456 episodes listed below
Getting-older laughs with real emotional utility.
Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is a chatty, affectionate show about aging, family systems, sleep, ADHD, and staying funny when life gets complicated. The episodes move from household jokes to earnest interviews without sanding off the mess.
PRESS PLAY
Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is a getting-older comedy-and-care show that treats aging as a shared condition, not a crisis. It is funny first. Then it gets sincere quickly. Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness use the familiar stuff of family life, sleep, birthdays, paperwork, forgotten ages, school-night events, and body quirks to reach bigger conversations about how people actually cope. The show’s sweet spot is emotional translation. ADHD becomes scaffolding, systems, perfectionism, and love languages. Autism is discussed through independence, friendship, family support, and the patience it can take for children to learn in their own time. Sleep is not just a wellness topic; it becomes anxiety, routine, and the small victory of making it through the night. Grief and dementia show up without turning the room solemn. Kate Bowler’s conversation about joy gives the show one of its clearest modes: something can hurt badly and still contain a bright, surprising moment. Political division gets handled through Roy Cooper’s language of decency, policy, health care, and the exhausting work of consensus. The show keeps returning to the household scale of big ideas. It asks what helps when the diagnosis arrives late, when a parent needs care, when a child needs more time, when a relationship needs systems, or when getting older feels both absurd and clarifying. The rhythm is informal, with banter, callbacks, listener notes, voicemail invitations, and bits that sound carried over from a long-running family conversation. Still, the episodes are not just personality chatter. They are guided by a steady instinct for practical reassurance. Laugh Lines works best for listeners who like their advice human-sized, funny, emotionally honest, and close enough to the kitchen table to be useful.
Made for: For adults navigating getting older, family, parenting, ADHD, sleep worries, caregiving, and aging parents. It especially suits listeners who want warmth and practical language without a polished self-help tone.
What sets it apart: The show turns expert and guest conversations into everyday family systems, then keeps the humor in the room. Its mix of teasing partnership, listener touchpoints, and candid ADHD and caregiving talk makes serious subjects feel approachable.
Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. Laugh Lines is all about aging better together and being able to laugh about getting older. The show features prominent experts, listener call-ins, and hilarious segments including “Are We Too Old For…” and “Gen Z Slang of the Week.” Kim and Penn Holderness are award-winning online content creators known for their original music, song parodies, comedy sketches, and weekly podcasts. Their videos have resulted in over two billion views and over nine million followers since 2013. Penn and Kim are also authors of the New York Times Bestselling Book, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) T…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Candid host banter turns ADHD, teenage emotion, and everyday family friction into recognizable, practical conversation.
Kim and Penn Holderness turn family life into lively conversation, moving between personal stories, playful disagreement, and questions that make emotional patterns easier to recognize.
Kim and Penn make paperwork sound like a love language, if yours has become a household negotiation.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tanner Smith brings everyday independence and hard-day advice into a warm conversation about autism, inclusion, and family support.
Kim and Penn Holderness keep the conversation with Tanner Smith warm, practical, and close to home, letting autism, inclusion, and growing independence come through in everyday terms.
ADHD, relationships, and the everyday work that makes care visible.
This episode centers on ADHD, relationships, and the practical work of keeping life organized. It stays close to paperwork, correcting a name on forms, and a 15-minute-a-day admin routine, while treating acts of service as one way a partner can show love through the details.
Kate Bowler turns joy into something sturdier than a slogan.
Kate Bowler's visit centers on a simple, stubborn idea: joy can surface in grief, boredom, or even a hospital room, and it does not wait for life to be tidy.
A candid, buoyant look at how ADHD can hide in plain sight.
Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness shape the episode around a diagnosis that finally gave Kim's experience a name after years of being told she was simply anxious.
A grounded politics conversation about health care, decency, and the hard work of consensus.
Roy Cooper keeps the focus on practical politics: helping working North Carolinians get health insurance, including the story of someone who realized she was finally covered and broke into tears.
A poolside comedy detour turns summer routines into a warm check-in on family momentum and overwhelm.
Summer starts in loose, familiar territory: a song debate about 1969, a quick Wikipedia aside, and Kim Holderness and Ben Holderness settling into pool-season comedy.
A grounded talk about teen anger, sarcasm, and the relief of finally naming them.
This episode works best when Kim and Penn Holderness and Dr. Lisa Damour get into teen emotions, especially how anger shifts from childhood into adolescence.
Builder stories behind practical innovation.
Wellness advice with beauty-world practicality.
Root-cause health conversations for longer living.
Longevity science, slowed down and made practical.
Root-cause health, explained at clinical speed.
Kim and Penn Holderness discuss how summer has changed, focusing on modern parenting challenges like screen time and college application stress.
Ben Holderness prepares for his first colonoscopy while discussing colorectal cancer risks and prevention with advocate Brooks Bell.
Kim and Penn Holderness interview Dr.
["Tanner Smith, a 27-year-old South Carolina native from Love on the Spectrum, tells Kim and Penn Holderness that his joy comes from friends, family, and God.", "He says autism makes his brain learn differently, but he also says \"it might take time for their children to learn, but they'll learn\" when talking to parents.", "Tanner walks through his daily routine of waking at 6, working until 1, doing workouts with Zach, and using Instacart check-ins for groceries and bathroom supplies.", "The conversation also covers dinosaurs, axe throwing, a plan to move to Columbia at 35, and Midge's work on Wable, an app for friendship, romance, and jobs in the neurodivergent community."]
Kim Holderness says turning 50 did not bring calm, because the year included an ADHD diagnosis, Lola's first year of college, and Penn's ongoing Alzheimer's planning.
["Kate Bowler defines joy as a \"brief, enlivening, soul-enlarging moment\" and pushes back on the idea that joy can be chosen on command.", "Kim and Ben Holderness spend the conversation on Bowler's idea of \"the ache,\" which she ties to a stage four cancer diagnosis at 35, unfinished relationships, and the limits of gratitude lists.", "Bowler contrasts happiness with joy, says joy can show up in hospitals and funerals, and argues that routine, fear, and self-help culture shrink the space for it.", "The conversation ends with a practical frame from Immanuel Kant: find someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."]
Kim and Penn Holderness celebrate Kim's 50th birthday with humor and reflections on aging.
Kim and Ben Holderness discuss sleep struggles and introduce Dr.
A humorous conversation between two ADHD individuals and a guest about the emotional aspects of ADHD, including mood rings and dysregulation.
Kim Holderness says a new therapist pushed her toward ADHD screening at almost 50, after years of anxiety and OCD labels, and the tests led to a diagnosis she did not expect.
Roy Cooper tells Kim and Penn Holderness that North Carolina's bipartisan Medicaid expansion gave "700,000 more North Carolinians" health insurance after years of resistance.
Dr.
Dr.
A Gen Zer discusses the irony of a smooth Carvana sale and then promotes Gab's Tech in Steps as a solution to youth mental health issues caused by social media.