Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

I'm Jesse Thorn, it's Bullseye.

If you know the work of Cool Out the Lysoc already, odds are it's because she made you laugh.

Maybe it was on the podcast who charted but she co-hosted for eight years on the Earwolf Network.

She also created the TV show Bajillion Dollar Properties which ran on CISO.

She's also an actor who's appeared in dozens of TV shows, like Parks and Recreation in the office.

But for pretty much as long as she has been a working actor, comedian, writer and showrunner,

she's also been working on a completely different project, a documentary called Origin Story,

that's streaming now on Amazon.

And its title is its subject, Cool Out's Origin Story.

It's a story about family secrets learning to adapt to them to empathize with difficult parents

and to connect with brand new loved ones.

Cool Out was raised in Minnesota.

Her parents were both refugees from the Secret War in Laos.

One night, during a family argument, her mother told her something that would change her life completely.

The man who'd raised her isn't her birth father.

In Origin Story, Cool Out confronts her history head on.

She reckons with her parents, her mom in particular.

She talks about identity and her experience as a second-generation immigrant.

She finds her birth father and goes to Laos to meet him.

Here's a bit from the documentary in this clip which opens the film.

Cool Out takes us through the night she found out.

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