Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness

All my life I’ve always been a rule follower. I don’t cut corners. I don’t take shortcuts. This week on The Amazing Race my rule following almost got the best of me. In a “needle in the haystack” challenge we had to turn over THOUSANDS of rocks in a coliseum to find a gold coin and get a clue. Despite having a head start, it took hours. It was a task that almost broke me. Hear more about what it w...

When intimidating headlines like “college admissions scandals” are swirling around, it seems like a perfectly natural reaction to feel overwhelmed and stressed out when applying to college is on the horizon. For us, having a high school aged daughter, the college application process has already been a topic of conversation in our home. We spoke to The College Essay Guy , Ethan Sawyer, and he told...

We did it. We survived another leg of The Amazing Race. Besides, “when do you go to the bathroom” the next most commonly asked question is “what do your kids think of all of this?” So when we sat down for this week’s recap of the 9th leg of the Amazing Race, we had some special guests. Lola and PC joined us for the first few minutes of our recap to share their reactions to this week’s episode. The...

This week we interviewed our Amazing Race friends, Sheri and Akbar Cook. We wanted to bring this to you because they are pretty amazing people and have such an inspiring story to tell. I’m going to tell you now, you’ll want to have some tissues on hand for this episode.  If you’re watching this season, Sheri and Akbar had some of my favorite moments of the season despite being eliminated at t...

I’ll admit that even though we’ve lived it, I get anxious watching myself on TV when The Amazing Race is airing. But one of my favorite things has been recording the recaps after the show airs to help process what things you see on screen and the emotions around the day. It feels good to talk about what happened and give context to what was going through our minds. In last night’s episode, we had...

When you've been with your person for 20 years, the hot and heavy dopamine of the early days tends to wear off. But luckily for us, I think the way Penn and I show love has improved. (There’s something special about knowing exactly how to love your person, right?) When you get older unsexy things can be sexy too. So in honor of Valentine's Day next week, we swap the five most unsexy things we find...

Hi, my name is Kim. I used to live with anxiety and depression. Now I don’t. I have just fundamentally changed my personality. It’s as simple as that. (Please roll your eyes at those previous statements.) One of the most common questions I get about The Amazing Race experience (besides “when do you pee?”) is “How has this experience changed you?” I haven’t answered it before because I wanted to le...

When we left for The Amazing Race, the biggest source of anxiety I had was the fact that we could not bring our phones with us. But not having screens ended up being our favorite part of the race experience. Once we got back home, we had a lot of catching up to do and found ourselves going in the other direction. We were on our screens ALL.THE.TIME. It felt like digital adultery spending more time...

Coming into The Amazing Race, I had made the decision I would do the “falling off of things” challenges. I would hate it. I would have tears in my eyes, but I would do it. It’s easy to say, of course, but when faced with having to bungee jump… I panicked. While I jumped, Penn panicked. The flood of emotions impacted the rest of our day (not in a good way.) We talked all about the jump (s...

Someone recently asked us, “What advice would you give to a newlywed couple?” and we realized... we had a lot to say. We’ve been married long enough that we have to do math in our heads to remember how long it’s been (it’s been 16 ¾ years). Going through all the things we would tell our newlywed selves refreshed strategies that have helped us be better at being married, too. We can’t go back and t...

For me, sometimes just showing up is a victory. Never has it been more true for me than showing up to start The Amazing Race, AGAIN. But we did it. After a 19 month pause in production, we restarted The Race. (SPOILER ALERT) In today’s recap we talk about our emotions going back, my mini-breakdown at a challenge and we chatted with our friends Moe Badger and Mike Norwood who, unfortunate...

This week we complete the second half of our interview with Ian Morgan Cron. We've never done this before, but there was so much good stuff that it had to be a two-part podcast. (And yes, we are asking Ian to bill us for the therapy session.) This week we dive into Kim's struggles as an Enneagram 1 and things get emotional. We also give an overview on all the enneagram types. Ian has released a wo...

Everyone has a story about what they were doing when the world shut down in 2020. Our story? Well, we finally get to tell you. We had just finished leg 3 of The Amazing Race in Glasgow, Scotland. (Spoiler Alert: We WON the leg, by the way!) In this week’s recap, we talk about what it was like on this leg of the Race and what was going through our minds when we learned that we’d be going home. Tell...

This week we had Ian Morgan Cron on our podcast to discuss his new book, The Story of You . It’s an enneagram-based book that not only talks about your type, but also the common broken childhood stories we tell ourselves and how we can write new ones. There was so much good stuff that we covered, we felt it had to be a two part podcast. In Part 1, we discussed Enneagram 7 (Penn) and how they can s...

Watching ourselves on The Amazing Race is supposed to be the fun part. We’ve already done all the work and we know how the story ends. What I didn’t account for is how watching the challenges would make my body re-live the stress and anxiety of the race all over again. [SPOILER ALERT] In week one, we discuss Penn’s ADHD… the blessing and the curse. It may have gotten us through the art puzzle in t...

Before Penn and I went on The Amazing Race, we trained and planned as much as we could. But another thing we did was talk about how we were going to talk to each other. The race can be a lot of pressure and we anticipated tensions to run high. As competitive as we planned to be on the show, our marriage is a priority. Penn and I talk this week about our tips for wartime vs peacetime conversations...

Penn and I couldn’t be more opposite when it comes to making and keeping resolutions. This week on the podcast we heard from all of you about how you keep resolutions. In this weird week between Christmas and New Year’s, it was motivating to get your take on how to make a New Year resolution a success, including not making them at all! (Thanks Gary.) We also had some fun with a TikTok comment we g...

This week we sit down to talk to Shawn Johnson and Andrew East about their transition from being professional athletes to content creators and everything in-between. Shawn and Andrew are so fun and have wisdom beyond their years. We talk about how they met, their take on youth sports, and how we all might jump into a zero-gravity jet! You can listen to their podcast (just nominated for a People's...

Penn and I both agreed that being on The Amazing Race was a bucket list item for us. It was a fun dream because in our minds there was a ZERO percent chance it would ever happen. Until it did. We’ve had to keep a secret for almost TWO YEARS that we were competing on The Amazing Race in Season 33. We left in February 2020 and we were in Europe as the world was shutting down. Earlier this year, we l...

Marriage isn’t always 50/50. In fact, in our marriage, there are times one partner is pulling the entire load. The last few weeks have been tough for our family. On top of the “normal” family struggles that bubble up in every house, my grandmother’s health took a sharp decline. So Penn started using this phrase and pairing it with thoughtful action: “I’m anticipating your needs…” then he would do...

It's always fun to interview people we can fangirl over and this week's guest is no exception. Penn and I talk to stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and fellow North Carolinian Fortune Feimster! Everything Fortune does seems to be steeped in positivity. We talk about her growing up in NC, what her parents must have thought about her becoming a comedian, and how she accidentally stole the show in th...

We thought it would be fun to hear from you guys this week on some of your favorite Thanksgiving traditions and your crazy stories... and thanks to this new invention called a TELEPHONE we get to actually hear your voices too! This Thanksgiving is going to be a hard one for our family, but your calls brightened our day and made us laugh. We are thankful for you. Don’t forget to call us and leave a...

Penn and I talk about treating your marriage like a team using the most inspirational and uplifting muse we know… Ted Lasso. Our family loves watching Ted Lasso, and we’re going through withdrawals now that Season 2 is over. So we thought we’d use some of the show’s best one-liners to talk about treating your marriage as a team. (Who needs couples therapy when you have Ted Lasso, right? Total...

*This podcast episode is around the heavy topic of social media and the prevalence of sexual predators. There is content on the show that people may find disturbing. Though it’s important to have these conversations with your kids, we recommend listening on your own first.* We interviewed my friend, Roo Powell, on our podcast in February 2020 where she talked to us about her work uncovering online...

People always ask us what it’s like to do our job. We get it. It’s a weird way to pay the mortgage. Our version of a business seminar is when we get to sit down with other creators and share our non-traditional job experiences. That's why we were excited to swap stories with fellow creators Kristin Hensley & Jen Smedley from #IMOMSOHARD on this week’s podcast. We guarantee these ladies will make y...