Mental Breakdowns & Moonshot Goals with Mike Massimino

The Holderness Family Podcast

Kim Holderness

Kids & Family, The Holderness Family, Humor, 50s, Laugh Lines, Aging, Education, The Laugh Line, Kim Holderness, Penn Holderness, Getting Older, Holderness Podcast, 40s, Gen X, Self-improvement, Laugh Line, Relationships, Family, Marriage, Familyfriendly, Comedy, 950823, Marriagecounseling, Holderness, Youtube, Raisingchildren, Christmasjammies, Parenting, Society & Culture

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We started this episode with tears, and somehow ended up in outer space. (Welcome to Laugh Lines!) This week, I had a completely unplanned “Menty B” (short for mental breakdown) about our daughter leaving for college. There are feelings. So many feelings. And mascara malfunctions. Then (try not to get whiplash) we take an emotional U-turn to bring on former astronaut and NYT bestselling author, Mike Massimino, to talk about setting big, bold, seemingly impossible goals.

Penn really dislikes goal setting, but he loves space. So he felt like an astronaut could help him be a better goal setter. Mike shares the truly wild story of how he overcame three rejections from NASA, trained his eyes to beat the vision test (seriously!), and why collaboration is the best way to achieve your dreams. We also hear from an awesome 13-year-old listener who might just bring back a forgotten podcast segment. So buckle up Laugh Lines listeners, this one’s a real journey. We love to hear from you, leave us a message at 323-364-3929 or write the show at [email protected]. You can also watch our podcast on YouTube.

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Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness is an evolution of The Holderness Family Podcast, which began in 2018. 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) Thriving With ADHD and winners on The Amazing Race (Season 33) on CBS.

Laugh Lines is hosted and executive produced by Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness, with original music by Penn Holderness. Laugh Lines is also written and produced by Ann Marie Taepke, and edited and produced by Sam Allen. It is hosted by Acast. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Helen Louise, colleague at Astre Brombra. And if like me, you need to fill up those
0:04.0	cupboards again, we've got loads of rollbacks on big brand household essentials. That's right, Helen
0:08.5	Louise. Like this 24 pack of Cushel's Simply Soft toilet roll from £11.98 to £8 £8 £3.65
0:16.0	£5 £0.Koll £0. £3.25 £0. £3.000 £2 £2 £2 £3.29 to £2.48. I need to stock up now. That's good on his value. That's Asda price.
0:24.6	Selected stores subject to availability may exclude Asda Express and small stores. See
0:28.4	azda.com slash small stores.
0:32.0	We're going to do this now? Yeah. With this, this look?
0:35.3	What is the... I think we find out who we are when we're faced with a failure.
0:41.2	So you are a fan of the Katie Perry's and the Gail Kings.
0:45.3	Like, you're a fan of celebrities taking these space flights.
0:48.7	Did I say that?
0:50.6	Yeah, we get older every day.
0:53.2	Got more wrinkles, that's okay.
0:55.2	Yeah, we're laughing when we age.
0:57.2	Life is like a comedy stage.
1:00.9	And that's what we got laugh lines.
1:07.1	Hey, I'm Kim Holderness.
1:08.4	And I'm Penn Holderness.
1:09.3	And thank you for joining us on Laughlines. We're so glad you're here. If you have a bathroom Advil, purse Advil, travel Advil, car Advil, then you're in a safe space. We are your people. We're leaning into that sort of thing here. And you know, we're just talking about life. Speaking of which, how you doing, babe? We, like, we were about to hit record and I said, how you
1:30.9	doing? And this is, I'm going to do my impression to Kim. Fine. We have a very exciting show for you
1:35.5	today before I have my mental breakdown. My mentee B. A New York Times bestselling author,
1:40.9	professor, former astronaut, Mike Massimino, he's here to help us with
	...

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