it's like, it gets closer to midnight every day. - Also, they're in it out there, I'm ready.

I cut enough. (laughing) - We're back to, so when? - I mean, - When the rest of the world is like we're in the fight

or flight part, like who's gonna survive? - Not me. - He's just gonna do this. - He's gonna like, trust fall into nothing. - Yeah.

- But actually, I had a therapist tell me that they've added, you know how it's flight, flight, oh my God. - Flight, flight, flight, or freeze. - Yeah.

- Therapists are now adding feed as in you eat, instead of dealing with the room. - I do it. - Okay, but, come on, this is like-- - I don't know if that's like--

- So you're saying-- - Do you understand the room? - The room is bad. - Well, fight or flight is an actual thing that happens when like a tiger is coming after you.

It's your genetic code-- - My genetic, if a tiger caveman was like, oh look, they're mushroom and just eats a mushroom instead of like just freezes up. - I will say, my instincts.

“I've never been, I think I need the number of your therapist”

because if a tiger was chasing me, I wouldn't look for gummy bears and I feel like that would tell the or a cookie cake. - Okay, I got it. - What?

- The original is fight flight freeze or fun. Which is trying to appease or please the threat to avoid conflict. - Yeah, no. - Which you can, caveman, like--

- Oh, you can imagine that. - Yep. - And now it's been changed to feed as like our modern day. - Got it. - We're like our modern day fun.

- So you're appeasing your own self by eating instead of-- - Yeah. - Okay.

- Well, if it's got all the same first letter,

it must be making sense. - I will say, on last week's podcast, we talked about how I have been adding a birthday cake, a cookie cake, to the shopping cart every week. And when you have adult money,

you can just buy a birthday cake. And for that reason, I'm retapy. (laughs) - Oh my gosh. - Wow.

“- For those listening, I'm holding a happy birthday cookie cake.”

- It's no one's birthday. - It is no one's birthday. - No one's birthday. - I'm not saying that eating cookie cakes is gonna solve anything.

I don't think we get lost in this. I think we keep up the fight, but I also think we could have a snack. - Also wanna make it very clear, we don't ever eat the cake.

We just take little pensions of the side of it. That's not eating it, 'cause we didn't cut an actual slice. We just take a little tiny bit, so we don't ever eat it.

- Oh, that's so cute. That's cute. Oh, this is cute that she brought a knife. - Of course. - Do you think I use a knife?

- A knife? - No, no, this is what I do. - Oh, it smells so good. - Also, I just take up the middle stays there until the very end.

- We eat around it. - Yeah. - Okay. - Show what we mean, this isn't eating. You just 'cause you didn't even cut it all the way.

- Look, this isn't even a true bite. - It's not, she's not eating it. - It's not even a real bite. - That's not, yeah. - You don't even have to do that.

Okay, pass it around, pass it around. When I mentioned the cookie cake, we did get a funny laugh lines email. It's so funny. And we have to show that this is gonna be a YouTube thing.

Sarah from Alabama. - Hold on, he's stealing icing from other parts of the cake. - Sarah from Alabama sent us an email. She had to bring a cake to church, but she didn't have time to make anything.

So she ran into her local grocery store for God or glasses though, and picked up the cake because it had a nice fall design and a lot of icing. Sarah, I feel you.

You've gotta get the cake for the most icing. A few minutes later, she got to church and was about to drop it off and looked at it and it said, "Oh my God, Becky, look at that butt."

I would pay double for that.

- Right.

“- In the next coming weeks, I don't know what we're gonna,”

what's gonna happen with this channel. I can, I need personally in my soul, comedy. And I love the process of making it. So we're gonna be funny. I just don't know when or how, right?

So hang out with us. We love that you're here, and typically, we end each podcast with Penn's Three Piece Nuggets. Meaning, we turn them into a nugget and he tells us the three,

just really profound things he's learned. You're hoping for a nugget sponsor for that. No nugs. - Well, Big Nug is like, that's enough not to crack. (laughs)

- Now we're gonna call it, I think, 'cause of our cookie cake, you know, our propensity. So we can call it slices of slices, what we're gonna cut crumbs of wisdom. Where do we get to call our cookies?

- Slices of hope. - Yeah. - More souls of hope. - More souls of hope. - Yeah.

- Crumbles, crumbles of comedy.

“- Or are you trying to straight-ups look for crumbles?”

- Oh, crumbles, crumbles, crumbles, crumbles. - How do I, crumbles, crumbles, crumbles, crumbles. - Let's go crums, crumbles of hope. - No. - Or it's like what you learned, cookie, let's workshop this.

Could you guys also, we ask a lot of you, come up with a name for this segment of a cookie-themed thing about what Penn learned or made 'em off. - Is there, can we illiterate?

- Yeah. - Sure. - Crums of... - Concern. - Fantastic.

- Cutastrophe. - Crums of... - What's that sauce? - You know, why are all the seas bad things? There's gotta be a good sea.

- So wait, if it's a recap, what if it's just like a sweet recap? - A sweet... - What? - A bag of cookies.

- I'm only laughing, 'cause every immediately questioned herself after saying it, so her face was like... - Sounded better in my head. - What about sweet recap?

- Because it's the end, it's the dessert, it's like, that opens us up to ice cream sponsorship. - Penn's chunks. - Penn's chunks. That's what it is right now.

So T- - Low and chunks. - Low and chunks with Penn. So T-B-D on title. What is it? - Penn's chipnopsis.

(coughing) - My favorite so far. - That's gonna piss. - So my cookie now? - You're cookie.

- I'm a cookie. - Okay, so if I'm doing this, I'm like, eating my family. - No, don't, don't. (laughing)

- Here's the chipnopsis. Number one, doing comedy is not easy right now. It's just not. Like you meet Kim, Amory Sam, we can wake up

and have a million ideas and on a week like this,

it's just hard. And I bet in everybody's jobs, they have a week when it's just hard. Like being an alcohol company on January 2nd, like trying to sell something.

That's a tough week for you guys, right? Number two, when you are arguing or making a stand about anything right now, take a moment and try to have some empathy for the perspective of the person

with whom you were talking. Whether that's a woman or a person of color, or even a white man. And number three, sometimes bringing joy can be an act of protest,

“because that's what the people you're protesting against”

want to take away from you. Those are Penn's chip naps, it says, "Hey, we did it, y'all." This didn't come off as like, "Oh, porous, porous." Like our job is so hard. Our job is actually a joy and very fun to do.

And this is not like other people in this planet have actual problems. I hope people listening aren't, right, yeah, I think probably are. Okay.

Look, this is, so this podcast is our perspective, right? So maybe you can now see things from our perspective, whether it's just a weird, wack, bizarre perspective. Or I, I do think that other people are going to this too. - Well, I do know we've got a few messages.

I mean, nobody sees everything we do, nobody listens to everything we do besides my mom, a peg. But some people did messages saying, like why haven't you said anything, why haven't you said anything, that sort of, so maybe this is the answer why,

like we were saying things in our way. So, what's your real laugh lines? - Oh, the credits? - Yeah. - Laflines is written and produced by Kim Holderness.

That's me, Penn Holderness,

that's you and Amory Tap, you sit and never there.

With original music by Penn Holderness, it's filmed, edited and live produced by Sam Allen and hosted by Aidcast. Sam Allen is also sitting over there. As always, we love to hear from you.

Please write to us at podcast at the Holderness Family.com

- Oh, I don't have it memorized like you do. - Three, two, three, three, six, four, three, nine, two, nine and we'll talk to you soon on the Lafline.